Percy Dearmer Explained

Honorific Prefix:The Reverend Canon
Percy Dearmer
Birth Name:Percival Dearmer
Birth Date:27 February 1867
Birth Place:Kilburn, England
Death Place:Westminster, England
Module:
Child:yes
Religion:Christianity (Anglican)
Church:Church of England
Congregations:St Mary-the-Virgin, Primrose Hill
Module2:
Child:yes
Alma Mater:Christ Church, Oxford
Discipline:Art
Workplaces:King's College, London

Percival Dearmer (27 February 1867 – 29 May 1936) was an English Anglican priest and liturgist best known as the author of The Parson's Handbook, a liturgical manual for Anglican clergy, and as editor of The English Hymnal. A lifelong socialist, he was an early advocate of the public ministry of women (but not their ordination to the priesthood) and concerned with social justice. Dearmer, with Ralph Vaughan Williams and Martin Shaw, helped revive and spread traditional and medieval English musical forms. His ideas on patterns of worship have been linked to the Arts and Crafts Movement, while The English Hymnal reflects both folkloric scholarship and Christian Socialism. At his death, he was a canon of Westminster Abbey, where he ran a canteen for the unemployed.

Early life and ordination

Dearmer was born on 27 February 1867 in Kilburn, Middlesex, to an artistic family; his father, Thomas Dearmer, was an artist and drawing instructor. Dearmer attended Streatham School and Westminster School in the early 1880s, before going to a boarding school in Switzerland. From 1886 to 1889 he studied modern history at Christ Church, Oxford, receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1890. He was associated with Pusey House and acted as secretary to its principal, Charles Gore.

Dearmer was made a deacon in 1891 and ordained to the priesthood in 1892 at Rochester Cathedral. On 26 May that year, he married 19-year-old Mabel White (1872–1915), the daughter of Surgeon-Major William White, a writer (known as Mabel Dearmer) of novels and plays. She died of typhus in 1915 while they were both serving with an ambulance unit in Serbia during the First World War. They had two sons, both of whom served in the First World War. The elder, Geoffrey, lived to the age of 103, one of the oldest surviving war poets. The younger, Christopher, died in 1915 of wounds received in battle in the Dardanelles.

The Parson's Handbook and incumbent at St Mary's

Dearmer's liturgical leanings were the product of a late Victorian debate among advocates of Ritualism in the Church of England. Although theoretically in agreement about a return to more Catholic forms of worship, high-church clergy argued over whether these forms should be appropriated from post-Tridentine Roman Catholic practices or revived from the traditions of pre-Reformation "English Use" rites. Dearmer's views fell very much on the side of the latter.

Active in the burgeoning Alcuin Club, Dearmer became the spokesman for a movement with the publication of his most influential work, The Parson's Handbook. In this work his intention was to establish sound liturgical practices in the native English tradition which were also in full accord with the rites and rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer and the canons that governed its use, and therefore safe from attack by evangelicals who opposed such practices. Such adherence to the letter was considered necessary in an environment in which conservatives such as John Kensit had been leading demonstrations, interruptions of services and legal battles against practices of Ritualism and sacerdotalism, both of which they saw as "popery".

The Parson's Handbook is concerned with general principles of ritual and ceremonial, but the emphasis is squarely on the side of art and beauty in worship. Dearmer states in the introduction that his goal is to help in "remedying the lamentable confusion, lawlessness, and vulgarity which are conspicuous in the Church at this time". His ideas on the pattern and manner of worship have been linked to the influence of John Ruskin, William Morris and others in the Arts and Crafts movement.

In 1901, after serving four curacies, Dearmer was appointed the third vicar[1] of London church St Mary-the-Virgin, Primrose Hill, where he remained until 1915. He used the church as a sort of practical laboratory for the principles he had outlined, revising the book several times during his tenure.

In 1912, Dearmer was instrumental in founding the Warham Guild, a sort of practical expression of the concerns discussed in the Alcuin Club and reflected in The Parson's Handbook, to carry out "the making of all the 'Ornaments of the Church and of the Ministers thereof' according to the standard of the Ornaments Rubric, and under fair conditions of labour". It is an indication of the founders' outlook, emphasis and commitment to the English Use that it was named for the last Archbishop of Canterbury before the break with Rome. Dearmer served as lifelong head of the Warham Guild's advisory committee.

Hymnology

Working with the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams as musical editor, Dearmer published The English Hymnal in 1906. He again worked with Williams and Martin Shaw to produce Songs of Praise (1925) and the Oxford Book of Carols (1928). These hymnals have been credited with reintroducing many elements of traditional and medieval English music into the Church of England, as well as carrying that influence well beyond the church, and from a political point of view bearing the imprint of Christian Socialism.

In 1931 an enlarged edition of Songs of Praise was published, notable for the first publication of the hymn "Morning Has Broken", commissioned by Dearmer from noted children's author Eleanor Farjeon. The song, later popularised by Cat Stevens, was written by Farjeon to be sung with the traditional Gaelic tune "Bunessan". Songs of Praise also contained Dearmer's version of "A Great and Mighty Wonder" which mixed John Mason Neale's Greek translation and a translation of the German "Es ist ein Ros entsprungen" from which the music to the hymn had come in 1906.

Later years

Dearmer left St Mary's to serve as a chaplain to the British Red Cross ambulance unit in Serbia, where his wife died of typhus in 1915. he worked with YMCA in France and, with the Mission of Help in India. Dearmer married his second wife, Nancy Knowles, on 1916. They had two daughters and a son, Antony, who died in Royal Air Force service in 1943.

For fifteen years Dearmer served in no official ecclesiastical posts, preferring instead to focus on his writing, volunteerism and affecting social change.

Politically, Dearmer was an avowed socialist, serving as secretary of the Christian Social Union from 1891 to 1912. He underscored these values by including a "Litany of Labour" in his 1930 manual for communicants, The Sanctuary. After being appointed a canon of Westminster Abbey in 1931 he ran a canteen for the unemployed out of it.

Dearmer served as visiting professor at the Berkeley Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1918–1919, and then as the first professor of ecclesiastical art at King's College London from 1919 until his death. He died of coronary thrombosis on 29 May 1936, aged sixty-nine, at his residence in Westminster. His ashes were interred in the Great Cloister at Westminster Abbey on 3 June.

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Notes and References

  1. Web site: Church where hymns and carols were debuted celebrates 150 years. Galton. Bridgit. 13 January 2022. Newsquest Media Group Ltd. 15 March 2023.

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