...
On the lowest fringe of these real Olympians hung the vicarage people,
and next to them came those ambiguous beings who are neither quality nor
subjects. The vicarage people certainly hold a place by themselves in
the typical English scheme; nothing is more remarkable than the progress
the Church has made--socially--in the last two hundred years. In the
early eighteenth century the vicar was rather under than over the
house-steward, and was deemed a fitting match for the housekeeper or any
not too morally discredited discard. The eighteenth century literature
is full of his complaints that he might not remain at table to share the
pie. He rose above these indignities because of the abundance of younger
sons. When I meet the large assumptions of the contemporary cleric, I
am apt to think of these things. It is curious to note that to-day that
down-trodden, organ-playing creature, the Church of England village
Schoolmaster, holds much the same position as the seventeenth century
parson. The doctor in Bladesover ranked below the vicar but above the
"vet," artists and summer visitors squeezed in above or below this point
according to their appearance and expenditure, and then in a carefully
arranged scale came the tenantry, the butler and housekeeper, the
village shopkeeper, the head keeper, the cook, the publican, the second
keeper, the blacksmith (whose status was complicated by his daughter
keeping the post-office--and a fine hash she used to make of telegrams
too!) the village shopkeeper's eldest son, the first footman, younger
sons of the village shopkeeper, his first assistant, and so forth.
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