Old Country Life

"'My love,' said the Vicar, 'this fact is worth a thousand arguments – the common people heard Christ gladly. Socinianism never fails to drive them away. A religion without a Saviour is the temple without the Shechinah, and its worshippers will all desert it. Few men in the world have less pretensions as a preacher than myself, – my voice, my look, my manner, all of a very ordinary nature, – and yet, I thank God, there is scarcely a corner of our little church where you might not find a streaming eye or a beating heart. The reason is – that I speak of Christ; and if there is not a charm in the word, there is the train of fears, and hopes, and joys which it carries along with it. The people feel, and then they must listen.'"

Evelyn in his Diary says, in 1683, "A stranger, and old man, preached – much after Bishop Andrews' method, full of logical divisions, in short and broken periods, and Latin sentences, now quite out of fashion in the pulpit, which is grown into a far more profitable way of plain and practical discourses, of which sort this nation, or any other, never had greater plenty or more profitable, I am confident."

Pepys is hardly to be quoted as a judge, as he went to church to see pretty faces, not, or not mainly, to hear sermons, and his criticism is not always to be trusted.

"1667, 26th May, the Lord's Day. I went by water to Westminster to the parish church, and there did entertain myself with my perspective glass up and down the church, by which I had the great pleasure of seeing and gazing at a great many very fine women; and what with that, and sleeping, I passed away the time till the sermon was done."

"1667, 20th August. Turned into St. Dunstan's church, where I heard an able sermon of the minister of the place; and stood by a pretty, modest maid, whom I did labour to take by the hand; but she would not, but got further and further from me; and at last I could perceive her to take pins out of her pocket to prick me if I should touch her again, – which seeing, I did forbear, and was glad I did spy her design. And then I fell to gaze upon another pretty maid in a pew close to me, and she on me; and I did go about to take her by the hand, which she suffered a little, and then withdrew. So the sermon ended, and the church broke up, and my amours ended also."

"1667, 25th August, Lord's Day. Up and to church, thinking to see Betty Michell, and did stay an hour in the crowd, thinking, by the end of a nose that I saw, that it had been her; but at last the head turned towards me, and it was her mother, which vexed me. So I back to my boat."

No, Pepys was no judge of a good sermon, his mind was otherwise engaged.

Sermons now-a-days produce little or no effect, because there are too many of them. The ears of hearers have been tickled till they are no longer capable of sensation. One hears curates boast of having preached some seven sermons in one week, and miserable stuff it must have been that flowed so freely; and yet good enough for the hearers, who, by accustoming their ears to be always hearing, are unable to appreciate a really good discourse, or if they appreciate, allow it to produce no effect whatever upon them. Our audiences in church are like those who live in railway arches, who become so accustomed to the rush overhead of trains, that none ever rouse them, and they cannot sleep without the intermittent rush to lull them.

The sermons of the end of last century and the beginning of this do not please us, because they are cast in a different mould, they generally appeal to a different side of us than do those of the present day. They were addressed to the natural, healthy conscience, and to plain, everyday common-sense, such as all men possess. Modern sermons are appeals to the feelings, amiable, sentimental emotions, and these amiable, sentimental emotions have become accustomed to be scratched, like cats, and purr when that is done. It was an epithet of scorn launched on Pope Damasus, that he was "ear-scratcher" to the ladies, – such is, however, the highest glory of a modern preacher.

Crabbe undoubtedly hit the old country parsons on their weak point when he said of his vicar, that his main characteristic was timidity. He was infinitely blameless, but also immeasurably afraid.

"Thus he his race began, and to the endHis constant care was, no man to offend;No haughty virtues stirr'd his peaceful mind;Nor urged the Priest to leave the Flock behind;He was his Master's soldier, but not oneTo lead an army of His martyrs on:Fear was his ruling passion."

Courage is born of conviction, and our old English country parsons had no definite convictions, a sort of vague, nebulous, inchoate notion that Christianity was all right, and that the Church of England was a via media, and they deprecated anything like giving precision and outline to faith, and assuming a direct walk which was not a perpetual dodging between opposed errors. I ventured in one of my novels, Red-Spider, to sketch this sort of parson, who never in the pulpit insisted on a doctrine lest he should offend a Dissenter, nor on a duty lest he should make a Churchman uneasy. And it was characteristic of the race. In the Faroes there are sixteen different names for fogs, and the articles of the Christian faith were only varieties in fogs to these spiritual pastors. The nebulous theory prevailed in astronomy, and in divinity as well. Some old-fashioned people resented the resolution of the nebulæ into fixed stars; and so also in that other province do they look on it as next to sacrilege to give to faith definition.

It is, however, only since parsons have begun to see definite ends that they have assumed any steadfastness in their walk and directness in their course. In Fielding's time the country parsons wore their cassocks as a usual dress. "Adams stood up," he relates, "and presented a figure to the gentleman which would have moved laughter in many, for his cassock had just fallen down below his great-coat, that is to say, it reached his knees, whereas the skirts of his great-coat descended no lower than half-way down his thighs."

The bands were always worn, the makeshift for the old Steenkirk tie of fine white linen edged with more or less deep lace. Knee-breeches, buckled shoes, and a black cocked hat completed his attire.

Some of the old Derby Uncle Toby jugs represent the beer-drinking parson of an age a little later. The cassock has disappeared, and he wears a clerical long black coat, with bands and white stockings. The apron of the bishop is the reminiscence of the cassock, as the hat tied up with strings of the archdeacon is the last survival of the cocked hat.

The parson and his parishioners were on very good terms. When the Vicar of Wakefield came to his new cure, the village turned out to meet him with pipe and drum. Nevertheless there was occasional friction, mainly, if not altogether, relative to tithe gathering. There is a harvest-home song Dryden wrote for, or introduced into his play, King Arthur; or, The British Worthy, in 1691, which forms part of the enchantments of Merlin, and is sung by Comus and a set of peasants —

"We have cheated the parson, we'll cheat him again,For why should a blockhead have one in ten?One in ten,One in ten;For why should a blockhead have one in ten,For prating so long, like a book-learned sot,Till pudding and dumpling burn to pot?Burn to pot."

There can be little question that the parson did get cheated over and over again, and bore it without a murmur.

An amusing ballad is sung to this day in the west of England relative to the way in which parsons were treated by their parishioners —

"There wor a man in our town,I knowed him well, 'twor Passon Brown,A man of credit and renown,For – he wor our Passon.Passon he had got a sheep,Merry Christmas he would keep;Decent Passon he – and cheap,Well-spoke – and not a cross 'un.Us had gotten nort to eat,So us stole the Passon's sheep —Merry Christmas us would keep;We ate 'n for our dinner.Us enjoyed our Christmas day;Passon preached, and said, 'Let's pray,But I'm a fasting saint; aye, aye!You'm each a wicked sinner.'Cruel vex'd wor Passon Brown,Sick to death he laid him downPassonless was soon our town,For why? – we'd starved our Passon.Tell'y – did'y ever hearSuch a story, true but queer,How 'twixt Christmas and New YearThe flock had ate their Passon?"

There was non-residence undoubtedly previous to the Act against holding more than one living at a time, unless near together. Men of birth and influence obtained a good deal of preferment, but never in post-Reformation times to the extent that this abuse existed before. To take but one instance. Thomas Cantilupe, who died in 1282, was Precentor and Canon of York, Archdeacon of Stafford and Canon of Lichfield, Canon of London, Canon of Hereford, and held the livings of Doderholt, Hampton, Aston, Wintringham, Deighton, Rippel, Sunterfield, and apparently also Prestbury. Pretty well! It was never so bad in the maligned Hanoverian period.

I had a living in Essex which was held formerly by a certain Bramston Staynes, who was a squarson in Essex, and held simultaneously three other livings; there was one curate to serve the three churches. The rector is said to have visited one of his livings twice only in the twenty years of his incumbency – once to read himself in, the other time to settle some dispute relative to the payment of his tithes.

I can recall several instances of the old scholar-parson, a man chap-ful of quotations. One, a very able classic, and a great naturalist, was rather fond of the bottle. "Mr. West," said a neighbour one day, "I hear you have a wonderfully beautiful spring of water in your glebe." "Beautiful! surpassing! fons Blandusiæ, splendidior vitro!– water so good that I never touch it – afraid of drinking too much of it."

Some twenty-five years ago I knew another, a fine scholar, an old bachelor, living in a very large rectory. He was a man of good presence, courteous, old-world manners, and something of old-world infirmities. His sense of his religious responsibilities in the parish was different in quality to that affected now-a-days.

He was very old when I knew him, and was often laid up with gout. One day, hearing that he was thus crippled, I paid him a visit, and encountered a party of women descending the staircase from his room. When I entered he said to me, "I suppose you met little Mary So-and-so and Janie What's-her-name going out? I've been churching them up here in my bed-room, as I can't go to church."

When a labourer desired to have his child privately baptized, he provided a bottle of rum, a pack of cards, a lemon, and a basin of pure water, then sent for the parson and the farmer for whom he worked. The religious rite over, the basin was removed, the table cleared, cards and rum produced, and sat down to. On such occasions the rector did not return home till late, and the housekeeper left the library window unhasped for the master, but locked the house doors. Under the library window was a violet bed, and it was commonly reported that the rector had on more than one occasion slept in that bed after a christening. Unable to heave up his big body to the sill of the window, he had fallen back among the violets, and there slept off the exertion.

I never had the opportunity of hearing the old fellow preach. His conversation – whether addressing a gentleman, a lady, or one of the lower classes – was garnished with quotations from the classic authors, Greek and Latin, with which his surprising memory was richly stored; and I cannot think that he could resist the temptation of introducing them into his discourse from the pulpit, yet I heard no hint of this in the only sermon of his which was repeated to me by one of his congregation. The occasion of its delivery was this.

He was highly incensed at a long engagement being broken off between some young people in his parish, so next Sunday he preached on "Let love be without dissimulation;" and the sermon, which on this occasion was extempore, was reported by those who heard it to consist of little more than this – "You see, my dearly beloved brethren, what the Apostle says – Let love be without dissimulation. Now I'll tell y' what I think dissimulation is. When a young chap goes out a walking with a girl, – as nice a lass as ever you saw, with an uncommon fresh pair o' cheeks and pretty black eyes too, and not a word against her character, very respectably brought up, – when, I say, my dearly beloved brethren, a young chap goes out walking with such a young woman, after church of a summer evening, seen of every one, and offers her his arm, and they look friendly like at each other, and at times he buys her a present at the fair, a ribbon, or a bit of jewellery – I cannot say I have heard, and I don't say that I have seen, – when, I say, dearly beloved brethren, a young chap like this goes on for more than a year, and lets everybody fancy they are going to be married, – I don't mean to say that at times a young chap may see a nice lass and admire her, and talk to her a bit, and then go away and forget her – there's no dissimulation in that; – but when it goes on a long time, and he makes her to think he's very sweet upon her, and that he can't live without her, and he gives her ribbons and jewellery that I can't particularize, because I haven't seen them – when a young chap, dearly beloved brethren – " and so on and so on, becoming more and more involved. The parties preached about were in the church, and the young man was just under the pulpit, with the eyes of the whole congregation turned on him. The sermon had its effect – he reverted to his love, and without any dissimulation, we trust, married her.

The Christmas and the Easter decorations in this old fellow's church were very wonderful. There was a Christmas text, and that did service also for Easter. The decorating of the church was intrusted to the schoolmaster, a lame man, and his wife, and consisted in a holly or laurel crutch set up on one side of the chancel, and a "jaws of death" on the other. This appalling symbol was constructed like a set of teeth in a dentist's shop-window – the fangs were made of snipped or indented white drawing paper, and the gums of overlapping laurel leaves stitched down one on the other.

A very good story was told of this old parson, which is, I believe, quite true. He was invited to spend a couple of days with a great squire some miles off. He went, stayed his allotted time, and disappeared. Two days later the lady of the house, happening to go into the servants'-hall in the evening, found, to her amazement, her late guest – there. After he had finished his visit up-stairs, at the invitation of the butler he spent the same time below. "Like Persephone, madam," he said, – "half my time above, half in the nether world."

In the matter of personal neatness he left much to be desired. His walled garden was famous for its jargonelle pears. Lady X – , one day coming over, said to him, "Will you come back in my carriage with me, and dine at the Park? You can stay the night, and be driven home to-morrow."

"Thank you, my lady, delighted. I will bring with me some jargonelles. I'll go and fetch them."

Presently he returned with a little open basket and some fine pears in it. Lady X – looked at him, with a troubled expression in her sweet face. The rector was hardly in dining suit; moreover, there was apparent no equipment for the night.

"Dear Mr. M – , will you not really want something further? You will dine with us, and sleep the night."

A vacant expression stole over his countenance, as he retired into himself in thought. Presently a flash of intelligence returned, and he said with briskness, "Ah! to be sure; I'll go and fetch two or three more jargonelles."

A kind, good-hearted man the scholar-parson was, always ready to put his hand into his pocket at a tale of distress, but quite incapable of understanding that his parishioners might have spiritual as well as material requirements. I remember a case of a very similar man – a fellow of his college, and professor at Cambridge – to whom a young student ventured to open some difficulties and doubts that tortured him. "Difficulties! doubts!" echoed the old gentleman. "Take a couple of glasses of port. If that don't dispel them, take two more, and continue the dose till you have found ease of mind."

But to return to our country parson, who had the jargonelles. His church was always well attended. Quite as large a congregation was to be found in it as in other parish churches, where all the modern appliances of music, popular preaching, parish visitations, clubs and bible-classes were in force. Perhaps the reason was that he was not too spiritually exacting. Many of our enthusiastic modern parsons attempt to screw up their people into a condition of spiritual exaltation which they are quite unable to maintain permanently, and then they become discouraged at the inevitable, invariable relapse.

We suppose that one main cause of dissent is the deadness and dulness of the Church service before the revival of late days; and we attribute this deadness and dulness to the indifference of these bêtes noirs, the clergy of last century. I doubt it.

At the time of the Commonwealth our churches had been gutted of everything ornamental and beautiful, and the services reduced to the most dreary performance of sermon and extempore prayer. At the Restoration, a very large number indeed of the Presbyterian ministers conformed, were ordained, and retained the benefices. Naturally they conducted the Common Prayer as nearly as they could on the lines of the service they were accustomed to. They had no tradition of what the Anglican liturgy was; they did not understand it, and they served it up cold or lukewarm, as unpalatable as possible. They did not like it themselves, and they did not want their congregations to become partial to it. The old clergy who were restored were obliged to content themselves with the merest essentials of Divine worship; their congregations had grown up without acquaintance with the liturgy – at all events for some nineteen years they had not heard it, and they did not want to shock their weak consciences by too sudden a transformation.

When Pepys went to church on November 4, 1660, he entered in his Diary, "Mr. Mills did begin to nibble at the Common Prayer, by saying Glory be to the Father, &c., after he had read the two psalms; but the people had been so little used to it, that they could not tell what to answer." The same afternoon he went to Westminster Abbey, "where the first time that ever I heard the organs in a cathedral."

Evelyn enters, on March 22, 1678, "now was our Communion-table placed altar-wise," that is to say, not till eighteen years after the Restoration! so slowly were alterations made in the churches to bring them back to their former conditions of decency and order. Whatever has been done since has been done cautiously and with hesitation, lest offence should be given.

It was not practicable in our village churches to have the hearty congregational singing that now prevails, for only a very few could read, and only such could join in the psalmody.

I have in my possession a diary kept by a kinswoman in 1813. She makes in that year an entry, "Walked over this Sunday to South Mimms church to hear a barrel-organ that has just been there erected. It made very beautiful and appropriate music, and admirably sustained the voices of the quire, but I do not myself admire these innovations in the conduct of Divine worship." What would she have said to the innovations that have taken place since then, had she lived to see them! And they have been, for the most part, in a right direction; but we must be thankful, not only for them, but for the evidence they give that the clergy are somewhat emerging from that condition in which they were, as Crabbe describes them, when "Fear was their ruling passion" —

"All things newWere deemed superfluous, useless, or untrue.Habit with him was all the test of truth;It must be right; I've done it from my youth.Questions he answer'd in as brief a way; —It must be wrong – it was of yesterday."

CHAPTER VI

THE HUNTING PARSON

WHY not? why should not the parson mount his cob and go after the hounds? A more fresh, invigorating pursuit is not to be found, not one in which he is brought more in contact with his fellow-men. There was a breezy goodness about many a hunting parson of the old times that was in itself a sermon, and was one on the topic that healthy amusement and Christianity go excellently well together. I had rather any day see a parson ride along with the pink, than sport the blue ribbon. The last of our genuine West Country hunting parsons was Jack Russell, whose life has already been written, but to whom I can bear testimony that he was a good specimen of the race. I was one day on top of a coach along with two farmers, one from the parish of Jack Russell, another from that of another hunting parson, whom we will call Jack Hannaford. They were discussing their relative parsons. Then he who was under Hannaford told a scurvy tale of him, whereat his companion said, "Tell'ee what, all the world knows what your pa'sson be; but as for old Jack Russell, up and down his backbone, he's as good a Christian, as worthy a pastor, and as true a gentleman as I ever seed."

In a parish on the Cornish side of the estuary of the Tamar, some little while ago, the newly appointed rector, turning over the register of baptisms in the vestry, was much astonished at seeing entries of the christening of boys only. "Why, Richard!" said he to the clerk, "however comes this about – are there only boys born in this place?"

"Please your Reverence, 'tain't that; but as they won't take the girls into the dockyard at Devonport, 'tain't no good baptizing 'em." The boys were christened only for the sake of the register requisite to present on admission into the Government dockyard. But if the boys were given baptism only, the girls devoted their efforts to show that they fell behind in masculine gifts in no sort, and the women of the village have approved themselves remarkable Amazons; they pull a boat, carry loads, speak gruff, wear moustache, very much as does a man.

Now, the unfortunate thing is, that the English clergy of the new epoch do seem to have been only ordained because they are feeble and effeminate youths. After ordination the curates are thrust into the society of pious and feeble women, and contract feeble and womanish ways. Just as in the Cornish parish only boys were baptized, so does it really seem as though only girlish youngsters pass under the bishop's hands, so that ordination becomes a pledge of effeminacy. Therefore, in my opinion, it would be a wholesome corrective if they could go after the hounds occasionally.

It is one thing to make of hunting a pursuit, and another to take it as a relaxation. The apostles were sportsmen, that is to say, they fished; and if it is lawful to go after fish, I take it there can be no harm in going after a hare or a fox; but then – only occasionally, and as a moral and constitutional bracer.

As said of the ordinary country parson, the good is forgotten and the evil is remembered, so is it with the hunting parson. The simple worthy rector who attended his sick, was good to the poor, preached a wholesome sermon, and was seen occasionally at the meet, is not remembered, – Jack Russell is the exception, – but the memory of the bad hunting parson never dies.

There is a characteristic song about the typical indifferent hunting parson that was much sung some fifty years ago. It ran thus[7]—

PARSON HOGG. Arranged by the Rev. H. Fleetwood Sheppard, M.A.][Listen] [PDF] [MusicXML]Mess Parson Hogg shall now maintainThe burden of my song, sir!A single life perforce he led,Of constitution strong, sir.Sing tally ho! sing tally ho!sing tally ho! why zounds, sir!He mounts his mare to hunt the hare,Sing Tally ho! the hounds, sir.And every day he goes to massHe first pulls on his boot, sir!That, should the beagles chance to pass,He may join in the pursuit, sir!Sing, Tally ho! &c.That Parson little loveth prayer,And pater night and morn, sir!For bell and book hath little care,But dearly loves the horn, sir!Sing, Tally ho! &c.St. Stephen's day that holy manHe went a pair to wed, sir!When as the service was begun,Puss by the churchyard sped, sir!Sing, Tally ho! &c.He shut his book. "Come on," he said,"I'll pray and bless no more, sir!"He drew the surplice o'er his head,And started for the door, sir!Sing, Tally ho! &c.In pulpit Parson Hogg was strong,He preached without a book, sir!And to the point, but never long,And this the text he took, sir!O Tally ho! O Tally ho!Dearly Beloved – zounds, sir!I mount my mare to hunt the hare,Singing, Tally ho! the hounds, sir!

One of the very worst types of the hunting parson was that man Chowne, whom Mr. Blackmore has immortalized in his delightful story of The Maid of Sker. Many of the tales told in that novel relative to Chowne – the name of course is fictitious – are quite true. As I happen to know a good many particulars of the life of this man, I will here give them.