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Updated: June 27, 2025
"He is a local man. He is a professional musician at Kennetbridge between here and Christminster. The vicar knows him. He was brought up and educated in Christminster traditions, which accounts for the quality of the piece. I think he plays in the large church there, and has a surpliced choir. He comes to Melchester sometimes, and once tried to get the cathedral organ when the post was vacant.
The afternoon service was going on, and even to tired limbs and an empty stomach it was restful and soothing to hear the sweet voices of the surpliced choristers, and the grand deep tones of the organ, echoing through the fretted roof, and rolling round the long pillared aisles. There were not ten people there besides myself, the clergy and the choir forming the bulk of the assembly.
In a short time, Father Con was surpliced and robed; Andy Lalor, whose face was charged with commensurate importance during the ceremony, sarved Mass, and answered the priest stoutly in Latin although he had not the advantage of understanding that sacerdotal language.
On the spectator's right march the surpliced men and boys of the Choir. Behind them is Jasper, black whiskers and all; he stares after Edwin and Rosa; his right hand hides his mouth. In the corner above him is an allegorical female, clasping a stiletto. Beneath Edwin and Rosa is, first, an allegorical female figure, looking at a placard, headed "LOST," on a door.
The Abbess, accompanied by her entire community, came to welcome us at the main gate, and her surpliced chaplains offered me holy water. After rest and refreshment, we made a detailed survey of her little empire, and everywhere observed traces of her good management and tact.
This gallery cuts into the triforium on its north side, and contains niches in which are sculptured angels with musical instruments. Until the middle of the last century it was customary for the surpliced choir to sing the Gloria in Excelsis from the gallery on Christmas Eve. The Gothic arches of the nave, large and beautiful, rest upon massive clustered piers of Purbeck marble.
Faith on the right, the choir beyond the open space before the sanctuary was a mass of white figures, scarved and surpliced; the high organ gallery, beneath which the screen had been removed, was crowded with them, and, far down beneath, the dim nave stretched the same endless pale living pavement to the shadow beneath the west window.
The members of the choir sit in collateral rows in the chancel; they are all surpliced; all very virtuous and clerical in look; seldom put their hands into their pockets whilst singing; and, whatever quantity of "linen" may be got out by them they invariably endeavour to obviate violence of expression. Their appearance reminds one of cathedral choristers.
Wooden benches were placed in line to form an aisle and a number of women and children knelt at the benches, each holding a large unlighted candle. A cardinal in a red robe came down the aisle, accompanied by a surpliced acolyte bearing a cup of oil.
The statue of Saint Agnes had reached the apse, still borne by the surpliced clerks, and her face looked very calm under the light, as if she were more than happy to return to her dreams of four centuries.
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