City and Suburban
By JOHN BETJEMAN On the PCC we learn with regret that old Hodge, the last man in the village who could use a .scythe, is giving up owing to rheumatism. The vicar is in favour of flattening the mounds so that the mower Can get round easily. Others, more advanced, and with nice tidy villa-mentality, would like to see all the stones taken up and laid against the churchyard wall or face down- wards on the paths and the churchyard laid out as a 'garden of rest' with standard roses And bird- baths. There is no official Church of England policy about country churchyards beyond the ex- cellent rule, insufficiently enforced, against white Italian marble and other alien stones among old tombstones. There are few headstones in church- yards earlier than 1650. But the English genius for sculpture in stone which may be seen in the befises, gargoyles and tracery of medimval churches moved out into the churchyard, where it'flowered in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. On the limestone belt and in Kent and Dbrset, where Portland and other local stones were used, these headstones are sometimes superbly carved with cherubs and skulls and sheaves and reaping hooks. They are lettered deeply and finely. They face west and as the sun moves round one can see how their lettering and sculp- ture are designed to catch the light. Their tops are infinitely varied in outline. The one policy which I am sure is quite wrong is for some diocesan arbiter of taste to go round with the vicar and decide which stones are to be retained on testhetic grounds. The result is that the churchyard be- comes neither a park nor a proper churchyard. One old tombstone is set off by its neighbour Which may be less magnificent, just as in a street of old houses the lesser houses are essential foils to the better, and to take away the less dis- tinguished is to turn the place into a museum. My advice would be to leave well alone, except for cutting nettles and uprooting ivy and elder- berry, and if you can't let the sheep in, why is long grass ugly?
'NOT ESSENTIAL'
Since I am on churchy matters, let me con- tinue. Very holy men usually have no visual sense. The famous Father Benson who founded the Cowley Fathers regarded art with suspicion and as something which pandered to the lusts of the eye. He it was, by the way, who was com- plained to by one of the community about the extreme asceticism of life at Cowley and the young monk ended, 'And anyhow, Father, we've got to live,' to which Benson is said to have re- plied, 'It's not essential.' I have no doubt , that the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury are very holy men. This is proved by the extracrdinary things like elongated television sets on light-oak tables which they have placed against the columns of the glorious nave of their cathedral. They are something to do with acoustics. Let us hope these are only a temporary experiment and that paganism will prevail.
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