TO ALDEBURGH, where Peter
Grimes would confess his crimes in an opera house on the shingle.
And not only this, but the Suffolk coast had taken a leaf out of
the Côte d'Azur, and was balmy. My friend Ian, never a man to miss
an opportunity, jumped into the sea and swam several yards. I
breathed in the unaccustomed warmth, and listened to the furious
gulls.
It was Sunday evening, and
my having taken matins at Little Horkesley that morning seemed
aeons away. For this is what the sea does: takes over. Replaces
what went before with its vast significance. I heard it hollering,
as it were, below the balcony of my room all night.
The costly whiff of skate
and haddock rose from the fishermen's huts, and the birds cried
even louder. Christianity was born to this smell and noise. Galilee
was 74 square miles of serenity and turbulence, where squalls blew
up, or where surfaces were calm, concealing great depth. It bred a
distinctive race, as seas do. As Aldeburgh does to this day. I
mean, Southwold and Great Yarmouth are only a few miles north, but
are they like Aldeburgh? Not remotely.
It is Songs of Praise at
Mount Bures from its modest height. And all around the epitome of
flower festivals. Pure Kilvert. Or so I always think. Francis
Kilvert died in 1879, and his niece Miss Kilvert was my Suffolk
neighbour. The contingencies of human existence can be
unbelievable. This is the time of year when I might include some of
Kilvert's diary in a sermon. Might he not console others as he
consoles me? St Paul blessed the Romans via the God of patience and
consolation.
On a June morning such as
this, Kilvert let himself out of the Golden Lion Hotel at Dolgellau
to visit real lions; for the menagerie had come to town. It was
5.30 a.m., and the lions, ostriches, gnus, and antelopes, wide
awake but caged up, were "eliciting divers roars, groans, howls,
hoots and grunts". All that I heard when at this hour I braved the
sopping wet grass were Jean's horses cropping and breathing, and
the final notes of the dawn chorus.
Kilbert climbed Cader Idris;
I became waist-high in my wildflower meadow and sticky with pollen.
But the early-ness of being outside was just the same for both of
us. Only he ran into Welsh rain, and I into the clarity of an East
Anglian morning. Kilvert descended Cader Idris by the "Fox's Path",
as I had done, 100 years later.
I came into a stingy
breakfast, being too idle to cook. And now, wet-footed, I am
writing this, consoled by the selfish thought that never in my life
have I ever had to catch the commuter's train. Only to stumble from
bed to meadow at an unearthly hour. For 5.30 a.m. can be paradisal,
whatever the weather.
Kilvert, a mighty walker,
met early risers of all ages; whereas I meet fewer and fewer fellow
tramps. Sunday afternoons might bring one or two of them out. Old
paths are grown over, old views no longer seen - such as that from
which, at a certain point, one can just make out Wormingford
Church, or an oak which is contemporary with Shakespeare.
So back to Songs of Praise,
and what to say between these hymns. And to hear them sung
eloquently inside the thick old walls. George Herbert, of course.
J. M. Neale, of course. Charles Wesley always consolingly
brilliant.