MEMORIES OF DEAN FITCHETT

Evening Star, Issue 21744, 12 June 1934, Page 3

MEMORIES OF DEAN FITCHETT

AN OUTSTANDING PERSONALITY [Written by Tyro, for the 1 Evening Star.'] Tlie consecration o}‘ Archdeacon Fit.•iiett to the See of Dunedin, rendered ■ acaut by the resignation of Dr lichards. lias set many thinking, no lonbt. of that remarkable man. his other, the late Dean Fitchett. In the ourse of a sermon Dean Fitchett laid . down as a kind of axiom that it was •veil for a man of experience to be associated with a tyro in the preaching and ministration involved in the conduct of a parish. As one who enjoyed the inestimable privilege of being associated with the late dean the present writer would attempt,to rescue from the oblivion which so readily overtakes even the most commanding personality some few impressions of Alfred Robinson Fitchett. It is remarkable of the late dean that despite hhi splendid equipment he left so little behind him in the way of writing. I can think of few figures in the intellectual history of New Zealand that offer a more instant invitation to the biographer than the late dean. Had someone with the gifts of a Lytton Strachey encountered him the world might have been richer by a portrait which it would be a delight to read. One can only address oneself to the task of rendering the Dean as he appeared to one in the hope that the impression will be in some measure communicable.

The clean used to say that he came of Italian stock, though whether this statement was made in a mood of light irony—that mood which was so familiar to those who knew him—l cannot say. As a boy he went to sea. Seldom in his eermons did he make reference to those early seafaring days, but there was one analogy ho drew —and he was not given to picturesque analogy—which bore upon that period. He would recall that when two sailing vessels passed each other at sea it was the convention to hang a board over the bulwarks to indicate the ship’s bearing in either case, so that the encounternig masters of the two vessels could check their calculations. The analogy is obvious. Every man needs advice at certain seasons From his fellows,, however consecrated his purpose may he. The dean's range as a preacher was wide. He relied on what may be called the popular note. Dr Waddell, one of his most brilliant contemporaries, indulged in a more picturesque—one would not say florid style. 1 The Voyage of Life ' was the title affixed to a volume of addresses by Dr Waddell. The dean, so far as I know, published no volume of sermons. / On one occasion the Anglican clergy’ in and about Dunedin combined to de-> liver a series of addresses in Lent. These had a co-ordinating thread, and a movement : was started tocollect these addresses in a volume to be published by an Australian firm. The dean was the only preacher of the group who had not committed his address to paper, and he could not be induced to do so. and thus render the series complete. It may be that he had in mind the saw attributed to Solomon “ of the making of books there is no end.” . No man had a greater love of books. To hear the dean pronounce.the word “book” was to be made aware of what was almost a passion. Of his early education. I cannot write, but he took the, degree of master of arts in the University of New Zealand. One must suppose/ that he attended lectures at the Otago University, where later he was' to act as locum tenens for Professor Bale as. lecturer in classics. I cannot say whether his scholarship was deep. It was brilliant, and he was most apt to teach. The classes he conducted at Selwvn will be remembered by all who attended them. They were delivered for the most part in the library of the college, a room which, if it did not provide him with an ideal setting, had an air of scholarship about'it which was intensified by the rows of antique books that were stored there. /The treatment to which these books were subjected at one period must have been a source of discomfort •to the dean. He always met his class, however small, in the academic dress which one associates with the cloisters of the old universities in the Home Hand. He was, for the time being, the authentic don. His exegesis was lit by a ready humour, by what one might call a note of modernity, He was very ready with some reference to current events of the day which would throw light on some particular passage. Sometimes the man of nimble wit and the reverent scholar would almost seem to be at issue. One recalls his remark . when a somewhat labyrinthine passage in a book of the Greek Testament had at last been threaded, to the relief, no doubt, of his students. " That’s a long rigmarole. isn’t it?” Then he would recall himself to the nature of the test upon which the class was .'engaged, and he would add: “‘I shouldn't havft said that. What I meant was that it was very involved.”

His somewhat quizzical manner may have earned him some chance resentments. He had a keen eye for the foibles of his fellow men and women. One would sometimes be startled into a smile, or something more than a smile, by his succinct appraisal of some person or position’in the course of the conclave with his staff which preceded the round of afternoon visiting. It is probable that he regarded himself as lacking in what may be called the visitorial flair. He bad not the gift for remembering names and faces which some priests and statesmen possess. Sensitive persons were sometimes rendered more sensitive by his uncompromising inquiry. “ Who are you ?”■ It is not repeated of him. however, as it was of Sir Herbert Beerbobm Tree, that this waywardness of memory was ever assumed for purposes of effect. The dean could, on occasion, quote Talleyrand, but I for one cannot recall that despite his brilliant and analytical mind he was ever intentionally cruel. No doubt he could administer a snub; no man was better equipped for the uncongenial task. In the heat of a debate I have heard him lose both bis temper and His wonted instinct for the apt word. Those occasions were rare, and one recalls them, lest this little sketch should seem too fulsome.

At the back of the dean there was always that mysterious quality, so difficult to define. It rendered him more memorable than his scholarship, of which, after all, a tyro is not entitled to write. Perhaps one can best indicate this quality by recalling _ how one instinctively looked for his pronouncement upon any matter. One might find oneself in agreement or otherwise, but what the dean thought or said concerning any matter was of moment. One might at times be shocked by what appeared to be almost flippancy, and then one would realise that one had been needlessly solemn. The dean spent himself as a preacher, and it seems a pity that the essence of his preaching could not have been preserved in some way. As, a younger man be committed all 1 1 is sermons to paper, but in the amplitude pf his power

he seems to have required no aid to memory at all. He drew very largely Upon the Pauline Epistles. For my own part I have never heard that subtle mind interpreted with such insight and erudition, but then my experience has not been large. When he was engaged upon a series of addresses that were complementary or directed towards one conclusion, the effect on the mind of the listener, to rate the effect no higher, was exhilarating. No preacher was less given to the frontal attack. This may have been an indication that the dean was not primarily a fisher of men. What he projected was an ideal founded on the intellect rather than a call to flee from the wrath to come. He was not, as 1 recall him, a mission preacher. There may be some who will remember hiA well-nigh flawless treatment in the retrospect, of the theme left him as a heritage by a powerful mission preacher who had conducted a campaign in the parish extending over a fortnight. It was a time of great stress, when human nature had appeared at its crudest. The parish waited for the dean’s pronouncement, and the dean did not fail his parish. One recalls the dean’s advocacy of Tennyson in the light of the campaign of detraction which manifested itself, perhaps a little before Rupert Brooke wrote in ‘ The Old Vicarage, Grantchester ’

Tennyson notes with studious eye How Cambridge waters hurry by. One recalls one’s tentative alliance with the clever modernists. It is not at all improbable that one thought of the dean’s infatuation as yet one more of his endearing traits. In the light of this later day it appears that the dean had taken the measure of the modernist more accurately than vve supposed. His attitude was not unsympatheticj but he continued to be Tennyson-minded. This is a fact to be remarked, for of the dean it could not be said that he allowed anything or anybody to bemuse him, “ Mon, they don’t make ’em . so smart these days,” was the comment of an assistant curate the dean once imported from Glasgow, a daring enterprise carried out, one must suppose, on the “ tyro ” theory, Tennyson, as rendered and interpreted by the dean both in the pulpit and in the week-night class, brought to many, 1 think, a sense of. colour transcending the neutral tints of a work-a-day world. The dean brought his reading, his travel, his inherited _ opulence of mind to the task of exposition. Here was an aspect, of the dean that differed from that with which the student of Greek or Latin was familiar. His audience was not in search of specialised knowledge, but of entertainment, and the dean knew how to impart both. Man’s nature is manifold, and there were many facets—or so it seemed—to the dean. In church one recalls the surpliced figure with the red hood that would work its way down by one shoulder, the speaking’voice of a tenor timbre, the sense of decorum—one might almost say of decor—that went ' with him. One recalls the dean, in the schoolroom. ’Here there are manifestations in the retrospect that are almost gnome-like. Be it a concert or a vestry meeting, the dean presides with that remote suggestion of his Italian ancestry about him. He is a Florentine noble strayed from some medieval setting into a world that ' Punch ’ delights to limn in black and white. There is no one worthy to receive the point of his repartee, and so it sometimes seems he directs that quizzical smile upon his own self. * There is the dean in time of trouble, humbly aware of his own inadequacy. There is the dean in’his study, and that other dean in the little room upstairs where he puts off the pastor and puts on the journalist. H is there, perhaps, that he is most attractive, because then be is the least accessible, be envy him that Elysium of the Wits. There we feel he takes his rightful place, whereas ‘we would instinctively run amoK. The dean's evolution from the Wesleyan preacher to the upholder of the Anglican tradition is something of which one cannot write from a restricted point of view. To most of us he appeared as if he, had come straight from one of the more liberal English seminaries. It would be superficial to declare that he acquired the English university manner. It would also be impertinent to speculate as to what he foresaw of what he desired for the future of his parish and of the Cathedral over whose Chapter he presided. What one can set down as one's own impression is that he presented in his own person ii certain ideal. It was the ideal of the liberal churchman. 1 have not the ability or the inclination, however, to appraise the dean’s churchmanship. 1 All that is attempted in tins little sketch is a pen portrait- of the man who dominated one’s .thoughts so often from earliest childhood. Never has help and encouragement been more generously given than it was to the writer of’these notes by the subject of them. A pastorate is not to be judged altogether by the individual failures in the flock. It is good to recall the liie of a pastor or that aspect of it that came within one’s purview, which is so rich in gracious incident.