All things bright and beautiful

This celebrated hymn has maintained its popularity through a century and a half of criticism, by the virtues of cheerfulness, clarity, simplicity and visual imagery. It was intended to illustrate the Apostles’ Creed for children (this text corresponding to the clause ‘Maker of heaven and earth’) and appearing in Hymns for Little Children in 1848, some 2 years before its author and compiler C Frances Humphreys became Mrs Alexander. But its use has regularly spilled over from school and Sunday school to weddings, funerals, harvest and Mothering Sunday, among other occasions when well-known and joyful hymns are needed. S T Coleridge’s ‘Ancient Mariner’ (1798) has the lines, ‘He prayeth best, who loveth best/ all things both great and small;/ for the dear God who loveth us, he made and loveth all’.

Bearing in mind its original purpose, Poet Laureate John Betjeman said (in a radio broadcast recalled by David Winter), ‘Could you imagine better words than “bright and beautiful��? or “wise and wonderful��? to capture a child’s delight in birds and animals?’ It appropriately opened Hymns and Songs in the extraordinarily popular ‘Ladybird’ series of children’s books, this one from 1979. The original 7 stzs include the opening 4 lines which later became its repeated refrain; the 4 other stzs included here are virtually unchanged. As in other hymnals, the omitted lines are (sadly) ‘The tall trees in the greenwood’, since daily rushgathering seems on the decline; and (inevitably) ‘The rich man in his castle’. This latter was intended to humble the wealthy; so many critics, loving to quote it but possibly unwilling to be so humbled, choose to interpret it as bullying the poor, that its usefulness has come to an end (but see Prov 22:2!).
Not so the hymn itself, where even ‘the Lord God made them all’ is a defiant claim in a culture where many imagine themselves the products of chance, fate, multiple deities, or their own cleverness. While Genesis 1 is the obvious source, we can also notice the relevance of Ecclesiastes 3:11, John 1:3 and Mark 7:37. Philip Skelton used the line ‘Ye creatures great and small’ in a Psalm-like text from 1784. Like many ‘creation’ hymns and Psalms, this one should not be blamed for failing to answer questions it does not attempt to address.

By the late 20th c, the folk-tune ROYAL OAK seemed to have lost its temporary supremacy over ALL THINGS BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL by William H Monk. The latter tune appeared in the 1887 edition of The Home Hymn Book and determined the familiar form of the text (with refrain) by its choice for A&M in 1889. The words have also prompted other music such as John Rutter’s brilliant late-20th-c choral setting; for David Winter (unconnected with the Betjeman episode) text and tune together ‘had a kind of cleansing effect; they radiated normality, simplicity and gratitude’.

b Eccles St, Dublin 1818; d Derry (Londonderry), N Ireland 1895. Born C F Humphreys, given 2 family names (the first given in some reference books as ‘Cecilia’, an understandable error) but always known as Fanny, she showed promise as a writer of verse (stories, amusements, devotions) from her early years. These could be sacred, sentimental, or witty; though never musical, she had a keen sense of sound and rhythm combined with a love of nature and the desire to be a good Anglican. In 1825 the family moved to Redcross, Co Wicklow (the date and place sometimes given for her birth), a ‘lost paradise’ and at that time a private riverside full of wildlife, and in 1833 to the more Protestant neighbourhood of Strabane, in Co Tyrone just south of Londonderry. Deaths in the family, and of 3 teenage sisters who were her friends, left a permanent shadow but also deepened her Christian faith and understanding. Pursuing her studies at home, she developed a good memory and became a fluent French speaker and keen reader. Through the sober godliness of her family and the upper-class company they kept, she ‘cherished into maturity an unshakeable faith in the natural goodness of the nobility’—V Wallace. Yet she also witnessed desperate poverty at first hand, while moving confidently among local and visiting clergy, who took her abilities and conversation seriously and without condescension. She remained most at home with small children and animals, notably dogs; and with her younger sister Anne (Annie) began a lifelong concern for deaf children and those with similar difficulties. Many of her royalties helped to support their care and education. Her frequent travels took her to Scotland and England as well as throughout Ireland.

As for her writing, Verses for Holy Seasons was published in 1846, followed by several other collections including Moral Songs (consciously echoing Watts?) and in 1848 Hymns for Little Children which ran to over 100 editions. By this book she was known; thus Walsham How, listing in a letter of 1869 his fellow guests at the home of the Bp of Oxford, includes ‘the Bishop of Derry with Mrs Alexander (“Hymns for Little Children
204, 372, 437, 842, 857.