A Brief History of Life in Victorian Britain (22 page)

The era is perceived, according to stereotype, as one of piety. Churchgoing was commonplace and expected. Family prayers were an equally rigid convention. Missionaries from Britain were sent all over the globe to convert the heathen, supported financially by the pennies of spinsters and Sunday School children. Clergymen lived a rarified, Trollopian existence in
cathedral closes and country vicarages, preaching soporific sermons and presiding over tea-parties while their curates fluttered the hearts of local young ladies. The Church – principally, of course, the Anglican Church – was an unflinching upholder of the social order and a sort of moral police force for the nation. Church-sponsored charitable organizations were numerous and, pricked in conscience by the poverty surrounding their own comfort, members of middle-class congregations carried out some useful social work, though this is seen as going hand in hand with humbug and hypocrisy.

Like all stereotypes, this one contains some truth. Observance of the Sabbath was often strict, and was enshrined in law. Clergymen, whether bishops or curates, enjoyed a greater prestige in society than they were later to do. Their opinions, utterances, writings and sermons were respected and heeded and debated, for they were seen as important and well-qualified social commentators whose views carried weight. The Church – not only in its Anglican form but on behalf of Nonconformist and Catholic interests – undertook a huge amount of philanthropic activity that was without precedent in its scope and the zeal of its – largely voluntary – workforce, for the Victorians believed that individuals, rather than the state, should look after society’s needs. Though guilt may have played some part in motivating them, it does not detract from their achievement. Waves of missionaries went from the United Kingdom – more of them than from any other country – to Africa and China, Canada and the South Seas to win souls, though they also devoted considerable energy to work at home in ‘Darkest England’. All the while their efforts were followed with close interest and supported by the prayers of the congregations that sponsored them.

Any notion of uninterrupted peace within the precincts of churches and cathedrals, however, is a serious misconception. The nineteenth century was, for the Anglican Church, a time of storm and stress, of bitter dispute and almost continuous attack from several quarters – from other denominations, from those who held radical or humanist views, and from those energetic and committed evangelicals within its own ranks who wished to refashion it into a less stagnant and more effective organization. Created by the Tudors as a compromise between religious extremes, the Anglican Church was found to be inadequate in an industrial, materialistic and less deferential age. It was in considerable need of overhaul, but this process had begun, and reform was well under way during the decades before Victoria’s accession. The characteristics of this National Church as they were before the advent of new enthusiasms was summed up by a late Victorian author as:

Preaching, without passion or excitement, scholarlike, careful, wise . . . Its average was what naturally in England would be the average, in a state of things in which great religious institutions have been for a long time settled and unmolested – kindly, helpful, respectable, sociable persons of good sense and character, workers rather in a fashion of routine which no one thought of breaking; apt to value themselves on their cheerfulness and wit, but often dull and dogmatic and quarrelsome, often insufferably pompous.
¹

However agreeable the less pompous and more kindly members of the Church may have been, their indifferent and ineffectual outlook was seen by a new generation as a serious obstacle to necessary progress.

As well as those who wished the Church to respond more closely to the needs of society, there was a powerful element that wished it to reform. The most glaring abuse was absenteeism – the holding by a single clergyman of one or more parishes that he seldom visited but from which he received tithes. A parson with several livings could have an extremely comfortable existence, while the services in his various churches were conducted for him by impoverished curates. This practice was gradually brought to an end during Victoria’s reign, but it was only one among several major issues that reformers wished to address. A further movement within its ranks sought to rediscover the beauties of the Church’s early existence, or at least the purity that was perceived as belonging to the ‘Age of Faith’ – the Middle Ages. What this meant was in effect a repudiation of the Reformation, a return to ornament and statuary, ritual and – most controversially – devotion to the Mother of God. To some this was simple heresy, a denial of all that made the English Church distinctive. To others it offered a new dimension of beauty and spirituality – something that had been lacking precisely because of the Reformation.

The instigators of this tendency were all linked with the University of Oxford. The oldest of them was John Keble (1792–1866), a brilliant Oriel scholar who took orders and published, in 1827, a book of religious verse entitled
The Christian Year
. It was hugely popular, and so impressively written that he was appointed Professor of Poetry. In 1833 he preached a sermon in the university church that expressed his personal view that Anglicanism should embrace the whole Church, including its Catholic element. What he was saying was, in effect, that it was possible to include Catholic practices without betraying one’s Anglican convictions. He did not aim at a reintroduction of
Catholicism, rather the model to which he looked was the Laudian English Church of the seventeenth century. Like others whose thoughts had developed in a similar way, he was also alarmed at the spread of secularism in society. Several of his listeners passionately agreed with him, and between them they formed what became known as the Oxford Movement.

Their outlook attracted another brilliant mind. Edward Pusey (1800–82) was a clergyman and Fellow of Oriel who joined the debate through academic writing and the publishing of tracts in support of Keble’s views, though his influence was so great that those who shared his ideas came to be known as Puseyites. When he was suggested as Regius Professor of Divinity, the unsympathetic Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, ignored his candidacy and appointed a Low Churchman. This was not Pusey’s last rebuff, for he was suspended from preaching a few years later – though he continued to write, and remained a guiding spirit in the Oxford Movement.

John Henry Newman (1801–90) was another Fellow of Oriel inspired by Keble’s sermon to develop similar views, and he expressed them in an extensive range of tracts. He wrote nineteen of these, and the fact that several other members of the Movement also published pamphlets gave rise to the term ‘Tractarian’ to describe the Catholic tendency within Anglicanism. Newman, a quiet and deeply intellectual figure, found himself so drawn to this that in 1845 he converted to the Roman Catholic Church. He continued to write prolifically – his
Apologia pro vita sua
of 1864 was regarded as a masterpiece. He founded the Oratory in Birmingham and became the first Rector of the Catholic University of Ireland. He was created a cardinal in 1879 and died in 1890.

Another convert to Catholicism was Henry Manning (1808–92). The son of a Governor of the Bank of England, and a Prime Minister’s godson, he found his way by an indirect route into Anglican orders. He, like Newman, came to prefer the Roman Catholic Church, and converted in 1851. Less intellectual and more worldly than the members of the Oxford Movement, he became actively involved in work among the poor, and was an ally of – or at least a joint participant in various endeavours with – the Salvation Army and the temperance movement. He subscribed fully, in other words, to the Victorian notions of improving the lot of the poor. He also acted as a mediator in industrial disputes (most memorably the 1889 dock strike), and was a vigorous champion of access to education. His concern for the poor was so marked that critics thought him tainted with socialism, but his response was ‘People call it socialism, I call it Christianity.’ He became Archbishop of Westminster (where there was as yet no cathedral) in 1865, and a cardinal ten years later.

These men possessed some of the finest minds that nineteenth-century England produced. That they should devote the resources they possessed so completely to the service of Christianity suggests not only the important role that religion played in their era but the need they perceived for change, redefinition and reform.

Amid the tensions within Anglicanism, the advantage alternated between evangelicals and traditionalists throughout the century. Prime Ministers, who appointed bishops and could thus shape the character of church leadership for decades to come, were often driven by personal beliefs and preferences. Palmerston and Disraeli demonstrated, in their choice among candidates, a distrust of Tractarians that reflected the traditional English suspicion of ceremonious worship. Gladstone, on the other hand, was a Tractarian himself, and showed a corresponding disinclination to appoint evangelicals.

The Tudor gateway into the Cathedral Close at Canterbury might stand as a metaphor for the position of the Church at this time. It is large, elaborate and impressive, decorated with statuary and coats of arms, and it leads through to a place of peace and privilege. There are massive wooden gates, which still show signs of damage from the mob that tried to break them down during the Reform Bill riots in 1832, so completely was the Church identified with the landed gentry and the old, vested interests. The Church might have seemed secure and complacent, but its influence, its privileges and its possessions were under constant threat.

A strict Christian outlook that was manifest in Sabbath observance was not a product of the Victorian era. It had developed by the latter part of the eighteenth century (there were Sunday Observance Acts dating from 1677 and 1780). The battle was not definitively won at that time, for the Victorians were left to campaign for the banning of band concerts in parks on Sundays (they won), the restriction of postal deliveries (reduced to one) and the closing of beer shops (they lost). Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine any era since the Puritan Commonwealth in which the desire to restrict the pleasures of others would have been taken so seriously. Sometimes tragedy might be interpreted as evidence of divine displeasure. Throughout the railway age, trains ran on the Sabbath on many – though not all – lines. When, on the last Sunday of 1879, the Tay Bridge collapsed in a gale, taking seventy-five people to their deaths, the view was widely held that this had been their punishment for using public transport on the Lord’s Day.

Though Scotland, where the disaster had taken place, was a more deeply religious country than England, this attitude to
divine displeasure was not uncommon on both sides of the border, and can be seen in the notion of National Days of Fasting and Humiliation. The first of these, proposed by a Member of Parliament at the time of Britain’s first cholera epidemic in 1831, had been half-heartedly supported, and the idea was not taken seriously. The next one, held in 1854 and again the result of a cholera outbreak, was more successful. The following year there was a similar observance for the Crimean War, and in 1857 there was another day of self-abasement prompted by the most horrific event of the reign – the Indian Mutiny. A proclamation by the Queen stated that 7 October had been set aside: ‘For a solemn Fast, Humiliation, and prayer before Almighty God; in order to Obtain Pardon for our Sins, and for Imploring His Blessing and Assistance in our Arms for the Restoration of Tranquillity in India.’
²
The renowned Baptist, Charles Spurgeon, was the preacher, and the chosen venue was not a church or cathedral but the Crystal Palace. This was necessary in view of the numbers expected: in the event, 23,654 persons attended.

Although ‘Enthusiasm’ – an emotional, demonstrative faith – sat uncomfortably with the British character, it nevertheless took root. It found a response among those who had been cast adrift by the Industrial Revolution, with its destruction of traditional societies and values. By virtue of the number of people who embraced this outlook, it was highly influential during the Regency and pre-Victorian years. While ‘Enthusiasm’ might have been seen as suited only to the industrial working class, it was given respectability, and appeal at a higher social level, through the involvement of the devout and respected MP William Wilberforce. By the forties it was
established as an accepted, important shade of opinion. Evangelicals were to be found both in the Nonconformist sects and in Anglican congregations. It should also be remembered that members of the mercantile and manufacturing elite, especially those who came from areas that were Nonconformist in character, often belonged to this tendency (the Quaker Cadburys of York are one instance among several).

A high incidence of religious enthusiasm and church attendance was not, however, a state of affairs that remained static throughout the reign. Religious revivals, like other popular movements, tend to run their course, peaking and then declining rather than being maintained for decades. Respectable Christianity reached something of a high-water mark in the 1850s, and church congregations were greater from that decade until the end of the seventies than they were to be thereafter. The impetus could, it seemed, not be sustained.

As we have seen, the Victorian religious world was not a matter of a single Church existing without rivalry, or without serious divisions within its own ranks. Most legal and constitutional constraints on Catholics were removed in 1829, allowing the re-emergence into national life of a vigorous and experienced denomination that had widespread influence within immigrant communities (Irish and Italians). Nonconformity, which had blossomed in the eighteenth century, continued to have a striking level of influence in the nineteenth. Less socially acceptable than Anglicanism, it appealed to the working and lower middle classes, and was often identified with radical politics and trade unionism. To attend ‘chapel’ rather than ‘church’ – to be a Baptist or Methodist rather than an Anglican – was a social label as much as a reflection of a person’s spiritual conscience.