A Resting Place for Sorrow

I've been re-reading Tess of the D"Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, and have been much convicted by one particular episode. Hardy was no friend of the church; his works are known for their anti-Christian themes. But he hits a nerve in his representation of an encounter between young Tess and her parish priest.

Tess has been raped, and the child she subsequently bears marks her out as a fallen woman. She receives only condemnation from her father, and is ignored by the church which, previously, she had attended faithfully. Fearing, with good cause, for the life of her ailing son, Tess sends for the Vicar, but he is turned away by her father. In desperation she is forced to baptize her child herself (which, incidentally, is perfectly legal in Reformed circles, in extremis). This she does, mimicking the liturgy she had heard in worship. Hardy's treatment of the scene is touching and sympathetic. He does not really approve of the superstition, one feels, but he admires the simple devotion of a mother.

The child dies and Tess makes arrangements to meet the Vicar. She tells him what she has done, and asks for his approval. Eventually, he gives it, acknowledging no difference in the ordinance that she had given from any rite that he would have performed. Hardy is scathing in his depiction of a man who is trying to do his best. Noting Tess's dignity, and the tenderness of her voice, the cleric speaks to her out of nobler impulses "or rather, those that he had left in him after ten years of endeavour to graft technical belief on actual scepticism. The man and the ecclesiastic fought within him, and the victory fell to the man."

But then Tess moves on to another question. Will he allow the child to be buried in consecrated ground? The Parson begins to waver, concerned, presumably, that his parishoners will find out about the irregular baptism, and that word might get back to the Bishop. Though Tess presses him, he continues to make excuses. Finally, she exclaims "Don't for God's sake speak as saint to sinner, but as you yourself to me myself - poor me!" But he will not.

And so baby "Sorrow" is buried, clandestinely, in a corner of the churchyard reserved for the ungodly, at the cost of a shilling for the sexton. The Parson had struggled to reconcile ecclesiastical law, as he understood it, with the compassion he felt for a young girl and her dead child. But he chose to answer her as a saint might answer a sinner, and in this he failed.


There is a place for Law. We would be in a sorry state without it. But there is also a place for Love. Would that those of us who spend our days with our collars turned (figuratively, or not), might never forget.