From
Shirley
by
Charlotte Brontë in 1849
Chapter
I
Levitical¹
. . OF late years,
an abudant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of England: they
lie very thick on the hills; every parish has one or more of them; they
are young enough to be very active, and ought to be doing a great deal
of good. But not of late years are we about to speak; we are going back
to the beginning of this century: late years – present years are dusty,
sun-burnt, hot, arid; we will evade the noon, forget it in siesta, pass
the mid-day in slumber, and dream of dawn.
.
. If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance
is preparing for you, reader, you never wore more mistaken. Do you anticipate
sentiment, and poetry, and reveries? Do you expect passion, and stimulus,
and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard,
Something real, cool, and solide lies before you; something unromantic
as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with the consciousness
that they must rise and betake themselves thereto. It is not positively
affirmed that you shall not have a taste of the exciting, perhaps towards
the middle and close of the meal, but it is resolved that the first dish
set upon the table shall be one that a Catholic – ay, even an Anglo-Catholic
– might eat on Good Friday in Passion Week: it shall be cold lentils and
vinegar without oil; it shall be unleavened bread with bitter herbs, and
no roast lamb.
.
. Of late years, I say, an abundant shower of curates has fallen
upon the north of England: but in eighteen-hundred-eleven-twelve that
affluent rain had not descended: curates were scarce then: there was no
Pastoral Aid – no Additional Curates' Society² to stretch a helping hand
to worn-out old rectors and incumbents, and give them the wherewithal
to pay a vigorous young colleague from Oxford or Cambridge. The present
successors of the Apostles, disciples of Dr Pusey and tools of the Propaganda,
were at that time being hatched under cradle-blankets, or undergoing regeneration,
by nursery-baptism in wash-hand-basins. You could not have guessed by
looking at any one of them that the Italian-ironed double frills of its
net-cap surrounded the brows of a preordained, specially sanctified successor
of St Paul, St Peter, or St John; nor could you have foreseen in the folds
of its long night-gown the white surplice in which it was hereafter cruelly
to exercise the souls of its parishioners, and strangely to nonplus its
old-fashioned vicar by flourishing aloft in a pulpit the shirt-like raiment
which had never before waved higher than the reading-deck³.
.
. Yet even in those days of scarcity there were curates: the precious
plant was rare, but might be found. A certain favoured district in the
West Riding of Yorkshire could boast three rods of Aaron4
blossoming within a circuit of twenty miles. You shall see them, reader.
Step into this neat garden-house on the skirts of Whinbury, walk forward
into the little parlour – there they are at dinner. Allow me to introduce
them to you: – Mr Donne, curate of Whinbury; Mr Malone, curate of Briarfield;
Mr Sweeting, curate of Nunnely. These are Mr Dunne's lodgings, being the
habitation of one John Gale, a small clothier. Mr Donne has kindly invited
his brethren to regale with him. You and I will join the party, see what
is to be seen, and hear what is to be heard. At present, however, they
are only eating; while they eat we will talk aside.
From
Chapter XXIV
Valley of the Shadow of Death
.
. The servents in the kitchen, hearing the strain, stole to the
stairfoot to listen: even old Helstone, as he walked in the garden, pondering
over the unaccountable and feeble nature of women, stood still among his
borders to catch the mournful melody more distinctly. Why it reminded
him of his forgotten dead wife, he could not tell; nor why it made him
more concerned that he had hitherto been for Caroline's fading childhood.
He was glad ro recollect that he had promised to pay Wynne, the magistrate,
a visit that evening. Low spirits and gloomy thoughts were very much his
aversion: when they attacked him he usually found means to make them march
in double-quick time. The hymn followed him faitly as he crossed the fields:
he hastened his customary sharp pace, that he might get beyond its reach.
1.
'Levitical': chapter introduces us to the curates. Traditionally,
the Levites were the priests of Israel.
2.
no additional Curates' Society: The Pastoral Aid Society was
founded by Bishop Blomfield in 1836. Its purpose was to provide adequate
service by the clergy of the Church of England in all the parishes in
the country. It gave finiancial assistance to the poorer parishes. The
Additional Curates' Society was founded in the following year by the wine
merchant Joshua Watson, who also founded the National Society for the
Provision of Church Schools and the Church Building Society. These were
all attempts by the Church of England, with its rigid and old-fashioned
parochial system, to meet the problems posed by the growth and movement
of population which partly accompanied, partly caused, and partly resulted
from the Industrial Revolution.
3.
higher than the reading-desk: Most of this paragraph makes satirical
reference to the Oxford Movement. This movement (1833-45), within the
Church of England, was centred on the University of Oxford and aimed to
restore the High Church ideals of the seventeenth century. Its chief objects
were the defence of the Church of England as a divine institution, the
maintenance of the doctrine of the Apostolic Succession, and the Book
of Common Prayer as a rule of faith. Among the group's acknowledged leaders
Dr Pusey was perhaps the most sympathetic. With the Oxford Movement, there
gradually and inevitably arose a party which tended more and more towards
submission to Rome. To this party Charlotte Brontë refers when she speaks
of the 'tools of the Propaganda'. The Sacred Congregation of Propaganda
was the Roman Catholic Congregation concerned with missions to heathen
countries and the administration of territories, like England in 1811-12,
where there was no properly established hierarchy. Within the Church of
England the effective influence of the Oxford Movement was revealed most
obviously in the sphere of worship and ceremony which came to play a much
larger part in the life of the Church than in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries.
