The Parish Clerk Part 6

An old ballad, _King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid_, contains an interesting allusion to the parish clerk, and shows the truth of that which has already been pointed out, viz. that the office of clerk was often considered to be a step to higher preferment in the Church. The lines of the old ballad run as follows:

"The proverb old is come to pa.s.se, The priest when he begins his ma.s.se Forgets that ever clarke he was; He knoweth not his estate."

Christopher Harvey, the friend and imitator of George Herbert, has some homely lines on the duties of clerk and s.e.xton in his poem _The Synagogue_. Of the clerk he wrote:

"The Churches Bible-clerk attends Her utensils, and ends Her prayers with Amen, Tunes Psalms, and to her Sacraments Brings in the Elements, And takes them out again; Is humble minded and industrious handed, Doth nothing of himself, but as commanded."

Of the s.e.xton he wrote:

"The Churches key-keeper opens the door, And shuts it, sweeps the floor, Rings bells, digs graves, and fills them up again; All emblems unto men, Openly owning Christianity To mark and learn many good lessons by."

In that delightful sketch of old-time manners and quaint humour, _Sir Roger de Coverley_, the editor of _The Spectator_ gave a life-like representation of the old-fashioned service. Nor is the clerk forgotten.

They tell us that "Sir Roger has likewise added five pounds a year to the clerk's place; and that he may encourage the young fellows to make themselves perfect in the Church services, has promised, upon the death of the present inc.u.mbent, who is very old, to bestow it according to merit." The details of the exquisite picture of a rural Sunday were probably taken from the church of Milston on the Wiltshire downs where Addison's father was inc.u.mbent, and where the author was born in 1672.

Doubtless the recollections of his early home enabled Joseph Addison to draw such an accurate picture of the ecclesiastical customs of his youth. The deference shown by the members of the congregation who did not presume to stir till Sir Roger had left the building was practised in much more recent times, and instances will be given of the observance of this custom within living memory.

Two other references to parish clerks I find in _The Spectator_ which are worthy of quotation:

"_Spectator_, No. 372.

"In three or four taverns I have, at different times, taken notice of a precise set of people with grave countenances, short wigs, black cloaths, or dark camblet trimmed black, with mourning gloves and hat-bands, who went on certain days at each tavern successively, and keep a sort of moving club.

Having often met with their faces, and observed a certain shrinking way in their dropping in one after another, I had the unique curiosity to inquire into their characters, being the rather moved to it by their agreeing in the singularity of their dress; and I find upon due examination they are a knot of parish clerks, who have taken a fancy to one another, and perhaps settle the bills of mortality over their half pints. I have so great a value and veneration for any who have but even an a.s.senting _Amen_ in the service of religion, that I am afraid but these persons should incur some scandal by this practice; and would therefore have them, without raillery, advise to send the florence and pullets home to their own homes, and not to pretend to live as well as the overseers of the poor.

"HUMPHRY TRANSFER.

"_Spectator_, No. 338.

"A great many of our church-musicians being related to the theatre, have in imitation of their epilogues introduced in their favourite voluntaries a sort of music quite foreign to the design of church services, to the great prejudice of well-disposed people. These fingering gentlemen should be informed that they ought to suit their airs to the place and business; and that the musician is obliged to keep to the text as much as the preacher. For want of this, I have found by experience a great deal of mischief; for when the preacher has often, with great piety and art enough, handled his subject, and the judicious clerk has with utmost diligence called out two staves proper to the discourse, and I have found in myself and in the rest of the pew good thoughts and dispositions, they have been all in a moment dissipated by a merry jig from the organ loft."

Dr. Johnson's definition of a parish clerk in his Dictionary does not convey the whole truth about him and his historic office. He is defined as "the layman who reads the responses to the congregation in church, to direct the rest." The great lexicographer had, however, a high estimation of this official. Boswell tells us that on one occasion "the Rev. Mr. Palmer, Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, dined with us. He expressed a wish that a better provision were made for parish clerks.

Johnson: 'Yes, sir, a parish clerk should be a man who is able to make a will or write a letter for anybody in the parish.'" I am afraid that a vast number of our good clerks would have been sore puzzled to perform the first task, and the caligraphy of the letter would in many cases have been curious.

That careful delineator of rural manners as they existed at the end of the eighteenth century, George Crabbe, devotes a whole poem to the parish clerk in his nineteenth letter of _The Borough_. He tells of the fortunes of Jachin, the clerk, a grave and austere man, fully orthodox, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, and detecter and opposer of the wiles of Satan. Here is his picture:

"With our late vicar, and his age the same, His clerk, bright Jachin, to his office came; The like slow speech was his, the like tall slender frame: But Jachin was the gravest man on ground, And heard his master's jokes with look profound; For worldly wealth this man of letters sigh'd, And had a sprinkling of the spirit's pride: But he was sober, chaste, devout, and just, One whom his neighbours could believe and trust: Of none suspected, neither man nor maid By him were wronged, or were of him afraid.

There was indeed a frown, a trick of state In Jachin: formal was his air and gait: But if he seemed more solemn and less kind Than some light man to light affairs confined, Still 'twas allow'd that he should so behave As in high seat, and be severely grave."

The arch-tempter tries in vain to seduce him from the right path. "The house where swings the tempting sign," the smiles of damsels, have no power over him. He "shuns a flowing bowl and rosy lip," but he is not invulnerable after all. Want and avarice take possession of his soul. He begins to take by stealth the money collected in church, putting bran in his pockets so that the coin shall not jingle. He offends with terror, repeats his offence, grows familiar with crime, and is at last detected by a "stern stout churl, an angry overseer." Disgrace, ruin, death soon follow; shunned and despised by all, he "turns to the wall and silently expired." A woeful story truly, the results of spiritual pride and greed of gain! It is to be hoped that few clerks resembled poor lost Jachin.

A companion picture to the disgraced clerk is that of "the n.o.ble peasant Isaac Ashford[40]," who won from Crabbe's pen a gracious panegyric. He says of him:

"n.o.ble he was, contemning all things mean, His truth unquestioned, and his soul serene.

If pride were his, 'twas not their vulgar pride, Who, in their base contempt, the great deride: Nor pride in learning--though by Clerk agreed, If fate should call him, Ashford might succeed."

[Footnote 40: _The Parish Register_, Part III.]

He paints yet another portrait, that of old Dibble[41], clerk and s.e.xton:

"His eightieth year he reach'd still undecayed, And rectors five to one close vault conveyed.

His masters lost, he'd oft in turn deplore, And kindly add,--'Heaven grant I lose no more!'

Yet while he spake, a sly and pleasant glance Appear'd at variance with his complaisance: For as he told their fate and varying worth, He archly looked--'I yet may bear thee forth.'"

[Footnote 41: _The Parish Register_, Part III.]

George Herbert, the saintly Christian poet, who sang on earth such hymns and anthems as the angels sing in heaven, was no friend of the old-fashioned duet between the minister and clerk in the conduct of divine service. He would have no "talking, or sleeping, or gazing, or leaning, or half-kneeling, or any undutiful behaviour in them."

Moreover, "everyone, man and child, should answer aloud both Amen and all other answers which are on the clerk's and people's part to answer, which answers also are to be done not in a huddling or slubbering fashion, gaping, or scratching the head, or spitting even in the midst of their answer, but gently and pausably, thinking what they say, so that while they answer 'As it was in the beginning, etc.,' they meditate as they speak, that G.o.d hath ever had his people that have glorified Him as well as now, and that He shall have so for ever. And the like in other answers."

Cowper's kindliness of heart is abundantly evinced by his treatment of a parish clerk, one John c.o.x, the official of the parish of All Saints, Northampton. The poet was living in the little Buckinghamshire village of Weston Underwood, having left Olney when mouldering walls and a tottering house warned him to depart. He was recovering from his dread malady, and beginning to feel the pleasures and inconveniences of authorship and fame. The most amusing proof of his celebrity and his good nature is thus related to Lady Hesketh:

"On Monday morning last, Sam brought me word that there was a man in the kitchen who desired to speak with me. I ordered him in. A plain, decent, elderly figure made its appearance, and being desired to sit spoke as follows: 'Sir, I am clerk of the parish of All Saints in Northampton, brother of Mr. c.o.x the upholsterer. It is customary for the person in my office to annex to a bill of mortality, which he publishes at Christmas, a copy of verses. You will do me a great favour, sir, if you will furnish me with one.' To this I replied: 'Mr. c.o.x, you have several men of genius in your town, why have you not applied to some of them? There is a namesake of yours in particular, c.o.x, the Statuary, who, everybody knows, is a first-rate maker of verses. He surely is the man of all the world for your purpose.' 'Alas, sir, I have heretofore borrowed help from him, but he is a gentleman of so much reading that the people of our town cannot understand him.'

"I confess to you, my dear, I felt all the force of the compliment implied in this speech, and was almost ready to answer, Perhaps, my good friend, they may find me unintelligible too for the same reason.

But on asking him whether he had walked over to Weston on purpose to implore the a.s.sistance of my muse, and on his replying in the affirmative, I felt my mortified vanity a little consoled, and pitying the poor man's distress, which appeared to be considerable, promised to supply him. The waggon has accordingly gone this day to Northampton loaded in part with my effusions in the mortuary style. A fig for poets who write epitaphs upon individuals! I have written _one_ that serves _two hundred_ persons."

Seven successive years did Cowper, in his excellent good nature, supply John c.o.x, the clerk of All Saints in Northampton, with his mortuary verses[42], and when c.o.x died, he bestowed a like kindness on his successor, Samuel Wright.

[Footnote 42: Southey's _Works of Cowper_, ii. p. 283.]

These stanzas are published in the complete editions of Cowper's poems, and need not be quoted here. They begin with a quotation from some Latin author--Horace, or Virgil, or Cicero--these quotations being obligingly translated for the benefit of the worthy townsfolk. The first of these stanzas begins with the well-known lines:

"While thirteen moons saw smoothly run The Nen's barge-laden wave, All these, life's rambling journey done, Have found their home, the grave."

Another verse which has attained fame runs thus:

"Like crowded forest trees we stand, And some are mark'd to fall; The axe will smite at G.o.d's command, And soon will smite us all."

And thus does Cowper, in his temporary role, point the moral:

"And O! that humble as my lot, And scorned as is my strain, These truths, though known, too much forgot, I may not teach in vain.

"So prays your clerk with all his heart, And, ere he quits his pen, Begs you for once to take his part, And answer all--Amen."

Again, in another copy of verses he alludes to his honourable clerkship, and sings:

"So your verse-man I, and clerk, Yearly in my song proclaim Death at hand--yourselves his mark-- And the foe's unerring aim.

"Duly at my time I come, Publishing to all aloud Soon the grave must be our home, And your only suit a shroud."

On one occasion the clerk delayed to send a printed copy of the verses; so we find the poet writing to his friend, William Bagot:

"You would long since have received an answer to your last, had not the wicked clerk of Northampton delayed to send me the printed copy of my annual dirge, which I waited to enclose. Here it is at last, and much good may it do the readers!"

Let us hope that at least the clerk was grateful.