CLERGYMEN'S WIVES.
THE revolt of the curates has brought the clergyman's wife a good deal in evidence during the past few weeks. In much of the controversy on the curates' side, there has been an undertone audible, "We can stand the vicar ; but what we can't and won't stand is the vicar's wife ;" and to back up this view of the case, stories have been told of clergy- women who have dared to give a bit of their mind to the curate, who have criticised his sermons and his dress, and who have even engaged him through an advertisement in a church newspaper. No doubt there are managing vicars' wives, —women who do not scruple to say to the most saintly and eloquent of unbeneficed priests: "I've arranged with Mr. Jones, the junior curate, that he shall take the evening service next Sunday as the Smithsons are expecting a niece of the Bishop, and will doubtless bring her with them, and I should like her to be favourably impressed with our church. You will therefore be so kind as to take St. Saviour's [the iron church near the canal]. It will be better for the vicar not to take any duty next Sunday as I am afraid of his getting his feet wet after his bad cold." Of course, this sort of clergyman's wife is very trying to men who stand 6 ft. 2 in. in their socks, who stroked the College boat, and who, if pressed, will modestly admit that they try, perhaps not altogether unsuccessfully, to combine the piety and learning of Cyprian and the rest of the Fathers, with the eloquence of Bossuet and the tact and worldly discretion of the ablest of the great ecclesiastics of Rome.
In spite, however, of such cases, there is another side to the matter. It is very easy to make fan of clergymen's wives, and to represent them as the bustling tyrants of the parish, but take them as a whole, we do not believe that there exists a nobler, a more devoted, or a more useful set of women on the face of the earth. No members of the community dis- charge better the duties which they are called upon to perform, or, acting as soldiers in the army of the State, acquit them- selves more bravely and more efficiently. We give little verbal praise or apparent honour to the mother who brings up a body of vigorous sons and daughters, and trains them so that they shall possess the healthy mind in a healthy body. Yet she who performs this task—by no means an easy one, especially on slender means—is, in the truest sense, a patriot. To mould strong, self-reliant, God-fearing men, and to send them out fitted to do their duty to their country, is as important an act as to serve the State directly. Think of the number of govern- ing men in India and the Colonies, of the Generals, Admirals, Judges, and great Civil Servants, who were reared in country vicarages and rectories. The women who made the homes whence such men sprung deserve to be remembered. But, if clergymen's wives are, as a class, admirable in their capacity of mothers and trainers of the strong and vigorous men that are needed so greatly by a governing race like the English, they are no less admirable as wives. Their fault, indeed, is that they are too good wives, and often spoil their husbands abominably. If instances of pure unselfishness are wanted, search the vicarages of England. The homes of the clergy are, as a rule, the homes of poor men with large families, but at the same time of men with that high standard of comfort and physical well-being which is taught in the Universities, and which characterises the cultivated class in England. But in many cases the maintenance of this high standard of comfort means that the clergyman's wife must work as hard as a busy tradesman at managing and con- triving for the vicar luxuries which she herself professes not to care for. Of course, there are plenty of instances to the contrary, but in hundreds of clerical households the whole energy of the establishment is concentrated upon making life soft for the man. It is thought nothing but right and natural that the vicar should have the best food, that his clothes should be new and good, that he should be the person to whom a pleasant holiday is an absolute necessity, and that his expensive hobby for books or coins or old oak or what not, should be gratified. If the clergymen's wives merely denied themselves to pamper their husbands, they might perhaps be pronounced to be more foolish than heroic, but it is the
same story with the sons and daughters. The personal sacri- fices that are made to send the boys to good schools and to keep them at college and to give the girls a chance, are untold. No doubt the clergyman makes sacrifices, too, but in nine cases out of ten the real pinch falls upon the wife. It is she who spends the bulk of the family income, and it is therefore she who has to make the economies, and, as a rule, she does it without complaining. The bravery of the clergyman's wife and the way in which she faces her difficulties is often really mag- nificent. You see her at a garden-party with her best bonnet on, talking to the wife of Mr. Brown, the retired City man, about the way in which the neighbourhood has degenerated socially, and it seems impossible that she can be bringing up seven children on £400 a year and a house. It is only when you note the grey hair and the determined ring of her voice that you realise that she is a person whose life is a daily hand-to-hand struggle with domestic worries, small and great. One sometimes wonders that clergymen's wives, at any rate those of the selfish ones, should hold, as they undoubtedly do, a higher rather than a lower view of the priestly office. One knows what the abler courtiers, when they speak the truth, feel as to the more magnificent pretensions of Kings. They may be personally very much attached to their King, but they, most of all men, realise that "dread sovereign" and "august majesty" are merely useful forms of words. When you see people in a rage about nothing, or foolishly influenced by the absurd flatteries of a knave or a fool, you are forced to believe that there is a great deal of human nature even in Royalty—for even the best and worthiest of Royalties are liable like the rest of us to get occasionally into childish rages, or to make themselves foolish about little things. In the same way it must be very trying to hear a man preach with a passionate earnestness of conviction against unselfishness and want of self-control and extol the duty of patience and gentleness, and next day or the same evening see him in a black ill-temper because his slippers have not been put to warm in front of the fire, or worse, because the cook has not done the vegetables as he likes them. "I've asked you, my dear, a hundred times to tell the cook that potatoes done like this are utterly disgusting." Mrs. Thrale once asked Dr. Johnson whether he ever " huffed " his wife about the dinner. "Repeatedly," he replied, "until one day she cured me by asking me if I were not ashamed to ask a blessing on food which I was next minute going to declare unfit to eat." Plenty of other men's wives in all classes have no doubt been inclined to ask that question, but to a clergy. man's wife such thoughts must arise not merely in regard to grace before meat, but as to a hundred petty incidents of life. In the abstract, one would think indeed that the position must be intolerable. It is impossible for a man to be a hero to his wife, and yet a clergyman has to be something more than a hero. Of course clergymen are not more selfish and unheroic in little things than other men, probably as a class they are quite as good, if not better, but then other men have not to set up the same high standard,—and remember, the standard applies quite as much to little as to big things. The question,—" Why don't you practise what you preach P" does not greatly affect Jones and Robinson, because, as a matter of fact, they do not preach unselfishness, patience, and kindli- ness, but it comes home with frightful force to the unfortunate clergyman. It really leaves him no room to practise any of • the smaller vices, to be sulky or irritable, rude or lazy, or to indulge even now and again in a "you may go to the devil for all I care " attitude towards his fellow-men. The impossi- bility of being a saintly hero to his wife might, indeed, be used as a strong abstract argument against a married clergy. "If," it might be said, "you allow clergymen to marry, you will turn their wives into sceptics; they will not be able to bear the contrast between the professions that a priest is bound to make, and the sight at close quarters of his necessarily great shortcomings." But those who argued thus would know little of human nature. The effect produced on clergymen's wives is not the least that which might be expected. They seem hardly ever to apply with strictness the maxim of principle and practice in the small affairs of life, or to feel disenchanted if the vicar shows himself mortal in such matters as his dinner and his little comforts. As a rule, we should say that there were no more sincere upholders of the notion that the priestly office sanctifies the man and raises him above his fellows, than the wives of clergymen. The love of the wife quite neutralises the effects of the contrast between what the clergyman as the expounder of God's word must preach, and what as a man he is only too likely to practise in the rough and tumble of life. No argument for a celibate clergy can possibly be founded on the disillusionment of the clergy- man's wife.
Clergymen's wives, however, afford on the other hand a very good argument in favour of a married clergy. See what excellent work they do for the Church and humanity in the districts in which their husbands have their cures. In many cases, nay, in the majority, half the work of social amelioration in the parish is done by the vicar's wife, and it is work that no curate could do,—work for which a woman is alone competent, or, again, work which can best be done by a man and a woman working together. And in practice this means work that can be done best by husband and wife in co-operation. Thus the marriage of the clergy means the introduction of women into a sphere of work half-spiritual and half-social, which is peculiarly theirs, but which they could hardly do except as clergymen's wives. The clergymen's wives constitute, in fact, a great body of volunteer workers among the poor. But though we believe very strongly in the clergyman's wife, admire her unselfishness and heroism, and recognise the good work she does, we are quite willing to admit that she has her faults like the rest of us. One of these faults requires special notice. We believe that the vicar's wife is often responsible for the unfortunate way, to use the mildest term, in which, in country districts, the Dissenters are sometimes treated by the clergy. The vicar is perhaps easy-going, and has knowledge enough of the world not to apply too strictly even so cherished a principle as the wickedness of tolerating schism. But his wife, womanlike, is against all compromises. She eggs him on to treat the Nonconformist minister as a heretic, a perverter of the people, and a far greater danger to the parish than the wildest profligate. Nulla salus ex ec,clesia is a motto which is to be driven in up to the hilt with all its odious consequences. Her absence of world- liness and her narrow sincerity do not allow her to admit that there is any truth but the one truth. Hence the most serious defect of our rural clergy ; their want of urbanity, kindliness, and of the fostering of a feeling of brotherhood in their dealings with the Nonconformist clergy. If only the vicar's wife could be a source of conciliation, instead of the reverse, rural England would be far more united than it is at present. It will, however, be a long time before this happy change is effected. We fear, indeed, the last persons to think of the Nonconformist clergy as anything but the subjects for that galling virtue, toleration, will be the clergymen's wives.
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