The Parish Clerk Part 28

"Life is but a winter's day; Some breakfast and away, Others to dinner stop and are full fed, The oldest man but sups and goes to bed."

He was a genuine old Dalesman of a type pa.s.sed away. His spirits really never survived the abolition of the stringed instruments in the western gallery with its galaxy of village musicians. "I hugged ba.s.s fiddle for many a year," he once told me. Peace be to his memory.

Canon Atkinson tells of his good and harmless but "f.e.c.kless" parish clerk and schoolmaster at Danby, whom, when about to take a funeral, he discovered sitting in the sunny embrasure of the west window, with his hat on, of course, and comfortably smoking his pipe. The clerk was a brother of the old vicar of Danby, and they seem to have been a curious and irreverent pair. The historian of Danby, in his _Forty Years in a Moorland Parish_, fully describes his first visit to the clerk's school, and the strange custom of weird singing at funerals to which Mr.

Jenkins alludes.

Another north-country clerk-schoolmaster was obliged to relinquish his scholastic duties and make way for a certified teacher. One day he heard the new master tell his pupils: "'A' is an indefinite article. 'A' is one, and can only be applied to one thing. You cannot say a cats or a dogs; but only a cat, a dog." The clerk at once reported the matter to his rector. "Here's a pretty fellow you've got to keep school! He says that you can only apply the article 'a' to nouns of the singular number; and here have I been singing 'A--men' all my life, and your reverence has never once corrected me."

Communicated by Mrs. Williamson, Lydgate Vicarage:

The old parish clerk of Radcliffe was secretary of the races committee, and would hurry out of church to attend these meetings. Mr. Foxley, the rector, was told of this weakness of his clerk, so one Wednesday evening, when the rector knew there was a meeting, he got into the pulpit (a three-decker was then in the church), and began his sermon.

Half an hour went by, then the clerk began to be restless. Another half-hour pa.s.sed; the clerk looked up from his seat under the pulpit, but still the rector went on preaching. It was too late then for the race-course meeting. So when the sermon was at length finished, the clerk got up and gave out "the 'undred and nineteenth Psalm from yend to yend. He's preached all day, and we'll sing all neet" (night).

At Westhoughton Church, Lancas.h.i.+re, there was a clerk of the old school, one Platt, who just before the sermon would stretch his long arm and offer his snuff-box to his old friend Betty, and to other cronies who happened to be in his immediate neighbourhood.

The clerk at Stratfieldsaye, who was a character, once astonished a strange clergyman who was taking the duty. The choir sat in the gallery, and the numbers were few on that Sunday. "Mon I 'elp them chaps? they be terrible few," said the clerk. The clergyman quite agreed that he should render them his valuable a.s.sistance, and sit in the gallery. Presently a man came in late, and was kneeling down to say his private prayer, when the clergyman was horrified to see the clerk deliberately rise in the gallery and throw a book at the man's head. When remonstrated with after service the clerk replied carelessly, "Oh, it were only my way o'

telling him to sing up, as we were terrible short this marning."

CHAPTER XXI

CURIOUS STORIES

The old clerk of Clapham, Bedford, Mr. Thomas Maddams, always used to read his own version of Psalm x.x.xix. 12: "Like as it were a moth fretting in a garment." Apparently his idea was of a moth annoyed at being in a garment from which it could not escape.

A parish clerk (who prided himself upon being well read) occupied his seat below the old "three-decker" pulpit, and whenever a quotation or an extract from the cla.s.sics was introduced into the sermon he, in an undertone, muttered its source, much to the annoyance of the preacher and amus.e.m.e.nt of the congregation. Despite all protests in private, the thing continued, until one day, the vicar's patience being exhausted, he leant over the pulpit side and immediately exclaimed, "Drat you; shut up!" Immediately, in the clerk's usual sententious tone, came the reply, "His own." (William Haggard, _Liverpool Daily Post_.)

N.B. I have heard this story before, and in a different key:

The preacher was a young, b.u.mptious fellow, fond of quoting the cla.s.sics, etc. One day a learned cla.s.sic scholar attended his service, and was heard to say, after each quotation, "That's Horace," "That's Plato," and such-like, until the preacher was at his "wits' ends" how to quiet the man. At last, leaning over the pulpit, he looked the man in the face, and is reported to have said, "Who the devil are you?" "That's his own!" was the prompt response.

In one of the village churches near Honiton, in 1864, the usual duet between the parson and clerk had been the custom, when the vicar appealed to the congregation to take their part. In a little while they took courage, and did so. This annoyed the clerk, and he could not make the responses, and made so many mistakes that the vicar drew his attention to the matter. He replied, with much irritation, "How can _I_ do the service with a lot of men and women a-buzzing and a-fizzing about me?"

A somewhat similar story is told of another church:

An old gentleman, now in his eightieth year, remembers attending Romford Church when a youth, and says that at that time (1840) the parish clerk was a person who greatly magnified his office. On one occasion he checked the young man for audibly responding, on the ground that he, the clerk, was the person to respond audibly, and that other people were to respond inaudibly.

Communicated by Miss Emily J. Heaton, of Sitting-bourne:

My father lived and worked as the clergyman of a parish until he was eighty-nine years of age. He remembered a clerk in a Yorks.h.i.+re parish in the time of one of the Georges. The clergyman said the versicle, "O Lord, save the King," and the clerk made no reply. The prayer was repeated, but still no answer. He then touched the clerk, who sat in the desk below, and who replied:

"A we'ant! He won't tak tax off 'bacca!"

Communicated by Mr. Frederick Sherlock:

I remember as a lad attending a church which owned a magnificent specimen of the parish clerk. He used to wear a dress-coat, and it was his practice to follow the clergy from the vestry, and while the vicar and curate were saying their private prayers in the reading-desk in which they both sat together, the venerable clerk with measured tread pa.s.sed down the centre of the church affably smiling and bowing right and left to such of the paris.h.i.+oners as were in his favour. In due course he arrived in the singers' gallery, where he had the place of honour under the organ: the good old man was leading soloist, which we well knew when Jackson's _Te Deum_ was sung on the greater festivals, for there was always a solemn pause before the venerable worthy quavered forth his solo.

It was a pew-rented church, and once a quarter strangers were startled, when the vicar from his place in the reading-desk had announced the various engagements of the week, to hear the clerk's majestic voice from his place in the gallery add, "And _I_ beg to announce" (with a marked emphasis on the _I_) "that the churchwardens will attend in the vestry on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday next, at eight o'clock, for the purpose of receiving pew rents and letting seats for the ensuing quarter."

As touching parish clerks, it is of interest to recall that William Maybrick was clerk of St. Peter's, Liverpool, from 1813-48. He had two sons, William, who became clerk, and Michael, who was organist at St.

Peter's for many years. William Maybrick, junior, had also two sons, James, whose name was so much before the public owing to the circ.u.mstances surrounding his death, and Michael, better known as "Stephen Adams," the famous composer and singer.

The following is a curious letter from a parish clerk to his vicar after giving notice to quit the latter's service. He was clerk of the parish of Maldon, Ess.e.x.

DEAR AND REV. SIR,

I avail myself of the opportunity of troubling your honour with these lines, which I hope you will excuse, which is the very sentiments of your humble servant's heart. Ignorantly, rashly, but reluctantly, I gave you warning to leave your highly respected office and most amiable duty, as being your servant, and clerk of this your most well wished parish, and place of my succour and support.

But, dear Sir, I well know it was no fault of yours nor from any of my most worthy paris.h.i.+oners. It were because I thought I were not sufficiently paid for the interments of the silent dead. But will I be a Judas and leave the house of my G.o.d, the place where His Honour dwelleth for a few pieces of money? No. Will I be a Peter and deny myself of an office in His Sanctuary and cause me to weep bitterly? No. Can I be so unreasonable as to deny, if I like and am well, to ring that solemn bell that speaks the departure of a soul? No. Can I leave digging the tombs of my neighbours and acquaintances which have many a time made me shudder and think of my mortality, when I have dug up the mortal remains of some perhaps as I well knew? No. And can I so abruptly forsake the service of my beloved Church of which I have not failed to attend every Sunday for these seven and a half years? No. Can I leave waiting upon you a minister of that Being that sitteth between the Cherubim and flieth upon the wings of the wind? No. Can I leave the place where our most holy services n.o.bly calls forth and says, "Those whom G.o.d have joined together" (and being as I am a married man) "let no man put asunder"? No. And can I leave that ordinance where you say then and there "I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," and he becomes regenerate and is grafted into the body of Christ's Church? No. And can I think of leaving off cleaning at Easter the House of G.o.d in which I take such delight, in looking down her aisles and beholding her sanctuaries and the table of the Lord? No.

And can I forsake taking part in the service of Thanksgiving of women after childbirth when mine own wife has been delivered ten times? No.

And can I leave off waiting on the congregation of the Lord which you well know, Sir, is my delight? No. And can I forsake the Table of the Lord at which I have feasted I suppose some thirty times? No. And, dear Sir, can I ever forsake you who have been so kind to me? No. And I well know you will not entreat me to leave, neither to return from following after you, for where you pray there will I pray, where you wors.h.i.+p there will I wors.h.i.+p. Your Church shall be my Church, your people shall be my people and your G.o.d my G.o.d. By the waters of Babylon am I to sit down and weep and leave thee, O my Church! and hang my harp upon the trees that grow therein? No. One thing have I desired of the Lord that I will require even that I may dwell in the House of the Lord and to visit His temple. More to be desired of me, O my Church, than gold, yea than fine gold, sweeter to me than honey and the honeycomb.

Now, kind Sir, the very desire of my heart is still to wait upon you.

Please tell the Churchwardens all is reconciled, and if not, I will get me away into the wilderness, and hide me in the desert, in the cleft of the rock. But I hope still to be your Gehazi and when I meet my Shunamite to say "All, all is well." And I will conclude my blunders with my oft-repeated prayer, "Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen."

P.S. Now, Sir, I shall go on with my fees the same as I found them, and will make no more trouble about them, but I will not, I cannot leave you, nor your delightful duties.

Your most obedient servant,

GEORGE G---- G.