Fifty Years Ago

by Walter Besant

Are there still any circles of society in which, if a lady with her daughters calls upon another lady with her daughters, the decanters, biscuits, and glasses are placed upon the table, and the visitors are asked whether they will take port or sherry? This, fifty years ago, was always done in country towns, and the visitors always took a glass of port or sherry. In some houses it was not port and sherry that were placed upon the table, but ‘red’ and ‘white.’ I do not know whether the red was currant or raspberry, but I think that the white was generally cowslip. When the visitors were gone, the ladies got out their work again, threaded their needles, and spent an enjoyable hour or two in discussing the appearance, the dress, the manners, and the resources of their visitors. But the visit did them good, because it compelled company manners, which are always good for girls, and it dragged them a little out of themselves. They were too much en famille, these girls; they were never separated from each other. The boys got out to school or to business all day; but the poor girls were always together. Side by side they did their household duties, side by side they sewed and dressmaked, side by side they walked, side by side they prayed in the church, side by side they slept. Small chance of happiness was theirs—happiness is a separate, distinct, individual kind of thing, in which one can consult one’s own likes—until, in the fulness of time, there came along the lover—a humdrum, commonplace kind of lover, I dare say, but his sweetheart was as commonplace as himself—and she exchanged a house, where she was a better kind of servant, for one of exactly the same sort, in which she was the mistress. And when one says mistress, it must be remembered that man was, in those days, much more of a master in the house than he is now allowed to be. I speak not at random, but from the evidence of those who remember and from study of the literature, both that written by the men and that by the women. I am certain that the husband, unless he was hen-pecked—a pleasing word, now seldom used—was always the Master and generally the Tyrant in the house.

Let me, with some diffidence, approach the subject of the Church in the country town. I never truly understood the Church of fifty years ago until, in the autumn of 1885, I perambulated with one who is jealous for Church architecture and Church antiquities the north-east corner of Norfolk, where there are many churches, and most of them are fine. In our pilgrimage among these monuments we presently came upon one at the aspect of which we were fain to sit down and weep. It was, externally, an old and venerable structure, which might have been made beautiful within. Plaster covered the walls, and hid the columns; the interior of the church was crowded with high pews, painted white, and having along the top a sham mahogany kind of hand-rail; the chancel was encumbered with these enclosures, which hid the old brass-work; that which belonged to the Squire was provided with red curtains on brass rods to keep the common people from gazing at the Quality. The reading-desk, pulpit, and altar were covered with a cloth which had been red, but had long before faded away into an indescribably shabby brown. The pulpit was not part of the old three-decker, but was stuck into the wall; the windows had lost their old tracery; the painted glass was gone; the roof was a flat whitewashed ceiling. The church, to eyes accustomed to better things, presented a deplorable appearance. My friend, pointing solemnly to the general shabbiness, remarked, ‘Donec templa refeceris.’ It was the motto of the journal started early in the Forties by a small knot of Cambridge men—among whom was Mr. Beresford Hope, now, alas! no more—who desired to raise and beautify public worship in the Anglican faith, and also, I believe, to assert and insist upon certain points of doctrine. And they clearly perceived that, while the churches remained in their neglected condition, and church architecture was at its then low ebb, their doctrine was impossible. How far they have succeeded not only the Ritualists themselves proclaim, but also every other party in the Church, and even the Nonconformists, who have shared in the increased beauty and fitness of public worship.

THE QUEEN RECEIVING THE SACRAMENT AFTER HER CORONATION—WESTMINSTER ABBEY, JUNE 29, 1838.

(From the Picture by C. R. Leslie, R.A., at Windsor Castle.)

He who can remember the ordinary Church Services in the early Fifties very well knows what they were in the Thirties, except that in the latter there were still some venerable divines who wore a wig.

The musical part of the service was, to begin with, taken slow—incredibly slow; no one now would, who is not old enough to remember, believe how slow it was. The voluntary at the beginning was a slow rumble; the Psalms were very slowly read by the clergyman and the clerk alternately, the Gloria alone being sung, also to a slow rumble. The choir was generally stationed in the organ loft, which has been known to be built over the altar at the east end—as at St. Mary’s, Cambridge—but was generally at the west end. It was not a choir of boys and men only, but of women and men. The ‘Te Deum’ was always ‘Jackson’—from my youth up have I loathed ‘Jackson’; there was just one lively bit in it for which one looked and waited; but it lasted a very few bars; and then the thing dragged on more slowly than ever till it came to the welcome words, ‘Let me never be confounded.’ Two hymns were sung—very slowly; they were always of the kind which expressed either the despair of the sinner or the doubtful joy of the believer. I say doubtful, because he was constantly being warned not to be too confident, not to mistake a vague hope for the assurance of election, and because, with the rest of the congregation, he was always being told how few in number were those elect, and how extremely unlikely that there could be many of those few in that one flock. Read any of the theological literature of the period, and mark the gulf that lies between us and our fathers. There were many kinds of preachers, just as at present—the eloquent, the high and dry, the low and threatening, the forcible-feeble, the florid, the prosy, the scholarly—but they all seemed to preach the same doctrine of hopelessness, the same Gospel of Despair, the same Father of all Cruelty, the same Son who could at best help only a few; and when any of the congregation dared to speak the truth, which was seldom, these blasphemous persons whispered that it was best to live and enjoy the present, and to leave off trying to save their souls against such fearful odds, and with the knowledge that if they were going to be saved it would be by election and by no merit or effort of their own, while, if the contrary was going to happen, it was no use striving against fate. Wretched, miserable creed! To think that unto this was brought the Divine Message of the Son of Man! And to think of the despairing deathbeds of the careless, the lifelong terror of the most religious, and the agony of the survivors over the death of one ‘cut off in his sins’!

What we now call the ‘life’ of the Church, with its meetings, committees, fraternities, guilds, societies, and organisations, then simply did not exist. The clergyman had an easy time; he visited little, he had an Evening Service once a week, he did not pretend to keep saints’ days and minor festivals and fasts—none of his congregation expected him to keep them; as for his being a teetotaller for the sake of the weaker brethren, that would have seemed to everybody pure foolishness, as, indeed, it is, only people now run to the opposite belief; yet he was a good man, for the most part, who lived a quiet and exemplary life, and a good scholar—scholars are, indeed, sadly to seek among the modern clergy—a sound theologian, a judge of good port, and a gentleman. But processions, banners, surpliced choirs, robes, and the like, he would have regarded as unworthy the consideration of one who was a Churchman, a Protestant, and a scholar.

To complete this brief study of the Church fifty years ago, let us remark that out of 11,500 livings which it possessed, 3,000 were under 100l. and 1,000 under 60l. a year, that there were 6,080 pluralists and 2,100 non-residents, that the Dissenters had only been allowed to marry in their own chapels and by their own clergy in the year 1831, that they were not admitted, as Dissenters, to the Universities, and that the incomes of some of the Bishops were enormous.