Surplice requirements

Recently I heard one fashionable young clergyman say to another that a faded shirt is the sign of a faded soul. I hope that’s not true, because if it is, things don’t look good for me. Most of my clerical shirts need a spin with the Dylon Velvet Black, and a number of them need their collars turned. They’ll see me

out, though, with judicious visible mending. Which is to say that I’m done with clerical outfitting.

But oh, what fun it was while it lasted! And how amusing it is to see, admire and tut over the habits of the generations that came before me, as well as the newly ordained ones I’ve run into over the past few weeks.

“I was an Evangelical at Cranmer Hall,” my friend, the prebendary of St Pancras, told me, “so of course I went to J&M and got their cheapest cassock, and a surplice, and a black preaching scarf.” “What was the cassock made of?” “Some indeterminate black fabric. Synthetic.”

“Could you wash it?”

“Oh, that would have saved a bit of money! Now I send all the Evangelicals to be outfitted at Watts. I tell them there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be as smartly turned out as the Catholics.”

“The Anglo-Catholic boys are going on holiday to Rome to order from Gammarelli’s these days.”

“I know. Especially the ones from London and Chichester.”

“But who made your cope, that you wear in St Paul’s?”

“That came out of a wardrobe: they had a very short one.”

“I had to get a very short cope too. I spotted it at a second-hand vestment dealer’s—luckily it was affordable. Now I lend it out whenever there’s a small priest in need of one.”

My beloved training incumbent, Owain Bell, is liberal and Broad Church. He wears a double-breasted cassock that buttons at the neck and at the waist and is held closed by a black leather belt. He was outfitted at Wippell’s of Exeter.

I was ordained 15 or so years after the prebendary of St Pancras and 30 years after Owain. I’ve got two cassocks, one for winter and one for summer, with 39 buttons down the front of each. No cheating with a zip or Velcro. I got them from J&M, who were very obliging about allowing me lots of pleats in the skirt.

I also have an alb—the long, white garment I wear over the cassock when I say mass. It requires a sort of linen antimacassar called an amice, which folds around my neck and shoulders and ties with long white tapes. It also requires a girdle, a long white rope to go around my waist. It would be simpler to wear an oatmeal-coloured all-in-one cassock-alb, but I’ve never done so: the sin of vanity is strong in me.

There’s the surplice, which is the basic Anglican vestment (the cassock is medieval streetwear, much as my clerical shirt and jeans are now), and a square-necked pleated cotta, for when I’m invited somewhere extremely High Church. My offspring, when young, referred to them respectively as “the nightgown, the angel and the village idiot.” And I have a black melton funeral cloak, and that very short cope which an unkind senior colleague used to refer to as “Alice’s Pocahontas costume.” That’s all before we get to the subject of the actual priestly vestment: the stole.

I’m delighted and chastened, though, to recall the events of a couple of weeks ago, when I went over to Oxford to have lunch with my friend Jim Keenan, who was delivering the D’Arcy Lectures at Campion Hall. “How will you know him?” someone asked. “He’ll be dressed like a Jesuit,” I said. Sure enough, I saw Jim when he was still far off, walking rapidly towards me, dressed in casual slacks, a long-sleeved t-shirt, a baseball cap and trainers. ♦

They’ll see me out with judicious visible mending. Which is to say that I’m done with clerical outfitting