Electra
By Dr. F. BRITTAIN UNTIL some, quarter of a century ago our village church was lighted entirely by paraffin, except that there were, of course, candles on the altars and that the choir stalls had candles as well as paraffin. The brass lamps, hanging from the roof by three-branched chains, certainly harmonised well with the ancient building, yet it was not everybody that liked them.
The choir boys naturally liked them, because there was always a chance that one of the lamps would be turned up too high and belch forth black smoke over the head of some unsuspecting worshipper. Sometimes, if the preacher was a visitor, he might be flattered by the apparently close attention that the boys were paying to his discourse, when all the time they were watching a flaring lamp just over his head and hoping that its glass would ' split with a loud crack before he could finish his sermon. The boys liked the lamps most of all at Tenebrae, because then one or two of them might be deputed to go round the church and put them out during the singing of the Benedictus ; and if they were skilful they could turn them down to a point where they were not quite extinguished but would make gurgling groaning noises during the rest of the service.
The women of the congregation, on the other hand, disliked the lamps intensely. They asserted that the oil had a nasty smell, that Frederick Roland White (our verger, sacrist and parish clerk) overfilled them, and that the overflow dripped on to their hats and coats during the service .and on to the pews at all times. It might have been expected that Frederick Roland would dis- like the lamps, too, and would favour- replacing them by electricity, seeing that the replacement would save him a good deal of work and obviate numerous unwelcome complaints from • irritated members of the congregation. He had been heard to say, too, that in his opinion electric lamps would look just as well as the paraffin lamps. Yet everyone knew that he was opposed to a change, although he did not explicitly say so.
The reason for his conservatism was that he was very susceptible to cold and that paraffin lamps raised the temperature of our chilly mediaeval church a little, whereas electric lamps would not do so. Tall, very thin and very frail, he wore his cassock all day long, in church or out of it, in an endeavour to keep warm. Even in summer he rarely felt warm enough in church ; and in winter, when going backwards and forwards between the church and his house, or between the church and the village shop to fetch paraffin, he looked a strange sight with a" scarf and overcoat over his cassock and his white hair peeping from under an ancient mildewed bowler hat.
Accordingly, when Frederick Roland heard that the patron of the living was going to present electric-lighting apparatus to the church, he was not enthusiastic. He was no more so when the installation was complete and the Vicar—we had long since awarded him the title of Patriarch—announced that the electric light was to be switched on for the first time at Evensong on Christmas Eve, after suitable dedicatory prayers. A pleasant ceremony has been attached to Evensong on Christmas Eve in our -parish church ever since 1698, when a parishioner, one John Bradshaw, died, -bequeathing a sum of money to pay for a sermon to be preached at that service every year and for a loaf of bread to be given to everyone present. The Patriarch nearly always' chooses the same text for the Bradshaw Sermon—" Let us now go even unto Bethlehem." He chooses it because, as he explains to us at the beginning of the sermon, the word " Bethlehem' means " House of Bread."
After the sermon he blesses the loaves and distributes them from the chancel step to the members of the choir and congregation. We looked forward to Christmas Eve in the year 1925 with more than the usual interest, because of the impending inaugura- tion of the electric light. There were two sets of switches—bne close to the main door of the nave, the other in the chancel. When the belfry clock struck the hour we emerged from the vestry in procession and groped our way through the dark nave, for there was no light except from the altar candles and the two others that accompanied the processional cross. When we reached the nave door the donor and his wife joined us, the Patriarch, opened his Priest's Prayer Book and, after- searching for some time, read such prayers suited to the occasion as he could find in it. At the end of the prayers he made a sign and the donor switched on the new nave lights. The procession then turned round and began to. make its way slowly up the nave to the chancel, where, after further prayers, the donor's wife was to switch on the remaining lights. Unfortunately, the Patriarch (as so often happened) had for- gotten to say anything about his intentions to Frederick Roland ; so he, full of zeal and anxious only to do the right thing, rushed ahead to the chancel, switched on all the lights, folded his arms, and stood waiting for the procession to arrive, conscious of having done his duty in excellent time.
He therefore felt decidedly hurt when the silent, slow-moving procession reached the chancel and the 'Patriarch, in a cold stage-whisper that could be heard all over the church, said, for no apparent reason, " Now switch them all off again." The bewildered and humiliated Frederick Roland did as he was told ; the ceremony already enacted at the nave door was repeated, the chancel lights were officially switched on, and we all went to our stalls and sang Evensong.
A hymn followed, and then came the Bradshaw Sermon. Instead of the customary Let us now go even unto Bethlehem " the Patriarch gave out a text from St. Matthew IV, 16 : " The people which sat in darkness saw a great light." To prepare the ground thoroughly for the spiritual lesson that he was going to draw, he began by sketching the long history of the lighting of our church, from the primitive rushlight .to the paraffin lamp. Paraffin, he emphasised, was considered wonderful in its time but was now antiquated. It was evil-smelling, messy, ruinous to hats and clothes, and liable to fail at any time, but science had come to the rescue. One could never tell, he said, when a paraffin lamp would ago out ; but, with this wonderful electric light . . . He waved his hand grandly towards the wonderful electric light ; and at that very moment it fused, plunging us at once into a darkness broken only by the light of the altar candles.
The astonished Patriarch stared into the blackness of the nave, in which he could just distinguish the ghost-like faces of his flock. For a tense moment or two no one stirred, and he felt he must be dreaming. -Then one of the congregation coughed and he realised that he was awake. Turning towards the chancel he said, in a feeble, quavering voice, " Bring me a candle "; and Frederick Roland, with what seemed like slow deliberation, struck 'a match, lit a candle in one of the little 'square _wooden candlesticks which we had thought would never be used again, walked slowly with it to the pulpit and handed it up to the Patriarch.
As he did so, some of us noticed that, although Frederick Roland was in no way to blame for the failure of the light, his wax-like and normally placid and saintly face wore a faint but unmistakable smile.
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