Ronald Blythe notes a paucity of literary churchwardens
THE CHURCHWARDEN as a literary character is a rare bird, which is odd when one remembers his prolixity. He emerged in the late-medieval Church. There was one for the priest and one for the people in each parish, and here they are still, quite extraordinary men and women who, as well as holding thousands of churches together, are the principal choosers of their incumbents. Yet it is now one of the avoided offices, and most PCC members say, “Not me! Not me!”
To our relief, some of our churchwardens reign for ever, and we thank God for it. They prove to have been called as much as elected, and, as there is nothing about this in the Rules, who are we to say, “Your three years are up”?
There are three churches, thus six wardens. But John has died, leaving more a natural than an administrative vacancy. A musician, he brought the choir up to RSCM standard, and we will go on hearing his voice as we sing.
Each of our wardens, and wardens everywhere, of course, bring their individual genius to the job, and the culture of a parish reflects this. But writers haven’t much to say about them, not even Barbara Pym. Trollope’s first Barsetshire novel was called The Warden, but it was not about a churchwarden.
The poet George Crabbe chooses the parish clerk as the victim of his exposure, Jachin, “the gravest man on the ground”. The year came, however, “when christening fees were small, the weddings few, the parties paupers all,” and fees for parish clerks not enough to feed a mouse; and so he nicked from the collection. His end was grim, as it would be in Aldeburgh.
The most distinguished churchwarden to take the col-lection in English literature, so to speak, was T. S. Eliot. Long-serving, like our friends, he was warden of St Stephen’s near Grenville Place in London for a quarter of a century. They said that “in church he looked very much like a businessman, and in business he looked very much like a cleric.” He saw the “piaculative pence” drop from the choirboys’ fingers.
My own history of churchwardenship is not very businesslike, I have to admit.
Thrice I was called to the high office, or rather told to do it, once by a patron, then by what ap-peared to be a misinformed common consent. I was church-warden of All Saints’, Great Glemham, first, then of St Peter’s, Charsfield, then of All Saints’, Debach, all in Suffolk.
At Glemham, I was youthful and writing my first book, and much struck that I was helping to run a church where George Crabbe had been Rector. A pretty church, fresh inside, with a seven-sacrament font and patches of ancient colour, and with striking tales still about the poet-botanist-priest.
On a winter’s afternoon, he would, they told me, carry his book nearer and nearer to the window, and, when he could no longer read it, would slam it shut and cry, “All go home!” And in summer he would, they said, gather the congregation at the door after service, and walk it through the lanes as he gave a lesson on plants. The Hall gardens were white with his snowdrops in February.
At Charsfield, there was a bell that said in Latin, “Box of sweet honey, I am Michael’s bell.” At Debach (1853, and now turned into a house), there was the ghost of Edward FitzGerald and a hint of Omar Khayyám.
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