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Page 3
Mr Harding is a small man, now verging on sixty years, but bearing few
of the signs of age; his hair is rather grizzled, though not gray;
his eye is very mild, but clear and bright, though the double glasses
which are held swinging from his hand, unless when fixed upon his
nose, show that time has told upon his sight; his hands are delicately
white, and both hands and feet are small; he always wears a black
frock coat, black knee-breeches, and black gaiters, and somewhat
scandalises some of his more hyperclerical brethren by a black
neck-handkerchief.
Mr Harding's warmest admirers cannot say that he was ever an
industrious man; the circumstances of his life have not called on
him to be so; and yet he can hardly be called an idler. Since his
appointment to his precentorship, he has published, with all possible
additions of vellum, typography, and gilding, a collection of our
ancient church music, with some correct dissertations on Purcell,
Crotch, and Nares. He has greatly improved the choir of Barchester,
which, under his dominion, now rivals that of any cathedral in
England. He has taken something more than his fair share in the
cathedral services, and has played the violoncello daily to such
audiences as he could collect, or, _faute de mieux_, to no audience
at all.
We must mention one other peculiarity of Mr Harding. As we have
before stated, he has an income of eight hundred a year, and has no
family but his one daughter; and yet he is never quite at ease in
money matters. The vellum and gilding of "Harding's Church Music"
cost more than any one knows, except the author, the publisher, and
the Rev. Theophilus Grantly, who allows none of his father-in-law's
extravagances to escape him. Then he is generous to his daughter, for
whose service he keeps a small carriage and pair of ponies. He is,
indeed, generous to all, but especially to the twelve old men who are
in a peculiar manner under his care. No doubt with such an income Mr
Harding should be above the world, as the saying is; but, at any rate,
he is not above Archdeacon Theophilus Grantly, for he is always more
or less in debt to his son-in-law, who has, to a certain extent,
assumed the arrangement of the precentor's pecuniary affairs.
Chapter II
THE BARCHESTER REFORMER
Mr Harding has been now precentor of Barchester for ten years; and,
alas, the murmurs respecting the proceeds of Hiram's estate are again
becoming audible. It is not that any one begrudges to Mr Harding
the income which he enjoys, and the comfortable place which so well
becomes him; but such matters have begun to be talked of in various
parts of England. Eager pushing politicians have asserted in the
House of Commons, with very telling indignation, that the grasping
priests of the Church of England are gorged with the wealth which the
charity of former times has left for the solace of the aged, or the
education of the young. The well-known case of the Hospital of St
Cross has even come before the law courts of the country, and the
struggles of Mr Whiston, at Rochester, have met with sympathy and
support. Men are beginning to say that these things must be looked
into.
Mr Harding, whose conscience in the matter is clear, and who has never
felt that he had received a pound from Hiram's will to which he was
not entitled, has naturally taken the part of the church in talking
over these matters with his friend, the bishop, and his son-in-law,
the archdeacon. The archdeacon, indeed, Dr Grantly, has been somewhat
loud in the matter. He is a personal friend of the dignitaries of the
Rochester Chapter, and has written letters in the public press on the
subject of that turbulent Dr Whiston, which, his admirers think, must
well nigh set the question at rest. It is also known at Oxford that
he is the author of the pamphlet signed "Sacerdos" on the subject of
the Earl of Guildford and St Cross, in which it is so clearly argued
that the manners of the present times do not admit of a literal
adhesion to the very words of the founder's will, but that the
interests of the church for which the founder was so deeply concerned
are best consulted in enabling its bishops to reward those shining
lights whose services have been most signally serviceable to
Christianity. In answer to this, it is asserted that Henry de Blois,
founder of St Cross, was not greatly interested in the welfare of the
reformed church, and that the masters of St Cross, for many years
past, cannot be called shining lights in the service of Christianity;
it is, however, stoutly maintained, and no doubt felt, by all the
archdeacon's friends, that his logic is conclusive, and has not, in
fact, been answered.
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