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The Altar Steps by Compton MacKenzie

C >> Compton MacKenzie >> The Altar Steps




To the Editor of the WIELD OBSERVER AND SOUTH WORCESTERSHIRE
COURANT,

SIR,--The leader in your issue of last Tuesday upon my sermon in
St. Andrew's Church on the preceding Sunday calls for some
corrections. The action of the Bishop of Kidderminster in
inhibiting Father Rowley from accepting an invitation to preach in
my church is due either to his ignorance of the facts of the case,
to his stupidity in appreciating them, or, I must regretfully add,
to his natural bias towards persecution. These are strong words for
a parish priest to use about his diocesan; but the Bishop of
Kidderminster's consistent support of latitudinarianism and his
consistent hostility towards any of his clergy who practise the
forms of worship which they feel they are bound to practise by the
rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer call for strong words. The
Bishop in correspondence with me declined to give any reason for
his inhibition of Father Rowley beyond a general disapproval of his
teaching. I am informed privately that the Bishop is suffering from
a delusion that Father Rowley disobeyed the Bishop of Silchester,
which is of course perfectly untrue and which is only one more sign
of how completely out of accord our bishops are with what is going
on either in their own diocese or in any other. My own inclination
was frankly to defy his Lordship and insist upon Father Rowley's
fulfilling his engagement. I am not sure that I do not now regret
that I allowed my church-wardens to overpersuade me on this point.
I take great exception to your statement that the offertories both
in the morning and in the evening were sent by me to Father Rowley
regardless of the wishes of my parishioners. That there are certain
parishioners of St. Andrew's who objected I have no doubt. But when
I send you the attached list of parishioners who subscribed no less
than L18 to be added to the two collections, you will I am sure
courteously admit that in this case the opinion of the parishioners
of St. Andrew's was at one with the opinion of their Vicar.--I am,
Sir, your obedient servant,

ADRIAN FORSHAW.

Mark was so much delighted by this letter that he went off at once to
call on Mr. Forshaw, but did not find him at home; he was amused to hear
from the housekeeper that his reverence had been summoned to an
interview with the Bishop of Kidderminster. Mark fancied that it would
be the prelate who would have the unpleasant quarter of an hour.
Presently he began to ponder what it meant for such a letter to be
written and published; his doubts about the Church of England returned;
and in this condition of mind he found himself outside a small Roman
Catholic church dedicated to St. Joseph, where hopeful of gaining the
Divine guidance within he passed through the door. It may be that he was
in a less receptive mood than he thought, for what impressed him most
was the Anglican atmosphere of this Italian outpost. The stale perfume
of incense on stone could not eclipse that authentic perfume of
respectability which has been acquired by so many Roman Catholic
churches in England. There were still hanging on the pillars the framed
numbers of Sunday's hymns. Mark pictured the choir boy who must have
slipped the cards in the frame with anxious and triumphant and
immemorial Anglican zeal; and while he was contemplating this symbolical
hymn-board, over his shoulder floated an authentic Anglican voice, a
voice that sounded as if it was being choked out of the larynx by the
clerical collar. It was the Rector, a stumpy little man with the purple
stock of a monseigneur, who showed the stranger round his church and
ended by inviting him to lunch. Mark, wondering if he had reached a
crossroad in his progress, accepted the invitation, and prepared himself
reverently to hear the will of God. Monseigneur Cripps lived in a little
Gothic house next to St. Joseph's, a trim little Gothic house covered
with the oiled curls of an ampelopsis still undyed by autumn's henna.

"You've chosen a bad day to come to lunch," said Monseigneur with a
warning shake of the head. "It's Friday, you know. And it's hard to get
decent fish away from the big towns."

While his host went off to consult the housekeeper about the extra place
for lunch, a proceeding which induced him to make a joke about extra
'plaice' and extra 'place,' at which he laughed heartily, Mark
considered the most tactful way of leading up to a discussion of the
position of the Anglican Church in regard to Roman claims. It should not
be difficult, he supposed, because Monseigneur at the first hint of his
guest's desire to be converted would no doubt welcome the topic. But
when Monseigneur led the way to his little Gothic dining-room full of
Arundel prints, Mark soon apprehended that his host had evidently not
had the slightest notion of offering an _ad hoc_ hospitality. He paid no
attention to Mark's tentative advances, and if he was willing to talk
about Rome, it was only because he had just paid a visit there in
connexion with a school of which he was a trustee and out of which he
wanted to make one kind of school and the Roman Catholic Bishop of
Dudley wanted to make another.

"I had to take the whole question to headquarters," Monseigneur
explained impressively. "But I was disappointed by Rome, oh yes, I was
very disappointed. When I was a young man I saw it _couleur de rose_. I
did enjoy one thing though, and that was going round the Vatican. Yes,
they looked remarkably smart, the Papal Guards; as soon as they saw I
was _Monsignore_, they turned out and presented arms. I'm bound to admit
that I _was_ impressed by that. But on the way down I lost my pipe in
the train. And do you think I could buy a decent pipe in Rome? I
actually had to pay five _lire_--or was it six?--for this inadequate
tube."

He produced from his pocket the pipe he had been compelled to buy, a
curved briar all varnish and gold lettering.

"I've been badly treated in Wield. Certainly, they made me Monseigneur.
But then they couldn't very well do less after I built this church.
We've been successful here. And I venture to think popular. But the
Bishop is in the hands of the Irish. He cannot grasp that the English
people will not have Irish priests to rule them. They don't like it, and
I don't blame them. You're not Irish, are you?"

Mark reassured him.

"This plaice isn't bad, eh? I ordered turbot, but you never get the fish
you order in these Midland towns. It always ends in my having plaice,
which is good for the soul! Ha-ha! I hate the Irish myself. This school
of which I am the chief trustee was intended to be a Catholic
reformatory. That idea fell through, and now my notion is to turn it
into a decent school run by secular clergy. All the English Catholic
schools are in the hands of the regular clergy, which is a mistake. It
puts too much power in the hands of the Benedictines and the Jesuits and
the rest of them. After all, the great strength of the Catholic Church
in England will always be the secular clergy. And what do we get now? A
lot of objectionable Irishmen in Trilby hats. Last time I saw the Bishop
I gave him my frank opinion of his policy. I told him my opinion to his
face. He won't get me to kowtow to him. Yes, I said to him that, if he
handed over this school to the Dominicans, he was going to spoil one of
the finest opportunities ever presented of educating the sons of decent
English gentlemen to be simple parish priests. But the Bishop of Dudley
is an Irishman himself. He can't think of anything educationally better
than Ushaw. And, as I was telling you, I saw there was nothing for it
but to take the whole matter right up to headquarters, that is to Rome.
Did I tell you that the Papal Guards turned out and presented arms? Ah,
I remember now, I did mention it. I was extraordinarily impressed by
them. A fine body. But generally speaking, Rome disappointed me after
many years. Of course we English Catholics don't understand that way of
worshipping. I'm not criticizing it. I realize that it suits the
Italians. But suppose I started clearing my throat in the middle of
Mass? My congregation would be disgusted, and rightly. It's an
astonishing thing that I couldn't buy a good pipe in Rome, don't you
think? I must have lost mine when I got out of the carriage to look at
the leaning tower of Pisa, and my other one got clogged up with some
candle grease. I couldn't get the beastly stuff out, so I had to give
the pipe to a porter. They're keen on English pipes, those Italian
porters. Poor devils, I'm not surprised. Of course, I need hardly say
that in Rome they promised to do everything for me; but you can't trust
them when your back is turned, and I need hardly add that the Bishop was
pulling strings all the time. They showed me one of his letters, which
was a tissue of mis-statements--a regular tissue. Now, suppose you had a
son and you wanted him to be a priest? You don't necessarily want him to
become a Jesuit or a Benedictine or a Dominican. Where can you send him
now? Stonyhurst, Downside, Beaumont. There isn't a single decent school
run by the secular clergy. You know what I mean? A school for the sons
of gentlemen--a public school. We've got magnificent buildings, grounds,
everything you could wish. I've been promised all the money necessary,
and then the Bishop of Dudley steps in and says that these Dominicans
ought to take it on."

"I'm afraid I've somehow given you a wrong impression," Mark interposed
when Monseigneur Cripps at last filled his mouth with plaice. "I'm not a
Roman Catholic."

"Oh, aren't you?" said Monseigneur indifferently. "Never mind, I expect
you see my point about the necessity for the school to be run by secular
clergy. Did I tell you how I got the land for my church here? That's
rather an interesting story. It belonged to Lord Evesham who, as perhaps
you may know, is very anti-Catholic, but a thorough good sportsman. We
always get on capitally together. Well, one day I said to his agent,
Captain Hart: 'What about this land, Hart? Don't you think you could get
it out of his lordship?' 'It's no good, Father Cripps,' said Hart--I
wasn't Monseigneur then of course--'It's no good,' he said, 'his
lordship absolutely declines to let his land be used for a Catholic
church.' 'Come along, Hart,' I said, 'let's have a round of golf.' Well,
when we got to the eighteenth hole we were all square, and we'd both of
us gone round three better than bogie and broken our own records. I was
on the green with my second shot, and holed out in three. 'My game,' I
shouted because Hart had foozled his drive and wasn't on the green. 'Not
at all,' he said. 'You shouldn't be in such a hurry. I may hole out in
one,' he laughed. 'If you do,' I said, 'you ought to get Lord Evesham to
give me that land.' 'That's a bargain,' he said, and he took his mashie.
Will you believe it? He did the hole in two, sir, won the game, and beat
the record for the course! And that's how I got the land to build my
church. I was delighted! I was delighted! I've told that story
everywhere to show what sportsmen are. I told it to the Bishop, but of
course he being an Irishman didn't see anything funny in it. If he could
have stopped my being made Monseigneur, he'd have done so. But he
couldn't."

"You seem to have as much trouble with your bishops as we do with ours
in the Anglican Church," said Mark.

"We shouldn't, if we made the right men bishops," said Monseigneur. "But
so long as they think at Westminster that we're going to convert England
with a tagrag and bobtail mob of Irish priests, we never shall make the
right men. You were looking round my church just now. Didn't it remind
you of an English church?"

Mark agreed that it did very much.

"That's my secret: that's why I've been the most successful mission
priest in this diocese. I realize as an Englishman that it is no use to
give the English Irish Catholicism. When I was in Rome the other day I
was disgusted, I really was. I was disgusted. I thoroughly sympathize
with Protestants who go there and are disgusted. You cannot expect a
decent English family to confess to an Irish peasant. It's not
reasonable. We want to create an English tradition."

"What between the Roman party in the Anglican Church and the Anglican
party in the Roman Church," said Mark, "It seems a pity that some kind
of reunion cannot be effected."

"So it could," Monseigneur declared. "So it could, if it wasn't for the
Irish. Look at the way we treat our English converts. The clergy, I
mean. Why? Because the Irish do not want England to be converted."

Mark did not raise with Monseigneur Cripps the question of his doubts.
Indeed, before the plaice had been taken away he had decided that they
no longer existed. It became clear to him that the English Church was
England; and although he knew in his heart that Monseigneur Cripps was
suffering from a sense of grievance and that his criticism of Roman
policy was too obviously biased, it pleased him to believe that it was a
fair criticism.

Mark thanked Monseigneur Cripps for his hospitality and took a friendly
leave of him. An hour later he was walking back through the pleasant
vale of Wield toward the Cotswolds. As he went his way among the green
orchards, he thought over his late impulse to change allegiance,
marvelling at it now and considering it irrational, like one astonished
at his own behaviour in a dream. There came into his mind a story of
George Fox who drawing near to the city of Lichfield took off his shoes
in a meadow and cried three times in a loud voice "Woe unto the bloody
city of Lichfield," after which he put on his shoes again and proceeded
into the town. Mark looked back in amazement at his lunch with
Monseigneur Cripps and his own meditated apostasy. To his present mood
that intention to forsake his own Church appeared as remote from
actuality as the malediction of George Fox upon the city of Lichfield.

Here among these green orchards in the heart of England Roman
Catholicism presented itself to Mark's imagination as an exotic. The two
words "Roman Catholicism" uttered aloud in the quiet June sunlight gave
him the sensation of an allamanda or of a gardenia blossoming in an
apple-tree. People who talked about bringing the English Church into
line with the trend of Western Christianity lacked a sense of history.
Apart from the question whether the English Church before the
Reformation had accepted the pretensions of the Papacy, it was absurd
to suppose that contemporary Romanism had anything in common with
English Catholicism of the early sixteenth century. English Catholicism
long before the Reformation had been a Protestant Catholicism, always in
revolt against Roman claims, always preserving its insularity. It was
idle to question the Catholic intentions of a priesthood that could
produce within a century of the Reformation such prelates as Andrews and
Ken. It was ridiculous at the prompting of the party in the ascendancy
at Westminster to procure a Papal decision against English Orders when
two hundred and fifty years ago there was a cardinal's hat waiting for
Laud if he would leave the Church of England. And what about Paul IV and
Elizabeth? Was he not willing to recognize English Orders if she would
recognize his headship of Christendom?

But these were controversial arguments, and as Mark walked along through
the pleasant vale of Wield with the Cotswold hills rising taller before
him at every mile he apprehended that his adhesion to the English Church
had been secured by the natural scene rather than by argument.
Nevertheless, it was interesting to speculate why Romanism had not made
more progress in England, why even now with a hierarchy and with such a
distinguished line of converts beginning with Newman it remained so
completely out of touch with the national life of the country. While the
Romans converted one soul to Catholicism, the inheritors of the Oxford
Movement were converting twenty. Catholicism must be accounted a
disposition of mind, an attitude toward life that did not necessarily
imply all that was implied by Roman Catholicism. What was the secret of
the Roman failure? Everywhere else in the world Roman Catholicism had
known how to adapt itself to national needs; only in England did it
remain exotic. It was like an Anglo-Indian magnate who returns to find
himself of no importance in his native land, and who but for the flavour
of his curries and perhaps a black servant or two would be utterly
inconspicuous. He tries to fit in with the new conditions of his
readopted country, but he remains an exotic and is regarded by his
neighbours as one to whom the lesson must be taught that he is no
longer of importance. What had been the cause of this breach in the
Roman Catholic tradition, this curious incompetency, this Anglo-Indian
conservatism and pretentiousness? Perhaps it had begun when in the
seventeenth century the propagation of Roman Catholicism in England was
handed over to the Jesuits, who mismanaged the country hopelessly. By
the time Rome had perceived that the conversion of England could not be
left to the Jesuits the harm was done, so that when with greater
toleration the time was ripe to expand her organization it was necessary
to recruit her priests in Ireland. What the Jesuits had begun the Irish
completed. It had been amusing to listen to the lamentations of
Monseigneur Cripps; but Monseigneur Cripps had expressed, however
ludicrous his egoism, the failure of his Church in England.

Mark's statement of the Anglican position with nobody to answer his
arguments except the trees and the hedgerows seemed flawless. The level
road, the gentle breeze in the orchards on either side, the scent of the
grass, and the busy chirping of the birds coincided with the main point
of his argument that England was most inexpressibly Anglican and that
Roman Catholicism was most unmistakably not. His arguments were really
hasty foot-notes to his convictions; if each one had separately been
proved wrong, that would have had no influence on the point of view he
had reached. He forgot that this very landscape that was seeming
incomparable England herself had yesterday appeared complacent and
monotonous. In fact he was as bad as George Fox, who after taking off
his shoes to curse the bloody city of Lichfield should only have put
them on again to walk away from it.

The grey road was by now beginning to climb the foothills of the
Cotswolds; a yellow-hammer, keeping always a few paces ahead, twittered
from quickset boughs nine encouraging notes that drowned the echoes of
ancient controversies. In such a countryside no claims papal or
episcopal possessed the least importance; and Mark dismissed the subject
from his mind, abandoning himself to the pleasure of the slow ascent.
Looking back after a while he could see the town of Wield riding like a
ship in a sea of verdure, and when he surveyed thus England asleep in
the sunlight, the old ambition to become a preaching friar was kindled
again in his heart. He would re-establish the extinct and absolutely
English Order of St. Gilbert so that there should be no question of
Roman pretensions. Doubtless, St. Francis himself would understand a
revival of his Order without reference to existing Franciscans; but
nobody else would understand, and it would be foolish to insist upon
being a Franciscan if the rest of the Order disowned him and his
followers. If anybody had asked Mark at that moment why he wanted to
restore the preaching friars, he might have found it difficult to
answer. He was by no means imbued with the missionary spirit just then;
his experience at Chatsea had made him pessimistic about missionary
effort in the Church of England. If a man like Father Rowley had failed
to win the support of his ecclesiastical superiors, Mark, who possessed
more humility than is usual at twenty-one, did not fancy that he should
be successful. The ambition to become a friar was revived by an
incomprehensible, or if not incomprehensible, certainly by an
inexplicable impulse to put himself in tune with the landscape, to
proclaim as it were on behalf of that dumb heart of England beating down
there in the flowery Vale of Wield: _God rest you merry gentlemen, let
nothing you dismay!_ There was revealed to him with the assurance of
absolute faith that all the sorrows, all the ugliness, all the
soullessness (no other word could be found) of England in the first year
of the twentieth century was due to the Reformation; the desire to
become a preaching friar was the dramatic expression of this inspired
conviction. Before his journey through the Vale of Wield Mark in any
discussion would have been ready to argue the mistake of the
Reformation: but now there was no longer room for argument. What
formerly he thought now he knew. The song of the yellow-hammer was
louder in the quickset hedge; the trees burned with a sharper green; the
road urged his feet.

"If only everybody in England could move as I am moving now," he
thought. "If only I could be granted the power to show a few people, so
that they could show others, and those others show all the world. How
confidently that yellow-hammer repeats his song! How well he knows that
his song is right! How little he envies the linnet and how little the
linnet envies him! The fools that talk of nature's cruelty, the blind
fatuous sentimental coxcombs!"

Thus apostrophizing, Mark came to a wayside inn; discovering that he was
hungry, he took his seat at a rustic table outside and called for bread
and cheese and beer. While he was eating, a vehicle approached from the
direction in which he would soon be travelling. He took it at first for
a caravan of gipsies, but when it grew near he saw that it was painted
over with minatory texts and was evidently the vehicle of itinerant
gospellers. Two young men alighted from the caravan when it pulled up
before the door of the inn. They were long-nosed sallow creatures with
that expression of complacency which organized morality too often
produces, and in this quiet countryside they gave an effect of being
overgrown Sunday-school scholars upon their annual outing. Having cast a
censorious glance in the direction of Mark's jug of ale, they sat down
at the farther end of the bench and ordered food.

"The preaching friars of to-day," Mark thought gloomily.

"Excuse me," said one of the gospellers. "I notice you've been looking
very hard at our van. Excuse me, but are you saved?"

"No, are you?" Mark countered with an angry blush.

"We are," the gospeller proclaimed. "Or I and Mr. Smillie here," he
indicated his companion, "wouldn't be travelling round trying to save
others. Here, read this tract, my friend. Don't hurry over it. We can
wait all day and all night to bring one wandering soul to Jesus."

Mark looked at the young men curiously; perceiving that they were
sincere, he accepted the tract and out of courtesy perused it. The tale
therein enfolded reminded him of a narrative testifying to the efficacy
of a patent medicine. The process of conversation followed a stereotyped
formula.

_For three and a half years I was unable to keep down any sins for more
than five minutes after I had committed the last one. I had a dizzy
feeling in the heart and a sharp pain in the small of the soul. A friend
of mine recommended me to try the good minister in the slum. . . . After
the first text I was able to keep down my sins for six minutes . . .
after twenty-two bottles I am as good as I ever was. . . . I ascribe my
salvation entirely to_. . . . Mark handed back the tract with a smile.

"Do you convert many people with this literature?" he asked.

"We don't often convert a soul right off," said Mr. Smillie. "But we sow
the good seed, if you follow my meaning; and we leave the rest to Jesus.
Mr. Bullock and I have handed over seven hundred tracts in three weeks,
and we know that they won't all fall on stony ground or be choked by
tares and thistles."

"Do you mind my asking you a question?" Mark said.

The gospel bearers craned their necks like hungry fowls in their
eagerness to peck at any problems Mark felt inclined to scatter before
them. A ludicrous fancy passed through his mind that much of the good
seed was pecked up by the scatterers.

"What are you trying to convert people to?" Mark solemnly inquired.

"What are we trying to convert people to?" echoed Mr. Bullock and Mr.
Smillie in unison. Then the former became eloquent. "We're trying to
wash ignorant people in the blood of the Lamb. We're converting them
from the outer darkness, where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing
of teeth, to be rocked safe for ever in the arms of Jesus. If you'd have
read that tract I handed you a bit more slowly and a bit more carefully,
you wouldn't have had any call to ask a question like that."

"Perhaps I framed my question rather badly," Mark admitted. "I
understand that you want to bring people to believe in Our Lord; but
when by a tract or by a personal exhortation or by an emotional appeal
you've induced them to suppose that they are converted, or as you put it
saved, what more do you give them?"

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