On Hands and Voices

I’ve been reading the biography of Sabine Baring-Gould, author, in his own day, of many best-selling novels, but now remembered for a number of hymns that are still sung. A man slated by his father to become an engineer, who counted on his fingers, alas, to the end of his days, he went to Cambridge as a classicist and fell in love with the Oxford Movement, only being allowed to take Holy Orders after his two younger brothers declined their father’s invitation to take the younger son’s place in the Church.

            Baring-Gould spent the last forty-five years of his long life, according to his biographer, doing nothing but exactly what he wished to do. His living of Lew Trenchard, where he was the loved and honoured Rector, was also his manor, where he was the respected squire. He had fifteen children, some of whom he didn’t recognise when he met them. He wrote standing at a writing-desk all day: novels, histories, lives of the saints, theology, church history, poetry, antiquities, translations. His lovely translation of the fifteenth-century hymn “Come down, O love divine” remains in the hymnal, while “Onward Christian Soldiers” has fallen out of favour, perhaps partly due to Sullivan’s stirring (imperialist?) tune: Baring-Gould wrote it for Sunday-school children to sing, and set it to a slow movement from Haydn. “Onward Christian Soldiers” was controversial in its time: the line, “With the cross of Jesus going on before” was considered too papist for some, especially since the hymn was written for the children’s procession.

            He set his hand to many things. He was an amateur archaeologist — especially of his local district — when amateurs were held in high regard. He considered his most important work the collection of English folk-songs; he compiled an immense volume of the old song-men’s repertoire, rushing to the side of these aged singers to catch the works before they died. His biographer believes he could have achieved more lasting work had he restricted his interests: he might have made his mark in literature, theology or history. But he set his hand to many things.

            This is Baring-Gould’s story. Story, of course, comes from the voice and makes meaning of events as we tell them to ourselves, whether past or future events.Thus a baby may be predicted as “Daddy’s little princess” or a father remembered in “Dad’s mission was to take care of his family — and he did!” Stories we tell in preparation, celebration, commemoration.

            The work of hands is somewhat different. Hands make the present, repair the past, structure the future. The presentness of hands is made present to me whenever I play a wrong note on the piano: everyone can tell what I’m thinking! (or not thinking, as is often the case). Keeping the eyes on the keyboard to assure a fingering or a rhythm I can see time: past time flowing into present into future. Is it better to set our hands to many things, or to attain the starry skies by handing on only one thing?

            One thing only is necessary, according to the Gospels, and maybe Baring-Gould did just as well setting his hands to many things, and doing exactly what he wished to do, in the context of a verse he wrote that was left out of Hymns Ancient and Modern:

            ‘What the Saints established

            That I hold for true,

            What the Saints believeth

            That believe I too.’

Too papist? Or maybe not.