A Parish Factotum

Here lives ******* *****, a maker of rhymes
On births, and on marriages, burials and times,
Teaches reading and writing, to whistle and draw
And arithmetic too – has a smattering of law;
A dealer in paper, in, wafers and wax,
A writer on signboards, carts, waggons, and sacks;
A measurer of land – can plan and take view;
Takes in periodicals – also the news;
Societies’ agent, their scribe and cashier,
Their monthly reporter – of some once a year;
An inscriber of tombs – yes, and plays on the flute,
A grower of cucumbers, ditto of fruit,
A vendor of pencils, a dealer in quills;
Sometimes arbitrator – a maker of wills;
Hence lawyers dislike him, and say he is queer;
Assessor is also – likewise overseer;
A constable’s deputy oft, and surveyor,
The clerk of the vestry, and general payer,
Collector of poor-rates and all the king’s taxes,
He many a taker and payer perplexes.
The dead and the living, rich, poor, old and young,
Claim part of his labours by pen or by tongue.
By some deemed a wise man, by some called a fool,
He is everyone’s hobby – but nobody’s tool;
Yet with all his professions, ‘tis very well known,
Other men’s cash he handles, but none of his own!

A truly rural Pooh Bah of a man, highly articulate despite his humble origins. But he might have added that he had one great fear: that of being forgotten. He need not have worried, even about the parish of Chiddingly which, he felt, had never fully accepted him because he had not been born in it. Chiddingly remembers him well, even today. We went there while we were researching this book and by chance met the vicar outside the parish church.

“Ah, Dickie Lower!” he exclaimed in answer to our query. “You should see Mr. Lane, the parish clerk, about him!” Richard Lower may have been dead already one hundred and forty years, but the vicar spoke of him as though he were still living, a respected but perhaps slightly eccentric parishioner, just around the corner. He had, of course, been Mr. Lane’s predecessor for some forty years.

Mr. Lane and his family were most kind and helpful when we met them. They told us much about Dickie Lower, and about Mark Antony, the son he raised and educated to become one of the most respected and widely quoted of all Sussex historians. They told us too of one old lady who could still remember reciting his poems at school.