Edward Elgar and His World (6 page)

The idea of the work originated in this way. Mr. Reeve, addressing his pupils, once remarked: “The Apostles were poor men, young men, at the time of their calling; perhaps before the descent of the Holy Ghost not cleverer than some of you here.” This set me thinking, and the oratorio of 1903 is the result.
⁴⁶

The mythological genesis of the work lent Elgar a sense of purpose for
The Apostles
beyond the merely musical: it fastened the composition to Christian education.

Central to the progression of Elgar's early faith and education was his relationship to the Worcester parish of St. George's. Though a student at Walsh's Dame school and Littleton House, typical religious instruction for Catholics at midcentury was handled by the parish priest, who might visit the school several times a week to teach and catechize the students.
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During most of Elgar's school years, there were two priests at St. George's, the most permanent being Father William Waterworth, S.J.
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Waterworth arrived in Worcester during 1857 and left in 1878.
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He had an impressive pedigree for a parish priest posted to a sleepy provincial town: education at a Jesuit grammar school in London followed by seminary at Stonyhurst, the most celebrated Catholic public school in England, where students were taught at a level comparable to Cambridge or Oxford; rector of the Jesuit Church of St. James's, Spanish Place, one of the most important Catholic churches in London; and confessor to Henry Edward (later Cardinal) Manning.
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Fr. Waterworth certainly encouraged Ultramontane theology when he gave an eleven-year-old Elgar a votive picture of St. Joseph, with a simple French text, and likely would have instructed Elgar to pray to such an image.
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Two prayers to St. Joseph were commonly available to Catholics in
The Garden of the Soul;
each asks for intercession from Joseph.
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Most sources, be they Worcestershire history or Elgar biography, present Fr. Waterworth as an erudite, affable individual loved by his Catholic parishioners and local Protestants alike. Fr. Brian Doolan's brief history
St. George's, Worcester: 1590–1999
is typical of the Waterworth hagiography, noting that the priest was

described by his Jesuit obituarist as “a model of Rectors.” … He was a considerable scholar who had been destined for an academic career but this was impeded by delicate health. He lectured regularly to the “Worcester Cathedral Institute,” contributed articles to
The Rambler
and
The Dublin Review
and was a notable preacher. He was on the warmest personal terms with the Dean and Canons of the Cathedral and other Protestant divines in the city.
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If this is the case, Waterworth must also have been charming and disarming, for his writings are militantly pro-Catholic, almost to the point of anti-Protestant condescension. Elgar's primary religious teacher and leader wrote a number of books that take the rhetorical stance that the English Reformation was at best a tragic mistake and at worst a hideous crime against humanity.

Some of Waterworth's attacks on Anglicanism were so cogent and radical that they were reprinted in cheap pamphlets for wider distribution to agitate the Catholic populace. Such was the case with his “The Popes and the English Church,” originally published in the October 1870 issue of
The Month
and quickly reprinted by the Catholic Truth Society, a popular Ultramontane organization.
⁵⁴
Waterworth's words are those of an impassioned partisan as he denies the legitimacy of the Anglican Church:

Anglicanism is, as at present constituted, hopelessly anti-Catholic. It is a sheer nationalism, and such a nationalism is destructive of one of the great marks of the Church, distinctly indicated in the Creed of the Apostles and the Creed of Nicea, namely, Catholicism—“I believe in the Holy Catholic Church”: “I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.”
⁵⁵

The major thrust of the article begins at this point: there is only one Church, and it has always been (and still was in Waterworth's time) under the spiritual and temporal leadership of the Pontiff, and any attempts to remove elements of the Church from the control of the Pontiff are morally bankrupt and illegitimate. No figure is safe from Waterworth's harsh and unyielding criticism; he calls Oliver Cromwell “unprincipled.”
⁵⁶

Waterworth's entire corpus of writings presents all elements of Anglicanism, including the infrastructure it confiscated during the Reformation and created afterward, as illegitimate. His writings from the 1850s are if anything even more absolutist in tone, especially regarding the veracity of other denominations and the absolute spiritual power and the necessity of the Pope. To Waterworth, any Englishman who recognized a “Protestant establishment” was flawed and a pretender because Protestant establishments were temporal and not divine—to him, the only church was the Catholic Church and, as he repeatedly stated, “all others are false.”
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Waterworth would even take historical events and place a distinctly Catholic spin on them, such as when he conflated the English love of freedom and independence with Catholicism:

The introduction of the Liturgy of Edward VI into this country, in the year 1549, was the signal of insurrection: after a lapse of more than 300 years, that Liturgy is still the fruitful source of discontent and religious and civil agitation. When it was first of all forced upon the nation, seventeen counties rose up nearly simultaneously, sword in hand, to defend their religious liberties. In the words of the first Article of the great Charter of English freedom, they declared that “the Church of England shall be free, and enjoy her rights and liberties inviolate.” These words of Magna Charta signify that Sovereigns shall not meddle with the Church; that the Pope shall direct the spiritual authorities to the exclusion of other influences; and that the appointment of Prelates shall not be interfered with by the temporal power. Catholics, jealous of the tyranny and assumptions of a bad king, extorted our glorious Charter from King John.
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Such was Fr. Waterworth, the man “esteemed by the Catholics and the Protestants.” Waterworth's anti-Anglican view of history differs greatly from the dominant discourse espoused by pro-Anglican historians such as George Macaulay Trevelyan, who asserted that the English nation gained its essential character only through the Reformation.
⁵⁹
In contradistinction to the dominant Anglican ideology, Waterworth's aggressive Catholic revision of English history—echoed today by such revisionist historians as Eamon Duffy—was the basis of the primary religious education of the young Elgar and, indeed, of all the other Catholics in Worcester.
⁶⁰

Indeed, Waterworth's effects on Catholics around Elgar were profound. Elgar's own sister, Ellen Agnes (also referred to as “Helen Agnes” and nicknamed “Dot” or “Dott”), became a Dominican nun in 1902 and eventually a prioress.
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Elgar's schoolmate Hubert Leicester, who hailed from an old Catholic family, embraced the Catholic history of Worcester with relish, using it as an arena for Ultramontane polemical writings. In 1932, he published a short pamphlet about the history of Catholicism in Worcester, from Henry VIII's Protestant Reformation through the penal times. A good deal of Leicester's language in this publication mirrors the militant tone Waterworth used in his own writings. Leicester refers to “the so-called Reformation” and terms Henry VIII's confiscation of Church lands and property “stealing.” Indeed, Leicester maps the entire history of the English Reformation as an exercise in theft, stating that those who turned away from Catholicism did so for love of money, not religion, claiming, “When the first Bills were introduced into Parliament for the establishment of an English Protestant Church, the measures were passed principally by the votes of the holders of ill-gotten wealth.”
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Like the polemics of Waterworth, there was no room for compromise within Leicester's rhetoric—yet his writings appeared decades after the establishment of basic civil rights for Catholics in England and after his long and illustrious political career.
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While Leicester presented a wholly Ultramontane face, Elgar associated himself with the Ultramontane faction on at least two occasions, either voluntarily or because he was required to do so for professional advancement. The first instance was when he began as organist at St. George's. In the second instance, Elgar placed an advertisement in the Catholic magazine
The Tablet
in 1878, advertising his services as combined secretary and music teacher.
The Tablet
was one of the most important organs of Ultramontane Catholic news and opinion throughout the nineteenth century.
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Elgar's advertisement spoke diligently to that world:

To Musical Catholic Noblemen, Gentlemen, Priests, Heads of Colleges, & c., or Professors of Music—A friend of a young man, possessed of great musical talent, is anxious to obtain partial employment of him as Organist or Teacher of Piano, Organ, or Violin, to young boys, sons of gentlemen, or as Musical Amanuensis to Composers or Professors of Music, being a quick and ready copyist. Could combine Organist and Teacher of Choir, with Musical Tutor to sons of noblemen, & c. Has had several years experience as Organist. The advertiser's object is to obtain musical employment for him, with proportionate time for study. Age 21, of quiet, studious habits, and gentlemanly bearing. Been used to good society. Would have unexceptional references. Neighbourhood of London preferred; the Continent not objected to. Disengaged in September.
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The advertisement presents Elgar as flexible in his abilities and eager to apply himself to almost anything for the sake of employment. Had it proved successful, such a position would have kept him in the insulated doctrinal world of Ultramontane Catholicism, and the advertisement shows Elgar's willingness to live and work within that world. But young Elgar's notice did not evince the most savvy business strategy because advertising in
The Tablet
meant the readers would be primarily Ultramontane Catholics—converts—and not the Old English Catholics, who might have had the money and resources to hire Elgar for such a desirable position.

Elgar found no suitable employment from his advertisement; however, St. George's soon gave him a modest professional position. He deputized there as organist for his father in 1872, was appointed assistant organist in 1873, and eventually became titular organist in 1885, serving until he departed for London in 1889.
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Consequently, Elgar had ample opportunity to compose Catholic music and partake in Catholic ceremonies.
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One nonliturgical devotional ceremony during these years, on October 7, 1888, inaugurated the “Apostleship of Prayer” and the blessing of a Sacred Heart statue which still exists in St. George's today. Sacred Heart statues were icons used for extraliturgical devotions in the nineteenth century in churches or at home;
The Garden of the Soul
shows seven pages of prayers for this ritual.
⁶⁸
As the
Catholic Encyclopedia
, published between 1907 and 1914, noted, “Devotion to the Sacred Heart may be defined as the devotion to the adorable Heart of Jesus Christ insofar as this Heart represents and recalls His love; or what amounts to the same thing: devotion to the love of Jesus Christ insofar as this love is recalled and symbolically represented to us by his heart of flesh.”
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The importance of this event is reflected by the presence of the visiting Bishop Edward Ilsley, who officiated at the service; traditionally, bishops visited parishes for the sacraments of confirmation and ordinations, as well as installing a new priest in the parish. The Litany of the Sacred Heart, which began to appear in Catholic devotional prayer books after 1875, is a brief ritual that includes responses to prayers said by a celebrant.
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Its form is close to the “Agnus Dei” prayer, since after addressing Christ's heart with numerous blandishments (including “Heart of Jesus, burning furnace of charity, /Heart of Jesus, abode of justice and love”) it simply asks for Christ's mercy.
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For this ceremony, Elgar composed his last composition for St. George's, the
Ecce Sacerdos
. The composition is quite concise (only fifty-three measures long) and Elgar dedicated it to Hubert Leicester.
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Leicester's fervent Ultramontane prose clearly reflected Waterworth's early influence as a religious teacher. Elgar, too, might have traveled this path, but the only tangible manifestation of fervor before 1889 was the completion of
Ecce Sacerdos
. In his Faithful Child years, Elgar's experiences with Catholicism were steady but various. From the time of his education until he left Worcester for London, he was never conscious of a life without aspects of the Catholic Church, either because he was learning about it through the offices of Walsh, Reeve, the teachers at Spetchley Park, and Fr. Waterworth, or because he was employed as a musician at St. George's. It cannot be known if he shared Hubert Leicester's religious fervor at this time, as nothing within the extant anecdotal or historical record, outside of his Catholic religious music, suggests an intense devotion to Catholicism save the ineffectual advertisement to be a musician for Catholic families or organizations. It is only in his next incarnation, as the “Publicly Faithful” avatar, that Elgar seeks to project an overtly Catholic image.

The “Publicly Faithful” Avatar: 1889–1905, or “What Is the Meaning of This Frequent Use of the Sign of the Cross?”

In the period between 1889 and 1905, Elgar manifested the “Publicly Faithful” avatar in three ways: by attending mass, by publicly proclaiming himself a Catholic in interviews and compositions, and by complaining to friends and intimates about the anti-Catholic prejudice that he experienced repeatedly. Once he arrived in London in 1889, it is easy to detect signs of a sort of religious fervency that developed during the early years of his marriage. Elgar attended church no less than fifty times in 1890, despite frequent illness and bad weather frustrating his attendance.
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Elgar's only child, Carice, also became a public manifestation of the family's religious faith: as a schoolgirl she was made to wear a prominent gold cross tied with a black ribbon around her neck.
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Public proclamations of his creed appeared on the scores of his oratorios
The Dream of Gerontius, The Apostles
, and
The Kingdom
, which he dedicated “A.M.D.G.” (
Ad majorem dei gloriam
—“To the greater glory of God”). While not unheard of at the beginning of the twentieth century, Elgar's dedications of his oratorios to the Almighty was certainly unusual among British composers.
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The publicity for all three of these oratorios, leading up to their premieres in 1900, 1903, and 1906, respectively, included discussion in both the musical press and the English Catholic press.
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Elgar arranged for a public expression of belief to be published with Canon Charles Vincent Gorton's libretto interpretations of the last two oratorios; Gorton's interpretations were sold at performances.
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At the first performance of
The Apostles
Elgar presented the singers with postcard copies of Ivan Kramskoi's mystical painting
Christ in the Wilderness
(its subject looking realistically human and upset) and let it be known publicly that he composed
The Apostles
with a print of the painting in his study.
⁷⁸
He also allowed
Gerontius
to be used as a fund-raising piece for the building of the Catholic cathedral in Westminster on June 6, 1903.