LIFE AT LEWES
Under the direction of the junior-master who overlooked the young monks
for some years after their profession, Chris continued his work of
illumination, for which he had shown great aptitude during his year of
noviceship.
The art was beginning to disappear, since the introduction of printing
had superseded the need of manuscript, but in some Religious Houses it
was still thought a suitable exercise during the hours appointed for
manual labour.
It was soon after the beginning of the new year that Chris was entrusted
with a printed antiphonary that had its borders and initials left white;
and he carried the great loose sheets with a great deal of pride to the
little carrel or wooden stall assigned to him in the northern cloister.
It was a tiny room, scarcely six feet square, lighted by the window into
the cloister-garth, and was almost entirely filled by the chair, the
sloping desk against the wall, and the table where the pigments and
brushes lay ready to the hand. The door opened on to the cloister itself
where the professed monks were at liberty to walk, and on the opposite
side stood the broad aumbries that held the library of the house; and it
was from the books here that Chris was allowed to draw ideas for his
designs. It was a great step in that life of minute details when now for
the first time he was permitted to follow his own views, instead of
merely filling in with colour outlines already drawn for him; and he
found his scheme for the decoration a serious temptation to distraction
during the office. As he stood among the professed monks, in his own
stall at last, he found his eyes wandering away to the capitals of the
round pillars, the stone foliage and fruit that burst out of the slender
shafts, the grim heads that strained forward in mitre and crown
overhead, and even the living faces of his brethren and superiors, clear
against the dark woodwork. When he bent his eyes resolutely on his book
he found his mind still intent on his more secular business; he mentally
corrected this awkward curve of the initial, substituted an oak spray
with acorns for that stiff monstrosity, and set my Lord Prior’s face
grinning among griffins at the foot of the page where humour was more
readily admitted.
It was an immense joy when he closed his carrel-door, after his hour’s
siesta in the dormitory, and sat down to his work. He was still warm
with sleep, and the piercing cold of the unwarmed cloister did not
affect him, but he set his feet on the sloping wooden footstool that
rested on the straw for fear they should get cold, and turned smiling to
his side-table.
There were all the precious things laid out; the crow’s quills sharpened
to an almost invisible point for the finer lines, the two sets of
pencils, one of silver-point that left a faint grey line, and the other
of haematite for the burnishing of the gold, the badger and minever
brushes, the sponge and pumice-stone for erasures; the horns for black
and red ink lay with the scissors and rulers on the little upper shelf
of his desk. There were the pigments also there, which he had learnt to
grind and prepare, the crushed lapis lazuli first calcined by heat
according to the modern degenerate practice, with the cheap German blue
beside it, and the indigo beyond; the prasinum; the vermilion and red
lead ready mixed, and the rubrica beside it; the yellow orpiment, and,
most important of all, the white pigments, powdered chalk and egg
shells, lying by the biacca. In a separate compartment covered carefully
from chance draughts or dust lay the precious gold leaf, and a little
vessel of the inferior fluid gold used for narrow lines.
* * * * *
His first business was to rule the thick red lines down the side of the
text, using a special metal pen for it; and then to begin to sketch in
his initials and decorations. For this latter part of the work he had
decided to follow the lines of Foucquet from a Book of the Hours that he
had taken out of its aumbry; a mass of delicate foliage and leaves, with
medallions set in it united by twisted thorn-branches twining upwards
through the broad border. These medallions on the first sheet he
purposed to fill with miniatures of the famous relics kept at Lewes, the
hanging sleeve of the Blessed Virgin in its crystal case, the
drinking-cup of Cana, the rod of Moses, and the Magdalene’s box of
ointment. In the later pages which would be less elaborate he would
introduce the other relics, and allow his humour free play in designing
for the scrolls at the foot tiny portraits of his brethren; the Prior
should be in a mitre and have the legs and tail of a lion, the
novice-master, with a fox’s brush emerging from his flying cowl, should
be running from a hound who carried a discipline in his near paw. But
there was time yet to think of these things; it would be weeks before
that page could be reached, and meanwhile there was the foliage to be
done, and the rose leaf that lay on his desk to be copied minutely from
a hundred angles.
* * * * *
His distractions at mass and office were worse than ever now that the
great work was begun, and week after week in confession there was the
same tale. The mere process was so absorbing, apart from the joy of
creation and design. More than once he woke from a sweating nightmare in
the long dormitory, believing that he had laid on gold-leaf without
first painting the surface with the necessary mordant, or had run his
stilus through his most delicate miniature. But he made extraordinary
progress in the art; and the Prior more than once stepped into his
carrel and looked over his shoulder, watching the slender fingers with
the bone pen between them polishing the gold till it shone like a
mirror, or the steady lead pencil moving over the white page in
faultless curve. Then he would pat him on the shoulder, and go out in
approving silence.
* * * * *
Chris was supremely content that he had done right in asking for
profession. It appeared to him that he had found a life that was above
all others worthy of an immortal soul. The whole day’s routine was
directed to one end, the performance of the _Opus Dei_, the uttering of
praises to Him who had made and was sustaining and would receive again
all things to Himself.
They rose at midnight for the night-office that the sleeping world might
not be wholly dumb to God; went to rest again; rose once more with the
world, and set about a yet sublimer worship. A stream of sacrifice
poured up to the Throne through the mellow summer morning, or the cold
winter darkness and gloom, from altar after altar in the great church.
Christopher remembered pleasantly a morning soon after the beginning of
his novitiate when he had been in the church as a set of priests came in
and began mass simultaneously; the mystical fancy suggested itself as
the hum of voices began that he was in a garden, warm and bright with
grace, and that bees were about him making honey--that fragrant
sweetness of which it had been said long ago that God should eat--and as
the tinkle of the Elevation sounded out here and there, it seemed to him
as a signal that the mysterious confection was done, and that every
altar sprang into perfume from those silver vessels set with jewel and
crystal.
When the first masses were over, there was a pause in which the _mixtum_
was taken--bread and wine or beer--standing in the refectory, after a
short prayer that the Giver of all good gifts might bless the food and
drink of His servants, and was closed again by another prayer said
privately for all benefactors. Meanwhile the bell was ringing for the
Lady mass, to remind the monks that the interval was only as it were a
parenthetical concession; and after Terce and the Lady Mass followed the
Chapter, in which faults were confessed and penances inflicted, and the
living instruments of God’s work were examined and scoured for use. The
martyrology was read at this time, as well as some morning prayers, to
keep before the monks’ minds the remembrance of those great vessels of
God’s household called to so high an employment. It was then, too, that
other business of the house was done, and the seal affixed to any
necessary documents. Christopher had an opportunity once of examining
this seal when it had been given him to clean, and he looked with awe on
the figures of his four new patrons, St. Peter, St. Pancras, St. Paul
and Our Lady, set in niches above a cliff with the running water of the
Ouse beneath, and read the petition that ran round the circle--
“_Dulcis agonista tibi convertit domus ista Pancrati memorum precibus
memor esto tuorum._”
When the chapter was over, and the deaths of any brethren of the order
had been announced, and their souls prayed for, there was a pause for
recreation in the cloister and the finishing of further business before
they assembled again in time to go into church for the high mass, at
which the work and prayers of the day were gathered up and consecrated
in a supreme offering. Even the dinner that followed was a religious
ceremony; it began by a salutation of the Christ in glory that was on
the wall over the Prior’s table, and then a long grace was sung before
they took their seats. The reader in the stone-pulpit on the south wall
of the refectory began his business on the sounding of a bell; and at a
second stroke there was a hum and clash of dishes from the kitchen end,
and the aproned servers entered in line bearing the dishes. Immediately
the meal was begun the drink destined for the poor at the gate was set
aside, and a little later a representative of them was brought into the
refectory to receive his portion; at the close again what was left over
was collected for charity; while the community after singing part of the
grace after meat went to finish it in the church.
Chris learned to love the quiet religious graciousness of the refectory.
The taking of food here was a consecrated action; it seemed a
sacramental thing. He loved the restraint and preciseness of it, ensured
by the solemn crucifix over the door with its pathetic inscription
“SITIO,” the polished oak tables, solid and narrow, the shining pewter
dishes, the folded napkins, the cleanly-served plentiful food, to each
man his portion, the indescribable dignity of the prior’s little table,
the bowing of the servers before it, the mellow grace ringing out in its
monotone that broke into minor thirds and octaves of melody, like a
grave line of woodwork on the panelling bursting into a stiff leaf or
two at its ends. There was a strange and wonderful romance it about on
early autumn evenings as the light died out behind the stained windows
and the reader’s face glowed homely and strong between his two candles
on the pulpit. And surely these tales of saints, the extract from the
Rule, these portions of Scripture sung with long pauses and on a
monotone for fear that the reader’s personality should obscure the
message of what he read--surely this was a better accompaniment to the
taking of food, in itself so gross a thing, than the feverish chatter of
a secular hall and the bustling and officiousness of paid servants.
After a general washing of hands the monks dispersed to their work, and
the novices to bowls or other games; the Prior first distributing the
garden instruments, and then beginning the labour with a commendation of
it to God; and after finishing the manual work and a short time of
study, they re-assembled in the cloister to go to Vespers. This, like
the high mass, was performed with the ceremonial proper to the day, and
was followed by supper, at which the same kind of ceremonies were
observed as at dinner. When this was over, after a further short
interval the evening reading or Collation took place in the
chapter-house, after which the monks were at liberty to go and warm
themselves at the one great fire kept up for the purpose in the
calefactory; and then compline was sung, followed by Our Lady’s Anthem.
This for Chris was one of the climaxes of the day’s emotions. He was
always tired out by now with the day’s work, and longing for bed, and
this approach to the great Mother of Monks soothed and quieted him. It
was sung in almost complete darkness, except for a light or two in the
long nave where a dark figure or two would be kneeling, and the pleasant
familiar melody, accompanied softly by the organ overhead after the bare
singing of Compline, seemed like a kind of good-night kiss. The
infinite pathos of the words never failed to touch him, the cry of the
banished children of Eve, weeping and mourning in this vale of tears to
Mary whose obedience had restored what Eve’s self-will had ruined, and
the last threefold sob of endearment to the “kindly, loving, sweet,
Virgin Mary.” After the high agonisings and aspirations of the day’s
prayer, the awfulness of the holy Sacrifice, the tramping monotony of
the Psalter, the sting of the discipline, the aches and sweats of the
manual labour, the intent strain of the illuminating, this song to Mary
was a running into Mother’s arms and finding compensation there for all
toils and burdens.
Finally in complete silence the monks passed along the dark cloister,
sprinkled with holy water as they left the church, up to the dormitory
which ran over the whole length of the chapter house, the bridges and
other offices, to sleep till midnight.
* * * * *
The effect of this life, unbroken by external distractions, was to make
Chris’s soul alert and perceptive to the inner world, and careless or
even contemptuous of the ordinary world of men. This spiritual realm
began for the first time to disclose its details to him, and to show
itself to some extent a replica of nature. It too had its varying
climate, its long summer of warmth and light, its winter of dark
discontent, its strange and bewildering sunrises of Christ upon the
soul, when He rose and went about His garden with perfume and music, or
stayed and greeted His creature with the message of His eyes. Chris
began to learn that these spiritual changes were in a sense independent
of him, that they were not in his soul, but rather that his soul was in
them. He could be happy and content when the winds of God were cold and
His light darkened, or sad and comfortless when the flowers of grace
were apparent and the river of life bright and shining.
And meanwhile the ordinary world went on, but far away and dimly heard
and seen; as when one looks down from a castle-garden on to humming
streets five hundred feet below; and the old life at Overfield, and
Ralph’s doings in London seemed unreal and fantastic activities,
purposeless and empty.
Little by little, however, as the point of view shifted, Chris began to
find that the external world could not be banished, and that the
annoyances from the clash of characters discordant with his own were as
positive as those which had distressed him before. Dom Anselm Bowden’s
way of walking and the patch of grease at the shoulder of his cowl,
never removed, and visible as he went before him into the church was as
distractingly irritating as Ralph’s contempt; the buzz in the voice of a
cantor who seemed always to sing on great days was as distressing as his
own dog’s perversity at Overfield, or the snapping of a bow-string.
When _accidie_ fell upon Chris it seemed as if this particular house was
entirely ruined by such incidents; the Prior was finikin, the
junior-master tyrannical, the paints for illumination inferior in
quality, the straw of his bed peculiarly sharp, the chapter-house
unnecessarily draughty. And until he learnt from his confessor that this
spiritual ailment was a perfectly familiar one, and that its symptoms
and effects had been diagnosed centuries before, and had taken him at
his word and practised the remedies he enjoined, Chris suffered
considerably from discontent and despair alternately. At times others
were intolerable, at times he was intolerable to himself, reproaching
himself for having attempted so high a life, criticising his fellows
for so lowering it to a poor standard.
* * * * *
The first time that he was accused in chapter of a fault against the
Rule was a very great and shocking humiliation.
He had accused himself as usual on his knees of his own remissions, of
making an unnecessarily loud noise in drinking, of intoning a wrong
antiphon as cantor, of spilling crumbs in the refectory; and then leaned
back on his heels well content with the insignificance of his list, to
listen with a discreet complacency to old Dom Adrian, who had overslept
himself once, spilled his beer twice, criticised his superior, and
talked aloud to himself four times during the Greater Silence, and who
now mumbled out his crimes hastily and unconcernedly.
When the self-accusations were done, the others began, and to his horror
Chris heard his own name spoken.
“I accuse Dom Christopher Torridon of not keeping the guard of the eyes
at Terce this morning.”
It was perfectly true; Chris had been so much absorbed in noticing an
effect of shade thrown by a corbel, and in plans for incorporating it
into his illumination that he had let a verse pass as far as the star
that marked the pause. He felt his heart leap with resentment. Then a
flash of retort came to him, and he waited his turn.
“I accuse Dom Bernard Parr of not keeping the guard of the eyes at Terce
this morning. He was observing me.”
Just the faintest ripple passed round the line; and then the Prior spoke
with a tinge of sharpness, inflicting the penances, and giving Chris a
heavy sentence of twenty strokes with the discipline.
When Chris’s turn came he threw back his habit petulantly, and
administered his own punishment as the custom was, with angry fervour.
As he was going out the Prior made him a sign, and took him through into
his own cell.
“Counter-accusations are contrary to the Rule,” he said. “It must not
happen again,” and dismissed him sternly.
And then Chris for a couple of days had a fierce struggle against
uncharitableness, asking himself whether he had not eyed Dom Bernard
with resentment, and then eyeing him again. It seemed too as if a fiend
suggested bitter sentences of reproach, that he rehearsed to himself,
and then repented. But on the third morning there came one of those
strange breezes of grace that he was beginning to experience more and
more frequently, and his sore soul grew warm and peaceful again.
* * * * *
It was in those kinds of temptation now that he found his warfare to
lie; internal assaults so fierce that it was terribly difficult to know
whether he had yielded or not, sudden images of pride and anger and lust
that presented themselves so vividly and attractively that it seemed he
must have willed them; it was not often that he was tempted to sin in
word or deed--such, when they came, rushed on him suddenly; but in the
realm of thought and imagination and motive he would often find himself,
as it were, entering a swarm of such things, that hovered round him,
impeding his prayer, blinding his insight, and seeking to sting the very
heart of his spiritual life. Then once more he would fight himself free
by despising and rejecting them, or would emerge without conscious will
of his own into clearness and serenity.
But as he looked back he regretted nothing. It was true that the
warfare was more subtle and internal, but it was more honourable too;
for to conquer a motive or tame an imagination was at once more arduous
and more far-reaching in its effects than a victory in merely outward
matters, and he seldom failed to thank God half-a-dozen times a day for
having given him the vocation of a monk.
There was one danger, however, that he did not realise, and his
confessor failed to point it out to him; and that was the danger of the
wrong kind of detachment. As has been already seen the theory of the
Religious Life was that men sought it not merely for the salvation of
their own souls, but for that of the world. A monastery was a place
where in a special sense the spiritual commerce of the world was carried
on: as a workman’s shed is the place deputed and used by the world for
the manufacture of certain articles. It was the manufactory of grace
where skilled persons were at work, busy at a task of prayer and
sacrament which was to be at other men’s service. If the father of a
family had a piece of spiritual work to be done, he went to the
monastery and arranged for it, and paid a fee for the sustenance of
those he employed, as he might go to a merchant’s to order a cargo and
settle for its delivery.
Since this was so then, it was necessary that the spiritual workmen
should be in a certain touch with those for whom they worked. It was
true that they must be out of the world, undominated by its principles
and out of love with its spirit; but in another sense they must live in
its heart. To use another analogy they were as windmills, lifted up from
the earth into the high airs of grace, but their base must be on the
ground or their labour would be ill-spent. They must be mystically one
with the world that they had resigned.
Chris forgot this; and laboured, and to a large extent succeeded, in
detaching himself wholly; and symptoms of this mistake showed themselves
in such things as tending to despise secular life, feeling impatient
with the poor to whom he had to minister, in sneering in his heart at
least at anxious fussy men who came to arrange for masses, at
troublesome women who haunted the sacristy door in a passion of
elaborateness, and at comfortable families who stamped into high mass
and filled a seat and a half, but who had yet their spiritual burdens
and their claims to honour.
But he was to be brought rudely down to facts again. He was beginning to
forget that England was about him and stirring in her agony; and he was
reminded of it with some force in the winter after his profession.
* * * * *
He was going out to the gate-house one day on an errand from the
junior-master when he became aware of an unusual stir in the court.
There were a couple of palfreys there, and half-a-dozen mules behind,
whilst three or four strange monks with a servant or two stood at their
bridles.
Chris stopped to consider, for he had no business with guests; and as he
hesitated the door of the guest-house opened, and two prelates came out
with Dom Anthony behind them--tall, stately men in monks’ habits with
furred cloaks and crosses. Chris slipped back at once into the cloister
from which he had just come out, and watched them go past to the Prior’s
lodging.
They appeared at Vespers that afternoon again, sitting in the first
returned stalls near the Prior, and Chris recognised one of them as the
great Abbot of Colchester. He looked at him now and again during Vespers
with a reverential awe, for the Abbot was a great man, a spiritual peer
of immense influence and reputation, and watched that fatherly face,
his dignified bows and stately movements, and the great sapphire that
shone on his hand as he turned the leaves of his illuminated book.
The two prelates were at supper, sitting on either side of the Prior on
the dais; and afterwards the monks were called earlier than usual from
recreation into the chapter-house.
The Prior made them a little speech saying that the Abbot had something
to say to them, and then sat down; his troubled eyes ran over the faces
of his subjects, and his fingers twitched and fidgetted on his knees.
The Abbot did not make them a long discourse; but told them briefly that
there was trouble coming; he spoke in veiled terms of the Act of
Supremacy, and the serious prayer that was needed; he said that a time
of testing was close at hand, and that every man must scrutinise his own
conscience and examine his motives; and that the unlearned had better
follow the advice and example of their superiors.
It was all very vague and unsatisfactory; but Chris became aware of
three things. First, that the world was very much alive and could not be
dismissed by a pious aspiration or two; second, that the world was about
to make some demand that would have to be seriously dealt with, and
third, that there was nothing really to fear so long as their souls were
clean and courageous. The Abbot was a melting speaker, full at once of a
fatherly tenderness and vehemence, and as Chris looked at him he felt
that indeed there was nothing to fear so long as monks had such
representatives and protectors as these, and that the world had better
look to itself for fear it should dash itself to ruin against such rocks
of faith and holiness.
But as the spring drew on, an air of suspense and anxiety made itself
evident in the house. News came down that More and Fisher were still in
prison, that the oath was being administered right and left, that the
King had thrown aside all restraints, and that the civil breach with
Rome seemed in no prospect of healing. As for the spiritual breach the
monks did not seriously consider it yet; they regarded themselves as
still in union with the Holy See whatever their rulers might say or do,
and only prayed for the time when things might be as before and there
should be no longer any doubt or hesitation in the minds of weak
brethren.
But the Prior’s face grew more white and troubled, and his temper
uncertain.
Now and again he would make them speeches assuring them fiercely that
all was well, and that all they had to do was to be quiet and obedient;
and now he would give way to a kind of angry despair, tell them that all
was lost, that every man would have to save himself; and then for days
after such an exhibition he would be silent and morose, rapping his
fingers softly as he sat at his little raised table in the refectory,
walking with downcast eyes up and down the cloister muttering and
staring.
Towards the end of April he sent abruptly for Chris, told him that he
had news from London that made his presence there necessary, and ordered
him to be ready to ride with him in a week or two.