There’s a story told of Richard Chartres, formerly bishop of London, arriving at theological college. The young men were given an icebreaker: what clergyman had most inspired their model of priesthood? One spoke of his grandfather, another of his college chaplain, and so forth. Then it was Chartres’s turn. “Archdeacon Grantly, in Barchester Towers,” he said. I hope this story is true. When I came up to the same theological college many years later, they were still asking that question, and I had trouble coming up with an acceptable answer. By opening the question to the ranks of the fictional, Chartres had made the conversation a whole lot wilder, more truthful and more fun.
Don Camillo, for instance, is a presence on the days when you’re feeling beleaguered and irascible, and need an extra reminder to go into the sanctuary to talk to Jesus. The young priest in Georges Bernanos’s Diary of a Country Priest has for years been someone I turn to in loneliness and failure—and for that one exhilarating motorbike ride. Adolphus Irwine, the rector of Broxton in Adam Bede, is another inspiration, especially for his domestic distractions and his honesty when he falls short. Who, after all, can measure up to Chaucer’s parson? When I ask around there are some surprises. Your vicar may be the one who looks to Sterne’s Parson Yorick, or to Doctor Syn, alias The Scarecrow with his long list of transferrable skills. Anthony Trollope’s clergy are everywhere still: one of my favourites is Mr Crawley, the painfully proud vicar of Hogglestock in Framley Parsonage.