1952: Chapter IX - In Which the Rector of Ducks-on-Ponds Encounters an Inheritance, a Title, and an Inconvenience to His Vocation
Arthur Frederick Blandy, D.Phil. (Syd.), sometime Fellow in Genealogical Studies
I have frequently observed, both in my lectures to the University Extension Board and in polite conversation of a sufficiently educated nature, that historically the Church of England has presented itself as an arrangement of considerable elasticity—a hammock of moral decencies, so to speak—capable of sustaining the combined weight of theology, ambition, and appetite without the visible collapse of any. The case of the Reverend John Mallard, later known in certain anxious circles (and, I might add, abroad) as Condé el Ánade, presents perhaps the most felicitous illustration of this equilibrium gone delightfully awry.
Let me state at the outset that Condé el Ánade is not to be mistaken for some continental inflection of heresy; it was, in fact, the hereditary title attached to the Mallard estate, rendered pretentiously into Spanish by John’s elder brother, apparently in one of those phases of Andalusian enthusiasm that swept the English gentry of the later eighteenth century. I stress this at length—somewhat to the irritation of my students—to forestall the tiresome letters of correction that inevitably follow the publication of anything mildly exotic.
Now to the quandary.
In the year 1775, the Reverend Mr. Mallard, then Rector of Ducks-on-Ponds (a hamlet of minor spiritual promise near Winchester), found himself the accidental heir to the ancient, bloated dignity of Condé el Ánade, his elder brother having succumbed to that subtle mortality which attends those who drink more port than blood. The event placed our cleric in a position of moral contradiction unique in the annals of decorum: one cannot, alas, be both shepherd and sheepdog in the fields of Grace and Nobility without attracting unpleasant murmurs from both flocks. The law, the liturgy, and his own appetite conspired against any seamless union of crosier and coronet.
I have examined the correspondence of the period in exhaustive depth—indeed, with such thoroughness that my ophthalmologist expressly forbids me further immersion in Quarto script. In a letter dated September of that year to Dr. Simeon Hatchley, John wrote, with a candour both misplaced and inspiring:
“I feel, dear friend, that God has placed me in a position where virtue may be exercised without interruption, and indulgence without suspicion.”
Exactly so.
Needless to add, the Church’s response to virtue so cleverly phrased was immediate and confused. The living of Ducks-on-Ponds, being technically the King’s gift (though in practice the Duke’s dispensation), seemed at risk of contamination from hereditary luxury. Were John to keep both his pulpit and his peerage, the delicate scaffolding of ecclesiastical superiority might totter. Society demanded an act of public self-sacrifice, preferably written in a hand of good Italic form and sealed with an apology.
Of Titles and Tithes
Here began, I think, the first of John’s ingenious rearrangements of legality. To avoid surrendering his pulpit—an inconvenience he compared, in another letter, “to giving up one’s appetite in order to preserve one’s digestion”—he determined to resign the title altogether. His scheme was devilishly clever: to convey the peerage, by “special courtesy of filial sentiment,” to his younger sister Lavinia, a woman famous for her piety and her collection of taxidermied hoopoes. That this succession blatantly defied primogeniture did not trouble him; the King, so the story runs, already owed certain favours to the Duke, and the Crown was content to ratify any metamorphosis provided it occurred quietly and without parliamentary alarm.
Thus, in a single stroke of the pen and a small confusion of genealogical paperwork, John divested himself of Condé el Ánade and preserved Ducks-on-Ponds. It is, I think, one of the most pious examples of self-interest in the late Georgian age.
The outcome was heralded privately by Lavinia’s rather touching letter to her maid: “Since becoming noble, I find I sleep no differently, though my bed requires additional dusting.” Historians would find fewer wars if all transferences of power were conducted with such dusterly moderation.
Of Carnal and Cardinal Satisfactions
Freed from the inconvenient glitter of nobility, John now gave full expression to what he termed “the deeper functions of ecclesiastical liberty.” Contemporary clerical diaries—notably The Rectory Review, Being Observations Upon Vice Unobserved (anonymous, but unmistakably his)—suggest that he discovered in the Church a theatre of indulgence so secure that even gossip felt itself absolved.
His sermons multiplied (mainly in volume), his entertainments grew notably episcopal, and his domestic staff, by all accounts, consisted almost exclusively of beautiful young men whose employment contracts included advanced instruction in the minor prophets. It was, as my predecessor Professor MacFarlane said with some disapproval, “a household more Socratic than Anglican.”
One must remember that eighteenth-century clerical decorum operated under the rule of plausible opacity. As long as appearances remained ironed, the conscience was free to wrinkle in private. I do not suggest immorality—far from it. I suggest, rather, a theological curiosity expressed in too many directions at once.
The Scholar’s Consideration of Impunity
I have been accused, sometimes to my face, of treating these matters with excessive sympathy. But let the reader consider the context. It was an age when rectors spoke as dukes, and dukes behaved as rectors, and both found forgiveness in architecture. John’s conduct, absurd as it may seem, represented less corruption than anticipation: the prototype of that genial modern cleric who reconciles credit, decoration, and desire by liberal interpretation of Scripture.
His misstep—if we must so describe a feat of such aesthetic genius—lay in recording everything. He kept notebooks on his “methods of pastoral compliance.” He outlined in no fewer than eight volumes (later rediscovered and printed as The Condé Papers, or, Correspondences on Convenient Virtue) an entire system for balancing sensual liberty with spiritual hierarchy. The work was condemned by the Church, naturally, and praised by philosophers, also naturally. Voltaire called it “the only sincere theology the English have attempted.”
I cannot resist quoting one passage, suppressed in the 1790 edition:
“I pray not in hope of Heaven, which is too far, but in gratitude for Authority, which is at hand.”
Say what you will, it has the crispness of modern Australian administration.
Of My Own Position, by Way of Conclusion
Some have accused me of indulgent relativism for treating John with admiration rather than censure. I reply that my duty as historian is precision, not piety. I have yet to meet a man who, given the opportunity of uniting immortality with indulgence, would choose to surrender both. That he found his paradise beneath a surplice only proves the resilience of the British class system.
If he sinned, he sinned heroically; if he deceived, he deceived decorously; and if he served God, he did so in the only way any man truly can—by remaining quite true to himself whilst pretending otherwise.
As for me, I can only aspire to such disciplined hypocrisy. Indeed, I thank Providence that the modern university, unlike the eighteenth-century Church, requires no renunciation of titles whatever—only the modest denial of competence.
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