Sydney Smith | Page 6

beat, were now severely taxed by his mother's failing
health and by the cost of starting his brothers in the world. At Oxford,
he had dabbled in medicine and anatomy, and had attended the lectures
of Dr., afterwards Sir Christopher, Pegge,[6] who recommended him to
become a doctor. His father wished to send him as a super-cargo to
China! His own strong preference was for the Bar, but his father, who
had already brought up one son to that profession and found it more
expensive than profitable, looked very unfavourably on the design; and
under paternal pressure the wittiest Englishman of his generation
determined to seek Holy Orders, or, to use his own old-fashioned
phrase, to "enter the Church." He assumed the sacred character without
enthusiasm, and looked back on its adoption with regret. "The law," he
said in after life, "is decidedly the best profession for a young man if he
has anything in him. In the Church a man is thrown into life with his
hands tied, and bid to swim; he does well if he keeps his head above
water."
Under these rather dismal auspices, Sydney Smith was ordained
Deacon in 1794. He might, one would suppose, have been ordained on

his Fellowship, and have continued to reside in College with a view to
obtaining a Lectureship or some other office of profit. Perhaps he found
the mental atmosphere of Oxford insalubrious. Perhaps he was
unpopular in College. Perhaps his political opinions were already too
liberal for the place. Certain it is that his visit to France, in the earlier
stages of the Revolution, had led him to extol the French for teaching
mankind "the use of their power, their reason, and their rights."
Whatever was the cause, he turned his back on Oxford, and, as soon as
he was ordained, became Curate of Netheravon, a village near
Amesbury.[7] As he himself said, "the name of Curate had lost its legal
meaning, and, instead of denoting the incumbent of a living, came to
signify the deputy of an absentee." He had sole charge of the parish of
Netheravon, and was also expected to perform one service every
Sunday at the adjoining village of Fittleton. "Nothing," wrote the
new-fledged Curate, "can equal the profound, the immeasurable, the
awful dulness of this place, in the which I lie, dead and buried, in hope
of a joyful resurrection in 1796." Indeed, it is not easy to conceive a
more dismal situation for a young, ardent, and active man, fresh from
Oxford, full of intellectual ambition, and not very keenly alive to the
spiritual opportunities of his calling. The village, a kind of oasis in the
desert of Salisbury Plain, was not touched by any of the coaching-roads.
The only method of communication with the outside world was by the
market-cart which brought the necessaries of life from Salisbury once a
week. The vicar was non-resident; and the squire, Mr. Hicks-Beach,
was only an occasional visitor, for his principal residence was fifty
miles off, at Williamstrip, near Fairford. (He had acquired Netheravon
by his marriage with Miss Beach.) The church was empty, and the
curate in charge likened his preaching to the voice of one crying in the
wilderness. The condition of the village may best be judged from a
report made to Mr. Hicks-Beach by his steward in 1793. Nearly every
one was dependent on parochial relief. Not a man earned ten shillings a
week. A man with a wife and four children worked for six shillings a
week. A girl earned, by spinning, four shillings a month. Idleness,
disease, and immorality were rife; and, as an incentive to profitable
industry, a young farmer beat a sickly labourer within an inch of his
life.

Mrs. Hicks-Beach referred this uncomfortable report on the condition
of her property to the newly-installed curate, requesting his opinion on
the cases specified. The curate replied with characteristic vigour. One
family owed its wretched condition to mismanagement and
extravagance; another to "ignorance bordering on brutality"; another to
"Irish extraction, numbers, disease, and habits of idleness." One family
was composed of "weak, witless people, totally wretched, without
sense to extricate them from their wretchedness"; a second was
"perfectly wretched and helpless"; and a third was "aliment for
Newgate, food for the halter--a ragged, wretched, savage, stubborn
race."[8]
The squire and Mrs. Hicks-Beach, who seem to have been thoroughly
high-principled and intelligent people, were much concerned to find the
curate corroborating and even expanding the evil reports of the steward.
They immediately began considering remedies, and decided that their
first reform should be to establish a Sunday-school. The institution so
named bore little resemblance to the Sunday-schools of the present day,
but followed a plan which Robert Raikes[9] and Mrs. Hannah More[10]
had originated, and which Bishop Shute Barrington[11] (who