Christians round the world will certainly know the rousing hymn Onward Christian Soldiers - but how many will know who composed it?
If I said the answer is that it was composed by an extraordinary vicar who lived in the depths of the Devon countryside at the turn of the 19th century, would they be any the wiser? Perhaps not. And yet that man, the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, the centenary of whose death we commemorated this year, was truly remarkable – a parson, an aesthete, a linguist, a prolific writer on an incredible variety of subjects ranging from biography to travel, folklore, theology, fiction (he wrote 40 novels, his speciality the penny-dreadful Gothic fiction of the day) and a profusion of short stories in a variety of magazines, all full of history and folklore. And, of course, hymns.
As though this were not enough aesthetic achievement, he was also a noted linguist and translator, a pioneer archaeologist (on Dartmoor), and, perhaps arguably most importantly, the collector of the folksongs of Devon and Cornwall, a task he began in 1888, duly publishing his discoveries, and which he considered his finest achievement. Many of these manuscripts are today scattered far and wide in libraries and archives and are now valuable records of local history.
He was privileged member of the gentry, a man full of character, and a totally committed vicar and shepherd to his parishioners. He eventually inherited the role of local squire, the Lord of the Manor, his seat Lew Trenchard Manor, a large, idyllic, country mansion which he personally redesigned himself, next to the beautiful little church of St Peter’s, which again he saved from disrepair by renovating it himself when he became minister.
Both church and adjacent manor, until recently a country house hotel, nestle in quiet isolation in the heart of the glorious, unspoiled, Devon countryside about a mile downhill from the little village of Lewdown.
The church is full of memorials, big and small, to the Baring-Gould family.
Revd Conway, like his famous predecessor, is constantly active in and around his churches and himself the writer of notable sermons, of which Baring-Gould, the composer of highly original, powerful and spiritually evocative addresses himself, would undoubtedly approve. In addition, Revd Conway is a perennial optimist with an infectious sense of humour.
Baring-Gould took his office very seriously, spreading his ministerial obligations and practice well beyond the physical confines of the church. In other words, he took Christ’s message literally and went out of his way to help and attend to his parishioners.
He was one of those highly gifted, larger-than-life, often eccentric men unique to the 19th century. Britain was then at the height of Empire and her power and pre-eminence in world affairs seem to have thrown up these remarkable individuals who made extraordinary contributions in many fields to both Victorian society and to the nation as a whole. Baring-Gould was one of them.
To support this latter contention I should mention en passant another relatively local Victorian vicar who in some respects was similar to Baring-Gould. In fact, Baring-Gould wrote a biography of him. This was the Revd Robert Stephen Hawker. He too was a literary man, and a poet gifted enough to attract a visit from Tennyson. His church was St Morwenna and St John the Baptist at Morwenstow in the wilder reaches of North Cornwall close to cliffs high above the Atlantic. He was a notable eccentric, dressed outlandishly, was fond of elaborate practical jokes, loved animals, (he took a pet pig on a lead for walks) and, like Baring-Gould, was a very kind, humane man and a true shepherd to his flock.
Baring-Gould’s family came from the ranks of that enduring social caste, the English landed gentry, and their history is peopled with military grandees, explorers, and writers.
The Gould family began historically with a John Gold, a crusader at the siege of Damietta in 1217, who for his bravery was given an estate at Seaborough in Somerset. Sabine’s paternal grandfather was William Baring, who had assumed by Royal Licence in 1795 the additional surname and Arms of Gould and, from his mother, the manor of Lew Trenchard.
He was educated mostly privately, and, for a brief stint, at King’s School Warwick, from which he had to withdraw because of a bronchial disease, from which he was to suffer for much of his life. His education was completed as an undergraduate at Clare College, Cambridge, where he graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in 1857, followed by a master’s degree.
He was then briefly a teacher in Sussex, specialising in languages and science. However, the key, and perhaps unexpected, decision of his life was his wish to take holy orders, much to the annoyance of his father. An unusual and always singularly single-minded man, Baring-Gould was ordained in 1864 and became a curate in a Yorkshire parish.
Soon came another decision, which only emphasises his determination to follow his own star, namely to form while in Yorkshire a relationship with the 14-year-old daughter of a mill hand, Grace Taylor.
In the days when society was rigidly regulated, for someone from the upper class to become involved with a woman from the lower class was just not done. To make the point, although the relationship thrived Grace was sent away for two years to be educated in the ways of the gentry!
They were married in 1868. She was a special person. The marriage lasted 48 years until her death in 1916. They had 15 children, all but one of whom survived into adulthood. Baring-Gould was devoted to her. He called her ‘half my soul'.
His father was so displeased with his son joining the Church, that Baring-Gould was initially almost disowned and barred from inheriting the 3,000 acre family estate and succeeding to the title of Lord of the Manor of Lew Trenchard. However, when his father died in 1872, the door was open for him to become both the parson of Lew Trenchard’s St Peter’s Church and its squire. He had come into his own.
He really was prolific in so many intellectual disciplines. It would require pages just to list the novels he wrote, the hymns he composed, the huge number of folk songs he collected (a successful task which he considered his principal achievement), his historical publications about the West Country, and his archaeological works about Dartmoor’s ancient sites. It would not be no exaggeration to call him an extraordinary polymath. Of course, he had collaborators, particularly in his research and writings on folk songs, but the drive and professional application in these studies were undoubtedly his. His first two collections of 1895, named Songs and Ballads of the West (1889-90) and A Garland of Country Songs (1895), are undoubtedly a major contribution to an appreciation of rural life in the West Country.
St Peter’s, hidden away in its glorious rural setting, is to this day undoubtedly one of the loveliest little parish churches in the South West and even further afield. Enter and you will immediately notice a remarkably crafted rood screen, and then many medieval pews – rescued and restored by the Baring-Goulds, after having been removed years before to languish unseen in a local barn and replaced by pedestrian substitutes. You will also see on the walls a profusion of plaques and memorials to the Baring-Goulds.
In that regard, as in so many of England’s old Anglican country churches, they are a reflection in miniature of the life of the gentry, who many regard as having been the mainstay of English rural life for hundreds of years.
Baring-Gould’s novels include The Broom-Squire; Laleham: a story of the salt marches; Guavas the Tinner; and the astonishing, 16-volume The Lives of the Saints. Then there was his Book of Ghosts; Dartmoor Idylls, and In a Quiet Village. The list of his writings, both historical and fictional, just goes on and on!
Sabine Baring-Gould died on January 2, 1924 and is buried next to his wife in St Peter’s churchyard.
Until recently the the beautiful Lew Trenchard (or Lewtrenchard) Manor was a country house hotel. It now slumbers quietly without a squire.
You might perhaps think that the Baring-Gould connection would be long gone. You would be wrong. There are numerous descendants of their 15 children.
The family tree has come down through his son, Edward, and grandson, Linton, to Dr Merrill Almond, Baring-Gould’s great granddaughter, and in turn to her son, Professor Douglas Almond, a professor in the Department of Economics at Columbia University in the USA. He is still closely connected with the Lewtrenchard estate and is not infrequently to be seen at Sunday services at St Peter’s.
Wherever in the hereafter that extraordinarily gifted man, Sabine Baring-Gould, may be today, he will undoubtedly be delighted to see that the family connection with that magical place, Lewtrenchard, is still being enthusiastically maintained.
Dick Benson-Gyles is a journalist and the author of The Boy in the Mask, a biography of T.E.Lawrence
