HURSLEY CHURCH
IN one of his prose writings Mr. Keble speaks of the faithful shepherd
going on his way though storms may be raging in the atmosphere; and such
might be a description of his own course as regarded his flock, though
there were several of these storms that affected him deeply. One gust
came very near home.
The diocesan, Bishop Charles Sumner, was an excellent and conscientious
man, with a much deeper sense of his duties as a bishop than his
immediate predecessors, and of great kindness and beneficence; but he had
been much alarmed and disturbed by the alleged tendencies of the _Tracts
for the Times_, and shared in the desire of most of the authorities to
discourage their doctrines and practice. When, therefore, the curate of
Hursley came to Farnham to be admitted to the priesthood, he was
required, contrary to the usual custom with candidates, to state
categorically his views upon the Holy Eucharist. He used the expressions
of the Catechism, also those of Bishop Ridley, but was desired to use his
own individual words; and when these were sent in, he was rejected,
though they did not outrun the doctrine that had always been taught by
the close followers of the doctrine of the Catechism. Nevertheless, in
spite of this disapproval, there was no withdrawal of his licence, and he
remained at Hursley, not thinking it loyal to seek Ordination from
another bishop, as would readily have been granted. He married Mrs.
Keble’s cousin, Miss Caroline Coxwell, and their young family was an
infinite source of delight to the childless vicarage.
Their baby ways, to one who held that “where christened infants sport,
the floor is holy,” and who read a mystical meaning into many of their
gestures and words, were a constant joy and inspiration; and there grew
up a store of poems upon them and other little ones, especially the
children of Dr. George Moberly, then headmaster of Winchester College
(later bishop of Salisbury). These Mr. Keble thought of putting together
for publication, being chiefly impelled to do so by the desire to improve
Hursley Church, the eighteenth century arrangement of which really
prevented the general inculcation of the more reverent observances which
teach and imply doctrine.
In consideration of the feelings of certain old parishioners, and the
other more pressing needs, as well as of the patience with which so great
an enterprise needed in his mind to be contemplated, nine years had
elapsed since his incumbency had begun before he wrote: “We are stirring
about our Church, and next spring I hope really to go to work; you must
come and see the plans first, or else hereafter for ever hold your peace
in respect of alleging impediments. One feels that one’s advanced age
has not rendered one fitted to set about such works; but really the
irreverence and other mischiefs caused by the present state of Hursley
Church seem to leave one no choice.”
The step that had first been taken was one for which many generations far
and wide have reason to be grateful, the arrangement and publication of
the _Lyra Innocentium_, to a certain degree on the lines of the
_Christian Year_, so as to have one poem appropriated to each Sunday and
holy day (though these were only fully marked off in a later edition).
The book is perhaps less universally read than the _Christian Year_, and
is more unequal, some poems rising higher and into greater beauty, some
deeper and showing that the soul had made further progress in these
twenty years, some very simple in structure, fit for little children, yet
with a grave and solemn thought in the last verse.
Those that are specially full of Hursley atmosphere, on events connected
with the author, may be touched on here.
“Christmas Eve Vespers” was suggested by the schoolmaster’s little
daughter going into church before the decoration had been put up, and
exclaiming, disappointed, “No Christmas!” “The Second Sunday in Lent”
recalls, in the line on “the mimic rain on poplar leaves,” the sounds
made by a trembling aspen, whose leaves quivered all through the summer
evenings, growing close to the house of Mr. Keble’s life-long friend and
biographer, Sir John Taylor Coleridge, at Ottery St. Mary. An engraving
of Raffaelle’s last picture “The Transfiguration” hung in the Vicarage
drawing-room.
“The Fourth Sunday in Lent,” on the offering of the lad with the five
loaves, was suggested by the stained window on that subject given by the
young Marquess of Lothian—a pupil for some years of Mr. Wilson at
Ampfield—to the church at Jedburgh, built by his mother. Now that he has
passed away, it may be remarked that he, as well as all the children
commemorated in these poems, grew up so as to leave no painful impression
connected with them. “Keep thou, dear boy, thine early vow,” was
fulfilled in him, as it was with George Herbert Moberly, the eldest son
of Dr. Moberly, who, when a young child staying at the vicarage, was
unconsciously the cause of the poems “Loneliness” and “Repeating the
Creed,” for Easter Sunday and Low Sunday. Frightened by unwonted
solitude at bedtime, he asked to hear “something true,” and was happy
when Mrs. Keble produced the Bible. He was a boy of beautiful
countenance, and his reverent, thoughtful look, as he repeated the Creed,
delighted Mr. Keble. It was little expected then that he was doomed to a
life-long struggle with invalidism, though he was able to effect much as
a thinker and a priest before he, too, was taken to see in Paradise “the
glorious dream around him burst.”
It was a baby sister of his who drew herself up in her nurse’s arms with
a pretty gesture, like a pheasant’s neck in a sort of reproof, as she
said “Thank you” to her little self, when she had held out a flower to
Mr. Keble, which, for once in his life, he did not notice; and his
self-reproach produced the thoughts of thankfulness. One of the gems of
the _Lyra_, “Bereavement,” was the thought that came to the mind of the
Pastor as he buried the little sister, the only child except the elder
girl, of the bailiff at Dr. Moberly’s farm. “Fire” embodied his feeling
about a burnt child at Ampfield—
We miss thee from thy place at school
And on thy homeward way,
Where violets, by the shady pool,
Peep out so shyly gay
The Lullaby, with the view of the burnished cross upon the spire, and the
girl singing the baby to sleep with the old Psalm—
In Thee I put my stedfast trust,
Defend me, Lord, for Thou art just,
is another Ampfield scene, inspiring noble and gentle thoughts for
Innocents’ Day.
“Lifting up to the Cross” (St. James’s Day) was the product of a drawing
brought home from Germany of a sight beheld by Miss Maria Trench, on a
journey with Sir William and Lady Heathcote. She afterwards became Mrs.
Robert F. Wilson, and made her first wedded home at Ampfield; and there
is another commemoration of that journey in the fountain under the bank
in Ampfield churchyard, an imitation of one observed in Tyrol and with
the motto—
While cooling waters here you drink
Rest not your thoughts below,
Look to the sacred sign and think
Whence living waters flow,
Then fearlessly advance by night or day,
The holy Cross stands guardian of your way.
“More Stars” (All Saints’ Day) and “Wakefulness” (The Annunciation) are
reminiscences of Charles Coleridge Pode, a little nephew of Mr. Yonge,
and his ecstatic joy on the first night of being out of doors late enough
to see the glory of the stars. A few months later, on a sister being
born, he hoped that her name would be Mary “because he liked the Virgin
Mary.” And when, only a few days later, his own mother was taken from
him, he lay awake and silent, night after night. He, too, was one who
fulfilled his early promise, till, as a young physician, he was cut off
after much patient suffering. “More Stars” is also attributed to an
exclamation of one of Mr. Peter Young’s children; but in point of fact,
most little ones have broken out in a similar joyous shout on their first
conscious sight of the starry heavens.
Mrs. Keble used to forbear telling of the subjects of these poems, lest,
as she said, there might be a sort of blight on the children in breaking
the reserve; but most of them are beyond the reach of that danger in
publicity; and I can only further mention that the village children _en
masse_, and the curate’s in detail, furnished many more of the subjects,
while still they only regarded Mr. Keble as their best of playmates.
They cheered him when the great sorrow of his life befell him in the
secession of John Henry Newman, hitherto his friend and fellow-worker.
It came at a time when perhaps he was most fitted to bear it, when his
brother in Gloucestershire and his wife at home had just begun to recover
from a terrible typhoid fever caught at Bude.
Words spoken in the immediate prospect of death, by Mrs. Keble,
strengthened her husband’s faith and made him more than ever determined
to hold fast by the Church of his fathers; and the thankfulness and
exhilaration caused by the improvement in her health carried him the
better over the first blow, though he went out alone to a quiet deserted
chalk-pit to open the letter which he knew would bring the final news of
the reception of his friend into the Roman Church.
Nor did his Hursley plans stand still. Under the management of Sir John
Taylor Coleridge and other friends, the _Christian Year_ had become much
more profitable, and the _Lyra_ also brought in a considerable quota, so
that the entire work could be undertaken at Mr. Keble’s expense.
It was decided, partly by Mr. Yonge himself, that the enterprise was on
too large a scale for his partial knowledge, and moreover, much progress
had been made during these nine years in ecclesiology, so that architects
who had made it their study were to be found. The design was committed
to William Harrison, Esq., a relation of Archdeacon Harrison, a very old
friend and contemporary. It followed the lines of the existing church,
which were found to be so solid and well built as for the most part only
to need casing and not renewal, nor was the old tower taken down.
The contract with Locke and Nesham was for £3380, exclusive of the
flooring, the wood-work, and other fittings of the interior. For this
£1200 was set aside, but the sum was much exceeded, and there were many
offerings from private friends.
The altar of cedar-wood was the gift of Robert Williams, Esq.; the altar
plate was given by Mrs. Heathcote; the rails by the architect; the font
by the Rev. William Butler and Emma his wife, and the clergy and sisters
of Wantage. Mr. Butler was then vicar of Wantage, later canon of
Worcester and dean of Lincoln. The present cedar credence table was made
long after Mr. Keble’s death, the original one was walnut, matching the
chancel fittings.
This was proposed as the inscription on the base of the font, to be
entirely hidden—
Ecclesiæ Parochiali
Sanctorum Omnium
In agro Hursleiense
Hunc Fontem, Lavacrum Regenerationis,
In honorem D. N. J. C.
Gratis animis
D.D.D.
Presbyteri, Diacones, Lectores, Sorores
Ecclesiæ SS. Petri et Pauli
Indigna familia
Apud Wantagium
Whether the whole was actually cut out on the under side of the granite
step must be uncertain.
The steps of the sanctuary have in encaustic tiles these texts. On the
lowest:
Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have a right
to the Tree of Life, and enter through the gates into the city.
On the step on which the rails stand:
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for
they shall be filled.
On the next:
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
And on the highest:
Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty, they shall behold the
land that is very far off.
The lectern was the offering of the friend of his youth, the Rev. Charles
Dyson, Rector of Dogmersfield, copied from that at Corpus Christi
College, where they first met.
The corbels were carefully chosen: those by the chancel arch are heads of
St. Peter and St. Paul, as exponents of the inner mysteries; those by the
east window are St. Athanasius and St. Augustine as champions of the
faith. On the corbels of the north porch, looking towards the hills of
Winchester, are Bishops Andrewes and Ken on the outside; on the inside,
Wykeham and Waynflete. On the south porch, St. Augustine of Canterbury,
and the Empress Helena over the door; on the outside, Bishop Sumner and
Queen Victoria to mark the date of building.
“How would you like to have the book boards of the seats?” wrote the
architect; “perhaps it would suggest the idea of a prayer desk if they
were made to slope as the chancel stalls?”
And certainly their finials do suggest kneeling, and the arrangement is
such that it is nearly impossible not to assume a really devotional
attitude.
A stranger clergyman visited the church, measured the font and the height
to the ceiling, and in due time, in 1850, there arrived the beautiful
carved canopy, the donor never being known.
The windows did not receive their coloured glass at first; but Mr. Keble
had an earnest wish to make them follow the wonderful emblematic series
to which he had been accustomed in the really unique Church of Fairford,
where he had grown up. The glass of these windows had been taken in a
Flemish ship on the way to Spain by one John Tame, a Gloucestershire
merchant, who had proceeded to rebuild his parish church so as fitly to
receive it, and he must also have obtained the key to their wonderful and
suggestive arrangement.
Fairford Church is much larger than Hursley, so that the plan could not
be exactly followed, but it was always in Mr. Keble’s mind. It was
proposed that the glass should be given by the contribution of friends
and lovers of the _Christian Year_. Two of the windows came from the
Offertory on the Consecration day, one three-light was given by Mrs.
Heathcote (mother of Sir William), another by Sir William and Lady
Heathcote, one by the Marchioness of Bath, and one by the Marchioness of
Lothian. The designs were more or less suggested by Dyce and Copley
Fielding, but the execution was carried out by Wailes, under the
supervision of Butterfield. The whole work was an immense delight to Mr.
Keble, and so anxious was he that the whole should be in keeping, that
the east window was actually put in three times before it was judged
satisfactory. The plan of the whole was Mr. Keble’s own; and though the
colours are deeper, and what is now called more crude, than suits the
taste of the present day, they must be looked upon with reverence as the
outcome of his meditations and his great delight. I transcribe the
explanation that his sister Elisabeth wrote of their arrangement:
The Hursley windows are meant to be a course of Instruction in Sacred
History from Adam to the last day the church being dedicated to All
Saints.
The north-west window has Adam and Noah. The windows along the north
aisle each represent two persons from the Old Testament.
The three-light window on the north side, David with the ground plan
of the Temple, Moses with the Tables of the Law, Solomon with the
Model of the Temple. The Medallion under Moses is the Altar of
Incense, and some of the Holy things.
The whole of that window means to represent the fixing and finishing
of the Old Religion.
Then comes in the north chancel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and
Daniel, the prophets preparing for the Gospel.
The north-east window has the Circumcision connecting the Law with
the Church, with the figures of Anna and Simeon on each side.
East window: The Crucifixion, The Blessed Virgin and St. John on each
side, The Agony, Bearing the Cross, and the Scourging.
The side window of the Sanctuary has St. Stephen and St. John the
Baptist as the nearest Martyrs to our Lord, both before and after
Him, and their martyrdoms underneath.
The south-east window: The Resurrection, with soldiers at the
Sepulchre. St. Peter and St. Paul on each side.
The south chancel windows: The Four Evangelists; under, St. Luke, the
Disciples at Emmaus; under, St. John, he and St. Peter at the
Sepulchre.
The three-light south window: St. James the Less, first Bishop of
Jerusalem; underneath, the Council in Acts x. 6. At his side two
successors of the Apostles, St. Clement of Rome, Phil. iv. 3, and St.
Dionysius of Athens, Acts xvii. 34, to show how the Church is built
upon the Apostles.
In the west window, the Last Judgment, with St. Michael with his
scales, and answering to Adam and Noah in the west window of the
north aisle; and as a repentance window, St. Peter and St. Mary
Magdalene in the west of the south aisle. In the two windows close
to the font, St. Philip and Nicodemus, for baptism.
So were carried out the lines in the _Lyra Innocentium_.
The Saints are there the Living Dead,
The mourners glad and strong;
This sacred floor their quiet bed,
Their beams from every window shed
Their voice in every song.
The clerestory windows were put in somewhat later, on finding that the
church was dark, and Mr. Keble wished to have the children mentioned in
Scripture, in outline upon them, but this was not carried out.
It was first thought probable that readers of the _Christian Year_ and
the _Lyra Innocentium_ might have presented these stained windows, but
the plan fell through, and the only others actually given were the
repentance window, representing St. Peter and St. Mary Magdalene, by Mr.
Harrison. Two were paid for by special offertories, and the rest were
finally given by Mr. Keble, as the sums came in from his published
writings.
[Picture: Hursley Vicarage and Church]
The spire, completing the work, was added to the ancient tower by Sir
William Heathcote.
The foundation stone, a brass plate with an inscription surrounded by oak
leaves and acorns, was laid on the 29th of May 1847, but the spot is
unknown. The entire cost, exclusive of the woodwork and the gifts
mentioned, amounted to £6000. The large barn was used as a temporary
church, and there are happy recollections connected with it and with the
elm-shaded path between the Park and the vicarage field. When all sat on
forms without the shade of pews, example taught a lesson of reverent
attitude to the congregation, who felt obliged to lay aside any bad
habits which might have grown up out of sight, so as to be unconsciously
prepared for the new church, where the very width of the open benches and
the shape of their ends are suggestive of kneeling in prayer. The period
of the building was a time of enjoyment to Mr. Keble, for it was
symbolical to him of the “edifying,” building up, of the living stones of
the True Church, and the restoring her waste places. When the workmen
were gone home he used to walk about the open space in the twilight
silence in prayer and meditation.
When the topmost stone was to be added, on 18th October 1848, and the
weathercock finally secured, Mr. Keble ascended to the elevation that he
might set his hand to the work, and there said a thanksgiving for the
completion—“The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this
house. His hands shall also finish it” (Zech. iv. 9).
The day of the Consecration was an exceedingly happy one, on 24th October
1848, the only drawback being that Sir William Heathcote was too unwell
to be present. There was a great gathering—the two Judges, Coleridge and
Patteson, and many other warm and affectionate friends; and Sir John
Coleridge was impressed by the “sweet state of humble thankfulness” of
the Vicar and his wife in the completion of the work.
The sermon at Evensong on that day was preached by Mr. Keble himself, in
which he spoke of the end of all things; and said the best fate that
could befall that new church was that it should be burnt at the Judgment
Day.
He thought, probably, of the perils of perversion from true Catholic
principles which the course of affairs in these days made him dread
exceedingly, and hold himself ready to act like the Non-jurors, or the
Free Kirk men in Scotland, who had resigned all for the sake of
principle. “Nevertheless,” he wrote, “I suppose it is one’s duty to go
on as if all were encouraging.”
And he did go on, and supported others till, by God’s Providence, the
tide had turned, and much was effected of which he had only dreamt as
some day possible. It was in this frame of mind that the poem was
composed of which this is a fragment:
The shepherd lingers on the lone hillside,
In act to count his faithful flock again,
Ere to a stranger’s eye and arm untried
He yield the rod of his old pastoral reign.
He turns and round him memories throng amain,
Thoughts that had seem’d for ever left behind
O’ertake him, e’en as by some greenwood lane
The summer flies the passing traveller find,
Keen, but not half so sharp as now thrill o’er his mind.
For indeed every lapse in his parish turned to fill their pastor with
self-blame.