Dearmer was born on 27 February 1867 inKilburn, Middlesex, to an artistic family; his father, Thomas Dearmer, was an artist and drawing instructor.[9] Dearmer attended Streatham School andWestminster School in the early 1880s, before going to a boarding school inSwitzerland.[9] From 1886 to 1889 he studied modern history atChrist Church, Oxford,[9] receiving hisBachelor of Arts degree in 1890. He was associated withPusey House and acted as secretary to its principal,Charles Gore.
Dearmer was made a deacon in 1891 and ordained to the priesthood in 1892[10] atRochester Cathedral. On 26 May that year, he married 19-year-oldMabel White (1872–1915), the daughter of Surgeon-Major William White, a writer (known as Mabel Dearmer) of novels and plays.[11] She died oftyphus[12] in 1915 while they were both serving with an ambulance unit in Serbia during theFirst World War. They had two sons, both of whom served in the First World War. The elder,Geoffrey, lived to the age of 103, one of the oldest surviving war poets. The younger, Christopher, died in 1915 of wounds received in battle in the Dardanelles.
Dearmer's liturgical leanings were the product of a late Victorian debate among advocates ofRitualism in the Church of England. Although theoretically in agreement about a return to more Catholic forms of worship,high-church clergy argued over whether these forms should be appropriated from post-Tridentine Roman Catholic practices or revived from the traditions of pre-Reformation "English Use" rites. Dearmer's views fell very much on the side of the latter.
Active in the burgeoningAlcuin Club,[9] Dearmer became the spokesman for a movement with the publication of his most influential work,The Parson's Handbook. In this work his intention was to establish sound liturgical practices in the native English tradition which were also in full accord with the rites and rubrics of theBook of Common Prayer and thecanons that governed its use, and therefore safe from attack by evangelicals who opposed such practices. Such adherence to the letter was considered necessary in an environment in which conservatives such asJohn Kensit had been leading demonstrations, interruptions of services and legal battles against practices of Ritualism and sacerdotalism, both of which they saw as "popery".
The Parson's Handbook is concerned with general principles of ritual and ceremonial, but the emphasis is squarely on the side of art and beauty in worship. Dearmer states in the introduction that his goal is to help in "remedying the lamentable confusion, lawlessness, and vulgarity which are conspicuous in the Church at this time".[13] His ideas on the pattern and manner of worship have been linked to the influence ofJohn Ruskin,William Morris and others in theArts and Crafts movement.
In 1901, after serving four curacies, Dearmer was appointed the third vicar[14] of London church St Mary-the-Virgin,Primrose Hill, where he remained until 1915.[10] He used the church as a sort of practical laboratory for the principles he had outlined, revising the book several times during his tenure.
In 1912, Dearmer was instrumental in founding theWarham Guild,[15] a sort of practical expression of the concerns discussed in the Alcuin Club and reflected inThe Parson's Handbook, to carry out "the making of all the 'Ornaments of the Church and of the Ministers thereof' according to the standard of the Ornaments Rubric, and under fair conditions of labour".[citation needed] It is an indication of the founders' outlook, emphasis and commitment to the English Use that it was named for the lastArchbishop of Canterbury before the break with Rome. Dearmer served as lifelong head of the Warham Guild's advisory committee.
Working with the composerRalph Vaughan Williams as musical editor, Dearmer publishedThe English Hymnal in 1906.[16] He again worked with Williams andMartin Shaw to produceSongs of Praise (1925) and theOxford Book of Carols (1928). These hymnals have been credited with reintroducing many elements of traditional and medieval English music into the Church of England, as well as carrying that influence well beyond the church, and from a political point of view bearing the imprint ofChristian Socialism.[7]
In 1931 an enlarged edition ofSongs of Praise was published,[17] notable for the first[18] publication of the hymn "Morning Has Broken",[17] commissioned by Dearmer from noted children's authorEleanor Farjeon. The song, later popularised byCat Stevens, was written by Farjeon to be sung with the traditional Gaelic tune "Bunessan".Songs of Praise also contained Dearmer's version of "A Great and Mighty Wonder" which mixedJohn Mason Neale's Greek translation and a translation of the German "Es ist ein Ros entsprungen" from which the music to the hymn had come in 1906.[19]
Dearmer left St Mary's to serve as a chaplain to theBritish Red Cross ambulance unit in Serbia, where his wife died oftyphus in 1915.[20]In 1916[citation needed] he worked withYMCA in France and,in 1916 and 1917,[citation needed] with the Mission of Help in India.[21] Dearmer married his second wife, Nancy Knowles, on19 August[citation needed] 1916.[22] They had two daughters and a son, Antony, who died inRoyal Air Force service in 1943.
For fifteen years Dearmer served in no official ecclesiastical posts, preferring instead to focus on his writing, volunteerism and effecting social change.[citation needed]
Politically, Dearmer was an avowed socialist, serving as secretary of theChristian Social Union from 1891 to 1912.[9] He underscored these values by including a "Litany of Labour"[23] in his 1930 manual for communicants,The Sanctuary.[citation needed] After being appointed acanon of Westminster Abbey in 1931[24] he ran a canteen for the unemployed out of it.[8]
Dearmer served as visiting professor at theBerkeley Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1918–1919,[25] and then as the first professor of ecclesiastical art atKing's College London[22] from 1919[26] until his death. He died ofcoronary thrombosis on 29 May 1936, aged sixty-nine, at his residence inWestminster.[9] His ashes were interred in the Great Cloister at Westminster Abbey on 3 June.[9]
Bates, J. Barrington (2004). "Extremely Beautiful, but Eminently Unsatisfactory: Percy Dearmer and the Healing Rites of the Church, 1909–1928".Anglican and Episcopal History.73 (2):196–207.ISSN0896-8039.JSTOR42612398.
Jones, Peter d'Alroy (1968).The Christian Socialist Revival, 1877–1914: Religion, Class, and Social Conscience in Late-Victorian England. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press (published 2016).ISBN978-1-4008-7697-6.JSTORj.ctt183pj8c.
Knight, Frances (2016).Victorian Christianity at the Fin de Siècle: The Culture of English Religion in a Decadent Age. London: I.B. Tauris.ISBN978-0-85772-789-3.
Watson, J. R. (2015). "The Bible and Hymnody". In Riches, John (ed.).The New Cambridge History of the Bible. Vol. 4. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 725–749.doi:10.1017/CHO9780511842870.043.ISBN978-0-521-85823-6.
Wilkinson, Alan (1996) [1978].The Church of England and the First World War (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Lutterworth Press (published 2014).ISBN978-0-7188-4165-2.
