The Minor Canon is a warm admirer of Jasper's musical talents, and on one occasion in particular is much impressed with his singing.
I must thank you, Jasper, for the pleasure with which I have heard you to-day. Beautiful! Delightful!
And thus we are introduced to the other musician, whose position at Cloisterham Cathedral is almost as much a mystery as that of Edwin Drood himself. He was the lay precentor or lay clerk, and he was also a good choirmaster. It is unnecessary to criticize or examine too closely the exact position that Jasper held. In answer to a question on this subject, Mr. B. Luard-Selby, the present organist of Rochester Cathedral, writes thus:
We have never had in the choir of Rochester Cathedral such a musical functionary as Dickens describes in The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The only person approaching Jasper in the choir is one of the lay clerks who looks after the music, but who of course has nothing to do with setting the music for the month. I don't think Dickens had much idea of church order or of cathedral worship, though he may have gone over the cathedral with a verger on occasions. The music of a cathedral is always in the hands of the precentor, assisted by the organist.
It is Edwin Drood himself who says that Jasper was lay precentor or lay clerk at the cathedral. He had a great reputation as a choir-trainer and teacher of music, but he is already weary of his position and takes little notice of words of eulogy. He was well acquainted with the old melodies, and on one occasion we find him sitting at the piano singing brave songs to Mr. Sapsea.
No kickshaw ditties, favourites with national enemies, but ... genuine George the Third home brewed, exhorting him (as ‘my brave boys’) to reduce to a smashed condition all other islands but this island, and all continents, peninsulas, isthmuses, promontories, and other geographical forms of land soever, besides sweeping the sea in all directions. In short he rendered it pretty clear that Providence made a distinct mistake in originating so small a nation of hearts of oak, and so many other verminous peoples.
We have a different picture of him on another occasion, as he sits ‘chanting choir music in a low and beautiful voice, for two or three hours’—a somewhat unusual exercise even for the most enthusiastic choirmaster. But this was before the strange journey with Durdles, and we can only guess at the weird thoughts which were passing through the musician's mind as he sat in his lonely room.
We have only a brief reference to the choir of Cloisterham Cathedral. Towards the end we read of them ‘struggling into their nightgowns’ before the service, while they subsequently are ‘as much in a hurry to get their bedgowns off as they were but now to get them on’—and these were almost the last words that came from the Master's pen.
Anthems
There is an interesting reference to anthems in connexion with the Foundling Hospital,[ 15 ] an institution which Dickens mentions several times. Mr. Wilding (N.T.), after he had been pumped on by his lawyer in order to clear his head, names the composers of the anthems he had been accustomed to sing at the Foundling.