CHAUNTERS’
“I heard once more in college fanes
The storms their high-built organs make,
And thunder-music, rolling, shake
The prophets blazon’d on the panes.”
_In Memoriam._
Without any choice of mine, except in one instance, it has happened
that since I left school, in 1860, I have always lived in cathedral
cities. Oxford, London, Bangor, Norwich, Chester, Manchester in turns
have been my dwelling-places. The cathedral city aspect of London (the
above-mentioned exception) is little considered: only of Chester and
Norwich can it be said that the atmosphere is Close. There bishop,
dean, and canon in residence are persons to be reckoned with. Even the
minor canon, a young man who comes with a tenor or baritone voice,
and goes away with a wife and a living, receives in many quarters the
brevet rank of canon, and is a welcome guest if he can sing comic songs
in the drawing-room.
An Oxford college about the year 1860 instituted “Choral Scholarships,”
with the view of attracting undergraduates, who should be able to take
an intelligent part in rendering the choral services for which it was
so famed; and the wag of the period unkindly described them as “_Vox
et praeterea nihil_.” This is possibly true of some minor canons also,
especially of those who are gifted with a tenor voice: for nature
bestows this supreme gift with so sparing a hand that she can hardly
be expected in every case to add wisdom. I cannot remember that I ever
met a minor canon with a _basso profondo_. But baritones abound, and
when they, or the tenors, retire to their country living, there is much
lamentation in the Close.
One such glorified minor canon I used to meet annually. The Reverend A.
Chaunters had risen to the rank of precentor[27] in a southern city:
let us call it Sudchester: then he had been offered the snug rectory of
Q., and in that country parish he had spent many happy years.
His cathedral days shared a fond place in his memory with his
undergraduate days at Oxford. I think, if I may be allowed the vain
thought, that it really pleased him to get me to lunch every autumn
after his school inspection: and with coffee and tobacco to prolong the
session till the October twilight warned me to go.
It was my part to tell him year by year of the Cathedral services in
the city in which I dwelt; of Services[28] by Stainer and Stanford; of
anthems by Gounod, Stainer, and Martin; of the surpassing merits of the
organist and choirmaster. He would respond with chronicles of Magdalen
and of New in the ’forties and ’fifties; of Elvey and Corfe; and of
the Musical Society in which he took an active part; and then of the
much-loved cathedral, where he was precentor; of the wonderful tenor,
and of the surpassing boy who sang Rossini’s “Inflammatus”--“with the
C in alt, you know”--and Mendelssohn’s “Hear my Prayer.” He would
fetch out old folios, worn at the edges and weak in the back; and
looking lovingly through them, he would ask, did I know “I beheld and
lo,” _Blow_; and “They that go down,” _Attwood_? Had I ever seriously
studied Purcell? Ah-h.
Then it was mine to tell him of changes in Oxford: of new buildings,
even of new colleges: and it was his to bring up memories of (I forget
what) college, where he matriculated before I was born. He was there
at the time of the “Oxford Movement.” He had heard the sermon of Pusey
which was condemned: he had sat under Keble: under John Henry Newman
himself. He must have continued at Oxford as Chaplain of New, Magdalen,
or Christ Church after he took his degree, for he remembered the day
in 1845 when Bounder of Queen’s met him and said, “Have you heard
that Newman has gone over at last, and a good job too?” That was John
Bounder, who afterwards was Archdeacon of Nevermindwhere, &c., &c.
A little prompting from me would set the old man a-gate (in Cheshire
phrase) with a crowd of memories of his cathedral life; so varied that
I suspect that, like many in their anecdotage, he assimilated the
experiences of others.
Of his Dean he had much to say. The very reverend gentleman had been
incumbent of a town parish, where Evangelical views prevailed, and
cathedral services were new to him. It was said that after watching
the choir for some days he summoned the precentor (that was Chaunters’
predecessor) to the Chapter House, and began after the method of
Socrates:
“Mr. Precentor, I’d be glad to know whether your choir is paid to sing,
or to stand and do nothing?”
“Certainly, to sing, Mr. Dean.”
“Because I have been watching ’um for four days now, and I’ve come
to the conclusion that there’s an organised conspiracy among ’um. In
the Psalms, for instance, ye’ll see ’um taking it in turns; one side
singing a verse, and then resting, while the other side sings; so
that half of ’um are idle all the time. It’s an organised conspiracy;
nothing else.”
The precentor explained the antiphonal method, and the canon, who was
present, rather staggered the dean by assuring him that this method was
practised by the early Christians in the days of Trajan.[29]
After this the dean was quiet for some weeks: then he broke out again
on the precentor: “I’ve been looking a good deal lately at your list
of Services, and I notice that ye give us too much in the same key.
There’s Kempton in B flat, and King in B flat, and Boyce in B flat, and
so on. Couldn’t ye give us a little more variety?”
“By all means, Mr. Dean,” said the precentor: “glad to see that you
take so much interest in the music.”
He withdrew, and revised the list for the coming week: there were
four Services (out of fourteen) in the objectionable key, and in each
case he erased B flat and substituted A sharp. Thus amended, the list
was printed and submitted to the dean, who was pleased to express his
gratitude that his suggestion had been adopted.
“Your precentor, I presume, didn’t explain that an organ has only one
note to represent A sharp and B flat,” said I, anxious to let my host
know that I saw the point of his story.
“Not he: he was a man who enjoyed a joke, and sometimes made one, when
he would have done better to hold his tongue till he got outside. I
remember one day, an old canon had died; he had always been in money
difficulties, and had left a family very poorly provided for. The
precentor came in just before service with a hymn-book, and suggested
that the canon in residence should choose a hymn suitable to the
melancholy occasion.
“‘To be sure,’ said the canon pensively, turning over the leaves in a
vague way: ‘there’s a beautiful hymn beginning:
‘O let him whose sorrow
No relief can find--’
“‘The very thing,’ said the precentor:
‘Trust in God and borrow.’[30]
“‘That is what _he_ would have done.’”
Chaunters’ cathedral, he said, stood in the midst of a Close: there was
the palace, there was the deanery, there were the houses of the four
canons. Even the minor canons presumed to occupy modest dwellings or
lodgings in the sacred precincts. There also was the devout centurion,
Colonel A., and there the retired Admiral B. There, too, were godly
matrons and still more godly spinsters, who revered the cathedral,
adored either the bishop or the dean, associated with the canons’
families, and patronised the minor canons.
The canons were appointed by the Crown. The King can do no wrong, but
he may be misguided. One canon was the head of a college at Oxbridge;
he “resided” at Sudchester in the Long Vacation. When October came,
it brought with it the incumbent of a huge London parish, which he
neglected till Christmas. Then came the archdeacon, who indeed never
went away, for the Close was his home. The fourth was a voluble
Irishman who had obliged his political party--Chaunters did not tell
me which party--at a critical time, and had received his reward in
the form of a canonry; though he was of opinion that a deanery would
have been more fitting, and his wife criticised with some acerbity two
recent appointments to the episcopal bench.
The archdeacon, I have said, was a fixture; the others let their
houses, when they were not in residence, and thus added a modest sum
to their revenues. Two of them sided with the bishop, who was High;
the others with the dean, who was Low. Chaunters was epigrammatic and
symmetrical in his account.
Just outside the Close, for the convenience of his music pupils, lived
the organist, Dr. Pedler, whose Services--Pedler in C, and Pedler in
E flat--are as well known as his anthems, “Oh my soul,” _Pedler_, and
“Great and marvellous,” _Pedler_. He even wrote an oratorio, called
Sennacherib. It was performed by the local Philharmonic Society, and
Part I. was favourably received; but in Part II., when they came to the
tenor and bass recitative (D minor) “And when they arose” (too-too)
“early in the morning” (too-too) “behold” (burr-r-r) “they were all
dead corp-ses” (vum-vum on the ’cellos), there was smothered laughter
in the middle of the hall: and the really fine aria for the tenor,
“For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast”
was interrupted by guffaws from the back seats, where the humour of the
recitative had more slowly penetrated. The dean, too, gave it to be
understood that the blending of the Book of Kings with Lord Byron was
hardly becoming in a cathedral official, and Sennacherib perished.
“It was a pity, though,” said my host, “for that tenor air, sung by
Sims Reeves with extraordinary power to a harp obbligato accompaniment,
should have carried it through.” And the old gentleman sat down at the
piano, and made as though he would play it; but he laughed sadly, and
muttered, “No Sims Reeves, and no harp here,” and went on with his
memories.
“This soured the organist, and he developed unsound opinions about the
Close. His enemies even said that he voted for the Whig candidate at a
Parliamentary election: but this was before the days of ballot voting,
and the base slander was easily disproved. He was a freeholder under
the old statutes of the cathedral, and neither dean nor bishop could
touch him.”
“_Quamdiu bene se gessisset_,” I interposed, knowing the Rector’s
affection for an easy bit of Latin.
“Just so,” he answered, rather uncertainly, and continued.
“Pedler’s special aversion was the Irish canon; partly because he
had led the laughter that slew Sennacherib, and had even asked why
Sims Reeves had not a Jews’ harp to accompany him: partly because it
was known to Pedler that the Canon spoke of him as the ‘great and
marvellous’ one, in allusion to the anthem above mentioned: but chiefly
because by the statutes of the cathedral his enemy was precentor, and
got £600 a year for his office.[31]
“‘Paddy Windbags,’ he would say--for by that opprobrious name he
designated his enemy--‘doesn’t know the difference between the
Cruiskeen Lawn and Winchester New; and with his canonry, and what he
gets by letting furnished apartments here, when he is on the stump in
Mudborough, he gets as much as all the men and boys on the _Cantoris_
side put together.’
“‘And there’s that Cockney chap,’ he would go on, ‘got a living in
London worth goodness knows what; population 15,000; takes a holiday in
September, because he is so hard worked, and _then_ comes down here
for three solid months with thirteen old sermons in his pocket to fire
at the cathedral congregation. Three months with two hours’ work a day!
Yah!’
“All gone now,” Chaunters sighed; and there was a pause.
“Did I ever tell you about old Dick the blower?” he resumed: “Dick had
been blowing the cathedral organ for thirty-five years; it was all
done by hand then; and the story was that he knew the Services and
anthems so well that he could tell exactly how many fillings of the big
bellows went to each. He had a rough copy of the Service List hung up
in the recess where he worked his lever, and a glance at that sufficed.
One afternoon, when the First Lesson was running down, he looked at
the list to see what ‘Magnificat’ was on; it was Rogers in D; and he
muttered ‘sixty-four,’ or whatever the number of pumpings was, and in
due course he blew sixty-four times. But by bad luck it happened that
an eminent musician had turned up, and, to impress him, the precentor
had taken off Rogers in D, which is a short affair, and put on Attwood
in C, which, you may remember, has a long Gloria at the end. Having
blown his sixty-four, Dick had emerged from his den to stretch his
legs, and, long before the Gloria was finished, the organ was as dead
as Sennacherib. Dick was puzzled, but conscious of right; and when,
during the Second Lesson, Pedler came raging down-stairs to know what
was wrong, Dick was ready: ‘What ’ave I bin a doin’ on? Why, what ’ave
you bin a singin’ of? _Hattwood in C?_ What does it say on that there
list? Doctor Rogers in D, and I blowed Dr. Rogers in D. If
you’d ’a said Hattwood in C, I’d ’a blowed accordin’.”
Pedler admitted contributory negligence.
Concerning vergers, Chaunters had countless tales; but he robbed all
the cathedrals in England of their local vergers and domiciled them
all in Sudchester. It was not his verger, but a St. Paul’s man who
objected to private devotions on the ground that they had services at
10 and 3.30, and didn’t want no fancy work. It was a Canterbury verger
who bade a private devotee rise from his knees, and apologetically
remarked to a bystander that if he didn’t stop ’em he should ’ave ’em
prayin’ hall hover the place. It was a Belgravian verger who warned the
lady not to leave her parasol about while she looked at the painted
windows, “because Private Devotions comes in at 11, and they halways
steals.” It was in a northern cathedral that the vergers complained to
the dean that the organist, by playing on the organ when there was no
service going on, distracted the visitors so much that they wouldn’t go
round the chapels and tombs.
“So that,” replied the Dean blandly, “not only this our craft is in
danger to be set at naught, but also that the temple of the great
goddess Diana should be despised.”
It was at that same northern fane that a recently appointed verger,
who had left a good place to assume his gown, on being invited by
his exceedingly respectable master to return, said, “I had rather be
a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of
ungodliness.” It was in a still more remote cathedral that the old
verger, on being informed by the canon that the stranger whom he was
showing round was an Ecclesiastical Commissioner, one of the family of
Shalmaneser, hastily moved to the visitor’s right side, and explained
that he kept his money in the pocket which he thus removed out of
danger.
But all these and many other equally veracious anecdotes did my host
affiliate on Sudchester, and I said no word of reproof. All vergers
work on the same principle, that the cathedral exists for their
benefit, and that they should be supreme. It follows that vergers’
stories are interchangeable.
He had stories of parish clerks, which in like manner he localised
in the adjacent parishes. Most of them are in print, but one purely
Cheshire story, dating from 1866, has possibly been forgotten, even in
the county. I will risk it after forty-two years.
It was at the time of the cattle plague, when Cheshire farmers were
threatened with absolute ruin, that in a country church one afternoon
the choir burst into a pathetic hymn, of which I remember only one
verse:
“There’s not a cow, or ox, or beast,
But takes it out of hand;
And soon we’ll have no beasts at all
To dwell within the land.”
The farmers wept bitterly, and said it was too touching: but the Rector
said to the clerk, when they got into the vestry, “Why, Thomas, what
was that psalm you were singing? Was it one of David’s?”
“Deevid!” said the clerk in bitter scorn, “Deevid never wrote hanythink
loike that in hall ’is born dees: that wur a bit of _moy_ puttin’
tergether.”
I remember how I pleased the old man by capping his story with a
Midland counties’ story, told me by the vicar concerned therein:
They had begun the Athanasian Creed, and in the front seat, right
before the old three-decker of pulpit, reading-desk, and clerk’s pew,
stood an old man searching in vain for the unaccustomed formulary.
The vicar hastily whispered to the clerk below him, “Find his place.”
The clerk obeyed, and then half-turning round muttered with withering
contempt:
“Whoy, ’ee were a-rootlin i’ the Psawms!”
Of course these varied reminiscences were not all produced at one
meeting; they were spread over many years, and some recurred more than
once, more than twice. The story about Dick, the blower, for instance,
was a hardy annual, and if the Rector had not produced it in any year,
I should have been aggrieved.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] His official rank was succentor, the precentor being a Canon; but
in Sudchester the full title is always conceded.
[28] “Services”--with a capital S--stands for the Canticles, and the
musical setting of the Communion Service.
[29] “Carmenque Christo, quasi deo, dicere secum _invicem_.”--Pliny, x.
97.
[30] The verse runs thus in the hymn-book:
“Trust in God, and borrow
Ease for heart and mind.”
[31] This custom exists at other old foundations; St. Paul’s, York, &c.