Chapter XX: Part I: was favourably received; but in Part II., when they came to the

tenor and bass recitative (D minor) “And when they arose” (too-too) “early in the morning” (too-too) “behold” (burr-r-r) “they were all dead corp-ses” (vum-vum on the ’cellos), there was smothered laughter in the middle of the hall: and the really fine aria for the tenor,

“For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast”

was interrupted by guffaws from the back seats, where the humour of the recitative had more slowly penetrated. The dean, too, gave it to be understood that the blending of the Book of Kings with Lord Byron was hardly becoming in a cathedral official, and Sennacherib perished.

“It was a pity, though,” said my host, “for that tenor air, sung by Sims Reeves with extraordinary power to a harp obbligato accompaniment, should have carried it through.” And the old gentleman sat down at the piano, and made as though he would play it; but he laughed sadly, and muttered, “No Sims Reeves, and no harp here,” and went on with his memories.

“This soured the organist, and he developed unsound opinions about the Close. His enemies even said that he voted for the Whig candidate at a Parliamentary election: but this was before the days of ballot voting, and the base slander was easily disproved. He was a freeholder under the old statutes of the cathedral, and neither dean nor bishop could touch him.”

“_Quamdiu bene se gessisset_,” I interposed, knowing the Rector’s affection for an easy bit of Latin.

“Just so,” he answered, rather uncertainly, and continued.

“Pedler’s special aversion was the Irish canon; partly because he had led the laughter that slew Sennacherib, and had even asked why Sims Reeves had not a Jews’ harp to accompany him: partly because it was known to Pedler that the Canon spoke of him as the ‘great and marvellous’ one, in allusion to the anthem above mentioned: but chiefly because by the statutes of the cathedral his enemy was precentor, and got £600 a year for his office.[31]

“‘Paddy Windbags,’ he would say--for by that opprobrious name he designated his enemy--‘doesn’t know the difference between the Cruiskeen Lawn and Winchester New; and with his canonry, and what he gets by letting furnished apartments here, when he is on the stump in Mudborough, he gets as much as all the men and boys on the _Cantoris_ side put together.’

“‘And there’s that Cockney chap,’ he would go on, ‘got a living in London worth goodness knows what; population 15,000; takes a holiday in September, because he is so hard worked, and _then_ comes down here for three solid months with thirteen old sermons in his pocket to fire at the cathedral congregation. Three months with two hours’ work a day! Yah!’

“All gone now,” Chaunters sighed; and there was a pause.

“Did I ever tell you about old Dick the blower?” he resumed: “Dick had been blowing the cathedral organ for thirty-five years; it was all done by hand then; and the story was that he knew the Services and anthems so well that he could tell exactly how many fillings of the big bellows went to each. He had a rough copy of the Service List hung up in the recess where he worked his lever, and a glance at that sufficed. One afternoon, when the First Lesson was running down, he looked at the list to see what ‘Magnificat’ was on; it was Rogers in D; and he muttered ‘sixty-four,’ or whatever the number of pumpings was, and in due course he blew sixty-four times. But by bad luck it happened that an eminent musician had turned up, and, to impress him, the precentor had taken off Rogers in D, which is a short affair, and put on Attwood in C, which, you may remember, has a long Gloria at the end. Having blown his sixty-four, Dick had emerged from his den to stretch his legs, and, long before the Gloria was finished, the organ was as dead as Sennacherib. Dick was puzzled, but conscious of right; and when, during the Second Lesson, Pedler came raging down-stairs to know what was wrong, Dick was ready: ‘What ’ave I bin a doin’ on? Why, what ’ave you bin a singin’ of? _Hattwood in C?_ What does it say on that there list? Doctor Rogers in D, and I blowed Dr. Rogers in D. If you’d ’a said Hattwood in C, I’d ’a blowed accordin’.”

Pedler admitted contributory negligence.

Concerning vergers, Chaunters had countless tales; but he robbed all the cathedrals in England of their local vergers and domiciled them all in Sudchester. It was not his verger, but a St. Paul’s man who objected to private devotions on the ground that they had services at 10 and 3.30, and didn’t want no fancy work. It was a Canterbury verger who bade a private devotee rise from his knees, and apologetically remarked to a bystander that if he didn’t stop ’em he should ’ave ’em prayin’ hall hover the place. It was a Belgravian verger who warned the lady not to leave her parasol about while she looked at the painted windows, “because Private Devotions comes in at 11, and they halways steals.” It was in a northern cathedral that the vergers complained to the dean that the organist, by playing on the organ when there was no service going on, distracted the visitors so much that they wouldn’t go round the chapels and tombs.

“So that,” replied the Dean blandly, “not only this our craft is in danger to be set at naught, but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised.”

It was at that same northern fane that a recently appointed verger, who had left a good place to assume his gown, on being invited by his exceedingly respectable master to return, said, “I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of ungodliness.” It was in a still more remote cathedral that the old verger, on being informed by the canon that the stranger whom he was showing round was an Ecclesiastical Commissioner, one of the family of Shalmaneser, hastily moved to the visitor’s right side, and explained that he kept his money in the pocket which he thus removed out of danger.

But all these and many other equally veracious anecdotes did my host affiliate on Sudchester, and I said no word of reproof. All vergers work on the same principle, that the cathedral exists for their benefit, and that they should be supreme. It follows that vergers’ stories are interchangeable.

He had stories of parish clerks, which in like manner he localised in the adjacent parishes. Most of them are in print, but one purely Cheshire story, dating from 1866, has possibly been forgotten, even in the county. I will risk it after forty-two years.

It was at the time of the cattle plague, when Cheshire farmers were threatened with absolute ruin, that in a country church one afternoon the choir burst into a pathetic hymn, of which I remember only one verse:

“There’s not a cow, or ox, or beast,
But takes it out of hand;
And soon we’ll have no beasts at all
To dwell within the land.”

The farmers wept bitterly, and said it was too touching: but the Rector said to the clerk, when they got into the vestry, “Why, Thomas, what was that psalm you were singing? Was it one of David’s?”

“Deevid!” said the clerk in bitter scorn, “Deevid never wrote hanythink loike that in hall ’is born dees: that wur a bit of _moy_ puttin’ tergether.”

I remember how I pleased the old man by capping his story with a Midland counties’ story, told me by the vicar concerned therein:

They had begun the Athanasian Creed, and in the front seat, right before the old three-decker of pulpit, reading-desk, and clerk’s pew, stood an old man searching in vain for the unaccustomed formulary. The vicar hastily whispered to the clerk below him, “Find his place.” The clerk obeyed, and then half-turning round muttered with withering contempt:

“Whoy, ’ee were a-rootlin i’ the Psawms!”

Of course these varied reminiscences were not all produced at one meeting; they were spread over many years, and some recurred more than once, more than twice. The story about Dick, the blower, for instance, was a hardy annual, and if the Rector had not produced it in any year, I should have been aggrieved.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] His official rank was succentor, the precentor being a Canon; but in Sudchester the full title is always conceded.

[28] “Services”--with a capital S--stands for the Canticles, and the musical setting of the Communion Service.

[29] “Carmenque Christo, quasi deo, dicere secum _invicem_.”--Pliny, x. 97.

[30] The verse runs thus in the hymn-book:

“Trust in God, and borrow
Ease for heart and mind.”

[31] This custom exists at other old foundations; St. Paul’s, York, &c.