1772: John Mallard, Rector of Ducks-on-Ponds
Private papers
This morning, as I surveyed from the breakfast parlour the pitiful little sweep of gravel that dares call itself my “drive,” I felt the first true throb of episcopal destiny stir somewhere between the heart and the digestion. I am, at last, in the Church—vested, beneficed, and veritably made sacred by durable masonry. To think: less than a year ago I was merely my brother’s charming embarrassment, a third son with too-perfect cuffs and too-small prospects; now I am God’s representative in a parish of one hundred and seventeen souls and precisely zero intellects. It is a tremendous improvement.
The living of Ducks-on-Ponds is, as the Dean observed when I was presented, “a suitable pulpit for beginnings of greatness.” By which he meant “remote.” Still, the house attached—I decline to call it rectory until my improvements are complete—possesses the bones of future magnificence. Already I perceive it, not merely as residence, but as headquarters, palace, and place of recorded splendour: my ecclesiastical Windsor, designed (forgive the presumption) on the model of Heaven’s Hierarchical Architecture, volume VII of Dr. Blenthorpe’s Celestial Mansions Considered with Notes on Pastoral Symmetry. (A work insufficiently read, I think, outside the higher nobility.)
After two weeks of prayerful consideration (and one of practical sketching), I determined that the current house is wholly unfit for divine administration. Surely God, who tolerates so few blemishes in heaven, can bear none in His earthly agents’ accommodation. Thus, I shall enlarge.
By providential coincidence—which is, I admit, indistinguishable from family influence—my brother the Duke owns the village entire. When I remarked that the view from my library fell inconveniently upon several labourers’ cottages, he gallantly offered their prompt removal. “They can sleep in the tithe barn,” said he, “more central for sermons.” Construction commenced at once. Nothing makes one feel more apostolic than the sight of peasants carrying away their own roofs in obedience to one’s vision.
The new plan—drafted partly by me, partly by Mr. Wade the mason, and largely by divine suggestion—comprises two additional wings: the East devoted to social intercourse (drawing room, oratory, music room, vestry of conversation), and the West to administration (sermon study, print room, and small observatory for nightly meditation upon the stars, or, as I told the Archdeacon, “the moral firmament”).
Behind these extends an ample court of stables and grooms’ quarters; for while moderation may be Christian, horsemanship is sacred. The cellar, however, is my masterpiece: a vaulted sanctuary for Burgundy and Bordeaux, each bottle to be catalogued by vintage and theological correspondence. For instance, the heavier clarets shall be numbered under Justification, and the finer whites under Grace.
When lesser minds question whether such enlargement be “appropriate to a man of religion,” I remind them that beauty is persuasion’s strongest foothold. If my flock cannot yet reason toward righteousness, they may be overwhelmed into holiness by the symmetrical arrangement of my shrubbery. Theology is best learned from example, and I intend my residence to stand as visible doctrine: the Sermon on the Mount executed in stone. Were Christ Himself an English rector possessed of proper means, I venture He would have done likewise.
I find a useful precedent in The Ecclesiastical Dandy; or, Refinement of the Cloth by the late Bishop Mardyke, who proves (most eloquently) that virtue “germinates most rapidly in tasteful soil.” He himself built three chapels and a ballroom. A man for imitation—though critics called his work worldly simply because his vestry was panelled in rosewood. Philistines! The Almighty, being perfection, must naturally prefer polished surfaces.
Once my improvements are complete, I anticipate a remarkable elevation of tone throughout the parish. The villagers, inspired by proximity, will instinctively mend their manners, polish their speech, and curtail their breeding. The gentry of neighbouring parishes will visit for guidance—social and celestial. Gentlemen clergy will see that Church preferment, rightly understood, is not a retreat from the world but its refinement. One does not renounce one’s nobility in serving God; one civilises the divine by example.
Indeed, I begin to suspect that this, at last, is my mission: to demonstrate that grace wears better when bespoke.
Tonight, therefore, I shall retire early, having ordered Mr. Wade to begin demolishing the west wall at dawn. I am consumed by anticipation. I imagine already the new façade gleaming in the morning sun: Corinthian but Christian, imposing but pastoral, a monument to that delicate principle first advanced by Lord Tavistock in his Treatise on Moral Superiority as a Function of Taste.
How fine it feels to be improving both one’s parish and one’s silhouette simultaneously.
In sum, I cannot help but reflect: it is good—nay, essential—that I have entered the Church. For what other institution could so conveniently reconcile sanctity with fine architecture and an ancestry deserving of both?
You are here: States of Grace > Biography