Public-domain ebook
The Trials of a Country Parson
Language: en321 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Essays, Letters & Speeches·British Literature·Religion/Spirituality
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #58451.
The opening · free to read
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON.
My friends from Babylon the great are very good to me in the summer-time. They come in a delightful stream from their thousand luxuries, their great social gatherings, their brilliant talk, and their cheering and stimulating surroundings; they come from all the excitement and the whirl of London or some other huge city where men live, and they make their friendly sojourn with us here in the wilderness even for a week at a time. They come in a generous and self-denying spirit to console and condole with the man whom they pity so gracefully--the poor country parson “relegated,” as Bishop Stubbs is pleased to express it, “to the comparative uselessness of literary (and clerical) retirement.” I observe that the first question my good friends ask is invariably this: “What shall we do and where shall we go--to-morrow?” It would be absurd to suppose that any man in his senses comes to the wilderness to stay there, or that there could be anything to do there. A man goes to a place to see, not the place itself, but some other place. When you find yourself in the wilderness you may use any spot in it as a point of departure, but as a dwelling-place, a resting-place, never!
Moreover, I observe that, by the help of such means of locomotion as we have at command, the days pass merrily enough with my visitors in fine weather. But as sure as ever the rain comes, so surely do my friends receive important letters calling them back, much to their distress and disappointment. If the weather be very bad--obstinately bad--or if a horse falls lame and cannot be replaced, or some equally crushing disaster keeps us all confined to the house and garden, my visitors invariably receive a telegram which summons them home instantly even at the cost of having to send for a fly to the nearest market town. Sometimes, by a rare coincidence, a kindly being drops in upon us even in the winter. He is always genial, cordial, and a great refreshment, but he never stays a second night. We keep him warm, we allow a liberal use of “the shameful,” we give him meat and drink of the best, we flatter him, we coddle him, we talk and draw him out, we “show him things,” but he never stays over that single night; and when he goes, as he shakes our hands and wraps himself up in his rugs and furs, I notice that he has a sort of conflate expression upon his countenance; his face is as a hybrid flower where two beauties blend. One eye says plainly, “I am a lucky dog, for I am going away at last,” and the other eye, beaming with kindliness, sometimes with affection, says just as plainly, “Poor old boy, how I do pity you!”
Well! this is a pitiful age; that is, it is an age very full of pity. The ingenuity shown by some good people in finding out new objects of commiseration is truly admirable. It is hardly to be expected that the country parson should escape the general appetite for shedding tears over real or supposed sufferers.
But it strikes some of us poor forlorn ones as not a little curious that our grand town friends never by any chance seem to see what there is in our lot that is really pathetic or trying. “How often do you give it meat?” said a blushing, mild-eyed, lank-haired young worthy in my hearing the other day. “Lawk! sir, that don’t have no meat,” answered the laughing mother, as she hugged her tiny baby closer to her bosom. “Never have meat? How dreadful!” Just so! But it is not only ludicrous, it is annoying, to be pitied for the wrong thing; and though I am not inclined to maintain the thesis that we, the soldiers of God’s army of occupation, who are doing outpost duty, pass our lives in a whirl of tumultuous and delicious joy, yet, if I am to be pitied, do let me be pitied intelligently. I cannot expect to be envied, but surely it is not such a very heavy calamity for a man never to catch a sight of Truth or The World, or to find that there is not such a thing as an oyster-knife in his parish.
Moreover, side by side with pity, there is a large amount of much more irritating and ignorant exaggeration of the good things we are supposed to enjoy. We do not, I admit, hear quite so often as formerly about “fat livings” and “valuable preferment,” nor about the “rectorial mansion with a thousand a year”; but we hear a great deal more about such fabulous lands of Goshen than we ought to hear. There is always a disposition to represent our neighbours as better off than ourselves, and whereas the salaried townsman knows that his income, whatever it may be, is his net income which he may count upon as his spending fund to use as he pleases, when he hears of others as receiving or entitled to receive so many pounds a year, he assumes that they do receive it and that they may spend it as they please. The townsman, again, who moves among the multitude and every hour is reminded of that multitude pressing, as all fluids do, “equally in all directions,” hears, and sometimes he knows, that the clergy in the towns have immense claims upon their time and are always on the move in the streets and courts. They are always about, always en évidence. If a man has only to minister to a paltry seven hundred, what can he have to do? He must be a drone.
Moreover, the aforesaid townsman has read all about those country parsons. You can hardly take up a novel without finding a sleek rector figuring in the volumes. These idealized rural clerics always remind me of Mr. Whistler’s Nocturnes. The figures roll at you through the mists that are gathering round them. The good people who try to introduce us to these reverend characters very rarely venture upon a firm and distinct outline. The truth is, that for the most part the novelists never slept in a country parsonage in their lives, never knew a country parson out of a book.
A year or two ago my friend X. was dining in a London mansion. “Who’s that?” said a lady opposite, as she ducked her head in his direction and looked at her partner. X. turned to speak to his partner, but could not help hearing the scarcely whispered dialogue: “A country parson, did you say? Why, he’s tall!”
And their voices low with fashion, not with feeling, softly freighted All the air about the windows with elastic laughter sweet.
It was quite a surprise to that lady novelist that a country parson could be tall! Many men are tall--policemen, for instance. But only short men ought to be country parsons. Why! we shall hear of one of them being good-looking next!
When any class of men feel themselves to be the butt of others, they are apt to be a little cowed. They hold their peace and fret, and if they resent their hard treatment and speak out, they rarely do themselves justice. Very few men can come well out of a snub, and the countryman who is not used to it never knows what to reply to offensive language. Yet worms have been known to turn, not that I ever heard they got any good by it; they can’t bite, and they can’t sting, but I suppose it comforts them to deliver their own souls. Poor worms! Yes! you may pity them.
But if the country parson has his trials, how may he hope to be listened to when he desires to make it clear what they are? Where shall he begin? Where shall he begin if not by pointing to that delicate nerve-centre of draped humanity, exquisite in its sensitiveness, knowing no rest in its perpetual giving out of force, for ever hungering for renewal of its exhausted resources, feeling no pain in its plethora and dreading no death save from inanition--to wit, the Pocket? Touch a man’s pocket, and a shudder thrills through every fibre.
The country parson has a great deal to complain of at the hands of those who will persist in talking of him as an exceptionally thriving stipendiary. It is one thing to say that in all cases he gets more than he deserves; it is quite another to put forth unblushingly that his income is half as much again as in fact it is, and his outgoings only what the outgoings of other men are. Logicians class the suppressio veri among sophisms; but would it not be better to call that artful proceeding a fraud? “Drink fair, Betsy, whatever you do!” said Mrs. Gamp on a memorable occasion. Yes, if it is only out of the teapot.
i. With regard to the income of the country parson, it may be laid down as a fact not to be disputed, that hardly one per cent. of the country clergy ever touch the full amount which theoretically they are entitled to receive. In the case of parishes where the land is much subdivided, and where there are a number of small tithepayers, it would be almost impossible for the clergyman personally to collect his dues; he almost invariably employs an agent, who is not a likely man to do his work for love. Even the agent can rarely get in all the small sums that the small folk ought to pay. Even he has to submit to occasional defalcations, and to consider whether it is worth while to press the legal rights of his employer too far. Moreover, the small folk from time immemorial have expected something in the shape of a tithe dinner or a tithe tea, for which the diners or the tea-drinkers do not pay, you may be sure; this constitutes a not inconsiderable abatement on the sum-total of receipts which ought to come to hand at the tithe audit.
Taking one year with another, it may be accepted as a moderate estimate that the cost of collecting his tithe, plus bad debts in some shape or other, amounts to six per cent., and he who gets within seven per cent. of his clerical income gets more than most of us do. But the law allows of no abatement in respect of this initial charge; and because the law takes up this ground, the world at large assumes that the nominal gross income of the benefice does come into the pockets of the incumbent. The world at large is quite certain that nobody in his senses makes a return of a larger income than he enjoys, and if the parson pays on £500, people assume that he does not get less from his living than that. The world at large does not know that the parson is not asked to make a return. The surveyor makes up his books on the tithe commutation table for the parish, and on that the parson is assessed, whatever he may say.
ii. For be it known it is with the surveyor or rate-collector that the parson’s first and most important concern lies. Whatever he may receive from his cure, however numerous may be the defaulters among the tithe-payers, however large the expense of collecting his dues, the parson has to pay rates on his gross income. The barrister and the physician, the artist or the head of a government department, knows or need know nothing about rates. He may live in a garret if he likes; he may live in a boarding-house at so much a week; he may live in a flat at a rent which covers all extraneous charges. I suppose we most of us have known men of considerable fortune, men who live in chambers, men who live in lodgings, men who live in college rooms, who never directly paid a rate in their lives. Our lamented H., who dropped out recently, leaving £97,000 behind him, invested in first-class securities, was one of these languidly prosperous men. “I do detetht violent language on any thubject whatever,” he lisped out to me once. “I hope I thall never thee that man again who thtormed at rate collectorth tho. What ith a rate collector? Doth he wear a uniform?”
The book keeps going
Keep reading, and see it illustrated
Reading is free forever. Sign up and watch scenes appear while you read.
Scenes Storieta drew for other classics.
