The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
Master Simon had now to hurry off, having an appointment at the parish
church with the village choristers, who were to perform some music of
his selection. There was something extremely agreeable in the cheerful
flow of animal spirits of the little man; and I confess I had been
somewhat surprised at his apt quotations from authors who certainly
were not in the range of every-day reading. I mentioned this last
circumstance to Frank Bracebridge, who told me with a smile that Master
Simon’s whole stock of erudition was confined to some half a dozen old
authors, which the squire had put into his hands, and which he read over
and over whenever he had a studious fit, as he sometimes had on a
rainy day or a long winter evening. Sir Anthony Fitzherbert’s Book of
Husbandry, Markham’s Country Contentments, the Tretyse of Hunting, by
Sir Thomas Cockayne, Knight, Isaac Walton’s Angler, and two or three
more such ancient worthies of the pen were his standard authorities;
and, like all men who know but a few books, he looked up to them with a
kind of idolatry and quoted them on all occasions. As to his songs,
they were chiefly picked out of old books in the squire’s library, and
adapted to tunes that were popular among the choice spirits of the last
century. His practical application of scraps of literature, however, had
caused him to be looked upon as a prodigy of book-knowledge by all the
grooms, huntsmen, and small sportsmen of the neighborhood.
While we were talking we heard the distant toll of the village bell,
and I was told that the squire was a little particular in having his
household at church on a Christmas morning, considering it a day of
pouring out of thanks and rejoicing; for, as old Tusser observed,--
“At Christmas be merry, and thankful withal,
And feast thy poor neighbors, the great with the small.”
“If you are disposed to go to church,” said Frank Bracebridge, “I can
promise you a specimen of my cousin Simon’s musical achievements. As the
church is destitute of an organ, he has formed a band from the village
amateurs, and established a musical club for their improvement; he has
also sorted a choir, as he sorted my father’s pack of hounds, according
to the directions of Jervaise Markham in his Country Contentments: for
the bass he has sought out all the ‘deep, solemn mouths,’ and for the
tenor the ‘loud-ringing mouths,’ among the country bumpkins, and for
‘sweet-mouths,’ he has culled-with curious taste among the prettiest
lasses in the neighborhood; though these last, he affirms, are the most
difficult to keep in tune, your pretty female singer being exceedingly
wayward and capricious, and very liable to accident.”
As the morning, though frosty, was remarkably fine and clear, the most
of the family walked to the church, which was a very old building of
gray stone, and stood near a village about half a mile from the park
gate. Adjoining it was a low snug parsonage which seemed coeval with the
church. The front of it was perfectly matted with a yew tree that had
been trained against its walls, through the dense foliage of which
apertures had been formed to admit light into the small antique
lattices. As we passed this sheltered nest the parson issued forth and
preceded us.
I had expected to see a sleek well-conditioned pastor, such as is often
found in a snug living in the vicinity of a rich patron’s table, but I
was disappointed. The parson was a little, meagre, black-looking man,
with a grizzled wig that was too wide and stood off from each ear; so
that his head seemed to have shrunk away within it, like a dried filbert
in its shell. He wore a rusty coat, with great skirts and pockets that
would have held the church Bible and prayer-book: and his small legs
seemed still smaller from being planted in large shoes decorated with
enormous buckles.
I was informed by Frank Bracebridge that the parson had been a chum of
his father’s at Oxford, and had received this living shortly after the
latter had come to his estate. He was a complete black-letter hunter,
and would scarcely read a work printed in the Roman character. The
editions of Caxton and Wynkyn de Worde were his delight, and he was
indefatigable in his researches after such old English writers as have
fallen into oblivion from their worthlessness. In deference, perhaps, to
the notions of Mr. Bracebridge he had made diligent investigations into
the festive rites and holiday customs of former times, and had been as
zealous in the inquiry as if he had been a boon companion; but it was
merely with that plodding spirit with which men of adust temperament
follow up any track of study, merely because it is denominated learning;
indifferent to its intrinsic nature, whether it be the illustration of
the wisdom or of the ribaldry and obscenity of antiquity. He had pored
over these old volumes so intensely that they seemed to have been
reflected into his countenance; which, if the face be indeed an index of
the mind, might be compared to a title-page of black-letter.
On reaching the church-porch we found the parson rebuking the
gray-headed sexton for having used mistletoe among the greens with which
the church was decorated. It was, he observed, an unholy plant, profaned
by having been used by the Druids in their mystic ceremonies; and,
though it might be innocently employed in the festive ornamenting of
halls and kitchens, yet it had been deemed by the Fathers of the Church
as unhallowed and totally unfit for sacred purposes. So tenacious was
he on this point that the poor sexton was obliged to strip down a great
part of the humble trophies of his taste before the parson would consent
to enter upon the service of the day.
The interior of the church was venerable, but simple; on the walls were
several mural monuments of the Bracebridges, and just beside the altar
was a tomb of ancient workmanship, on which lay the effigy of a warrior
in armor with his legs crossed, a sign of his having been a crusader. I
was told it was one of the family who had signalized himself in the Holy
Land, and the same whose picture hung over the fireplace in the hall.
During service Master Simon stood up in the pew and repeated the
responses very audibly, evincing that kind of ceremonious devotion
punctually observed by a gentleman of the old school and a man of old
family connections. I observed too that he turned over the leaves of a
folio prayer-book with something of a flourish; possibly to show off an
enormous seal-ring which enriched one of his fingers and which had the
look of a family relic. But he was evidently most solicitous about
the musical part of the service, keeping his eye fixed intently on the
choir, and beating time with much gesticulation and emphasis.
The orchestra was in a small gallery, and presented a most whimsical
grouping of heads piled one above the other, among which I particularly
noticed that of the village tailor, a pale fellow with a retreating
forehead and chin, who played on the clarinet, and seemed to have blown
his face to a point; and there was another, a short pursy man, stooping
and laboring at a bass-viol, so as to show nothing but the top of a
round bald head, like the egg of an ostrich. There were two or three
pretty faces among the female singers, to which the keen air of a frosty
morning had given a bright rosy tint; but the gentlemen choristers had
evidently been chosen, like old Cremona fiddles, more for tone than
looks; and as several had to sing from the same book, there were
clusterings of odd physiognomies not unlike those groups of cherubs we
sometimes see on country tombstones.
The usual services of the choir were managed tolerably well, the vocal
parts generally lagging a little behind the instrumental, and some
loitering fiddler now and then making up for lost time by travelling
over a passage with prodigious celerity and clearing more bars than the
keenest fox-hunter to be in at the death. But the great trial was an
anthem that had been prepared and arranged by Master Simon, and on which
he had founded great expectation. Unluckily, there was a blunder at the
very outset: the musicians became flurried; Master Simon was in a fever;
everything went on lamely and irregularly until they came to a chorus
beginning, “Now let us sing with one accord,” which seemed to be a
signal for parting company: all became discord and confusion: each
shifted for himself, and got to the end as well--or, rather, as soon--as
he could, excepting one old chorister in a pair of horn spectacles
bestriding and pinching a long sonorous nose, who happened to stand
a little apart, and, being wrapped up in his own melody, kept on a
quavering course, wriggling his head, ogling his book, and winding all
up by a nasal solo of at least three bars’ duration.
The parson gave us a most erudite sermon on the rites and ceremonies
of Christmas, and the propriety of observing it not merely as a day
of thanksgiving but of rejoicing, supporting the correctness of his
opinions by the earliest usages of the Church, and enforcing them by the
authorities of Theophilus of Caesarea, St. Cyprian, St. Chrysostom, St.
Augustine, and a cloud more of saints and fathers, from whom he made
copious quotations. I was a little at a loss to perceive the necessity
of such a mighty array of forces to maintain a point which no one
present seemed inclined to dispute; but I soon found that the good man
had a legion of ideal adversaries to contend with, having in the course
of his researches on the subject of Christmas got completely embroiled
in the sectarian controversies of the Revolution, when the Puritans made
such a fierce assault upon the ceremonies of the Church, and poor old
Christmas was driven out of the land by proclamation of Parliament.*
The worthy parson lived but with times past, and knew but little of the
present.
Shut up among worm-eaten tomes in the retirement of his antiquated
little study, the pages of old times were to him as the gazettes of the
day, while the era of the Revolution was mere modern history. He forgot
that nearly two centuries had elapsed since the fiery persecution of
poor mince-pie throughout the land; when plum porridge was denounced as
“mere popery,” and roast beef as anti-christian, and that Christmas had
been brought in again triumphantly with the merry court of King Charles
at the Restoration. He kindled into warmth with the ardor of his contest
and the host of imaginary foes with whom he had to combat; he had a
stubborn conflict with old Prynne and two or three other forgotten
champions of the Roundheads on the subject of Christmas festivity;
and concluded by urging his hearers, in the most solemn and affecting
manner, to stand to the traditional customs of their fathers and feast
and make merry on this joyful anniversary of the Church.
* From the “Flying Eagle,” a small gazette, published
December 24, 1652: “The House spent much time this day about
the business of the Navy, for settling the affairs at sea,
and before they rose, were presented with a terrible
remonstrance against Christmas day, grounded upon divine
Scriptures, 2 Cor. v. 16; I Cor. xv. 14, 17; and in honor of
the Lord’s Day, grounded upon these Scriptures, John xx. I;
Rev. i. 10; Psalms cxviii. 24; Lev. xxiii. 7, 11; Mark xv.
8; Psalms lxxxiv. 10, in which Christmas is called Anti-
christ’s masse, and those Masse-mongers and Papists who
observe it, etc. In consequence of which parliament spent
some time in consultation about the abolition of Christmas
day, passed orders to that effect, and resolved to sit on
the following day, which was commonly called Christmas day.”
I have seldom known a sermon attended apparently with more immediate