British -- France -- Fiction; Diary fiction; Epistolary fiction; Household employees -- Fiction; Love stories; Young women -- Fiction
How different this Latin mass in France from last Sunday morning’s
service in Traxelby church! At Traxelby we are always so orderly, so
dignified. Here at Dieppe the people grab each a chair and put it down
where they like, so that they’re all higgledy-piggledy instead of
sitting in decorous ranks and rows. And, except for the Gospel and
Credo and the Canon, they make no pretence at sitting and standing and
kneeling according to any fixed usage or principle. Some seem to be
following the Proper in their missals, while others just pray, or think,
or finger their beads. Susan says they behaved dreadfully, and that it
didn’t seem a bit like proper Church.
I felt differently. The roughness and freedom and individuality were
less soothing than our elegant orderliness at Traxelby; but the
realities that underlie religion seemed nearer and warmer. These
faithful Dieppois looked more like the men and women of old who thronged
the hillsides of Palestine and sat down entranced upon the grass; and
they looked less like that chilly, respectable, dull-souled thing----
How shall I put it? Perhaps it’s this. They looked more like "the
multitude" of the Gospels, and less like "a congregation."
If I were not already an excommunicate heretic and schismatic, I should
have surely lost my soul for my inattention to Mass. I couldn’t help
comparing this Sunday with last. Last Sunday, Alice was with me as in
the old days. And Susan hadn’t had her letter. And Gibson hadn’t
talked to me in the garden. Everything was orderly, dignified,
low-pulsed, soothing, like last Sunday’s matins in Traxelby church. But
to-day, Susan’s letter is a fact. So is Gibson’s oath. And Ruddington
is at the Cheval d’Or. My life is suddenly disordered--just as Traxelby
church would be if these Dieppois were suddenly turned loose among the
chairs. Yet I’m not sure that last Sunday was better. Realities,
glowing human realities, have suddenly began to crowd, living and
breathing, all around me--just as I felt reality, warm and near, in the
rough and unpunctiliously celebrated Mass.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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