The Lighter Side of English Life

by Frank Frankfort Moore

II.—THE INNOVATORS

The volcanic force which caused all the alarm was a young clergyman who, by reason of his personal merits and his relationship to the Dean, became the most minor of all the canons, and probably the most pleasing. But before he had been a year in attendance it was rumoured that he had views, and no clergyman with views had ever been associated with the services at the Minster. There have been clergymen who took a lively interest in landscape photography—even colour photography—and others who had rubbed with their own hands some of the finest monumental brasses in the country. A prebendary went so far in horticulture as to stand godfather to a new rose (h.p.), and a precentor who devised an automatic reel—a fishing-rod reel, not the terpsichorean—but no dignitary had previously been known to develop views on the lines adopted by this Canon Mowbray, for his views had an intimate connection with the Church Service.

He had been heard to express the opinion that it was little short of scandalous that people should enter the Cathedral and find themselves surrounded by beauties of architecture and facing combinations of colour in glass that were extremely lovely—that they should be able to hear music of the most elevating type efficiently rendered by an organist of ability and a well-trained choir, but the moment a member of the Chapter—one of the dignitaries of the Church—began to discharge his duties, either in his stall, at the electern, or in the pulpit, the congregation were subjected to an infliction of mediocrity sometimes verging on imbecility. It was little short of scandalous, he said, that the most highly paid functionaries—men whose education had cost a great deal of money—should show themselves so imperfectly equipped to discharge their simplest duties in an intelligent manner. Few of them could even intone correctly, and he had a suspicion that intoning was invented to conceal their deficiency in reading the prayers. When they stood at the lectern and read in that artificial voice that they assumed for the Lessons for the day, treating the most splendidly dramatic episodes with a tameness that suggested rather more than indifference, they proved their inefficiency as plainly as when they stood at the altar-rails and repeated the Commandments in that apologetic tone they put on, as if they hoped the people present would understand quite clearly that they, the readers, were not responsible for the bad taste of the compiler of the Decalogue in referring to offences of which no well-bred lady or gentleman would be guilty.

And then he went on to refer to the preaching....

Now Canon Mowbray did not give expression to his views all at once. He was forced to do so by the action of the Dean and Chapter after he had startled them all, and the congregation as well, by his dramatic reading of the First Lesson, which was of the discomfiture of the Priests of Baal by the prophet Elijah—a subject treated very finely by Mendelssohn.

The truth was that Canon Mowbray had paid a visit to London every week in order to get a lesson in elocution from a well-known ex-actor, and at the end of six months had mastered, at any rate, the fundamentals of the art. His performance, regarded by itself, would have been thought quite creditable; but, judged by comparison with the usual reading of the Lessons in the Minster, it was startling—thrilling. Long before he had got to the ironic outburst of the prophet, “Cry aloud, for he is a god,” he had got such a hold upon his hearers that when he made a little pause the silence was striking. At the close also, when he had shut the Book and stood for a few moments before saying, “Here endeth the First Lesson,” the silence was the ecclesiastical equivalent to the plaudits of the playhouse at the effective close of an act: he might have said, “Here endeth the First Act.”

It seemed as if there was not a sirloin in Broad-minster over which the performance was not discussed. Sides were taken in almost every household of faith, some people condemning the innovation, others being enthusiastic in its favour. The one said it was too theatrical—it was not for clergymen to put themselves into a part, as if they were actors; the other affirmed that the Bible should be read by a clergyman as if he believed what he was reading, not in that voix blanche, as the French call the insincere monotone which for some reason, hard to discover, has been almost universally adopted as the voice of the Church.

As a natural consequence of the discussion the attendance at the afternoon service was immense, for it was understood that Canon Mowbray was to read one of the Lessons. Men who had become quite lax in their churchgoing looked up their silk hats, and even chapelgoers, having heard of the morning performance, hastened to the Minster just to see how theatrical it was. The organist wished he had chosen a more showy anthem than “In Judah is God known.” This was quite too commonplace for such an occasion, he thought: it would allow of the clergy's competing with the choir for popularity, the idea of which was, of course, absurd.

The offertory was nearly double that of any afternoon of the year.

There could be no doubt that the “draw” was Canon Mowbray. He filled the stage, so to speak; when he went to the lectern the effect was the same as is produced on a full house by the entrance of the “star,” and once again the silence was felt to be a subtle form of applause.