Part 27 (2/2)

The portrait of John Gray, sometime clerk in Eton College Chapel, taken in his gown as he stood in his desk, has been engraved, and is well known to old Etonians.

Few people possess the gift of humour in the same degree as the late Bishop Walsham How, and his stories of the race of parish clerks and vergers must not be omitted, and are here published by permission of his son, Mr. F.D. How, editor of _Lighter Moments_.

When I was a deacon, and naturally shy, I was visiting my aunts at Workington, where my grandfather had been rector, and was asked to preach on Sunday evening in St. John's, a wretched modern church--a plain oblong with galleries, and a pulpit like a very tall winegla.s.s, with a very narrow little straight staircase leading up to it, in the middle of the east part of the church. When the hymn before the sermon was given out I went as usual to the vestry to put on the black gown.

Not knowing that the clergyman generally stayed there till the end of the hymn, I emerged as soon as I had vested myself and walked to the pulpit and ascended the stairs. When nearly at the summit, to my horror I discovered a very fat beadle in the pulpit lighting the candles. We could not possibly pa.s.s on the stairs, and the eyes of the whole congregation were upon me. It would be ignominious to retreat. So after a few minutes' reflection I saw my way out of the difficulty, which I overcame by a very simple mechanical contrivance. I entered the pulpit, which exactly fitted the beadle and myself, and then face to face we executed a rotary movement to the extent of a semicircle, when the beadle finding himself next the door of the pulpit was enabled to descend, and I remained master of the situation.

At Uffington, near Shrewsbury, during the inc.u.mbency of the Rev. J.

Hopkins, the choir and organist, having been dissatisfied with some arrangement, determined not to take part in the service. So when the clerk, according to the usual custom of those days, gave out the hymn, there was a dead silence. This lasted a little while, and then the clerk, unable to bear it, rose up and appealed to the congregation, saying most imploringly, ”Them as _can_ sing _do_ ye sing: it's misery to be a this'n” (Shrops.h.i.+re for ”in this way”).

At Wolstanton, in the Potteries, there was a somewhat fussy verger called Oakes. On one occasion, just at the time of the year when it was doubtful whether lights would be wanted or no, and when they had not yet been lighted for evening service, a stranger, who was a very smart young clergyman, was reading the lessons and had some difficulty in seeing. He had on a pair of delicate lavender kid gloves. The verger, perceiving his difficulty, went to the vestry, got two candles, lighted them, and walked to the lectern, before which he stood solemnly holding the candles (without candlesticks) in his hands. This was sufficiently trying to the congregation, but suddenly some one rattled the latch of the west door, when Oakes, feeling that it was absolutely necessary to go and see what was the matter, thrust the two candles into the poor young clergyman's delicately gloved hands, and left him!

At the church of Stratfieldsaye, where the Duke of Wellington was a regular attendant, a stranger was preaching, and the verger when he ended came up the stairs, opened the pulpit door a little way, slammed it to, and then opened it wide for the preacher to go out. He asked in the vestry why he had shut the door again while opening it, and the verger said, ”We always do that, sir, to wake the duke.”

A former young curate of Stoke being very anxious to do things rubrically, insisted on the ring being put on the ”fourth finger” at a wedding he took. The woman resisted and said, ”I would sooner die than be married on my little finger.” The curate said, ”But the rubric says so,” whereupon the _deus ex machina_ appeared in the shape of the parish clerk, who stepped forward and said, ”In these cases, sir, the thoomb counts as a digit.”

A gentleman going to see a ritualistic church in London was walking into the chancel when an official stepped forward and said, ”You mustn't go in there.” ”Why not?” said the gentleman. ”I'm put here to stop you,”

said the man. ”Oh! I see,” said the gentleman; ”you're what they call the _rude_ screen, aren't you?”

A clergyman in the diocese of Wakefield told me that when first he came to the parish he found things in a very neglected state, and among other changes he introduced an early celebration of the Holy Communion. An old clerk collected the offertory, and when he brought it up to the clergyman he said, ”There's eight on 'em, but two 'asn't paid.”

A verger was showing a lady over a church when she asked him if the vicar was a married man. ”No, ma'am,” he answered, ”he's a chalybeate.”

A verger showing a large church to a stranger, pointed out another man and said, ”That is the other verger.” The gentleman said, ”I did not know there were two of you,” and the verger replied, ”Oh, yes, sir, he werges up one side of the church and I werges up the other.”

On my first visit to Almondbury to preach, the verger came to me in the vestry and said, ”A've put a platform in t' pulpit for ye; you'll excuse me, but a little man looks as if he was in a toob.” (N.B. To prevent undue inferences I am five feet nine inches in height.)

One of the speakers at the meeting of the Catholic Truth Society at Bristol (Sept., 1895) told a story of a pious Catholic visiting Westminster Abbey, and kneeling in a quiet corner for private devotion, when he was summoned in stentorian tones to come and view the royal tombs and chapels. ”But I have seen them,” said the stranger, ”and I only wish to say my prayers.” ”Prayers is over,” said the verger.

”Still, I suppose,” said the stranger, ”there can be no objection to my saying my prayers quietly here?” ”No objection, sir!” said the irate verger. ”Why, it would be an insult to the Dean and Chapter.”

The Rev. M.E. Jenkins writes his remembrances of several old clerks.

There was dear old Robert Livesay, of Blackburn parish church, whom every one knew, his large rubicund face beaming with good nature and humour--a very kindly old soul. In 1870 I was appointed to an old-world Dale's parish, which had one of the real old Yorks.h.i.+re clerks, Frank Hutchinson. He was lame and blind in one eye, and well do I recall his sonorous and tremulous response, his love for the Psalms (Tate and Brady's); he ”reckoned nought o' _Hymns Ancient and Modern_.” I used generally to find him with a long pipe in the vestry on my return from afternoon service. He was a great authority on the ancient history of the parish, and was formerly schoolmaster. He had brought up most respectably a large family of sons and daughters on the smallest means, many of whom still survive. I had a great respect for the old man, and so he had for me. He was very great at leading that peculiarly dirge-like wail at the huge Yorks.h.i.+re funerals. I never could quite make out any words, but as a singularly effective and musical cadence in a minor key, it was no doubt a survival, as I once heard Canon Atkinson say, the famous vicar of Danby, my immediate neighbour on the moors. At last I attended Frank Hutchinson daily in his prolonged decay, and received his solemn blessing and commendation on my work; and he received at my hand a few hours before his death his last communion, surrounded by all his children and grandchildren, in his small bedroom, by the light of a single candle. I can still see his thin face uplifted.

It is thirty-five years ago, and I can still hear the striking of his lucifer match in the midst of the afternoon service, and see him holding up close to his own eye the candle and the book, and can hear his tremulous ”Amen,” quite independent of the choral one sung by a small choir in the chancel. He was great in epitaphs. A favourite one, which he would recite _ore rotunda_, was:

”Let this record, what few vain marbles can, Here lies an honest man.”

Another, which, by the way, is in Egton churchyard, ran as follows:

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