‘“Mervyn Peake” was his real name; its Gothic jaggedness simply serendipitously suited his prose,’ PAGE 24


Notes of discord


Dissenting Praise: religious dissent and the hymn in England and Wales Isabel Rivers and David Wykes (eds)


OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 299PP, £65 ■Tablet bookshop price £58.50 Tel 01420 592974


Manning wrote that “hymns are for us Dissenters what the liturgy is for the Anglicans” – and, he might have added, for Catholics. In the absence of a prayer book or Missal, hymns have provided both the personal devotional aids and chief liturgical expression of Nonconformist identity. This book brings together leading historians of English and Welsh Dissent to celebrate and chronicle the Nonconformist love affair with hymns. It had a somewhat sticky beginning. Baptists, the first denomination to introduce hymn-singing into public worship in the seventeenth century, were deeply divided over whether only the Psalms should be sung, whether men and women should sing together, whether it was better to sing standing or sitting and over the correct method of singing. However, with the encouragement of enthusiasts like Benjamin Keach, who produced a hymn book with the title The Banquetting House, or a Feast of FatThings, many congregations were soon singing hymns of human composure with gusto. There are delightful pen portraits of the leading figures in the development of Dissenting hymnody, including Isaac Watts, the “father of English hymnody” who Christianised the Psalms and turned them into robust statements of British patriotism; Anne Steele, the Baptist writer whose defiantly anti-Catholic hymn to celebrate the anniversary of the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot began “When Hell and Rome combined their power”; and the Unitarian James Martineau who rewrote many of the great classics of nineteenth- century hymnody, including verses by John Henry Newman, to make them less Christocentric. At first sight, it seems strange that no consideration at all is given to the great prince of English hymn writers, Charles Wesley, and his brother, John, the founders of Methodism which of all Nonconformist denominations has been the most steeped in song. The reason for this omission, as the editors very properly point out, is that throughout their lives both the Wesley brothers remained ordained clergymen in the established Church of England and therefore do not strictly speaking qualify as


T


he early-twentieth-century Congregationalist historian Bernard L.


Dissenters. Several of Charles Wesley’s hymns in fact came in for criticism from Dissenters for their perceived Catholic tendencies. Josiah Conder, editor of the influential Congregational Hymn Book of 1836, described Wesley’s more personal and devotional hymns as “monastic, feminine and mawkish” and “smacking of the devotion of the Roman mystic”. The expression of such anti-Catholic sentiments became increasingly rare as Nonconformist hymnody became broader and more ecumenical in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Its progress in this direction is well charted, not least by Clyde Binfield’s delightful chapter on the urbane and cultured William Garrett Horder who did much to make Congregationalist hymnody in particular more liberal, inclusive and literary. Nicholas Temperley provides a stimulating chapter on the music of Dissent, although I would quarrel with his description of William Shrubsole’s tune “Miles Lane” for “All hail, the power of Jesus’ name” as “the most brilliant specimen of a dissenting hymn-tune”. For me, the other tune regularly used for this hymn, Ellor’s vigorous “Diadem”, is much more characteristically Nonconformist, with its repeated phrases and Handelian trill on the first appearance of the word “crown”.


AUDIOBOOK REVIEW


Small-town boy Billy Liar Keith Waterhouse, read by John Simm


CSA AUDIOBOOKS, 7 HOURS, £18.33


Fifties Northern town works brilliantly in audio form. John Simm reads Billy Fisher in a slightly husky, caustic timbre, reminiscent of the voice of Tom Courtenay in the 1963 film. Billy is burdened by expectations – he has to hold down a job chosen by his dad, get engaged to (all three of) his girlfriends and be ready to inherit his father’s business. His longing to be free of constraints is only matched by his disorganisation and lack of confidence. Clever, witty, dreamy and endearing, he nevertheless disappoints everyone: his petit bourgeois parents, his fiancées, his dreary undertaker boss. Most of his energy is poured into creating fantastic dishonesties, the rest in dreaming of escape. What Billy is in flight from is exactly the


K


sort of community we now mourn: a small town where even the wayside is so under


eith Waterhouse’s classic about a teenager in the tight-knit world of a


The book is rounded off with an interesting contribution on the evolution of the Welsh hymn by Wyn James. I am not sure he is quite right to take the replacement of the section on “Heaven” in the 1896 Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Hymn Book by one on “Social and National Hymns” in its successor hymnal in 1927 as an indication of the growth of liberal theology in the early twentieth century. I suspect the real reason why so many of the Victorian hymns about heaven disappeared in this period was because of greatly reduced mortality rates, especially among children, as a result of advances in health and hygiene, and the fact that infant death was a much less familiar experience for most households. It is the decline in hymns about hell which more accurately reflect the rise of a more liberal theology. It is a pity in many ways that the editors did not commission a concluding chapter reflecting the great contribution of Nonconformist writers like Fred Pratt Green, Brian Wren, Fred Kaan and Andrew Pratt to twentieth-century English hymnody. It would have shown that, however depleted the ranks of Dissenters today, in this field at least they still punch above their weight. Ian Bradley


scrutiny that nobody can fall by it unseen. Billy’s one happy, if mysterious, relationship is with the free-spirited Liz. Even she longs to tie Billy into marriage but she understands his passionate longing to be somewhere he can gain anonymity. Billy’s wild imaginings, his lying, are attempts to experiment with his own identity in a way that isn’t possible in an environment where everyone has known him from birth. This novel is a reminder that community doesn’t always equal happiness. It also seems to speak for a more innocent age than ours: one which had not fully foreseen the alienation and sadness inside the freedom Billy craves. Julian Margaret Gibbs


OUR REVIEWERS


Alec Ryrie is professor of the history of Christianity at Durham University.


Ian Bradley’s book Abide With Me: the world of Victorian hymns was published in paperback by Faber and Faber in 2010.


Julian Margaret Gibbs is a freelance writer. Catherine Nixey is a freelance writer. Brendan Walshis a writer and publisher.


16 July 2011 | THE TABLET | 23


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