THE CLERK IN LITERATURE
The parish clerk is so notable a character in our ecclesiastical and social life, that he has not escaped the attention of many of our great writers and poets. Some of them have with gentle satire touched upon his idiosyncrasies and peculiarities; others have recorded his many virtues, his zeal and faithfulness. Shakespeare alludes to him in his play of Richard II, in the fourth act, when he makes the monarch face his rebellious nobles, reproaching them for their faithlessness, and saying:
"God save the King! will no man say Amen?
Am I both priest and clerk? Well then, Amen.
God save the King! although I be not he;
And yet, Amen, if Heaven do think him me."
An old ballad, King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid, contains an interesting allusion to the parish clerk, and shows the truth of that which has already been pointed out, viz. that the office of clerk was often considered to be a step to higher preferment in the Church. The lines of the old ballad run as follows:
"The proverb old is come to passe,
The priest when he begins his masse
Forgets that ever clarke he was;
He knoweth not his estate."
Christopher Harvey, the friend and imitator of George Herbert, has some homely lines on the duties of clerk and sexton in his poem The Synagogue. Of the clerk he wrote:
"The Churches Bible-clerk attends
Her utensils, and ends
Her prayers with Amen,
Tunes Psalms, and to her Sacraments
Brings in the Elements,
And takes them out again;
Is humble minded and industrious handed,
Doth nothing of himself, but as commanded."
Of the sexton he wrote:
"The Churches key-keeper opens the door,
And shuts it, sweeps the floor,
Rings bells, digs graves, and fills them up again;
All emblems unto men,
Openly owning Christianity
To mark and learn many good lessons by."
In that delightful sketch of old-time manners and quaint humour, Sir Roger de Coverley, the editor of The Spectator gave a life-like representation of the old-fashioned service. Nor is the clerk forgotten. They tell us that "Sir Roger has likewise added five pounds a year to the clerk's place; and that he may encourage the young fellows to make themselves perfect in the Church services, has promised, upon the death of the present incumbent, who is very old, to bestow it according to merit." The details of the exquisite picture of a rural Sunday were probably taken from the church of Milston on the Wiltshire downs where Addison's father was incumbent, and where the author was born in 1672. Doubtless the recollections of his early home enabled Joseph Addison to draw such an accurate picture of the ecclesiastical customs of his youth. The deference shown by the members of the congregation who did not presume to stir till Sir Roger had left the building was practised in much more recent times, and instances will be given of the observance of this custom within living memory.
Two other references to parish clerks I find in The Spectator which are worthy of quotation:
"Spectator, No. 372.
"In three or four taverns I have, at different times, taken notice of a precise set of people with grave countenances, short wigs, black cloaths, or dark camblet trimmed black, with mourning gloves and hat-bands, who went on certain days at each tavern successively, and keep a sort of moving club. Having often met with their faces, and observed a certain shrinking way in their dropping in one after another, I had the unique curiosity to inquire into their characters, being the rather moved to it by their agreeing in the singularity of their dress; and I find upon due examination they are a knot of parish clerks, who have taken a fancy to one another, and perhaps settle the bills of mortality over their half pints. I have so great a value and veneration for any who have but even an assenting Amen in the service of religion, that I am afraid but these persons should incur some scandal by this practice; and would therefore have them, without raillery, advise to send the florence and pullets home to their own homes, and not to pretend to live as well as the overseers of the poor.
"HUMPHRY TRANSFER.
"Spectator, No. 338.
"A great many of our church-musicians being related to the theatre, have in imitation of their epilogues introduced in their favourite voluntaries a sort of music quite foreign to the design of church services, to the great prejudice of well-disposed people. These fingering gentlemen should be informed that they ought to suit their airs to the place and business; and that the musician is obliged to keep to the text as much as the preacher. For want of this, I have found by experience a great deal of mischief; for when the preacher has often, with great piety and art enough, handled his subject, and the judicious clerk has with utmost diligence called out two staves proper to the discourse, and I have found in myself and in the rest of the pew good thoughts and dispositions, they have been all in a moment dissipated by a merry jig from the organ loft."
Dr. Johnson's definition of a parish clerk in his Dictionary does not convey the whole truth about him and his historic office. He is defined as "the layman who reads the responses to the congregation in church, to direct the rest." The great lexicographer had, however, a high estimation of this official. Boswell tells us that on one occasion "the Rev. Mr. Palmer, Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, dined with us. He expressed a wish that a better provision were made for parish clerks. Johnson: 'Yes, sir, a parish clerk should be a man who is able to make a will or write a letter for anybody in the parish.'" I am afraid that a vast number of our good clerks would have been sore puzzled to perform the first task, and the caligraphy of the letter would in many cases have been curious.
That careful delineator of rural manners as they existed at the end of the eighteenth century, George Crabbe, devotes a whole poem to the parish clerk in his nineteenth letter of The Borough. He tells of the fortunes of Jachin, the clerk, a grave and austere man, fully orthodox, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, and detecter and opposer of the wiles of Satan. Here is his picture:
"With our late vicar, and his age the same,
His clerk, bright Jachin, to his office came;
The like slow speech was his, the like tall slender frame:
But Jachin was the gravest man on ground,
And heard his master's jokes with look profound;
For worldly wealth this man of letters sigh'd,
And had a sprinkling of the spirit's pride:
But he was sober, chaste, devout, and just,
One whom his neighbours could believe and trust:
Of none suspected, neither man nor maid
By him were wronged, or were of him afraid.
There was indeed a frown, a trick of state
In Jachin: formal was his air and gait:
But if he seemed more solemn and less kind
Than some light man to light affairs confined,
Still 'twas allow'd that he should so behave
As in high seat, and be severely grave."
The arch-tempter tries in vain to seduce him from the right path. "The house where swings the tempting sign," the smiles of damsels, have no power over him. He "shuns a flowing bowl and rosy lip," but he is not invulnerable after all. Want and avarice take possession of his soul. He begins to take by stealth the money collected in church, putting bran in his pockets so that the coin shall not jingle. He offends with terror, repeats his offence, grows familiar with crime, and is at last detected by a "stern stout churl, an angry overseer." Disgrace, ruin, death soon follow; shunned and despised by all, he "turns to the wall and silently expired." A woeful story truly, the results of spiritual pride and greed of gain! It is to be hoped that few clerks resembled poor lost Jachin.
A companion picture to the disgraced clerk is that of "the noble peasant Isaac Ashford [40]," who won from Crabbe's pen a gracious panegyric. He says of him:
"Noble he was, contemning all things mean,
His truth unquestioned, and his soul serene.
If pride were his, 'twas not their vulgar pride,
Who, in their base contempt, the great deride:
Nor pride in learning--though by Clerk agreed,
If fate should call him, Ashford might succeed."
[40] The Parish Register, Part III.
He paints yet another portrait, that of old Dibble [41], clerk and sexton:
"His eightieth year he reach'd still undecayed,
And rectors five to one close vault conveyed.
His masters lost, he'd oft in turn deplore,
And kindly add,--'Heaven grant I lose no more!'
Yet while he spake, a sly and pleasant glance
Appear'd at variance with his complaisance:
For as he told their fate and varying worth,
He archly looked--'I yet may bear thee forth.'"
[41] The Parish Register, Part III.
George Herbert, the saintly Christian poet, who sang on earth such hymns and anthems as the angels sing in heaven, was no friend of the old-fashioned duet between the minister and clerk in the conduct of divine service. He would have no "talking, or sleeping, or gazing, or leaning, or half-kneeling, or any undutiful behaviour in them." Moreover, "everyone, man and child, should answer aloud both Amen and all other answers which are on the clerk's and people's part to answer, which answers also are to be done not in a huddling or slubbering fashion, gaping, or scratching the head, or spitting even in the midst of their answer, but gently and pausably, thinking what they say, so that while they answer 'As it was in the beginning, etc.,' they meditate as they speak, that God hath ever had his people that have glorified Him as well as now, and that He shall have so for ever. And the like in other answers."
Cowper's kindliness of heart is abundantly evinced by his treatment of a parish clerk, one John Cox, the official of the parish of All Saints, Northampton. The poet was living in the little Buckinghamshire village of Weston Underwood, having left Olney when mouldering walls and a tottering house warned him to depart. He was recovering from his dread malady, and beginning to feel the pleasures and inconveniences of authorship and fame. The most amusing proof of his celebrity and his good nature is thus related to Lady Hesketh:
"On Monday morning last, Sam brought me word that there was a man in the kitchen who desired to speak with me. I ordered him in. A plain, decent, elderly figure made its appearance, and being desired to sit spoke as follows: 'Sir, I am clerk of the parish of All Saints in Northampton, brother of Mr. Cox the upholsterer. It is customary for the person in my office to annex to a bill of mortality, which he publishes at Christmas, a copy of verses. You will do me a great favour, sir, if you will furnish me with one.' To this I replied: 'Mr. Cox, you have several men of genius in your town, why have you not applied to some of them? There is a namesake of yours in particular, Cox, the Statuary, who, everybody knows, is a first-rate maker of verses. He surely is the man of all the world for your purpose.' 'Alas, sir, I have heretofore borrowed help from him, but he is a gentleman of so much reading that the people of our town cannot understand him.'
"I confess to you, my dear, I felt all the force of the compliment implied in this speech, and was almost ready to answer, Perhaps, my good friend, they may find me unintelligible too for the same reason. But on asking him whether he had walked over to Weston on purpose to implore the assistance of my muse, and on his replying in the affirmative, I felt my mortified vanity a little consoled, and pitying the poor man's distress, which appeared to be considerable, promised to supply him. The waggon has accordingly gone this day to Northampton loaded in part with my effusions in the mortuary style. A fig for poets who write epitaphs upon individuals! I have written one that serves two hundred persons."
Seven successive years did Cowper, in his excellent good nature, supply John Cox, the clerk of All Saints in Northampton, with his mortuary verses [42], and when Cox died, he bestowed a like kindness on his successor, Samuel Wright.
[42] Southey's Works of Cowper, ii. p. 283.
These stanzas are published in the complete editions of Cowper's poems, and need not be quoted here. They begin with a quotation from some Latin author--Horace, or Virgil, or Cicero--these quotations being obligingly translated for the benefit of the worthy townsfolk. The first of these stanzas begins with the well-known lines:
"While thirteen moons saw smoothly run
The Nen's barge-laden wave,
All these, life's rambling journey done,
Have found their home, the grave."
Another verse which has attained fame runs thus:
"Like crowded forest trees we stand,
And some are mark'd to fall;
The axe will smite at God's command,
And soon will smite us all."
And thus does Cowper, in his temporary rôle, point the moral:
"And O! that humble as my lot,
And scorned as is my strain,
These truths, though known, too much forgot,
I may not teach in vain.
"So prays your clerk with all his heart,
And, ere he quits his pen,
Begs you for once to take his part,
And answer all--Amen."
Again, in another copy of verses he alludes to his honourable clerkship, and sings:
"So your verse-man I, and clerk,
Yearly in my song proclaim
Death at hand--yourselves his mark--
And the foe's unerring aim.
"Duly at my time I come,
Publishing to all aloud
Soon the grave must be our home,
And your only suit a shroud."
On one occasion the clerk delayed to send a printed copy of the verses; so we find the poet writing to his friend, William Bagot:
"You would long since have received an answer to your last, had not the wicked clerk of Northampton delayed to send me the printed copy of my annual dirge, which I waited to enclose. Here it is at last, and much good may it do the readers!"
Let us hope that at least the clerk was grateful.
Yet again does the poet allude to the occupant of the lowest tier of the great "three-decker," when he in the opening lines of The Sofa depicts the various seekers after sleep. After telling of the snoring nurse, the sleeping traveller in the coach, he continues:
"Sweet sleep enjoys the curate in his desk,
The tedious rector drawling o'er his head;
And sweet the clerk below--"
a pretty picture truly of a stirring and impressive service!
Cowper, if he were alive now, would have been no admirer of Who's Who, and poured scorn upon any
"Fond attempt to give a deathless lot
To names ignoble, born to be forgot."
Beholding some "names of little note" in the Biographia Britannica, he proceeded to satirise the publication, to laugh at the imaginary procession of worthies--the squire, his lady, the vicar, and other local celebrities, and chants in his anger:
"There goes the parson, oh! illustrious spark!
And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk."
The poet Gay is not unmindful of the
"Parish clerk who calls the hymns so clear";
and Tennyson, in his sonnet to J.M.K., wrote:
"Our dusty velvets have much need of thee:
Thou art no sabbath-drawler of old saws,
Distill'd from some worm-canker'd homily;
But spurr'd at heart with fiercest energy
To embattail and to wall about thy cause
With iron-worded proof, hating to hark
The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone
Half God's good Sabbath, while the worn-out clerk
Brow-beats his desk below."
In the gallery of Dickens's characters stands out the immortal Solomon Daisy of Barnaby Rudge, with his "cricket-like chirrup" as he took his part in the social gossip round the Maypole fire. Readers of Dickens will remember the timid Solomon's visit to the church at midnight when he went to toll the passing bell, and his account of the strange things that befell him there, and of the ringing of the mysterious bell that told the murder of Reuben Haredale.
In the British Museum I discovered a fragmentary collection of ballads and songs, made by Mr. Ballard, and amongst these is a song relating to a very unworthy follower of St. Nicholas, whose memory is thus unhappily preserved:
THE PARISH CLERK
A NEW COMIC SONG
Tune--THE VICAR AND MOSES
Here rests from his labours, by consent of his neighbours,
A peevish, ill-natur'd old clerk;
Who never design'd any good to mankind,
For of goodness he ne'er had a spark.
Tol lol de rol lol de rol lol.
But greedy as Death, until his last breath,
His method he ne'er failed to use;
When interr'd a corpse lay, Amen he'd scarce say,
Before he cry'd Who pays the dues?
Not a tear now he's dead, by friend or foe shed;
The first they were few, if he'd any;
Of the last he had more, than tongue can count o'er,
Who'd have hang'd the old churl for a penny.
In Levi's black train, the clerk did remain
Twenty years, squalling o'er a dull stave;
Yet his mind was so evil, he'd swear like the devil,
Nor repented on this side the grave.
Fowler, Printer, Salisbury.
That extraordinary man Mr. William Hutton, who died in 1813, and whose life has been written and his works edited by Mr. Llewellyn Jewitt, F.S.A., amongst his other poems wrote a set of verses on The Way to Find Sunday without an Almanack. It tells the story of a Welsh clergyman who kept poultry, and how he told the days of the week and marked the Sundays by the regularity with which one of his hens laid her eggs. The seventh egg always became his Sunday letter, and thus he always remembered to sally forth "with gown and cassock, book and band," and perform his accustomed duty. Unfortunately the clerk was treacherous, and one week stole an egg, with dire consequences to the congregation, which had to wait until the clergyman, who was engaged in the unclerical task of "soleing shoes," could be fetched. The poem is a poor trifle, but it is perhaps worth mentioning on account of the personality of the writer.
There is a charming sketch of an old clerk in the Essays and Tales of the late Lady Verney. The story tells of the old clerk's affection for his great-grandchild, Benny. He is a delightfully drawn specimen of his race. We see him "creeping slowly about the shadows of the aisle, in his long blue Sunday coat with huge brass buttons, the tails of which reached almost to his heels, shorts and brown leggings, and a low-crowned hat in his hand. He was nearly eighty, but wiry still, rather blind and somewhat deaf; but the post of clerk is one considered to be quite independent and irremovable, quam diu se bene gesserit, during good behaviour--on a level with Her Majesty's judges for that matter. Having been raised to this great eminence some sixty years before, when he was the only man in the parish who could read, he would have stood out for his rights to remain there as long as he pleased against all the powers and principalities in the kingdom--if, indeed, he could have conceived the possibility of any one, in or out of the parish, being sufficiently irreligious and revolutionary to dispute his sovereignty. He was part of the church, and the church was part of him--his rights and hers were indissolubly connected in his mind.
"The Psalms that day offered a fine field for his Anglo-Saxon plurals and south-country terminations; the 'housen,' 'priestesses,' 'beasteses of the field,' came rolling freely forth from his mouth, upon which no remonstrances by the curate had had the smallest effect. Was he, Michael Major, who had fulfilled the important office 'afore that young jackanapes was born, to be teached how 'twere to be done?' he had observed more than once in rather a high tone, though in general he patronised the successive occupants of the pulpit with much kindness. 'And this 'un, as cannot spike English nayther,' he added superciliously concerning the north-country accent of his pastor and master."
On weekdays he wore a smock-frock, which he called his surplice, with wonderful fancy stitches on the breast and back and sleeves. At length he had to resign his post and take to his bed, and was not afraid to die when his time came. It is a very tender and touching little story, a very faithful picture of an old clerk [43].
[43] Essays and Tales, by Frances Parthenope Lady Verney, p. 67.
Passing from grave to gay, we find Tom Hood sketching the clerk attending on his vicar, who is about to perform a wedding service and make two people for ever happy. He christens the two officials "the joiners, no rough mechanics, but a portly full-blown vicar with his clerk, both rubicund, a peony paged by a pink. It made me smile to observe the droll clerical turn of the clerk's beaver, scrubbed into that fashion by his coat at the nape."
Few people know Alexander Pope's Memoir of P.P., Clerk of this Parish, which was intended to ridicule Burnet's History of His Own Time, a work characterised by a strong tincture of self-importance and egotism. These are abundantly exposed in the Memoir, which begins thus:
"In the name of the Lord, Amen. I, P.P., by the Grace of God, Clerk of this Parish, writeth this history.
"Ever since I arrived at the age of discretion I had a call to take upon me the Function of a Parish Clerk, and to this end it seemed unto me meet and profitable to associate myself with the parish clerks of this land, such I mean as were right worthy in their calling, men of a clear and sweet voice, and of becoming gravity."
He tells how on the day of his birth Squire Bret gave a bell to the ring of the parish. Hence that one and the same day did give to their own church two rare gifts, its great bell and its clerk.
Leaving the account of P.P.'s youthful amours and bouts at quarter-staff, we next find that:
"No sooner was I elected into my office, but I layed aside the gallantries of my youth and became a new man. I considered myself as in somewise of ecclesiastical dignity, since by wearing of a band, which is no small part of the ornaments of our clergy, might not unworthily be deemed, as it were, a shred of the linen vestments of Aaron.
"Thou mayest conceive, O reader, with what concern I perceived the eyes of the congregation fixed upon me, when I first took my place at the feet of the Priest. When I raised the Psalm, how did my voice quiver with fear! And when I arrayed the shoulders of the minister with the surplice, how did my joints tremble under me! I said within myself, 'Remember, Paul, thou standest before men of high worship, the wise Mr. Justice Freeman, the grave Mr. Justice Tonson, the good Lady Jones.' Notwithstanding it was my good hap to acquit myself to the good liking of the whole congregation, but the Lord forbid I should glory therein."
He then proceeded to remove "the manifold corruptions and abuses."
1. "I was especially severe in whipping forth dogs from the Temple, all except the lap-dog of the good widow Howard, a sober dog which yelped not, nor was there offence in his mouth.
2. "I did even proceed to moroseness, though sore against my heart, unto poor babes, in tearing from them the half-eaten apple, which they privily munched at church. But verily it pitied me, for I remembered the days of my youth.
3. "With the sweat of my own hands I did make plain and smooth the dog's ears throughout our Great Bible.
4. "I swept the pews, not before swept in the third year. I darned the surplice and laid it in lavender."
The good clerk also made shoes, shaved and clipped hair, and practised chirurgery also in the worming of dogs.
"Now was the long expected time arrived when the Psalms of King David should be hymned unto the same tunes to which he played them upon his harp, so I was informed by my singing-master, a man right cunning in Psalmody. Now was our over-abundant quaver and trilling done away, and in lieu thereof was instituted the sol-fa in such guise as is sung in his Majesty's Chapel. We had London singing-masters sent into every parish like unto excisemen."
P.P. was accused by his enemies of humming through his nostrils as a sackbut, yet he would not forgo the harmony, it having been agreed by the worthy clerks of London still to preserve the same. He tutored the young men and maidens to tune their voices as it were a psaltery, and the church on Sunday was filled with new Hallelujahs.
But the fame of the great is fleeting. Poor Paul Philips passed away, and was forgotten. When his biographer went to see him, his place knew him no more. No one could tell of his virtues, his career, his excellences. Nothing remained but his epitaph:
"O reader, if that thou canst read,
Look down upon this stone;
Do all we can, Death is a man
That never spareth none."