When Father Jinks read himself into St Agatha's, the church seemed to
him little better than a conventicle, a mere preaching-house, and it
was his business to change it into a place fit for Catholic worship. His
success in this direction was marvellous. Before his death there was a
chancel with screen and choir stalls, a side pulpit of carved stone with
scenes from the Gospels thereon, a reredos, and an altar with cross and
candlesticks, besides other pieces of ecclesiastical furniture of lesser
importance and beyond the lay intelligence. There was also an organ,
for which so many pews were removed, and a font near the door, for which
other pews were removed, and an east window, containing the life and
death of our patron saint, about whom nobody knew anything before, and
for which a magnificent geometrical design in red and blue, greatly
admired by the parish, had to be removed. The very plaster, with ornate
pattern of roses, he had stripped from the roof, and had the oak laid
bare; and although the walls had been tastefully decorated by a local
firm with a mixed border on a ground of green, so fierce and unrelenting
was the Vicar's iconoclastic passion that this also was sacrificed, and
nothing was to be seen in St Agatha's save stone and wood. “It was
the 'omeliest church you ever see,” that excellent woman Mrs. Judkin
remarked to me, “in the old Canon's time, with the bits of colour, and
'im a looking down at you in 'is black gown; and now it chills your 'art
to sit there, let alone that you're hexpected to bow 'alf the time;” and
so Mrs. Judkin, with many of like mind, went off to Ebenezer, where
the firmament was represented on the roof and the service was decidedly
warm. The structural reformation (or deformation, as it was generally
considered) was a very achievement of persevering and ingenious begging,
in which he taxed the patron and all the patron's friends, as well as
every old lady or ecclesiastical layman with the reputation of highness,
obtaining a pulpit from one and a font from another, picking up crosses,
candlesticks, stools, altar-cloths in all quarters, and being mightily
cheered by every addition to the full equipment of this neglected
edifice. Nor did Father Jinks ask from other people what he would not
give himself, for he dispensed with a curate that he might repair
the chancel, and, as appeared afterwards, he expended all his little
patrimony on the apocryphal life of St Agatha, whose doings and
appearance as represented on that window were a subject of derision
to the wits of the parish. When Jinks held his first festival in her
honour, and preached a discourse eleven minutes in length on St Agatha's
example and miracles, an interesting correspondence followed in the
local paper, in which it was asserted that the church, then in
the country and a chapel of ease to the famous church of St
Paul's-in-the-Fields, was named in the evil Laudian times, and ought to
have been rechristened by the name of Wycliffe or Latimer in the days of
the late lamented Canon; that St. Agatha never existed; that if she did,
she was a Papist; that if we knew enough, we should likely find that her
antecedents were very doubtful.
This correspondence, in which my friend himself was freely handled, did
not in the least disturb him, for the Festival of St Agatha was a height
to which he had been working for the three years, and it was the last
function of his public ministry. When the procession came out of
the vestry, with a cross-bearer--Jack Storgiss, the grocer, to whose
deformed little boy Jinks had been very kind--the banners of the Guild
of St Agatha, a choir of six men and twelve boys in varied garments,
Father Jinks himself with everything on he knew, attended by
acolytes--two little monkeys on whose ingenuous countenances
self-importance struggled with mischief--and, having marched round the
church singing “Onward, Christian soldiers,” re-entered the chancel, so
far as outward things went, the Father's heart was almost satisfied; and
as, in his stall, he thought of the desolation of the past he was as one
that dreamed.
If Jinks allowed himself to be proud of anything, it was of his
choir; and when people spoke of my friend as a weakling because he was
insignificant in appearance and a feeble preacher--he himself thanked
God daily that he was a priest, to whom Pastor Jumps' oratorical gifts
were unnecessary--one could always point to the choir, for the qualities
which created and held together that remarkable body were peculiar to
Jinks and were quite wanting in the Pastor. Three years before this
advertisement had appeared in the _Anglo-Catholic_:--
“Wanted, an organist and choirmaster, who will be prepared, for the
glory of God and the love of sacred music, to assist a priest in
affording Catholic worship to a neglected parish.”
This unworldly invitation caught the eye (and fancy) of Harold de
Petre--his original name was Henry Peter--about whom his friends were
much concerned because he had a small competency and would do nothing
except work at music; because he wore a brown velvet coat and a loose
red bow, and three ancient gems on his left hand, and his hair falling
over his ears; and because he practised a certain luxurious softness of
life which might pass any day into positive vice. Two more different men
could not have been found in a day's journey, but they became friends
at once. The priestly instinct detected at-once in Petre a gift whose
consecration would be the salvation of a soul and an assistance to the
Church of God; and the humility and sincerity of the little priest were
very attractive to the aesthete. From that time the curiously assorted
pair worked together in perfect harmony and ever-growing affection, with
one common desire to beautify the worship and edifice of St Agatha's.
In order to secure an organ Petre sacrificed one-third of his means, and
was daily designing some improvement in his loved instrument; for her
help he had even learned some organ handicraft, and could be seen almost
any day toiling in his shirt-sleeves. As he watched the life of the
Vicar, Petre began also to make many personal sacrifices, giving up
his wine--used to spend a good deal on Chateau Lafitte--to defray choir
expenses; teaching the piano in the more ambitious homes of the parish,
and with the proceeds providing two tenors and two basses of distinction
for the choir. One year he took no holiday that the altar might be
becomingly dressed according to the season of the Church year, whether
of joy or sorrow. Working with Jinks, a certain change even came over
Petre's outer man; with every year he shed a gem; black velvet replaced
the brown, and his hair became almost decorous; and one evening,
when the two were having a lemon squash after hard work at the Easter
decorations, Petre made a confession to his friend.
“There is something I wanted to tell you Jinks,” lighting his pipe
slowly. “My name is not really Harold de Petre: it's... just Henry
Peter. Didn't sound very artistic, you know, and I just... improved it
in fact. Rather think that I should go back to old signature.”
“My own name,” said the Vicar with much simplicity, “isn't a high-class
name, and I was once tempted to change it--it lends itself too easily to
abbreviations--but it seemed unreal to do that kind of thing.”
“Do you know, Father, I expect that anthem to go well to-morrow; that
little rascal Bags took the high notes magnificently to-night I told him
so, and he was awfully pleased: he's as keen as mustard at practice.”
Nothing further was said about fancy pseudonyms, but next time the
Father saw the organist's signature it was Henry Peter.
The boys in St. Agatha's choir were not angels, but they were Jinks'
particular friends, and would do more for him than for their own
parents. He had picked them up one by one in the parish as he
visited--for he had no school--upon the two qualifications that each
one had an ear, and each was an out-and-out boy. Because he was so good
himself Jinks would have nothing to do with prigs and smugs; and because
he did nothing wrong himself he delighted in the scrapes of his boys. It
was to him they went in trouble, and he somehow found a way of escape.
Every one knew who paid for the broken glass in the snowball fight
between Thackeray and Dickens Streets, in which Bags and another
chorister, much admired for his angelic appearance, led their
neighbourhood; and it was asserted by the Protestant party that the
Papist Vicar was seen watching the fray from the corner. When an
assistant School Board master bullied his boys beyond endurance and
they brought him to his senses with pain of body, it was the Vicar of
St Agatha's who pled the case of the rebels before the Board, and saved
them from public disgrace and the Police Court The Vicarage and all its
premises were at the disposal of the boys, and they availed themselves
freely of their privileges. Bags kept his rabbits in the yard--his
parents allowed no such tenants at home--and his fellow-warrior of the
snowball fight had a promising family of white mice in one of the empty
rooms, where another chorister had a squirrel, and _his_ friend
housed four dormice. There was a fairly complete collection of
pigeons--tumblers, pouters, fantails; you could usually have your choice
in pigeons at the Vicarage of St Agatha's. The choir did elementary
gymnastics in what was the Canoness's drawing-room, and learned their
lessons, if they were moved that way, in the dining-room. Every Friday
evening, after practice, there was a toothsome supper of sausages and
mashed potatoes, with stone ginger. Ye gods, could any boy or man feed
higher than that? On Saturdays in summer the Vicar took the whole gang
to the nearest Park, where, with some invited friends, they made two
elevens and played matches, with Jinks, who was too short-sighted to
play himself, but was the keenest of sportsmen, as consulting umpire;
and on chief holidays they all made excursions into the country, when
Harold de Petre became Henry Peter with a vengeance. And this was how
there was no difficulty in getting boys for the choir, and people began
to come to hear the music at St Agatha's.