Nicholas Ferrar and Little Gidding

Nicholas Ferrar, friend and publisher of George Herbert and founder of the Little Gidding community, died on December 2, 1637, but his death is remembered in the Church of England today. The Anglican church of St. John in Little Gidding, Cambridgeshire, describes his life and his family's retreat to Little Gidding, a community of prayer:

Nicholas Ferrar was the son of a London merchant who was an early member of the Virginia Company, the group which established the American colony in 1607. In 1622 Nicholas succeeded his elder brother John as the company’s Deputy, becoming responsible for its day-to-day administration. In 1624 twin disasters struck; the company was dissolved and John faced a threat of bankruptcy. This turn of events convinced Nicholas and the family that they should renounce worldliness by leaving London and devoting themselves to a life of godliness. Nicholas and John’s widowed mother, Mary, purchased the manor of Little Gidding as part of a deal to rescue John from debt. An outbreak of plague in London in 1625 caused the family to move to Little Gidding more promptly than they had intended. On arrival they found the church used as a barn and the house, uninhabited for 60 years, in need of extensive repair. . . .

The community's devotions were extensive:

In 1626 William Laud, then Bishop of St. David’s but later Archbishop of Canterbury, ordained Nicholas a deacon though Nicholas made clear that he would not proceed to the priesthood. He and the family soon established on weekdays a regular round of prayer based on Archbishop Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer. The family processed to the church for these services of matins, the litany, and evensong, which were led by Nicholas. On Sundays Nicholas led the customary matins to which the local children came and afterwards recited the psalms they had learned, for each of which they received a penny. After the recitations were completed, all returned to the church where the Vicar of Great Gidding (Little Gidding’s rector being an absentee) led another service that included a sermon and, once a month, Holy Communion. The psalm children then went back with the family to the house where the family, including old Mrs. Ferrar herself, helped to serve them lunch. When the family had in turn finished their lunch, they walked over the fields to Steeple Gidding for evensong.

Nicholas also began a round of hourly devotions in the house that combined recitation of psalms and readings from the gospels led by members of the family. These were later augmented by nightly vigils in which participants again repeated the psalms.

Little Gidding inspired T.S. Eliot and he meditates upon its spirit in one of his The Four Quartets poems. It seems even more appropriate today to read George Herbert's "Prayer (1)":

Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age,
God's breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth
Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,
The land of spices; something understood.

George Herbert and Advent: "My God, no hymn for thee?"

Richard J. Janet, PhD, professor of history, and director of the Thomas More Center for the Study of Catholic Thought and Culture at Rockhurst University, Kansas City, Missouri writes about George Herbert and Advent for Homiletic and Pastoral Review:

Advent, with its focus on beginnings and endings, the coming of Christ at Christmas, and the Second Coming at the end of time, holds the same lesson. Preparing for life is preparing for death, and vice-versa. Do not count the time, count the blessings and the beauty and the love generated during the time. Herbert sensed that. He died in 1633 at the age of 39 years. Shortly before he died, he sent his poems to a friend with instructions to publish them only if he thought they might “turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul.” Even in death, Herbert looked to the needs of others, and to his own need to share love.

Before he died, however, Herbert celebrated. He noted the turn of the seasons, and the passage of time marked by the liturgical calendar. Nature and prayer came together for him, as reflected in his Christmas poem. The poem begins with Herbert taking a pleasant horseback ride in the country, until he tires and seeks rest in a local inn. There he finds Christ, “wrapt in night’s mantle, stole into a manger.” Herbert longs to brighten his own “dark soul” to provide a home for Christ, and at the end of the poem offers a play on words as he looks for a Sun/Son to illuminate his world. As he does so, he sings and compares his soul to the shepherd and his flock. The country parson in Herbert comes out as he likens his hymn to nature, and praises Christ as the true Sun/Son and candle-holder for the universe.

The shepherds sing: and shall I silent be?
My God, no hymn for thee?
My soul ’s a shepherd too: a flock it feeds
Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.
The pasture is thy word: the streams, thy grace
Enriching all the place.
Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers
Out-sing the day-light hours.
Then we will chide the sun for letting night
Take up his place and right:
We sing one common Lord: wherefore he should
Himself the candle hold.

Please read the rest there.

More about the  Thomas More Center for the Study of Catholic Thought and Culture at Rockhurst University here.

Herbert and Donne: Metaphysical Poets

John Stubbs reviews Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert by John Drury in this month's Literary Review, including a comparison and contrast of George Herbert and John Donne:

Quite unlike Donne's life of adventure, disgrace, regretful isolation and self-fashioned redemption, Herbert's followed a steady trajectory of study, duty and meditation. His main dilemma seems to have been whether to pursue a public career - as his talents, social connections and perhaps family pressures disposed him to - or to take the cloth. There was, of course, no direct contradiction between the two: a bishop in the 1620s could still become a high-ranking minister. Yet Herbert seemed aware that the priesthood would take him in another direction towards simplicity and comparative solitude. He followed the example set by men such as Lancelot Andrewes, the famed preacher and one-time dean of Westminister, who would spend the entire morning alone in prayer when his duties allowed: events were always counterpointed by steady and, by any standard, gruelling rituals of prayer, reading, repeating and mastering declensions. Not a life for everyone; yet it helped quieten rather than stifle the heart.
 
I struck the board, and cried, No more.
I will abroad.
What? Shall I ever sigh and pine?
My life and lines are free; free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.

Herbert as much as Donne voices the waywardness of the passions, the anger that can send a child charging like an escaping balloon. But Herbert looks for a solution where Donne insists there is only a puzzle. For Donne, knowledge lies in dilemma, in paradox; for Herbert, this is only a stage. Their poetic language is also entirely different. In his famous 'Song: Go, and catch a falling star', for example, in telling his listener to 'Ride ... Till age snow white hairs on thee', Donne uses a metaphor from Horace, which an ancient book on rhetoric, Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria, explicitly disapproved of as 'far-fetched'. He even goes a step or three further. Snow is a metaphor for the visible effects of old age (white hair) and indeed age itself, but it is hard or even silly to visualise 'white hairs' literally snowing down onto someone's head. We have to go beyond that idea, by degrees, to the one Donne intends.

There is no such bad behaviour in Herbert. Because of this and other differences, the two poets have their camps of rival supporters; Drury avowedly belongs to Herbert's. In life, Donne and Herbert took mutual benefit from their diverse casts of mind. Although Donne was twenty years senior, he didn't treat Herbert as the younger man. They spent the summer of plague in 1625 together at the home of Herbert's stepfather in Chelsea and became respectful friends. By then Donne was the dean of St Paul's and was finding new self-definition in a venue that demanded preaching 'loose as the wind, as large as store' to fill its vast Gothic chamber. Herbert's path, on the other hand, lay towards minimalism, the quietness of retreat. He worked in small parishes, doing much to restore to his church at Leighton Bromswold and supporting the religious community at Little Gidding, the group in Huntingdonshire invoked in the fourth of T S Eliot's Four Quartets. Eliot, in many ways torn between the vision of Donne and the brighter influence of Herbert, illustrates the futility of asking which poet might be greater: we need both.

John Drury's excellent book is a fine guide and companion to such questions, bringing Herbert's 'life and lines' along the road without ever forcing a step. His attitude to Herbert the poet is one of inexhaustible wonder and inquiry, while to the man who died at 39 he is almost father-like, tender and humane. Music at Midnight should not cause readers or students to neglect Amy Charles's Life of George Herbert (1977), but no one interested in this writer should be without it.

Note that John Stubbs is the author of a biography of John Donne: Donne: The Reformed Soul (2006). 

Herbert, Vaughn Williams, and Allen

This morning at Mass for Laetare Sunday, at the Offertory the choir sang an arrangement of Ralph Vaughn Williams' The Call (George Herbert's poem) for choir, organ and flute. Above, a youtube video of Thomas Allen singing The Call at a Proms performance in 2004. (Starts at 5:38, after "Love Bade Me Welcome"; both are from the Five Mystical Songs (1906-1911)--then the choir sings the rousing Antiphon!)

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a Way, as gives us breath:
Such a Truth, as ends all strife:
Such a Life, as killeth death.

Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength:
Such a Light, as shows a feast:
Such a Feast, as mends in length:
Such a Strength, as makes his guest.

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
Such a Joy, as none can move:
Such a Love, as none can part:
Such a Heart, as joyes in love.

I have Allen's recording of the Five Mystical Songs with the Serenade to Music, Flo Campi, and the Fantasia on Christmas Carols--it is one of my favorite CDs!

George Herbert on Prayer and the Pulley

George Herbert, poet and Anglican clergyman, was born on April 3, 1593. I enjoyed Marchette Chute's dual biography of Herbert and Robert Herrick, Two Gentlemen, published in 1959. Herbert sadly died young in 1633 after only three years of service in the Church of England--he had intended a clerical career while at Cambridge but King James I's interest and patronage led him to a secular career. In 1630, he was ordained; in 1633, he completed his book of poetry, The Temple. It was published posthumously.

Two of my favorites:

PRAYER the Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth;
Engine against th’ Almightie, sinner's towre,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six daies world-transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear;
Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bels beyond the stars heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices, something understood.

and THE PULLEY.

WHEN God at first made man,
Having a glasse of blessings standing by ;
Let us (said he) poure on him all we can :
Let the worlds riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.
So strength first made a way ;
Then beautie flow’d, then wisdome, honour, pleasure :
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone, of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottome lay.
For if I should (said he)
Bestow this jewell also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts in stead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature :
So both should losers be.
Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlesnesse :
Let him be rich and wearie, that at least,
If goodnesse leade him not, yet wearinesse
May tosse him to my breast.