AN EARLY December afternoon, with slanting sunlight. The feast
of Nicholas Ferrar, to be exact. Does he have a feast? So he left
Little Gidding in Advent. Thinking of him, I see such a sun drawing
long shadows from a group of elms that Vikram Seth and I noticed
growing there. In a circle, but too close together.
Two horses on my meadow crop the muddy grass, and will soon be
moved on. The sky is pink and yellow. Now and then, a handful of
starlings pass in full flight. A few miles away, in both
directions, high streets will be crowded with shoppers and plangent
with canned carols. The white cat dozes among geraniums.
Girls call out from polished horses. "It is coming!" we shout -
not Christmas, but the storm. Only it often misses its way, in
spite of the forecasters' directions.
I take a funeral, and prepare two Nine Lessons and Carols.
Winter is all departures and arrivals. The former is back to front
as usual, the crem. preceding the service. An old friend, now with
God, wanted ten hymns.
"You can only have three."
"Oh, very well."
A relation from the other side of the world would talk about her
with tears. No flowers in church. And the Second Coming pushed to
the back of our minds.
And the sweet scent of trampled grass, and the squabbling rooks
in the near-naked trees. But youthful winter wheat in all
directions, and the river is high. It tugs at the iron bridge that
ties Essex to Suffolk, where the Saxon ford would have been. "No
heavy traffic."
A summer boat has been hauled up, and lies meditatively in the
rushes. Will we have snow? Who knows? "Don't forget the
bell-ringers' service," Brian says at the door. "You don't have to
do anything, just the welcome and blessing."
He does so much - they all do, and not only here, but in
thousands of parishes. Such music, such words. Only don't rely on
the organ at Mount Bures, which goes up when it should go down, or
something like that. I actually delight when, in extremis,
we sing unaccompanied.
We are to think of Samuel Johnson, my boyhood hero. His statue
looks towards Fleet Street from St Clement Danes, where Mother went
to Sunday school. He would walk from City church to City church,
hoping to hear a decent sermon. But his ears failed him, dear, good
man.
His prayers are self-reproving. His virtues were marvellously
Christian. He housed a trying female, fed his cats on oysters, made
a black boy his son, suffered from multiple aches and
disfigurements, and confessed that the ultimate of human happiness
was to ride in a swift carriage with a pretty woman.
I once carried Boswell's life of Doctor Johnson round the
Hebrides, reading it wherever he went, not so much in his footsteps
as in his complaining shadow. It was early summer, and I was
youthful. It was my first glimpse of Scotland.
Pressed flowers, bog cotton, campion, and heather stain its
pages. May on Skye! Bare feet in the burns. And the telling-off by
my Wee Free landlady for swimming on the sabbath. And in my ears Dr
Johnson's grand put-downs. Poor young Boswell. I'm not surprised
that he got drunk.
But now Advent all over again. The coming of Christ. Its
haunting language. Its bare altars. Its wheeling birds. It is
heart-breaking music. Its fear and its glory. And all those names
for Jesus - Adonai, Dayspring of Nations, Emmanuel. . . .