[ 11 ] Forster, Life of Charles Dickens.
[ 12 ] This is rather a modern development.
[ 13 ] Near King's Cross Station (G.N.R.).
CHAPTER V
CHURCH MUSIC
Dickens has not much to say about church music as such, but the references are interesting, inasmuch as they throw some light upon it during the earlier years of his life. In Our Parish (S.B.) we read about the old naval officer who
finds fault with the sermon every Sunday, says that the organist ought to be ashamed of himself, and offers to back himself for any amount to sing the psalms better than all the children put together.
This reminds us that during the first half of last century, and indeed later in many places, the church choir as we know it did not exist, and the leading of the singing was entrusted to the children of the charity school under the direction of the clerk, a custom which had existed since the seventeenth century. The chancel was never used for the choir, and the children sat up in the gallery at the west end, on either side of the organ. In a City church that Dickens attended the choir was limited to two girls. The organ was so out of order that he could ‘hear more of the rusty working of the stops than of any music.’ When the service began he was so depressed that, as he says,
I gave but little heed to our dull manner of ambling through the service; to the brisk clerk's manner of encouraging us to try a note or two at psalm time; to the gallery congregation's manner of enjoying a shrill duet, without a notion of time or tune; to the whity-brown man's manner of shutting the minister into the pulpit, and being very particular with the lock of the door, as if he were a dangerous animal.
Elsewhere he found in the choir gallery an ‘exhausted charity school’ of four boys and two girls. The congregations were small, a state of things which at any rate satisfied Mrs. Lirriper, who had a pew at St. Clement Danes and was ‘partial to the evening service not too crowded.’