The church mouse is one of the most charming and lovable of all John Betjeman's characters. She has a simple but shrewd outlook on life, living humbly in a forgotten junk cupboard, and getting little to eat except once a year at Harvest Festival. But how unfair it is, she thinks, that rats and mice from all around, who are never seen near the church the rest of the year, should come at Harvest Festival and greedily eat the food they have no right to. Some, she knows, have no religion at all, and some are quite different religions, yet that does not stop them coming to steal the Church of England's festive food.
The little mouse is quite sure that human beings wouldn't behave so badly. Yet on second thoughts, perhaps she's wrong? For who are all those people who fill the church on Harvest Festival Sunday whom she's never seen before? Are humans as bad as the animals and come to church only on the big festivals, but not on all the other Sundays of the year?
Diary Of A Church Mouse
**************************
Here among long-discarded cassocks,
Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,
Here where the vicar never looks
I nibble through old service books.
Lean and alone I spend my days
Behind this Church of England baize.
I share my dark forgotten room
With two oil-lamps and half a broom
The cleaner never bothers me,
So here I eat my frugal tea.
My bread is sawdust mixed with straw;
My jam is polish for the floor.
Christmas and Easter may be feasts
For congregation and for priests,
And so may Whitsun. All the same,
They do not fill my meagre frame.
For me the only feast at all
Is Autumn's Harvest Festival,
When I can satisfy my want
With ears of corn around the font.
I climb the eagle's brazen head
To burrow through a loaf of bread.
I scramble up the pulpit stair
And gnaw the marrows hanging there.
It is enjoyable to taste
These items ere they go to waste,
But how annoying when one finds
That other mice with pagan minds
Come into church my food to share
Who have no proper business there.
Two field mice who have no desire
To be baptized, invade the choir.
A large and most unfriendly rat
Comes in to see what we are at.
He says he thinks there is no God
And yet he comes ..... it's rather odd.
This year he stole a sheaf of wheat
(It screened our special preachers seat),
And prosperous mice from fields away
Came in to hear the organ play,
And under cover of its notes
Ate through the altar's sheaf of oats.
A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I
Am too papistical, and High,
Yet somehow doesn't think it wrong
To munch through Harvest Evensong,
While I, who starve the whole year through,
Must share my food with rodents who
Except at this time of year
Not once inside the church appear.
Within the human world I know
Such goings-on could not be so,
For human beings only do
What their religion tells them to.
They read the Bible everyday
And always night and morning pray,
And just like me, the good church mouse,
Worship each week in God's own house.
But all the same it's strange to me
How very full the church can be
With people I don't see at all
Except for Harvest Festival.
**************************
John Betjeman
A Ring Of Bells
