THE COLLEGE OF NOBLE POVERTY.
If a foreigner would apprehend (he can never comprehend) this England
of ours, with her dear and ancient graces, and her foibles as ancient
and hardly less dear; her law-abidingness, her staid, God-fearing
citizenship; her parochialism whereby (to use a Greek idiom) she
perpetually escapes her own notice being empress of the world; her
inveterate snobbery, her incurable habit of mistaking symbols and
words for realities; above all, her spacious and beautiful sense of
time as builder, healer and only perfecter of worldly things; let him
go visit the Cathedral City, sometime the Royal City, of Merchester.
He will find it all there, enclosed and casketed--"a box where sweets
compacted lie."
Let him arrive on a Saturday night and awake next morning to the note
of the Cathedral bell, and hear the bugles answering from the
barracks up the hill beyond the mediaeval gateway. As he sits down
to breakfast the bugles will start sounding nigher, with music absurd
and barbarous, but stirring, as the Riflemen come marching down the
High Street to Divine Service. In the Minster to which they wend,
their disused regimental colours droop along the aisles; tattered, a
hundred years since, in Spanish battlefields, and by age worn almost
to gauze--"strainers," says Brother Copas, "that in their time have
clarified much turbid blood." But these are guerdons of yesterday in
comparison with other relics the Minster guards. There is royal dust
among them--Saxon and Dane and Norman--housed in painted chests above
the choir stalls. "_Quare fremuerunt gentes?_" intone the
choristers' voices below, Mr. Simeon's weak but accurate tenor among
them. "_The kings of the earth stand up, and the rulers take counsel
together_ . . ." The Riflemen march down to listen. As they go by
ta-ra-ing, the douce citizens of Merchester and their wives and
daughters admire from the windows discreetly; but will attend _their_
Divine Service later. This, again, is England.
Sundays and week-days at intervals the Cathedral organ throbs across
the Close, gently shaking the windows of the Deanery and the Canons'
houses, and interrupting the chatter of sparrows in their ivy.
Twice or thrice annually a less levitical noise invades, when our
State visits its Church; in other words, when with trumpeters and
javelin-men the High Sheriff escorts his Majesty's Judges to hear the
Assize Sermon. On these occasions the head boy of the great School,
which lies a little to the south of the Cathedral, by custom presents
a paper to the learned judge, suing for a school holiday; and his
lordship, brushing up his Latinity, makes a point of acceding in the
best hexameters he can contrive. At his time of life it comes easier
to try prisoners; and if he lie awake, he is haunted less by his day
in Court than by the fear of a false quantity.
The School--with its fourteenth-century quadrangles, fenced citywards
behind a blank brewhouse-wall (as though its Founder's first
precaution had been to protect learning from siege), and its
precincts opening rearwards upon green playing-fields and
river-meads--is like few schools in England, and none in any other
country; and is proud of its singularity. It, too, has its stream of
life, and on the whole a very gracious one, with its young, careless
voices and high spirits. It lies, as I say, south of the Close;
beyond the northward fringe of which you penetrate, under archway or
by narrow entry, to the High Street, where another and different tide
comes and goes, with mild hubbub of carts, carriages, motors--ladies
shopping, magistrates and county councillors bent on business of the
shire, farmers, traders, marketers. . . . This traffic, too, is all
very English and ruddy and orderly.
Through it all, picturesque and respected, pass and repass the
bedesmen of Saint Hospital: the Blanchminster Brethren in black gowns
with a silver cross worn at the breast, the Beauchamp Brethren in
gowns of claret colour with a silver rose. The terms of the twin
bequests are not quite the same. To be a Collegian of Christ's Poor
it is enough that you have attained the age of sixty-five, so reduced
in strength as to be incapable of work; whereas you can become a
Collegian of Noble Poverty at sixty, but with the proviso that
misfortune has reduced you from independence (that is to say, from a
moderate estate). The Beauchamp Brethren, who are the fewer, incline
to give themselves airs over the Blanchminsters on the strength of
this distinction: like Dogberry, in their time they have "had
losses." But Merchester takes, perhaps, an equal pride in the
pensioners of both orders.
Merchester takes an even fonder pride in St. Hospital itself--that
compact and exquisite group of buildings, for the most part Norman,
set in the water-meadows among the ambient streams of Mere. It lies
a mile or so southward of the town, and some distance below the
School, where the valley widens between the chalk-hills and, inland
yet, you feel a premonition that the sea is not far away.
All visitors to Merchester are directed towards St. Hospital, and
they dote over it--the American visitors especially; because nowhere
in England can one find the Middle Ages more compendiously summarised
or more charmingly illustrated. Almost it might be a toy model of
those times, with some of their quaintest customs kept going in
smooth working order. But it is better. It is the real thing,
genuinely surviving. No visitor ever finds disappointment in a
pilgrimage to St. Hospital: the inmates take care of that.
The trustees, or governing body, are careful too. A few years ago,
finding that his old lodgings in the quadrangle were too narrow for
the Master's comfort, they erected a fine new house for him, just
without the precincts. But though separated from the Hospital by a
roadway, this new house comes into the picture from many points of
view, and therefore not only did the architect receive instructions
to harmonise it with the ancient buildings, but where he left off the
trustees succeeded, planting wistarias, tall roses and selected ivies
to run up the coigns and mullions. Nay, it is told that to encourage
the growth of moss they washed over a portion of the walls (the
servants' quarters) with a weak solution of farmyard manure.
These conscientious pains have their reward, for to-day, at a little
distance, the Master's house appears no less ancient than the rest of
the mediaeval pile with which it composes so admirably.
With the Master himself we have made acquaintance. In the words of
an American magazine, "the principal of this old-time foundation,
Master E. J. Wriothesley (pronounced 'Wrottesley') Blanchminster, may
be allowed to fill the bill. He is founder's kin, and just sweet."
The Master stepped forth from his rose-garlanded porch, crossed the
road, and entered the modest archway which opens on the first, or
outer, court. He walked habitually at a short trot, with his head
and shoulders thrust a little forward and his hands clasped behind
him. He never used a walking-stick.
The outer court of St. Hospital is plain and unpretending, with a
brewhouse on one hand and on the other the large kitchen with its
offices. Between these the good Master passed, and came to a second
and handsomer gate, with a tower above it, and three canopied niches
in the face of the tower, and in one of the niches--the others are
empty--a kneeling figure of the great cardinal himself.
The passageway through the tower is vaulted and richly groined, and
in a little chamber beside it dwells the porter, a part of whose duty
it is to distribute the Wayfarers' Dole--a horn of beer and a manchet
of bread--to all who choose to ask for it. The Master halted a
moment to give the porter good evening.
"And how many to-day, Brother Manby?"
"Thirty-three, Master, including a party of twelve that came in
motor-cars. I was jealous the cast wouldn't go round, for they all
insisted on having the dole, and a full slice, too--the gentlemen
declaring they were hungry after their drive. But," added Brother
Manby, with a glance at a card affixed by the archway and announcing
that tickets to view the hospital could be procured at sixpence a
head, "they were most appreciative, I must say."
The Master smiled, nodded, and passed on. He gathered that someone
had profited by something over and above the twelve sixpences.
But how gracious, how serenely beautiful, how eloquent of peace and
benediction, the scene that met him as he crossed the threshold of
the great quadrangle! Some thousands of times his eyes had rested on
it, yet how could it ever stale?
"_In the evening there shall be light_."--The sun, declining in a
cloudless west behind the roof-ridge and tall chimneys of the
Brethren's houses, cast a shadow even to the sundial that stood for
centre of the wide grass-plot. All else was softest gold--gold
veiling the sky itself in a powdery haze; gold spread full along the
front of the 'Nunnery,' or row of upper chambers on the eastern line
of the quadrangle, where the three nurses of St. Hospital have their
lodgings; shafts of gold penetrating the shaded ambulatory below;
gold edging the western coigns of the Norman chapel; gold rayed and
slanting between boughs in the park beyond the railings to the south.
Only the western side of the quadrangle lay in shadow, and in the
shadow, in twos and threes, beside their doors and tiny flower-plots
(their pride), sat the Brethren, with no anxieties, with no care but
to watch the closing tranquil hour: some with their aged wives
(for the Hospital, as the Church of England with her bishops, allows
a Brother to have one wife, but ignores her existence), some in
monastic groups, withdrawn from hearing of women's gossip.
The Master chose the path that, circumventing the grass-plot, led him
past these happy-looking groups and couples. To be sure, it was not
his nearest way to the home-park, where he intended to think out his
peroration; but he had plenty of time, and moreover he delighted to
exchange courtesies with his charges. For each he had a greeting--
--"Fine weather, fine weather, Brother Dasent! Ah, this is the time
to get rid of the rheumatics! Eh, Mrs. Dasent? I haven't seen him
looking so hale for months past."
--"A beautiful evening, Brother Clerihew--yes, beautiful
indeed. . . . You notice how the swallows are flying, both high and
low, Brother Woolcombe? . . . Yes, I think we are in for a spell of
it."
--"Ah, good evening, Mrs. Royle! What wonderful ten-week stocks!
I declare I cannot grow the like of them in my garden. And what a
perfume! But it warns me that the dew is beginning to fall, and
Brother Royle ought not to be sitting out late. We must run no
risks, Nurse, after his illness?"
The Master appealed to a comfortable-looking woman who, at his
approach, had been engaged in earnest talk with Mrs. Royle--talk to
which old Brother Royle appeared to listen placidly, seated in his
chair.
--And so on. He had a kindly word for all, and all answered his
salutations respectfully; the women bobbing curtseys, the old men
offering to rise from their chairs. But this he would by no means
allow. His presence seemed to carry with it a fragrance of his own,
as real as that of the mignonette and roses and sweet-Williams amid
which he left them embowered.
When he had passed out of earshot, Brother Clerihew turned to Brother
Woolcombe and said--
"The silly old '--' is beginning to show his age, seemin' to me."
"Oughtn't to," answered Brother Woolcombe. "If ever a man had a soft
job, it's him."
"Well, I reckon we don't want to lose him yet, anyhow--'specially if
Colt is to step into his old shoes."
Brother Clerihew's reference was to the Reverend Rufus Colt, Chaplain
of St. Hospital.
"They never would!" opined Brother Woolcombe, meaning by "they" the
governing body of Trustees.
"Oh, you never know--with a man on the make, like Colt. Push carries
everything in these times."
"Colt's a hustler," Brother Woolcombe conceded. "But, damn it all,
they _might_ give us a gentleman!"
"There's not enough to go round, nowadays," grunted Brother Clerihew,
who had been a butler, and knew. "Master Blanchminster's the real
thing, of course . . ." He gazed after the retreating figure of the
Master. "Seemed gay as a goldfinch, he did. D'ye reckon Colt has
told him about Warboise?"
"I wonder. Where is Warboise, by the way?"
"Down by the river, taking a walk to cool his head. Ibbetson's wife
gave him a dressing-down at tea-time for dragging Ibbetson into the
row. Threatened to have her nails in his beard--I heard her.
That woman's a terror. . . . All the same, one can't help
sympathising with her. 'You can stick to your stinking
Protestantism,' she told him, 'if it amuses you to fight the
Chaplain. You're a widower, with nobody dependent. But don't you
teach my husband to quarrel with his vittles.'"
"All the same, when a man has convictions--"
"Convictions are well enough when you can afford 'em," Brother
Clerihew grunted again. "But up against Colt--what's the use?
And where's his backing? Ibbetson, with a wife hanging on to his
coat-tails; and old Bonaday, that wouldn't hurt a fly; and Copas,
standing off and sneering."
"A man might have all the pains of Golgotha upon him before ever
_you_ turned a hair," grumbled Brother Dasent, a few yards away.
He writhed in his chair, for the rheumatism was really troublesome;
but he over-acted his suffering somewhat, having learnt in forty-five
years of married life that his spouse was not over-ready with
sympathy.
"T'cht!" answered she. "I ought to know what they're like by this
time, and I wonder, for my part, you don't try to get accustomed to
'em. Dying one can understand: but to be worrited with a man's
ailments, noon and night, it gets on the nerves. . . ."
"You're _sure_?" resumed Mrs. Royle eagerly, but sinking her voice--
for she could hardly wait until the Master had passed out of earshot.
"Did you ever know me spread tales?" asked the comfortable-looking
Nurse. "Only, mind you, I mentioned it in the strictest secrecy.
This is such a scandalous hole, one can't be too careful. . . . But
down by the river they were, consorting and God knows what else."
"At his age, too! Disgusting, I call it."
"Oh, _she's_ not particular! My comfort is I always suspected that
woman from the first moment I set eyes on her. Instinct, I s'pose.
'Well, my lady,' says I, 'if you're any better than you should be,
then I've lived all these years for nothing.'"
"And him--that looked such a broken-down old innocent!"
"They get taken that way sometimes, late in life."
Nurse Turner sank her voice and said something salacious, which
caused Mrs. Royle to draw a long breath and exclaim that she could
never have credited such things--not in a Christian land. Her old
husband, too, overheard it, and took snuff with a senile chuckle.
"Gad, that's spicy!" he crooned.
The Master, at the gateway leading to the home-park, turned for a
look back on the quadrangle and the seated figures. Yes, they made
an exquisite picture. Here--
"Here where the world is quiet"--
Here, indeed, his ancestor had built a haven of rest.
"From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea."
As the lines floated across his memory, the Master had a mind to
employ them in his peroration (giving them a Christian trend, of
course) in place of the sonnet he had meant to quote. This would
involve reconstructing a longish paragraph; but they had touched his
mood, and he spent some time pacing to and fro under the trees before
his taste rejected them as facile and even cheap in comparison with
Wordsworth's--
"Men unto whom sufficient for the day,
And minds not stinted or untill'd are given,
--Sound healthy children of the God of heaven--
Are cheerful as the rising sun in May."
"Yes, yes," murmured the Master, "Wordsworth's is the better.
But what a gift, to be able to express a thought just _so_--with that
freshness, that noble simplicity! And even with Wordsworth it was
fugitive, lost after four or five marvellous years. No one not being
a Greek has ever possessed it in permanence. . . ."
Here he paused at the sound of a footfall on the turf close behind
him, and turned about with a slight frown; which readily yielded,
however, and became a smile of courtesy.
"Ah, my dear Colt! Good evening!"
"Good evening, Master."
Mr. Colt came up deferentially, yet firmly, much as a nurse in a good
family might collect a straying infant. He was a tall, noticeably
well-grown man, a trifle above thirty, clean shaven, with a square
and obstinate chin. He wore no hat, and his close black hair showed
a straight middle parting above his low and somewhat protuberant
forehead. The parting widened at the occiput to a well-kept tonsure.
At the back the head wanted balance; and this lent a suggestion of
brutality--of "thrust"--to his abounding appearance of strength.
He walked in his priestly black with the gait and carriage proper to
a heavy dragoon.
"A fine evening, indeed. Are you disengaged?"
"Certainly, certainly"--in comparison with Mr. Colt's grave voice the
Master's was almost a chirrup--"whether for business or for the
pleasure of a talk. Nothing wrong, I hope?"
For a moment or two the Chaplain did not answer. He seemed to be
weighing his words. At length he said--
"I should have reported at once, but have been thinking it over.
At Early Celebration this morning Warboise insulted the wafer."
"Dear, dear, you don't say so!"
--"Took it from me, held it derisively between finger and thumb, and
muttered. I could not catch all that he said, but I distinctly heard
the words 'biscuit' and 'Antichrist.' Indeed, he confesses to having
used them. His demeanour left no doubt that he was insolent of set
purpose. . . . I should add that Ibbetson, who was kneeling next to
him and must have overheard, walked back from the altar-rail straight
out of chapel; but his wife assures me that this was purely a
coincidence, and due to a sudden weakness of the stomach."
"You have spoken to Warboise?"
"Yes, and he is defiant. Says that bread is bread, and--when I
pressed him for a definition--asked (insolently again) if the
Trustees had authorised our substituting biscuit for bread in the
Wayfarers' Dole. Advised us to 'try it on' there, and look out for
letters in the _Merchester Observer_. He even threatened--if you'll
believe me--to write to the Press himself. In short, he was beyond
all self-control."
"I was afraid," murmured the Master, flushing a little in his
distress, "you would not introduce this--er--primitive use--or, I
should say, restore it--without trouble. Brother Warboise has strong
Protestant prejudices; passionate, even."
"And ignorant."
"Oh, of course, of course! Still--"
"I suggest that, living as he does on the Church's benefaction,
eating the bread of her charity--"
The Chaplain paused, casting about for a third phrase to express
Brother Warboise's poor dependence.
The Master smiled whimsically.
"'The bread'--that's just it, he would tell you . . . And Alberic de
Blanchminster, moreover, was a layman, not even in any of the minor
orders; so that, strictly speaking--"
"But he left his wealth expressly to be administered by the Church.
. . . Will you forgive me, Master, if I repeat very respectfully the
suggestion I made at the beginning? If you could see your way to be
celebrant at the early office, your mere presence would silence these
mutineers. The Brethren respect your authority without question,
and, the ice once broken, they would come to heel as one man."
The Master shook his head tremulously, in too much of a flurry even
to note the Chaplain's derangement of metaphors.
"You cannot guess how early rising upsets me. Doctor Ainsley,
indeed, positively forbids it. . . . I can sympathise, you see, with
Ibbetson . . . and, for Brother Warboise, let us always remember that
St. Hospital was not made, and cannot be altered, in a day--even for
the better. Like England, it has been built by accretions, by
traditions; yes, and by traditions that apparently conflict--by that
of Brother Ingman, among others. . . .
"We who love St. Hospital," continued the Master, still tremulously,
"have, I doubt not, each his different sense of the _genius loci_.
Warboise finds it, we'll say, in the person of Peter Ingman,
Protestant and martyr. But I don't defend his behaviour. I will
send for him to-morrow, and talk to him. I will talk to him very
severely."