An Old English Home and Its Dependencies

I recollect one notable occasion. It was Christmas. The village choir was intent on performing the Hallelujah Chorus from the "Messiah." Bless you, my dear readers! they were not timorous and hesitating in those days any more than in these, when only quite recently a young village carpenter proposed for a rustic parish entertainment a piece out of "Lohengrin."

To return to the Hallelujah Chorus. Unhappily the organist was bowled over by a severe cold and could not attend. The soprano was cook at the rectory, and the plum-pudding had somehow gone wrong and must be attended to. So she did not attend. The alto had been invited "with her young man" to a friend's at a distance, therefore she could not attend, and the bass had been out carolling all night and drinking ale, and was hoarse and – well, indisposed. Accordingly, nothing daunted, our tenor gave us the Hallelujah Chorus as a solo, without accompaniment at all, and without the other parts. That was a wonderful performance – never to be forgotten.

The other day I was in a restored church, with stained glass windows, with brass candelabra, with velvet and gold hangings, with carved oak bench-ends, and encaustic tiled floors, and – I could not help myself – I laughed; for I saw in the side chapel a huge organ, elaborately painted and gilt. It had three key-boards, and I could not count all the stops. Nothing to laugh at in that; no: but there was, in the contrast between the church as it is now and what it was fifty years ago, as I remember it. I was then in it on a Sunday. There were no carved benches then, but tall deal pews. There was no organ: there was an orchestra in the west gallery, and the clerk was first violin therein. But his duties required that he should sit near the reading-desk at the chancel arch. Now, when it came to the giving out a psalm, the old fellow stood up and announced: "Let us sing to the praise and glory of God the – Psalm." Having done this, he left his desk and strode down the nave whistling the tune very shrilly, till he reached the west gallery, where he took his place at the music-stand, and drew the bow across his fiddle, tuned it, and the whole orchestra broke out into music – or, to be more exact, uproar.

In small country parishes it was by no means infrequent that the clerk alone could read, and he had to do all the responses. When it came to the psalm, he read out two lines audibly. Whereupon choir and congregation sang those two lines. Then he gave out two more lines, and those were sung. So on to the end. This was not very musical; but what else could be done, when the power to read print was not present in the congregation?

I do not think that the true history of the west end gallery in a parish church is properly known. In mediæval churches there was a very rich and elaborately carved wood screen between the chancel and the body of the church. The screen had several purposes to serve, some symbolical, some liturgical, some practical.

In the first place it was symbolical of death. In the Tabernacle and Temple a veil hid the Holy of Holies; but on the death of Christ the veil was rent asunder from the top to the bottom, and this signified that the way into the Holiest Place was open to all, and that death ceased to be the impenetrable mystery it had been; since Christ, by His death, had overcome death, it was possible to look beyond the veil and see the glorious place where is the Mercy-Seat and the Altar-Throne, and where our Great High Priest standeth, ever making intercession for us.

Now, in the mediæval churches, the chancel represented the Holiest Place, or heaven, and the nave was the figure of the Church on earth. Consequently the screen, dividing the nave from the chancel, was a figure of death. But inasmuch as by faith we can look through and beyond the barrier of death, the screens were made of carved work pierced through, so that the chancel with the altar might be perfectly visible beyond the screen. And inasmuch as death was overcome by Christ, the crucifix stood above the screen, a figure that proclaimed that it was through the cross of Christ alone, that the kingdom of heaven was opened to all believers, and that death was swallowed up in victory.

So much for the symbolic meaning of the screen. And yet, no – one word more must be added. Last summer I was walking along the north coast of Devon, when I visited the very fine parish church of Coombe Martyn. This noble church possesses an exceedingly fine rood-screen that has not been demolished. The church possesses something else of interest – a very intelligent, quaint old parish clerk.

As I was admiring the screen, the old man, who was dusting in the church, came up to me and said: "Please, your honour, have y' ever heard tell why the screen-doors niver shut?"

I expressed my doubt that this was so.

"Now, do y' go and look at ivery old church screen you seez," said the clerk. "If it ho'n't been meddled wi' by them blessed restorers, you'll find for sure sartain that the oak doors won't shut. Zur, see here. Here be the doors. Try 'em; they can't be made to shut."

I answered that the wood had swelled, and the joinery was imperfect.

"No, your honour," said the old man. "If you look close, you'll see it was made on purpose not to fit."

On examination it certainly did appear that the doors in question never could have been fastened. I admitted this, but doubted whether it was the same with all screen-gates.

"It's the same wi' all," said the old man. "I've looked at scores, and they was all made just the same, on purpose not to fit."

"That is very odd," said I, still incredulous.

"It was done on purpose," said the old man.

Then he came out with his explanation.

"Doant y' see, your honour. Them old men as made the screens weren't bad joiners, and they weren't fules neither. They was a sight better joiners than we be now. The reason they did it was this. For sure sartain the chancel means heaven, and the body of the church means airth. And then, doan't it say in Scriptur, 'The gates shall not be shut at all?' Very well, if the chancel be meant to tell o' the heavenly Jerusalem, then the screen gates must be made not to fit, that never nobody may never be able to fasten 'em no more. The old men weren't bad joiners, nor fules – not they."

And now – to the liturgical significance of the screen. As already said, it supported the crucifix, and the rule was that during Lent all images were to be veiled or covered with wraps. Accordingly, on the top of the screens were galleries by means of which the crucifix could be reached for the veiling on Shrove Tuesday, and the unveiling on Easter Eve.

But the screen served a third purpose, and that was eminently practical. On it sat the orchestra and choir. The gallery was made broad and solid to support them, and was furnished with a back to the west, against which the performers might lean, and which concealed them from the congregation in the nave. These backs have for the most part disappeared; nevertheless, several remain. They naturally were the first part of a screen to give way through the pressure of somnolent human beings against it.

The choir and instrumentalists sat on the rood-screen, where they could see every movement of the priest at the altar, and so take their cues for singing and playing. It was essential that they should be in this position. In Continental churches, where in many places the screens have been mutilated or removed, the choirs still occupy their old places. For instance, at Bruges, where the screen in the cathedral is reduced to a mere block of black and white marble beside the chancel steps, the musicians remain perched at the top. At Freiburg, where the screen and gallery have been erected in one of the transepts, quite out of sight of the altar, the singers and orchestra are on it.

At the Reformation, when the crucifix was torn away, a great ugly gap was left in the gallery-back above the screen. In cathedrals this gap was filled up with the organ. And in cathedrals and large churches the organ displaced the instrumentalists.

In many churches the screen itself was destroyed or allowed to fall into decay. But the use of the gallery was not forgotten. The priest now occupied the reading-desk, and as this was very generally in the body of the church, something had to be done to bring the choir and orchestra into a suitable position facing him.

Accordingly, in a great number of cases the gallery was removed to the west end of the church, and those who rendered the musical portion of divine service moved with it. Hence it came about that in a vast majority of cases the gallery at the west end, under the tower arch, came to be the great focus and centre of music and discord.

Now the fashion has set in everywhere to pull down the west gallery and open out the tower arch. But when the west gallery is gone, whither is the organ to go? Where is the choir to be put? The choirs are now very generally accommodated in the chancel, but the organ has been moved about into various places more or less unsuitable.

At one time the fashion was to build out a sort of chapel on the north side and to fit the organ into it; boxing it up on all sides but one. Naturally, the organ objected to this treatment. It was made to occupy an open space: it demanded circulation of air. In the pocket into which it was thrust it became damp, and went out of tune.

Nothing could have been designed more senseless than these cramped chapels for organs. The organ sets waves of air in motion, and the walls boxing in the pipes prevented the waves from flowing. It was found that organs in this position did not give forth a volume of sound commensurate with their cost and size, and they were pulled out, and stuck in side aisles, and painted and gilt, and an attempt made to render an unsightly object comely by flourish of decoration.

But again difficulties and objections became evident. An organ ought not to be on the damp floor, and it ought to be well elevated. Moreover, planted at the east end of an aisle, it did not support the congregation in their singing. It roared and boomed in the ears of the choir; and if the service is to be an elaborate performance, in which the congregation takes the part of audience only, then it is in the right place. But if the divine worship is to be congregational, if all are to be encouraged to sing, then the organ is out of place.

Consequently in a good many cases there is a talk of moving back the organ into a west gallery.

Unhappily, an organ is a very expensive traveller. An individual can tour round the globe at about the same cost that will move an organ from one end of a church to another. Hundreds on hundreds of pounds have been spent in marching the unhappy organ about; and we cannot be sure that its wanderings are over yet.

In these restless and impatient days, when everyone has a theory and a scheme, and desires to do what is contrary to what has been done, the hardest of lessons to acquire, and that entailing most self-restraint, but that which is least costly, and most calculated to give a man peace at the last, is to let well alone.

And now before we leave the old church, something must be said about the tower and bells.

On the Continent there is absolutely no art in bell-ringing – it is what any fool can do; the bells are clashed together, there is no sequence of notes, no changes in succession, there is noise, not melody. I remember many years ago passing through the queer little village with a queerer name, Corpsnuds, in the French Landes, on Midsummer-day. From the quaint church-tower sounded the most extraordinary clatter of bells, without sequence and without harmony. Moreover, from the top of the tower fluttered an equally extraordinary flag. On more attentive examination of the latter, when the wind was sufficiently strong to unfurl and expand it, it became obvious that this flag was nothing more nor less than a pair of dingy black trousers split at the seam, and reseated with a dingy navy-blue patch.

Having made the observation, I entered the belfry, to ascertain what produced the clatter among the bells.

There I discovered the sexton, in his blouse, very hot, very red, profusely perspiring, racing about the interior swinging the end of a single bell-rope.

On seeing me he halted, and wiped his brow on his sleeve. I asked him how it was that he alone was able to ring a peal of bells.

"Mais!" he answered, "C'est bien possible. I have tied a broomstick in a knot of the rope, among the bells, and as I whisk the rope about, the stick rattles this bell, that bell, all of them. Voila tout!"

"And the banner waving augustly above the tower?" I further inquired.

"Bien simple," was his answer. "An old pair of my patched pantaloons. My wife slit them; we have no parish flag, so I said —allons! mes pantalons. There they are: aloft! One must do what one can in honour of the bon Saint Jean."

It is in England alone that bell-ringing is an art, and oh! how lovely an art it is – to those far away who hear the swell and fall of the bells, the music always having a certain sadness in it. But it has its sordid side, as has all art, and the sordid side is the interior of the belfry; or, let us say, was, before reform pushed its way there.

There was some excuse for the ringers to conduct themselves in a free and easy manner in the belfry when it was shut off from the body of the church by a screen of boards against which the west gallery was erected. Then the belfry was so much apart from the church that it ceased to be regarded as pertaining to it, or being included within its sacred atmosphere. Accordingly the ringers conducted themselves in the belfry as they saw fit. They introduced pipes, also a barrel of beer. They sketched each other on the boards, never in complimentary style. They wrote scurrilous verses on the screen, and sometimes conducted there all kinds of buffoon games, and played practical jokes on each other.

Not only did they consider that they might do as they liked in the belfry, but that they might have access to it when they liked, and ring on whatever occasion they pleased.

Another abuse crept in. The ringers considered that they had done quite sufficient when they had rung a peal before Divine Service. Their ringing ended, they would withdraw to the road or loiter about the churchyard, talking and smoking, whilst worship proceeded within the church.

In a certain place that I know the ringers had been allowed their own way under an indifferent rector, and the worst possible condition of affairs had resulted. Then came a new rector with the reforming spirit in him, and he resolved to put matters to right. Hitherto the belfry key had been retained by the sexton, a prime offender. The parson demanded it. The sexton refused to surrender it. Then the rector went with a blacksmith to the tower door, broke it open, and affixed a new lock to it with a key that he retained for himself.

Great was the indignation among the ringers, and an anonymous letter was received by the rector:

"This be to giv Nottis. If you pass'n doant mind wot your about and let we ring the bells as plazes we, then us wull knock your little 'ed off."

The rector was not to be intimidated. That night he went to the belfry and locked himself in.

At the usual time for the practice to begin the ringers arrived, and he heard them discuss him and his doings in the churchyard. That he did not mind.

"I say," remarked the sexton, "ain't he the minister? Wot do that mean but that he's sent by the bishop to minister to us and do jist as us likes?"