The Trials of a Country Parson

by Augustus Jessopp

To see a good in evil, and a hope
In ill success; to sympathize, be proud
Of their half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim
Struggles for truth, their poorest fallacies,
Their prejudice, and fears, and cares, and doubts,
Which all touch upon nobleness, despite
Their error, all tend upwardly though weak,
Like plants in mines which never see the sun,
But dream of him, and guess where he may be,
And do their best to climb and get at him.

I was shocked when friendly critics told me I had drawn a melancholy picture, and that to live in such a community, and with surroundings such as I had described, must be depressing, almost degrading, for any man of culture and refinement.

The essays which follow in this volume were written as a kind of protest against any such view of the case. I think the two volumes—this and my former one—should in fairness be read each as the complement of the other. In “Arcady” I have drawn, as best I could, the picture of the life of the rustics around me. In this volume I have sketched the life of a country parson trying to do his best to elevate those among whom he has been called to exercise his ministry.

I hold that any clergyman in a country parish who aims exclusively at being a Religious Teacher will miss his aim. He must be more, or he will fail to be that. He must be a social power in his parish, and he ought to try, at any rate, to be an intellectual force also. It is because I am strongly convinced of this that I have brought so much into prominence the daily intercourse which I have enjoyed with my people on the footing of a mere friendly neighbour. I cannot think that I have any right at all to lift the veil from those private communings with penitents who are agonized by ghastly memories, with poor weaklings torturing themselves with religious difficulties, or at the bedside of the sick and dying. These seem to me to be most sacred confidences which we are bound to conceal from others as if they had been entrusted to us under a sacramental obligation of impenetrable silence. We all have our share of miserable experiences of this kind. We have no right to talk of them; they never can become common property without some one alive or dead being betrayed. In the single instance in which I may seem to have departed from this principle, it was the expressed wish of the poor woman whose sad story I told that others should learn the circumstances of the case which I made public.

It may be thought, perhaps, that my surroundings have something peculiar in them. But, No! they are of the ordinary type. For two centuries or so East Anglia was indeed greatly cut off from union and sympathy with the rest of England, and was a kingdom apart. The result has been that there are certain characteristics which distinguish the Norfolk character, and some of them are not pleasing. These are survivals, and they present some difficulties to him who is not an East Anglian born, when he is first brought face to face with them. But in the main we are all pretty much alike, and let a man be placed where he may, he will be sure to find something new in the situation, and almost as sure to make some mistakes at starting. I do not believe that a man of average ability, who is really in earnest in his desire to do the best he can for his people, and who throws himself heartily into his work, will find one place worse than another. Let him resolve to find his joy in the performance of his duty according to his light, and the joy will come. So far from repining at my own lot, I have found it—I do find it—a very happy one; and if I have dwelt on the country parson’s trials, I have done so in no petty and querulous spirit as if I had anything to complain of which others had not—this I should disdain to do—but rather as protesting that they press upon my brethren equally as upon myself, and that, such as they are, some must be, some need not be, some ought not to be.

As for the worries and annoyances, the “trials” which are inseparable from our position, it is the part of a wise man to make the best of them, and to put as good a face upon them as he can. But with regard to such matters as ought not to be and need not be, it behoves us all to look about us to discover if possible some remedy for the remediable, to find out the root and source of any evil which is a real evil, to lift up our voices against an abuse which has grown or is growing to be intolerable, and by no means to acquiesce in the continuance of that which is obviously working to the serious prejudice of the community. While every other class is crying out for Reform and getting it by simply raising the cry, it is a reproach upon us clergy—and I fear we deserve the reproach—that we are a great deal too ready to submit to the continuance of scandals and abuses rather than face the risks which any change is likely to bring upon our order. In no other profession is a man more certain to be regarded as a dangerous character, wanting in loyalty and wanting in humility, who is even suspected of a desire to improve upon the arrangements which have existed since time was young, or of advocating measures which would interfere with the order of procedure that was good enough for our grandfathers, and therefore must be good enough for ourselves. It really seems to be the belief of some among us that our Constitution in Church or State never grew at all, but chrystalized into its present form, and dropped from heaven in perfect panoply like Minerva from the head of Jove. To point a finger at the texture of the awful peplos, and to hint that it was woven in the looms of this world, is to bring upon oneself the charge of impiety. And yet these men are wrong. Organic bodies grow because they are alive; when they cease to grow and are no longer capable of adapting themselves to the changes that are going on around them, they die. Nothing can prolong their life. If you cramp and fetter a living thing by swathing it round about with iron bands that may force it to keep exactly the form it presented a thousand years ago—then you will kill it. It is only a question of time when your slaying process will prove successful. As for the other method of “letting things slide,” that is, if possible, more foolish than the other, and certainly more cowardly. What can be baser than the craven whine, “It will last our time”? An institution which has lasted through a long line of centuries, and which will only last our time, may be approaching dissolution from lack of inherent vitality, but it may also be in peril because of the despairing supineness of its pledged defenders.

I have lifted up my voice against one relic of the past which is most certainly doomed because it has been allowed to exist a great deal too long already; it is a survival which I am deeply convinced is answerable for much of the corruption that hurts us, much of the offence taken and given, much of the laxity and very much of the deplorable want of discipline existing among us.

The legal status of the beneficed clergy, in virtue of which they are freeholders for life in their several benefices, does not quite stand alone. The Parish Clerk, too, has a freehold in his benefice, and, after formal admission to it, he may retain it without fear of being turned out of it as long as the breath remains in his body. These freeholds in an office have been swept away in every other department of the public service, though they died hard and cost a good deal to abolish. The buying and selling of “places” and reversions or next presentations to them was as common in the State as in the Church not so very long ago. The odious system was swept away for ever by the simple expedient of making every public servant removable at pleasure for negligence, misconduct, inefficiency, or even less. It is only among the holders of ecclesiastical preferment that the old abomination survives. Because it survives, other things survive too which ought not to be tolerated. The first and foremost of these is the open sale of the right to present a clerk in orders to a cure of souls. But that is the least mischievous consequence of the present system being retained. There are other consequences which are far more serious. Among them is the almost entire want of movement and change, in the lives of the country clergy; the absence of fresh interests and of the invigorating stimulus of a new career, however humble, with new associations to give a zest to the performance, it may be, of the old duties, but discharged now among those who do not know all that you have to say, and are not yet tired of the sound of your voice, or at any rate thinking they would like to hear another. The rule in our country parishes is that where a man is set down at first, there he dies at last. Exchange of benefices is, I admit, more common than it used to be, partly because the benefices themselves are less valuable and less jealously kept in the patrons’ hands than they were; but even now exchanges are not often made and are not “negotiated” without some difficulty. To begin with, before two clergymen can change their cures, however much they may themselves be agreed, it is necessary that the consent of two patrons and two bishops should be obtained as a preliminary; and this is not always to be got for the asking. If a patron has bestowed preferment upon a clergyman with whose ministrations he is contented and something more, he is not too willing to part with him. If he has been so unfortunate as to have given the living to the wrong man, there may be very good reasons why he should not choose to be a party to such a transaction as would result in passing on a clerical scamp or incompetent from one cure to another. But in any case it by no means follows that, because I have presented a parson to a cure of souls, I should therefore give him the next presentation too, if he happens to be tired of his cure and anxious to go elsewhere. The result is that, as a rule, a beneficed clergyman, when once he finds himself, irremovable, in his cure, gives up all thought of leaving it. It is “a certainty,” and gradually he gets to look for nothing better; he goes through his duties as best he can, however mournfully conscious that he has lost the old fire and force and efficiency; he takes comfort in the thought that he has worked his parish while he could, and that he is entitled to take it easily now; and, indeed, in the eyes of those about him, he grows more and more picturesque and venerable, just as the old church tower does—but it is not safe to ring the bells up there when so much restoration is wanted.

I have dealt with this subject in some detail in the Fourth Paper in this volume. At the time it appeared, the public mind was much occupied with and disturbed by certain political questions then in the ascendant, and the essay fell dead, attracted little or no attention and, in fact, was read by few. It often happens that a book proves an utter failure by being published at the wrong time—a month too soon or a month too late. The favour of the reading public is very capricious, not always awarded to the most deserving, sometimes given with a kind of fury of acclamation to a lucky literary adventurer whose reputation “rushes up like the rocket and comes down like the stick.” Moreover the essay laboured under one rather serious defect, which I have not yet set myself to remedy by appending an almost necessary supplement. For it may be asked, and it has indeed been objected, “If every beneficed clergyman were to hold his appointment subject to removal, ought not some provision to be made for his retirement in old age or when physically or mentally unfit for the discharge of his sacred functions?” Yes! By all means. But why only the beneficed clergy? Why not all who are admitted to the sacred office? Surely it would not be difficult to elaborate a scheme whereby every officiating clergyman should be compelled to make provision for his family, or for his own retirement, by the simple expedient of stopping a certain percentage of his income and investing it in his name—much in the same way that the Clive fund is managed in India, or as the compulsory insurance of railway servants is enforced by some of the great companies. Until something of this sort is carried out, we shall continue to be pained by those distressing appeals for clergymen’s families reduced to beggary by the death of the bread-winner, which come to us all with increasing frequency, and which, as matters now look, are not likely to be fewer in the near future.

This however, is only a part, and I venture to think not quite a vital part, of the other question, which as a great national question appears to me of much greater importance. That question may be put in very few words. Is it for the advantage of the Church or the nation that the incomes of the clergy should continue to be assured to them by a different tenure from that which prevails in the case of all other public servants—a tenure which in the latter case was proved to be working prejudicially to the interests of the community at large, and which it was found absolutely necessary to abolish?