FOOTNOTES:

[12] “In respect that it is solitary I like it very well, but in respect that it is private it is a very vile life,” said Touchstone.

[13] Certificate printed on parchment, attesting competence as teacher. See Chapter on “Reports.”

[14] F. H. Myers, St. Paul.

CHAPTER X
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.