Before the ark
PAUL GALLICO's fictional 1950s London char, Mrs 'Arris, might
still have felt at home in Battersea when I first moved there in
1990.
In Battersea Park, mysterious Festival of Britain relics
protruded, or rattled in the wind; in Northcote Road, now a smart
foodie place, there was an old-fashioned clothing retailer in an
overall like Ronnie Barker's in Open All Hours; two
flights of china ducks turned up in the bazaar at the Ascension,
Lavender Hill; and Battersea Rise, not yet lined with restaurants
full of the young gods and goddesses of Southwark diocese, was
still piled high with secondhand furniture.
Just along from the furniture dealers who always displayed an
enormous Union flag, an elderly shopkeeper with Mary Whitehouse
glasses specialised in unsaleable bric-a-brac pedantically
displayed. I recall her darting out of view behind her bead curtain
when a black man entered the shop. From her crowded window I had a
"Made in Hong Kong" crib set "with Adoring Angels" but no Baby
Jesus.
But behind this street there was a "better" part of Battersea
already being rapidly transformed by death and the estate agent, so
that today it is like an outpost of Metroland on the South
Circular. Standard roses flourish in the gardens of houses with
only one doorbell; surnames go in twos and threes; and, beneath the
coal-holes, cellars are being dolled up to look like boutique-hotel
bars.
In the midst of all this glory is St Luke's, a red-brick C of E
basilica whose eloctroliers have edifying inscriptions and John
Betjeman's number all over them. My guess is that he would have
known of these, and equally admired the surprising outbreak of
Martin Travers in the Lady chapel.
St Luke's seems to be surfing the wave of social change
skilfully and successfully. It has sprouted a newish "community
hall" with meeting-rooms; and last month Benjamin Britten's
children's opera Noye's Fludde, based on the Chester
Miracle play, was ambitiously staged in church, with large amateur
orchestra, professional adult soloists, a well-rehearsed and
capable local cast, and an ark - Noye's (Noah's), of course.
I can't think of many places left where you could include "Lord
Jesus, think on me" as a well-known hymn when welcoming a gathering
drawn from the wider community - perhaps that was stretching it.
But the audience/congregation were, on the whole, good, if not,
indeed, over-eager, joiners-in.
Thanking everyone, the Vicar, the Revd Elisabeth Morse, made it
clear where some of this buzz was coming from. She singled out the
director, Alison Benton (now leaving St Luke's), for special
thanks. Staging Noye's Fludde had been a long-nursed
ambition.
"Once every year," Mrs Morse explained, "Alison and I go to the
pub. . ." And this did, indeed, prove an auspicious place
to confabulate about the bibulous Mrs Noye.
www.stlukeschurch.org.uk
Crossover cleric
THERE was some excitement about tune-smuggling organists a while
back (News, 10 May), but I learn from the Revd Anthony Peabody, a
retired priest in Berkshire, that he achieves such musical
borrowings even when no organist is present.
He plays the bass banjo in banjo trios, and writes the
bass-banjo part. "The resultant score, transferred to a MIDI file,
can be easily played through our splendid digital organ, on the
occasions when we sadly do not have a real live organist. The
resultant pieces, stripped of any banjo connections, sound like
perfectly splendid and jolly organ works."
He has thus been played out to the Calliope Rag and the
Dancing Dustman. "At our small rural church of Sulhamstead
Abbots, we regularly have a variety of jigs, rags, cakewalks and
marches as recessionals, along with Bach and Mendelssohn. Everyone
loves them," he says.
'Eavenly Arbour
AN INTERESTING footnote to the history of Charlotte Elliott, her
hymn "Just as I am", and St Mary's Hall, Brighton (Diary, 7 June),
is supplied by Margaret Mortimer, who writes from Dorset.
Mrs Mortimer (née Broughton-Thompson) was a boarder at the
school from 1937 until it closed in 1940, owing to the war. In the
garden, there was a decrepit old summerhouse known as the Arbour,
she tells me. On its back brick-and-flint wall was a plaque that
read: "In this Arbour Charlotte Elliott wrote 'Just as I am,
without one plea' and 'Christian, seek not yet repose'."
Mrs Mortimer never went to Brighton again until eight years ago,
when the deputy bursar offered to take her round her old
school.
"The garden was quite different and part built over. I was not
surprised the Arbour had gone, but of the plaque there was no sign,
either. I told my guide all about it, as I thought it might have
been stored somewhere, but he had never heard of its existence. I
fear it was a war casualty! (The army took the place over.)"
Perhaps some pious serviceman acquired a souvenir.
By the way, does anyone still sing "Christian, seek not yet
repose"? It survived into Hymns Ancient and Modern
Revised. W. H. Monk's tune, Vigilate, rings a faint
bell, but I don't recall encountering it recently. Since I am
writing this before the General Synod meeting, I hardly dare hope
that we shall find the campaigners from WATCH singing it, in their
bustles and bonnets.
Watch, as if on that alone
Hung the issue of the day;
Pray, that help may be sent down:
Watch and pray!
Feeling the call
ANOTHER topical thought comes to me courtesy of Graeme Hely,
from Glasgow. He wrote to tell us of a Scottish General Synod
meeting that he attended many years ago.
Three doors in the corridor outside the main hall were label-
led "Gentlemen", "Ladies", and "Bishops". One of the doors always
had a long queue outside. "As a first-timer, what really surprised
me was the number of women bishops we had in the Scottish Episcopal
Church," he recalls.
I expect they regarded it as an urgent matter of justice.