What I Remember, Volume 1

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

But it must be remembered that any change of this sort has been contemporaneous with change, at least as strongly marked in the same direction, in the general tone of English manners, sentiments, and habits. We English were not a devout people in the days when George the Third was king, especially as regards all that portion of the world which held aloof from evangelicalism and dissent. We were not altogether without religious feeling in college, but it manifested itself chiefly in the form of a pronounced abhorrence for those two, as we considered them, ungentlemanlike propensities. For about three weeks at Easter time the lower classes in the school read the Greek Testament instead of the usual Greek authors, and the upper classes read Lowth’s Prælections on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews—a book unimpeachable in point of Latinity and orthodoxy, for was not the author a Wykehamist? But I do not remember aught else in the way of religious instruction, unless it were found in the assiduity of our attendances at chapel.

We went to chapel twice (including the short evening prayers in the ante-chapel) every day. On Fridays we went three times, and on Saturdays also three times; the service in the afternoon being choral. On Sundays we went thrice to chapel, and twice to the cathedral; on red-letter days thrice to chapel, and as often on “Founder’s commemoration,” and “Founder’s obit.” These latter services, as also those on Sundays and holidays, were choral. We had three chaplains, an organist, four vicars choral, and six choristers for the service of the chapel. The “choristers,” who were mentioned at a former page as carrying the “dispers” up into hall, though so called, had nothing to do with the choral service. They were twelve in number, were fed, clothed, and educated by a master of their own, and discharged the duty of waiting on the scholars as messengers, etc., at certain hours.

Our three chaplains were all of them also minor canons of the cathedral. Very worthy, good men they were—one of them especially and exceptionally exemplary in his family relations; but their mode of performing the service in the chapel was not what would in these days be considered decorous or reverential. Besides the chaplaincy of the college, and the minor canonry of the cathedral, these gentlemen—all three of them, I believe—held small livings in the city. And the multiplicity of duty which had thus to be done rendered a decree of speed in the performance of the service so often a desideratum, and sometimes an absolute necessity, that that became the most marked characteristic of the performers. In reading, or rather intoning the prayers, the habit was to allow no time at all for the choir to chant their “Amen,” which had to be interjected in such sort that when the tones of it died away the priest had already got through two or three lines of the following prayer. One of our chaplains, who had the well-deserved character of being the fastest of the three, we called the diver. For it was his practice in reading or intoning to continue with great rapidity as long as his breath would last, and then, while recovering it, to proceed mentally without interruption, so that we lost sight (or hearing) of him at one point, and when he came to the surface, i.e., became audible again, he was several lines further down the page; and this we called “diving.” It was proudly believed in college that this was the gentleman of whom the story was first told, that he was ready to give any man to “Pontius Pilate” in the Creed, and arrive at the end before him. But however worthy competitor he may have been in such a race, I have reason to believe that the chaplain of a certain college in Oxford was the original of the story.

Another of our three chaplains was a great sportsman. It was the practice that the lessons were always read in chapel by one of the prefects.

I remember by the bye (but this is parenthetical), that one of our number was unable to pronounce the letter “r,” and we used to scheme that it should fall to his lot to tell us that “Bawabbas was a wobber.”

Now the boy who read the lessons, sat, not in his usual place, but by the side of the chaplain who was performing the service. And it was the habit of the reverend sportsman I have referred to, to intercalate with the verses of the Psalm he was reading, sotto voce, anecdotes of his most recent sporting achievements, addressed to the youth at his side, using for the purpose the interval during which the choir recited the alternate verse.

As thus, on one twenty-eighth evening of the month, well remembered after some sixty years:

“Who smote great kings: for his mercy endureth for ever.”

Then aside, in the well-known great rolling, mellow voice (I can hear it now):

“On Hurstley Down yesterday I was out with Jack Woodburn” (this was another minor canon of the cathedral, but not one of our chaplains)....