USA > Connecticut > The story of the Diocese of Connecticut : a new branch of the vine (Espiscopal Church) > Part 22
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The Revival has come a long way since the completion of the first effort to achieve a genuine Gothic atmosphere in Christ Church, Hartford. The plans were drawn by Ithiel Town, who revolted against the "unchurchly" meeting-house style. He worked with the full sympathy of the Rev. Nathaniel S. Wheaton, who had derived his Gothic enthusiasm from a recent sojourn in England. The liturgical quality of this church was completed by the opening of a recessed chancel in 1879. In his sermon on that occasion, Bishop Clark of Rhode Island briefly traced the history of the American Gothic Revival. His remarks alluded to a phase of the movement which was implied from its expression in the chancel - the shift toward rich decoration and more elaborate worship. "The
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interior arrangements and decorations," he said, "were not in the beginning altogether in harmony with the general style of the building. . . . " . . "7 The change was the result of the desire for a more intense spiritual life, which eventually blended the longing for holiness in the Evangelical Revival with the sacramental emphasis of the Oxford Catholic Movement.
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WORSHIP AND PIETY
S OME of its earliest friends had perceived that Gothicism might cause a profound and disturbing transformation in devotion and worship. Horace Walpole foresaw trouble and warned that Gothic was "the mother of superstition." He meant, of course, the ancient traditions of Catholic liturgy and spirituality. He had only an inadequate idea of them, however, for in his time (with some exceptions) polite rationalism had depressed the Church's spiritual life and made worship hardly more than a formality. Some of the most solemn occasions in the old Church year were virtually ignored. Even the suitable observance of Good Friday had almost ceased, and Bishop Porteous of London was sharply criticized for attempting to revive it. In Connecticut, the Rev. Daniel Fogg of Brooklyn wrote in his diary, in 1788, that his "best" parishioners had attended a ball on Ash Wednesday.
THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL
In the 1790's the Church of England began to feel the Methodist emphasis upon personal conversion and prayer, evange- listic preaching, and devotion to the sacraments. That influence affected the Evangelicals in the Church, who remained dominant in England and America until the Oxford Catholic Revival after 1830. The Evangelical spirit penetrated Connecticut, and trans- formed the tone of Church life. By the 1840's parish reports often read like those of the Rev. Pascal Kidder of Trinity Church, Bran- ford. He noted an increased interest in the services, and soon opened the church on all holy days, held services in homes, and encouraged weekly meetings at the rectory to converse about religious life.
The awakening was notable especially in a more reverent observance of Sunday. The twenty-four hours from sundown on Saturday to sundown on Sunday became consecrated to devotion.
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All children went to Sunday School and all respectable grown-ups to church - twice. The Rev. Louis French (1831-1912), rector of St. Luke's in Darien for fifty years, in old age recalled the im- pressive reverence of Sunday in Milford during his boyhood.
The new tone at first did not affect the quality of church services. For a long period in England before about 1830, the liturgy often was imperfectly observed. A clerk (pronounced "clark") usually droned the responses, and the people became content to let him. Any change, even for the better, was de- precated, and more than one reminiscence has noted that worship so invariably began with Psalm 100, sung to the tune "Old Hundred," that the custom was practically Church law.
Such liturgical indifference agreed with the doctrinal vague- ness of the Deistic age and the meeting-house style of building - as Ralph Adams Cram once remarked. This was true even in Con- necticut, where basic doctrine and the Prayer Book were deeply respected. The Holy Communion customarily was administered once in three months, and the priest frequently did not wear the surplice. The rite often was unobserved even by many who con- sidered themselves good Churchmen. Twenty communicants out of two hundred adult parishioners was a not unusual number. The Church opposed emotion and display, and services lacked appeal to the imagination. Cautious sermons in bleak churches had be- come almost a substitute for popular liturgical worship. By the early 1830's the Evangelical Movement had lost some of its zeal, rationalism was played out, and it was said that no power on earth could save the Church.
THE OXFORD REVIVAL
Just when all seemed lost, in 1833 the Rev. John Keble preached his sensational sermon, "National Apostacy," at Oxford University. In the same month a few scholars and priests met with Keble to discuss the state of their Church and suggest a remedy. One result was the famous series of Tracts for the Times. The writers were interested in sound doctrine and drew their inspiration from the Anglican theologians of the early 1600's, whose writings had inspired the early Connecticut High Churchmen like Doctor Samuel Johnson.
Although they were not "Ritualists," the Tractarians favored
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restoring some color and emotion to religion, as the Romantics had done in literature. As the poets had revived literary forms like the ballad and the romance, they would revive liturgical wor- ship, not as a mere esthetic thrill but as an expression of sound theology and moral earnestness. Their ideal of restrained and dignified ritual in the Eucharist required correctly planned Gothic churches, with deep chancels and altars. They wanted decoration, not for its own sake but as symbolic expression of the Faith. In England they found potent allies in the great architect, Augustus C. Pugin, and the Cambridge Camden Society, founded in 1839. Many years later Ralph Adams Cram succinctly expressed their feeling by writing that a noble service would have a deeper spiritual influence than many sermons.
"Not so!" replied the Evangelicals. They found Gothicism embarrassing because it suggested a stately liturgy and like Romantic literature was associated with esthetic feeling. Their resistance made the reformers' way a long and hard one. The common mental picture of an Episcopal church today includes a recessed chancel with an altar, robed priests, a vested choir, and a procession led by a cross. But to many good Churchmen of the 1830's such things were unthinkably "popish." The priest wore a black gown and read the Communion service at a table, and no- body knelt during the longer prayers. Since altars were seldom used even as tables, chancels were abandoned or used as vestries.
As the doctrinal views of the Oxford Revival gained ground, and increasingly stressed the Eucharist, the arrangement and ap- pearance of churches changed. The chancel was raised several steps above the body of the church, and the altar was set against the east wall, with the lectern and the pulpit located so that it could be seen. The overwhelming pulpit and desk combination gradually disappeared; outside, the cross replaced the weathercock on the steeple. By the 1840's the new ideal of worship began to interest American Churchmen who visited England or read the Tracts, the works of Pugin, and the Camden Society publications. Readers of the Tracts inspired the founding of Christ Church in New Haven as a free church with a "higher" type of devotion.
The American liturgical reformers collided with the general type of schedule set by the Evangelical "Low Church" school. The normal Sunday morning worship included Morning Prayer
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(often with the Litany) and the Ante-Communion service read from the desk, and usually lasted about an hour and a half. On the first Sunday of the month, Holy Communion followed Morning Prayer. Early celebrations were not common until after the middle of the century, and wafer bread and the mixed chalice were re- garded as suspiciously "popish."
In the early 1800's the Connecticut usage for Holy Com- munion often varied considerably from the usual rite. It is de- scribed by the Rev. Samuel F. Jarvis (son of Bishop Abraham Jarvis) in an interesting letter to Bishop William Skinner of Aber- deen, son of the Bishop Skinner who consecrated Seabury. "Bishop Seabury to the day of his death transposed the prayer We do not presume &c and used it after the prayer of consecration. In this practice he was followed by my Father; but though unquestionably an improvement it was an imprudent liberty, because it gave sanction to irregularity "1 The "imprudent liberty" is sig- nificant in the history of the American liturgy, because it was acknowledged in the revised Prayer Book of 1928.
Daily services were practically unknown until after the Oxford Revival, but Gregory T. Bedell, an Evangelical who served in Connecticut, introduced daily services in Philadelphia. Most Connecticut parishes had Evening Prayer at five o'clock or at "early candle-lighting," and attendance usually was good, especially in Evangelical territory. The Evangelicals, in fact, held more frequent services than High Churchmen - a situation that was later reversed. They shocked High Churchmen by holding Sunday evening "lectures," with informal sermons and even extempore prayers by ministers or laymen.
QUAINT CUSTOMS
Some prayer customs now seem very odd. In the old square pews people knelt on the floor with their faces toward the seat. Many sat bolt upright or merely bowed their heads, and one might see a few gray-headed men standing - a custom inherited from Puritan training.
Another survival was the tithing man, a sort of ecclesiastical constable who detected and reported religious offenses and minor moral delinquencies. He was a hardy institution in some parishes and flourished in Trinity Parish, Portland, as late as about 1880.
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His responsible eye preserved decency and order in church. If people nodded in their cushioned pews, his long rod shot out to tickle the ladies with a fox tail, or to rap boys and men with the knobbed other end. In Christ Church, Hartford, he kept a lynx eye upon the Washington College lads in the gallery.
One of the curious old customs was "meeting seed" from a fragrant herb like fennel, caraway or coriander, to be sniffed or chewed to ward off the sandman during a lengthy sermon. It is on record that children in Christ Church, New Haven, happily chewed fennel while the rector improved his text. From these mild luxuries it was a short step to the fashionable bottle of lav- ender or pink smelling salts, with its cut-glass stopper. Of course many ladies carried a fan to express emotions by its various un- foldings or flutterings. One might have seen a church fan pleased by the rector's rhetoric, or so angry that it would have been un- lucky for a squirming boy to be within reach.
THE PARISH SCHEDULE
As the century progressed, parishes in the larger towns de- manded a strenuous schedule of Sunday services. In 1840 a typical large parish, St. Andrew's in Meriden, expected the rector to preach two sermons at least forty-five minutes long, preside over Sunday School at noon, and later have a Bible class and Evening Prayer. He never took a vacation, and of course lost his voice and had a nervous breakdown. The Oxford Revival emphasis upon the Eucharist appeared in the introduction of an early Sunday cele- bration of Holy Communion in 1891, and in more frequent ob- servance of holy days of obligation, and a stricter schedule of Lenten services.
In marked contrast to the Revolutionary era, after 1820 Lent generally was more respected, with week-day services and the three-hour devotion on Good Friday. The latter observance appeared in Portland as early as 1824. When Lent came early, real devotion could be heroic. In Meriden the weekday early morning services were held in the unheated church, without re- gard to cold or bad weather, with Morning Prayer and the Litany. The many observances of secular special days did not come until after 1900.
Until well into the nineteenth century Easter apparently
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was not marked by great ceremony, and in many places was dis- tinguished only by special hymns. But Christmas was a glorious festival, as if to defy the lingering disapproval of the Puritan community. In many parishes the Christmas Eve service was the great musical event of the year, and the choir ladies might wear white dresses and flowered head wreaths. The bell rang out over the snow, and people streamed into the church, all green with hemlock and laurel and softly lit by freshly-cleaned whale-oil lamps and a multitude of candles. The organist was assisted by the chorister's big bass viol, and perhaps also by violins and flutes. After the closing benediction and prayer, the congregation streamed home through the night, those who lived far away in carriages or sleighs, the others walking along the starlit roads.
No other churches had anything like the Episcopal Christmas "illumination" in honor of the birth of Jesus, the world's true light. Even little remote country churches sparkled in the deep night, with candles set in frames at the windows. At St. Paul's, Norwalk, in the early 1800's, even the tower windows and the little ones in the spire above the belfry were lighted, and the churchyard was packed with people waiting for the doors to open.
Winding the long evergreen festoons was an annual delight for the young folks and might be prolonged for three weeks or more. In Christ Church Parish, New Haven, the senior warden hitched his big white horse to a sled and took a group of men to' his farm to cut evergreen trees and fragrant ground pine. Many parishes regaled the Church School children with a mammoth Christmas tree and a gay party at the rectory.
SPECIAL OCCASIONS
Such gaiety was not customary on other festival occasions - weddings, for example. The present-day church wedding, with flowers and music, was unknown (except in fashionable city churches) until far into the nineteenth century. The ceremony generally occurred outside the church, preferably in the family parlor, as in Puritan times, when marriage was regarded as purely civil. Even in such a large and wealthy parish as St. Paul's, Nor- walk, the second church had been used for many years before it became the scene of a wedding. About 1830 the rector caused a- stonishment by insisting upon a church service. One reason for
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the late introduction of marriages in church was the annoying irreverence on such occasions. Christ Church in Hartford pointed the way toward greater decency by voting that the wardens must consent to use of the church, and by letting it be known that any- one behaving irreverently would be told to leave.
Deaths and funerals were distinguished by some quaint customs. When a person died, the sexton tolled the bell to indicate the sex and age of the departed. In accordance with old English custom, he tolled the "passing bell" as the body was borne to the grave. On the Sunday after the burial, the family came to hear a special memorial sermon, which sometimes was published. That custom was derived from the ancient requiem Mass, but a sung requiem would have been unthinkable.
MUSIC
The Puritan prejudice against elaborate church music died a lingering death, and references to music and singing are scanty in early parish records. In New London, for example, there was no mention of music until the church had been flourishing for about forty years.
In most parishes there was not much music to mention. For many years after 1800 singing meant only metrical psalms and some hymns bound with the Prayer Book, for chanting and hymnals were virtually unknown. The parish meeting appointed a "psalm- setter," who stood in his pew and started the singing by giving the note on a tuning-fork or a pitch-pipe. A Norwalk Churchman cherished, and bequeathed as an heirloom, a pipe used by an an- cestor who was a chorister in the first church.
The "Quorister", an almost reverend character, appears frequently in early records of music in many parishes. In St. Michael's, Litchfield, for many years the annual society meeting made a small appropriation for music and empowered a committee to hire three "chosen Quoristers" to teach music and lead the singing at Litchfield center, Bantam, and Milton. If a parish had a choir, it was unvested and was tucked away in a rear gallery with the organ, if there was one.
The unloveliness of such a ministry of music is frankly admitted even by lovers of old ways, like the learned historian of St. James's, New London. "The people sat during the singing, and
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rose only at the 'Gloria Patri,' which was never omitted. There was no instrumental music, nor any choir of singers. An old gentleman, with a red face and hooked nose, pitched the tunes, and every one who chose sang as he could. From one quarter came a shrill treble; from another, a harsh, tremulous bass; from still another, the grating sound of one who, without musical ability, believing that singing was praying, deemed it his duty to add his contribution to the offering. There were sometimes among them good and sweet voices; but they were of young and older persons, without training or concert."2
Aware of the general musical illiteracy, a few large parishes tried to improve the singing by hiring teachers for music schools. Christ Church in Hartford had a teacher, and in 1820 patronized the Hartford Episcopal Musical Society. As late as 1850 parishioners subscribed to pay a chorister-teacher, but the organist resented his dictation. The distracted wardens and vestrymen finally hired a man to shoulder both tasks, provide a choir without cost to the parish - and leave if the congregation did not like the results.
Improvement usually was due to a rector who had some appreciation of music or would work with an intelligent chorister. About 1800 Doctor William Smith of St. Paul's in Norwalk, who was a composer, awakened in his flock "a taste for more fluent and attractive melody."3 He influenced music in the American Church by his Churchman's Choral Companion to His Prayer, which ap- peared in 1809 and was used in Connecticut. Poor as it was, it took an upward step when the general taste was appallingly low. It in- cluded an essay on correct chanting, and an amazing collection of chants, anthems, responses, and other selections. Presiding Bishop William White gave a lukewarm approval to chanting and the bishops sanctioned anthems, but declined to endorse the book as a whole, probably from conservatism rather than refined taste.
Samuel J. Camp, also in St. Paul's, showed what an edu- cated and zealous chorister could accomplish. The singing school met for many years in his home, and was a social feature of the youth. He was a picturesque teacher, with long hair flowing over his shoulders, and conducted with a book in one hand and a tuning- fork in the other, beating time with both.
Even in that progressive parish, the people were so pre- judiced that chanting long remained a private luxury of the singers.
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The Rev. William Cooper Mead typified the general conservatism about 1840, by his astonishment when he visited St. Thomas's Hall, a boys' school at Flushing on Long Island, and saw the little choristers don their white surplices and chant the service. It is hardly surprising that later he became an influential "anti-ritualist." His own parish choir undermined his resistance by serenading him with a carefully rehearsed program of chanting, and their per- formance became so perfect that city Churchmen visited St. Paul's.
St. John's, Hartford, introduced chanting in 1844, through the influence of the first rector, Arthur C. Coxe, who loved a rich liturgy and musical services. On Easter Day he wrote in his journal: "On this occasion the Music was of the fullest and finest Character; the Introit & responses to the decalogue, being chanted for the first time in this church."4
ORGANS AND ORGANISTS
Reformers waged a long battle to soften the ironbound Puritan prejudice against organs, and to abolish the almost sacred bass viol. Shortly after 1810 a proposal to put an organ in the gallery threw the parish in Portland into an uproar, but the pro- gressives won, and a committee bought the new-fangled instrument and "set" the tunes. From that time until 1850 other parish minutes record many purchases of small organs, and remodelings of rear galleries to accommodate them and the enlarged choirs.
The earliest organs usually were imported from England, as at St. James's in New London in 1817, but the later ones were made in America. They were mostly small and sweet-toned, and some were quaint specimens of furniture. The first one in Christ Church, Hartford, was built in George Catlin's shop on the Windsor road. It was only five or six feet wide, with pipes appearing through a shield-like opening in the breast of a large spread eagle. The parish paid Catlin two dollars a week for its use, and he provided the organist to play on Sundays and "public days."
About the middle of the century some parishes used me- lodeons and "hand-pumpers." In the 1850's Christ Church in New Haven set the choir on a rear platform with an ancient melodeon that droned like "bumble bee nests." Not until the 1890's did the parish abandon the hand-pumped organ, install a water motor, and excuse the "blow boys."
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Although some of the old organs were handsome, that did not protect them from abuse. After using the first instrument for forty-three years, in 1866 St. Michael's, Litchfield, bought a new one with a carved mahogany case. It stood for a long time under a leaky roof, and naturally broke down. In 1881 a local newspaper reported: "The dropsy is what ailed St. Michael's organ ... Dr. J. M. Morris, of Danbury, tapped it and got a quart of water."5
The organist frequently was not treated much better. Some- times he was expected to serve for a mere pittance or just for love of the job, even in wealthy city parishes. The first organist of St. John's in Hartford had no salary, Christ Church in New Haven paid only $50 a year in the 1850's, and as late as 1877 Hartford's rich Christ Church gave only $400. St. Michael's, Litchfield, in 1866 granted $75 annually to its organist and choirmaster, and $25 to the hard-worked "blower." One of the organists there, Dr. Howard E. Gates, was a real "character." He practiced in the church, but used to forget his key and therefore kept a convenient window unlocked. Once he forgot that it was Lent and horrified the congregation by starting to climb in during weekday Evening Prayer. The story appeared in the New York Police Gazette.
Some parishes laid an additional burden upon the poor organist by requiring his election by the choir he was to lead, as at Christ Church, West Haven, in 1857. But of course, if he did not measure up, they couldn't complain.
CHOIRS
With the coming of larger organs and higher ideals of music, parishes experimented with various kinds of choirs. The result was a great rise in expense, especially in urban parishes like Christ Church, Hartford, which spent $2000 for music in 1890. There were adult mixed choirs, volunteer choirs, quartettes, boy choirs, and girl choirs, and none ever pleased everybody at once. Since the early 1800's some large parishes have experimented with all types. At St. Michael's in Litchfield, the church was repeatedly rearranged to accommodate the changes and the new locations of the organ.
The paid, unvested quartette was expensive, and professional singers often were temperamental and displayed slight under- standing of church music. The result sometimes was a blazing
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"row." In one New Haven parish the organist and the singers re- signed when they clashed with the rector's ideal of simple dignity rather than vocal virtuosity. The rector found an organist in his own family, and taught the congregation hymns and canticles and even antiphonal chanting. Without a quartette or a singing con- gregation, the answer often was a mixed vested choir, conducted by a salaried teacher. Sometimes he paid the organist and re- warded the singers with lessons.
Late in the century some churches discovered the right solution in a choir of men and boys - if they could get a master who could handle boys. One of the successful pioneers was St. Andrew's, Meriden, where simple music in the morning encouraged the people to sing. Choral Evensong with oratorios and cantatas filled the church. West Haven started a male choir in which the men were mostly carpenters and built their own robing room. Somebody was inspired to present a processional cross - a daring novelty then.
During the period 1880-1900, the male choir appeared in such large and influential parishes as Christ Church in Hartford, Holy Trinity in Middletown, St. John's in Bridgeport, and St. John's, Hartford. Sometimes the experiment began cautiously at after- noon or evening services, and spread to Sunday morning as even the opponents of a vested choir admitted that they liked it. A fre- quent result of the vested male choir was a remodeling of the chancel and the introduction of choir stalls.
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