'A Clergyman'(1918)
Fragmentary, pale, momentary; almost nothing; glimpsed and gone; as it
were, a faint human hand thrust up, never to reappear, from beneath
the rolling waters of Time, he forever haunts my memory and solicits
my weak imagination. Nothing is told of him but that once, abruptly,
he asked a question, and received an answer.
This was on the afternoon of April 7th, 1778, at Streatham, in the
well-appointed house of Mr. Thrale. Johnson, on the morning of that
day, had entertained Boswell at breakfast in Bolt Court, and invited
him to dine at Thrale Hall. The two took coach and arrived early. It
seems that Sir John Pringle had asked Boswell to ask Johnson `what
were the best English sermons for style.' In the interval before
dinner, accordingly, Boswell reeled off the names of several divines
whose prose might or might not win commendation. `Atterbury?' he
suggested. `JOHNSON: Yes, Sir, one of the best. BOSWELL: Tillotson?
JOHNSON: Why, not now. I should not advise any one to imitate
Tillotson's style; though I don't know; I should be cautious of
censuring anything that has been applauded by so many suffrages.--
South is one of the best, if you except his peculiarities, and his
violence, and sometimes coarseness of language.--Seed has a very fine
style; but he is not very theological. Jortin's sermons are very
elegant. Sherlock's style, too, is very elegant, though he has not
made it his principal study.--And you may add Smalridge. BOSWELL: I
like Ogden's Sermons on Prayer very much, both for neatness of style
and subtility of reasoning. JOHNSON: I should like to read all that
Ogden has written. BOSWELL: What I want to know is, what sermons
afford the best specimen of English pulpit eloquence. JOHNSON: We have
no sermons addressed to the passions, that are good for anything; if
you mean that kind of eloquence. A CLERGYMAN, whose name I do not
recollect: Were not Dodd's sermons addressed to the passions? JOHNSON:
They were nothing, Sir, be they addressed to what they may.'
The suddenness of it! Bang!--and the rabbit that had popped from its
burrow was no more.
I know not which is the more startling--the de'but of the unfortunate
clergyman, or the instantaneousness of his end. Why hadn't Boswell
told us there was a clergyman present? Well, we may be sure that so
careful and acute an artist had some good reason. And I suppose the
clergyman was left to take us unawares because just so did he take the
company. Had we been told he was there, we might have expected that
sooner or later he would join in the conversation. He would have had a
place in our minds. We may assume that in the minds of the company
around Johnson he had no place. He sat forgotten, overlooked; so that
his self-assertion startled every one just as on Boswell's page it
startles us. In Johnson's massive and magnetic presence only some very
remarkable man, such as Mr. Burke, was sharply distinguishable from
the rest. Others might, if they had something in them, stand out
slightly. This unfortunate clergyman may have had something in him,
but I judge that he lacked the gift of seeming as if he had. That
deficiency, however, does not account for the horrid fate that befell
him. One of Johnson's strongest and most inveterate feelings was his
veneration for the Cloth. To any one in Holy Orders he habitually
listened with a grave and charming deference. To-day moreover, he was
in excellent good humour. He was at the Thrales', where he so loved to
be; the day was fine; a fine dinner was in close prospect; and he had
had what he always declared to be the sum of human felicity--a ride in
a coach. Nor was there in the question put by the clergyman anything
likely to enrage him. Dodd was one whom Johnson had befriended in
adversity; and it had always been agreed that Dodd in his pulpit was
very emotional. What drew the blasting flash must have been not the
question itself, but the manner in which it was asked. And I think we
can guess what that manner was.
Say the words aloud: `Were not Dodd's sermons addressed to the
passions?' They are words which, if you have any dramatic and
histrionic sense, cannot be said except in a high, thin voice.
You may, from sheer perversity, utter them in a rich and sonorous
baritone or bass. But if you do so, they sound utterly unnatural. To
make them carry the conviction of human utterance, you have no choice:
you must pipe them.
Remember, now, Johnson was very deaf. Even the people whom he knew
well, the people to whose voices he was accustomed, had to address him
very loudly. It is probable that this unregarded, young, shy
clergyman, when at length he suddenly mustered courage to `cut in,'
let his high, thin voice soar too high, insomuch that it was a kind of
scream. On no other hypothesis can we account for the ferocity with
which Johnson turned and rended him. Johnson didn't, we may be sure,
mean to be cruel. The old lion, startled, just struck out blindly. But
the force of paw and claws was not the less lethal. We have endless
testimony to the strength of Johnson's voice; and the very cadence of
those words, `They were nothing, Sir, be they addressed to what they
may,' convinces me that the old lion's jaws never gave forth a louder
roar. Boswell does not record that there was any further conversation
before the announcement of dinner. Perhaps the whole company had been
temporarily deafened. But I am not bothering about them. My heart goes
out to the poor dear clergyman exclusively.
I said a moment ago that he was young and shy; and I admit that I
slipped those epithets in without having justified them to you by due
process of induction. Your quick mind will have already supplied what
I omitted. A man with a high, thin voice, and without power to impress
any one with a sense of his importance, a man so null in effect that
even the retentive mind of Boswell did not retain his very name, would
assuredly not be a self-confident man. Even if he were not naturally
shy, social courage would soon have been sapped in him, and would in
time have been destroyed, by experience. That he had not yet given
himself up as a bad job, that he still had faint wild hopes, is proved
by the fact that he did snatch the opportunity for asking that
question. He must, accordingly, have been young. Was he the curate of
the neighbouring church? I think so. It would account for his having
been invited. I see him as he sits there listening to the great
Doctor's pronouncement on Atterbury and those others. He sits on the
edge of a chair in the background. He has colourless eyes, fixed
earnestly, and a face almost as pale as the clerical bands beneath his
somewhat receding chin. His forehead is high and narrow, his hair
mouse-coloured. His hands are clasped tight before him, the knuckles
standing out sharply. This constriction does not mean that he is
steeling himself to speak. He has no positive intention of speaking.
Very much, nevertheless, is he wishing in the back of his mind that he
could say something--something whereat the great Doctor would turn on
him and say, after a pause for thought, `Why yes, Sir. That is most
justly observed' or `Sir, this has never occurred to me. I thank you'-
-thereby fixing the observer for ever high in the esteem of all. And
now in a flash the chance presents itself. `We have,' shouts Johnson,
`no sermons addressed to the passions, that are good for anything.' I
see the curate's frame quiver with sudden impulse, and his mouth fly
open, and--no, I can't bear it, I shut my eyes and ears. But audible,
even so, is something shrill, followed by something thunderous.
Presently I re-open my eyes. The crimson has not yet faded from that
young face yonder, and slowly down either cheek falls a glistening
tear. Shades of Atterbury and Tillotson! Such weakness shames the
Established Church. What would Jortin and Smalridge have said?--what
Seed and South? And, by the way, who were they, these worthies? It is
a solemn thought that so little is conveyed to us by names which to
the palaeo-Georgians conveyed so much. We discern a dim, composite
picture of a big man in a big wig and a billowing black gown, with a
big congregation beneath him. But we are not anxious to hear what he
is saying. We know it is all very elegant. We know it will be printed
and be bound in finely-tooled full calf, and no palaeo-Georgian
gentleman's library will be complete without it. Literate people in
those days were comparatively few; but, bating that, one may say that
sermons were as much in request as novels are to-day. I wonder, will
mankind continue to be capricious? It is a very solemn thought indeed
that no more than a hundred-and-fifty years hence the novelists of our
time, with all their moral and political and sociological outlook and
influence, will perhaps shine as indistinctly as do those old
preachers, with all their elegance, now. `Yes, Sir,' some great pundit
may be telling a disciple at this moment, `Wells is one of the best.
Galsworthy is one of the best, if you except his concern for delicacy
of style. Mrs. Ward has a very firm grasp of problems, but is not very
creational.--Caine's books are very edifying. I should like to read
all that Caine has written. Miss Corelli, too, is very edifying.--And
you may add Upton Sinclair.' `What I want to know,' says the disciple,
`is, what English novels may be selected as specially enthralling.'
The pundit answers: `We have no novels addressed to the passions that
are good for anything, if you mean that kind of enthralment.' And here
some poor wretch (whose name the disciple will not remember) inquires:
`Are not Mrs. Glyn's novels addressed to the passions?' and is in due
form annihilated. Can it be that a time will come when readers of this
passage in our pundit's Life will take more interest in the poor
nameless wretch than in all the bearers of those great names put
together, being no more able or anxious to discriminate between (say)
Mrs. Ward and Mr. Sinclair than we are to set Ogden above Sherlock, or
Sherlock above Ogden? It seems impossible. But we must remember that
things are not always what they seem.
Every man illustrious in his day, however much he may be gratified by
his fame, looks with an eager eye to posterity for a continuance of
past favours, and would even live the remainder of his life in
obscurity if by so doing he could insure that future generations would
preserve a correct attitude towards him forever. This is very natural
and human, but, like so many very natural and human things, very
silly. Tillotson and the rest need not, after all, be pitied for our
neglect of them. They either know nothing about it, or are above such
terrene trifles. Let us keep our pity for the seething mass of divines
who were not elegantly verbose, and had no fun or glory while they
lasted. And let us keep a specially large portion for one whose lot
was so much worse than merely undistinguished. If that nameless curate
had not been at the Thrales' that day, or, being there, had kept the
silence that so well became him, his life would have been drab enough,
in all conscience. But at any rate an unpromising career would not
have been nipped in the bud. And that is what in fact happened, I'm
sure of it. A robust man might have rallied under the blow. Not so our
friend. Those who knew him in infancy had not expected that he would
be reared. Better for him had they been right. It is well to grow up
and be ordained, but not if you are delicate and very sensitive, and
shall happen to annoy the greatest, the most stentorian and roughest
of contemporary personages. `A Clergyman' never held up his head or
smiled again after the brief encounter recorded for us by Boswell. He
sank into a rapid decline. Before the next blossoming of Thrale Hall's
almond trees he was no more. I like to think that he died forgiving
Dr. Johnson.
-THE END-
Max Beerbohm's essay: 'A Clergyman' (1918)
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