That terrible vestry meeting
i.m. Robert Jackson (1840-1914)
1. Before the meeting
(to Robert Jackson's tune for 'A lift on the way' by Edwin Waugh)
For leading the Oldham choir his portrait in oils
is in the town gallery, displayed on the walls;
his other choir, St Peter's, his father and he
successively will have served a Jackson century.
A Jackson century!
A Jackson century!
When Tom and Bob will have played a Jackson century!
For hymns he created new tunes by the score;
one pamphlet has fifty, another boasts of more,
named after midland towns, and southern on sea --
the high points in the Jackson century.
A Jackson century!
A Jackson century!
When Tom and Bob will have played a Jackson century!
His songs in the dialect of his Lancashire,
by Lancashire Burns, Edwin Waugh, do you hear?
'A lift on the way' is praised cheerily:
a touch of earth in the Jackson century.
A Jackson century!
A Jackson century!
When Tom and Bob will have played a Jackson century!
2. The meeting
The congregation's thanks
to the choir for services,
proposed by Mr Green,
told of lack of unity;
the seconding also
looked back to the glory days,
recalled the choir's old fame
Oldham-wide, Lancashire-wide,
the days when people came
drawn by music to the church.
Then Mrs Martland told
how, an old attender, she
had noted worsening,
hymns as slow as funerals,
the awful music why
no one in her family
would come to church with her.
Motion carried in the end.
Reporters please ignore --
it's a parish matter.
SPLASH!
The Oldham standard filled
columns with the vestry row.
3. After the meeting
Who knows how Robert Jackson spent the night?
Widowed two years, so I suppose alone.
Late equinoctial was the dawn's first light.
Who reflected on what they'd said and done?
By end May he'd resigned as organist.
The choir resigned in solidarity.
Press reports from the next year still exist:
functions were lost then back, apparently,
then stroke, speech lost, paralysed legs and side.
No hymns, no songs, no oratorio.
On Sunday the twelfth of July he died,
a broken no-man, nothing left to know.
His great age, some said. Really? Seventy-four?
Apologies won't cover words that killed.
Twenty-three days before the First World War.
The Jackson century seven years unfilled.
Thanks to Gallery Oldham and Oldham Local Studies and Archives for letting me see relevant materials.
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