They were tremendous in those days. In the broad spaces between the windows were hung large red wooden shields upon which we emblazoned, in holly leaves and dyed everlasting flowers, mysterious ecclesiastical monograms and devices. This meant many pricked and hammered fingers. But the great undertaking each year was making the wreaths of evergreen, for over six hundred yards were required to twine round the pillars and to hang in festoons between them. The only place in Wilton which was big enough for this wreath-making was the Manège at Wilton House, with its sawdust-covered floor, and here we spent about ten days every December. Wooden benches were placed in rows down the length of the Manège, and upon these were laid pieces of rope, some of which were thirty and some forty-five feet long. One end of each piece was fastened to a nail at the end of the bench, and then we sat down and moved slowly backward, as we tied in the pieces of ilex, holly, box, and laurel, of which the festoon was composed. Our teacher was an old gardener, who had done this kind of thing all his life, and he was very strict about our technique. We had to sit ‘straddle-legged’, and to learn how to graduate the different lengths of stalk in our greenery, so as to make the festoon really strong. It was bitterly cold in the Manège, and round us, as we worked, there rose a cloud of thin dust, made of sawdust and pollen. It always gave me hay-fever, and I sneezed steadily all the time.
Thus described, those days before Christmas do indeed sound dull and dark, yet Advent had its heavenly splendour. Those heavy clouds were the right setting for the Advent hymn:
Lo He comes with clouds descending.
And as one thinks oneself back into those days, what emerges most distinctly is the memory of another austerely grand Gregorian tune:
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee O Israel.
The short winter days were illuminated by the terror, the majesty, and the joy of the Day of Doom.
For there were many extra services throughout Advent and the hymn-tunes overflowed from the church to the Manège, ringing in out heads as we sneezed among the sawdust.
In Thy beauty all resplendent,
In Thy glory all transcendent
Coming! In the opening east
Herald brightness slowly swells
Coming! O my glorious Priest,
Hear we not thy golden bells?
I can never forget those radiant visions when Advent comes back now. Every year I remember the old ardent tunes:
Time appointed may be long
But the vision must be sure.
Certainty shall make us strong,
Joyful patience can endure.
It is the same all through the year. I owe to my Rectory home the joyful awareness of an eternal significance persisting through the swiftly passing beauty of the seasons. In my mind the Church’s year will always come first. I was born into it. My father and mother gave it to me. It is entangled in all my thoughts.
Thus to grow up in the Christian year is to learn, in the words of Thomas Treherne, that ‘the World is not this little cottage of Heaven and Earth, though this be fair, it is too small a Gift. When God made the world He made the Heavens, and the Heaven of Heavens, and the Angels, the Celestial Powers. These also are parts of the World: so are all those infinite and eternal Treasures that are to abide for ever, after the Day of Judgement. Neither are these, some here and some there, but all everywhere, and at once to be enjoyed.’
Christmas is not a special prerogative of Rectories. It is ‘all everywhere, and at once to be enjoyed’. It belongs to all the world, but when it was over, and we went on through the long dreariness of January, we were companioned by the ‘Men of Old’ who once followed their star ‘with gladness’ as they set out on the audacious pilgrimage which sought a king and found a homeless child.
February was marked by Septuagesima Sunday and by my father’s reading of the first chapter of Genesis as the Lesson that day, and then we always sang Haydn’s anthem, ‘The Heavens are telling’. On the following Sunday, there was Newman’s hymn, ‘Praise to the Holiest in the Height’, and then the week when we prayed for ‘that most excellent gift of charity’.
It will be seen that our Christian year swung along mainly to the words and tunes of hymns, and they are often a very exciting part of childhood. They recall it for most grown-up people.
The Charity Collect led into Lent, and at Wilton Rectory this season did indeed mean forty days of penance. Between Advent Sunday and Easter Day, my father made a practice of adding to his usual parish visits, a house to house visitation of all the town. He had a passion for statistics, and in the evenings he loved making up his register, inserting full details of every family from year to year. By the time Lent came, he was already tired, and now there were added special services, addresses and instructions, so that he seemed to be hardly ever at home. Lenten dinners were late because of all these services, and Lenten meals were abstemious in character. To add to their dreariness, they were often attended by a visiting preacher, such as Canon Codd, whom my father once wearily asked to ‘Have some cod, Codd’. This provoked from the family a furtive lenten grin.
So our pleasures in Lent
