professional marauders and their soldiers, of professional saints
and their serfs; with a confusion of fighting barons, lay and
ecclesiastic, some or the most interesting bishops being no mean
warriors; and worst of all, a lot of begging friars producing little
but corruption. To the day of his death, the Conqueror makes no apology
for his wars in Normandy. There he was simply holding his own. The
behavior of the wild and worldly barons was not all he had to contend
with; there were also the visions and the notions of the unworldly
clergy, who, with intent, more or less good, more or less self-seeking,
interfered absolutely with good government, and William’s tact and
breadth with them, considered at a time when it is easy to be wise,
nearly one thousand years after the event, is astonishing. It fell to
his lot to deal with that peculiarly well-intentioned pope, Gregory
VII, who, by his ability to conceive and carry out his well-intentioned
policy, worked such incalculable evil. Spain is struggling with his
Shades today.
What a problem the mystics of the eleventh century, with their
tremendous following and their curious allegorical interpretations of
everything great or small in heaven or on earth, must have been to
a statesman! Listen to this eleventh century letter of thanks from
Saint Ivo to Gerard of Ham, for “an instrument of the whiteness of
snow for combing the hair.” This comb is agreeable to him in and of
itself, like other objects of beauty; but above all, it pleases him
because of the elevation of ideas, which it so beautifully symbolizes:
he is quite sure that thy prudence (_ta prudence_) has wished hereby
to give a suggestion to his vigilance to seek constantly by all sorts
of exhortations to reform the disorderly manners of his people, whom
he compares to a disarranged head of hair. And yet Saint Ivo was in
his day a strictly practical person, not to be fooled as Savonarola
was four hundred years later by the ordeal of fire. Saint Ivo forbids
a husband to condemn his wife even when the man he has accused could
be burned by hot irons; and when the martial old bishop of Le Mans,
who is accused of having treacherously surrendered that town, offers
to walk on hot irons to prove his innocence, Saint Ivo writes him that
ordeals are uncanonical and that he must not submit to them. But then
no reader of his correspondence can fail to see that Saint Ivo was very
timid. How he did dread the Channel! He entreats the holiest men of his
acquaintance to pray unceasingly for him while he is on the water.
But let us turn to the Conqueror’s own review of his life, as he
discussed it on his death-bed. Two of his clergy took it down. Thus,
as he would speak to his sons, he speaks to history. Here we have his
perplexities at first hand. That we may put ourselves in his place
as literally as possible, let us repair with the document to the
beautiful Abbey aux Dames, so tenderly connected with the Conqueror’s
queen. There, it is said, she made her thank-offering for her lord’s
safe deliverance, alike from the perils of war and the perils of
the Channel. This abbey was consecrated the year of the Conquest,
eleven years before the Abbey aux Hommes (ladies first). Many of the
Conqueror’s followers supplied their own ships, but Mathilda herself
fitted out the Conqueror’s,—the regal _Mora_—so splendidly stocked with
wine. Her good ship bore him safely to England and victory, and brought
him back, as ever, true to his queen. To this abbey they dedicated
their daughter Cicely, when she was a child, and she became a great and
powerful abbess. Here we may picture her praying, as a woman in the
intense Age of Faith could pray, for the souls of her parents.
Eight hundred and twenty-five years after its original construction we
found another high-bred cloistered Lady of the Trinity in passionate
prayer at the tomb of Mathilda. Was this pretty young nun a legitimate
part of the restoration? Though the cloisters of France were supposed
to have been abolished, this one had been passed by, for the Conqueror
holds Caen, and some iron hand of the past seems to have retained this
spiritual young girl in prayer at the tomb of his queen. A strange
sight it was, one of the curious tragedies of conservatism; but like
many every-day tragedies imperceptible to its actors.
To the eye all seemed beauty. From a fine old garden we stepped into
a majestic aisle of a great abbey. As we walked down in its dim
half-light, a curtain was drawn displaying a brass grill impassable in
the eyes of the church. Impassable it had been, in fact, for nearly
eight hundred and fifty years, but now to climb over it would be a
minor athletic feat. It separated the chapel of the foundress and the
nuns of the order of the Trinity from the whole outside world. The
entire central space of this chapel was occupied by Queen Mathilda’s
enormous cream-colored sarcophagus (restored). One might read the
inscription in eleventh-century characters, fresh from a modern chisel.
The chapel walls were lined with dark, carved wooden stalls, freshly
oiled, and new-born sunbeams peered decorously through rich-colored
glass on two kneeling nuns clad in the old-time flowing ivory-colored
robes of the Ladies of the Trinity.
One was a fleshy, middle-aged woman, mechanically counting her beads,
the other was young and beautiful. She was looking up, and, though
she was as motionless as the tomb beside her, her attitude expressed
action as sculpture may. What was she thinking of? Is the life of
today any less inscrutable than that of one thousand years ago? Here,
in the charity of the church, let us consider the Conqueror’s apology
(_apologia_); we are translating the word too literally, but the spirit
of the document is humble and explanatory and, withal, very winning.
In this _apologia_ William considers that he has done his duty to the
church, and history endorses him; in general, when he was at variance
with it he was in the right. But of his expedition to England—every
move of which is justified upon the Bayeux Tapistry—he repents,
although, fortunately, not fanatically enough to try and undo the deed.
He only makes what reparation he can to certain victims. Though on his
death-bed he liberated Harold’s son and nephew, he seems to overlook
a curious persecution, cruel in intent but easily repaired, that, in
the confidence and fury of his power, he had directed against the
soul of the defeated king. The Conqueror carried Harold’s body from
the battlefield (he wrapt it in the purple, it is true), but he had
insisted upon burying it in unhallowed ground, although for it Harold’s
mother had offered the weight in gold,—both parties firmly believing
that to lie in unconsecrated ground would militate against the repose
of the spirit. Though he tried to undo many a deed, the Conqueror
ignores entirely his arrogant revenge upon a soul. Facing death matures
our sense of value.
Though but one century removed from a forebear whose God was Odin,
whose Valhalla was a place where heroes cut each other to pieces daily
in fair fight, but where the blest are perpetually restored to life
at meal-time that they may eat of the wild boar and fight again and
forever,[4] at least the Conqueror came to shudder at his massacres at
Hastings and York, to truly repent and to die humbly commending his
soul to Mary.
The spirit of the nineteenth century was iconoclastic; it demolished
alike old heroes, old superstitions and old faiths. But the twentieth
century would call them back, not as realities, but as heroes,
superstitions and faiths, treating them philosophically, as great
moving forces, or poetically, as starting points for new ideals. The
hard, rational doubt which emancipated thought in the nineteenth
century develops into the sympathetic doubt of the twentieth. The
nineteenth century laughed at barbaric old heroes, while the twentieth
century smiles at them. Who wants to live in a world without heroes?
All men are not equal; but by reverent appreciation the small man may
become brother to the genius.
Every place, every document connected with the Conqueror bears his
strong individuality. Read of him where you may, between the lines
of the Domesday Book (that conscientious effort to tax all that the
traffic will bear), or in the broken lays of the troubadours, or by
the light or the density of contemporary chroniclers, Norman or Saxon,
you find before you a man great in himself and a forerunner of greater
things: a great builder, building better than he knew; a great ruler,
ruling farther than he knew—a true hero of the strenuous life.
Following the chance records from which the Conqueror’s biography is
put together, one is amazed by the integrity of his political instinct.
William the Norman is an instance for the poet who said, “The world is
what a few great men have made it.” The Conqueror seems such a typical
Englishman, alike in his love of the forests and the “high deer,” of
which the old Saxon chronicler complains, and in his appreciation of
justice and stability, for which the same chronicler gives thanks
on the spot. The Conqueror’s appeal is a very wide one. Even the
economists, who hold that the world is what demand and supply have made
it, write with an enthusiasm peculiarly their own of the Domesday Book
and its wisely self-seeking, avaricious author.
[Illustration: _Dinan—the Fortifications have been Turned into
Playgrounds._]
It cannot be argued that the Conqueror was a popular king, but
sinners, like saints, may be proven by their influence after death—the
Conqueror’s was strong and manly. His spirit entered widely into
mediæval legend. He is the Arthur, the ideal ruler, whom Malory
commends for manly purity, justice and probity; also for “open
manslaughter.” We may take Malory’s word for it, it was better than
the savage treachery known even four hundred years later, when
that old _raconteur_ was mixing probabilities, improbabilities and
impossibilities so picturesquely, and we have our old hero back.
Although we must alter Malory’s ideal, we can add to it as well as
subtract from it. We have the splendid barbarian who brought order
out of chaos both in England and Normandy, who loved and trusted his
wife, who loved nature and had an instinct for art, whose intelligent
attitude toward religion and learning left the Dark Ages behind, and
whose loyal leadership opened the romantic days of chivalry.
Near Caen is a lovelier town, “Dinan, where the Conqueror slept.” Here
history’s scroll seems to loosen, displaying an enchanting pastoral of
the ages; there lies the simple, old hamlet by the river, just as it
might have looked when William the Norman and Harold, son of Goodwin,
camped there together, a little less than one thousand years ago. Then,
back of the river on the bluff, later a securely walled town appeared,
but now the old fortifications have turned into charming parks and
playgrounds, girding the loveliest of French villages; and on a summer
day in fair France one can feel sure that though much of life is at
cross-purposes, all is not vanity: old moats may make the loveliest of
gardens; old warriors, the gentlest of heroes.
[Illustration: _Old Moats do make such Charming Gardens._]
_The Grandniece of the Grand Inquisitor_
I have a fair daughter formed like a
golden flower.—_Sappho._
The Spanish Inquisitor is one character of the past who has been
spared the mockish attentions of writers of historical romance. But
he, too, has suffered from the _on dit_ of history, history as she is
taught. However, he had his day. Once as the impersonation of “correct
sentiment,” he dealt his decrees from a palace and had the double
honor of representing Church as well as State. As times grew gentler,
the Inquisition was directed against books rather than men. Now,
certainly, something may be accorded to those who dispose of polemic
literature, even though they be as innocent as earthworms of their
ultimate use to humanity; therefore, let us try to look upon the Grand
Inquisitor, Miguel de Carpio, as a Spanish gentleman of an exceedingly
old school—as a man perhaps much less bloodthirsty than some of the
good and perfect knights, though abominably technical regarding certain
points. As theatre-goers we are in the gentleman’s debt, for it was he
who educated his nephew, Lope de Vega de Carpio, who in his turn was a
positive factor in the development of the modern drama.
Lope Felix de Vega de Carpio was of a mental mixture that has more than
passed away; it has been relegated to the incomprehensible,—at once a
graceful poet and a soldier, a past master of euphuism and a coarse
dramatist; an officer of the Church; “a servant of the Inquisition” or
a “familiar of the holy office,” as he fluently termed it (an honorary
escort of the victim to the stake); finally, chaplain of the monastic
order into which he retired; and, unquestionably, the most voluminous
of writers.
[Illustration: _A Peep Into the Cranium of a Bible Reader in Lope de
Vega’s Time._]
But his most poetic gift to the world was his love-child, Sister
Marcela de Felix of the Convent of the Ladies of the Trinity at Alcala.
Of all his children, legitimate or illegitimate, this daughter, by the
lady who inspired the best of his sonnets, was to him dearest. He takes
little Marcela to live with him as soon as ever his wife dies, and
dedicates a drama to the little girl; so does another poet. She seems
to be her father’s comrade, for when she is only eleven years old he
uses her to get back some letters that he has written to one of his
various mistresses; but when a relative of the husband of this mistress
makes improper overtures to Little Marcela, Lope de Vega rises like a
man “in spite of his age and holy orders,” and chastises the villain.
At sixteen, to the little maid comes a craving for an exalted purity, a
reaction of her beautiful soul from its coarse, immoral surroundings.
Being a woman, her ideal also calls for a lover, but he must be pure
and more beautiful than any one she has ever known, and he must love
her as she will him, “better than life.” It is the Age of Faith. Her
bridegroom awaits; she leaves her father to join him.
Of course, there are braver, fuller, happier lives than a nun’s, and
there always have been. But during the Age of Faith, in a religious
house, there was always a haven of rest for the idealist, while now it
sometimes seems he has not where to lay his head.
It was not in the Middle Ages that the king said, “If poets will be
poets, why, let them starve.” Then, on the contrary, the public fed a
vagabond population of vagabond singers who sang a certain grace into
the Romance languages; for the devotees of various abstractions there
was the refuge of holy orders. After taking up the religious life, if
they had force enough to arrange the conditions around them to fit
their desires, they might safely follow their various bents, for good
or ill, undisturbed by care for the future, their bodies being insured
against want, their souls against punishment. In Spain, particularly,
really great men and successful ones continued to take holy orders even
up to the eighteenth century.
In his prime, Calderon exchanged the position of superintendent of the
royal theatre for royal chaplain, but after a few qualms on the point
he continued to write plays on much the same order as before, only
they were performed by priests. Since Calderon was really orthodox the
arrangement seems natural enough; as a playwright he had baffled with
the public till he was fifty-one years old; in the church at least he
was relieved from the dictates of public tastes. There it was that he
probably wrote his beautiful “Magic Magician.”
I am not a Ruskinite. I would not, if I conveniently could, domesticate
the thirteenth century in the nineteenth; but I do believe in a
sympathetic attitude toward history, as toward present life, and for
the same reasons I would not turn the light of the twentieth century
in upon the gloom of the sixteenth, with the idea of getting a clear
picture. I for one do not feel that a convent was the saddest place
for Sister Marcela. That power which decrees the fall of nations had
its hand upon Spain. Wars, the Americas, the religious houses and the
Inquisition, had fed on the flower of the nation too long. The times
were out of joint. It seemed beautiful to little Marcela to lose such
a world and gain a soul. Being a poet, the heroic side of the church
appealed to her; in her intensity she joined the barefooted order of
the Trinity. How did her father part from her? He was a poet, too—did
he give her up with holy joy and homely sorrow?
In his way, Lope de Vega was a really religious man, for he lived
in close touch with his God—the literal, limited, jealous god of a
fanatic, it is true. Would you see its exact image, as shown on the
Market Place? Then read “The Marriage of the Soul to Divine Love,” a
broadly realistic drama, in which Lope de Vega supposes the bridegroom
to be the Savior. It was acted on the great Square of Valencia on the
occasion of the marriage of Philip III, the dramatist himself being the
clown in the cast.
But, too, this vulgar “familiar of the holy office” can be tender.
Listen to these lines, dedicated to his little dead son:—
“Holy angels and blest,
Through these palms as ye sweep,
Hold their branches at rest,
For my babe is asleep.
“And ye Bethlehem palm trees,
As stormy winds rush
In tempest and fury,
Your angry noise hush;—
Move gently, move gently,
Restrain your wild sweep;
Hold your branches at rest,—
My babe is asleep.
“My babe all divine,
With earth’s sorrows oppressed,
Seeks in slumber an instant
His grieving to rest;
He slumbers,—he slumbers,—
Oh hush, then, and keep
Your branches all still,—
My babe is asleep!
“Cold blasts wheel about him,—
A rigorous storm,—
And ye see how, in vain,
I would shelter his form;—
Holy angels and blest,
As above me ye sweep,
Hold these branches at rest,—
My babe is asleep!”
[Illustration: _The Literal, Limited God of a Fanatic and Father Adam
Stock-taking in Eden._]
What did he whisper to this living child as she parted from him? “Heard
melodies are sweet; but those unheard are sweeter.”
When, in the confident phrase of her father, Marcela de Carpio
“espoused the eldest son of God,” her mystic nuptials called forth the
truest “song-feast” ever held. The herald of old might bid the poets
appear and compete for a monarch’s pleasure. Order a tournament of
song, indeed! Mahomet was profound enough to go to the mountain. When
the beautiful love-child of Lope de Vega and Micaela de Luzan took the
veil, the ceremony was graced by all the dignity and circumstance which
the Church could lavish in outward expression of the passion and fervor
of the forceful old days of her power.
All the poets of the day, great and small, seemed to have been summoned
to this marriage feast, and all the poets of the day, great and small,
vainly tried to transcribe the living poem their eyes beheld when that
fair bride of Christ passed before them in a transport of ecstasy.
At that time many great ladies were taking the veil with equal pomp
and state, but no such tribute was paid them. What an absolutely
inexplicable power is personality! Marcela de Carpio never published a
line, and at this time had probably never written one. How did these
minor poets recognize this fair daughter of Sappho? Was she “formed
like a golden flower”? What a wonderful people are poets! But listen,
for Sister Marcela’s bridal song is with us yet, she pipes so clear and
sweet:
I.
“Let them say to my lover
That here I lie!
The thing of his pleasure,
His slave am I.
II.
“Say that I seek him
Only for love,
And welcome are tortures
My passion to prove.
III.
“Love giving gifts
Is suspicious and cold;
I have all, my Beloved,
When Thee I hold.
IV.
“Hope and devotion
The good may gain,
I am but worthy
Of passion and pain.
V.
“So noble a Lord
None serves in vain—
For the pay of my love
Is my love’s sweet pain.
VI.
“I love thee, to love thee,
No more I desire;
By faith is nourished
My love’s strong fire.
VII.
“I kiss Thy hands
When I feel their blows;
In place of caresses
Thou givest me woes.
VIII.
“But in Thy chastening
Is joy and peace;
O Master and Love,
Let not Thy blows cease!
IX.
“Thy beauty, Beloved,
With scorn is rife!
But I know that Thou lovest me
Better than life.
X.
“And because Thou lovest me,
Lover of mine,
Death can but make me
Utterly Thine.
XI.
“I die with longing
Thy face to see;
Ah, sweet is the anguish
Of Death to me!”
Marcela de Carpio retired from the world in 1621. It was not till 1870
that the ladies of the Convent of the Trinity at Alcala called the
attention of the director of the Spanish Academy to a manuscript so
dear to that sisterhood,—the love-songs of a nun, the poems of Sister
Marcela de Felix. Such a delay in publication would be disastrous to a
worldling of the pen, but oblivion cannot bury a soul. Besides, Sister
Marcela was dreaming of heaven, not of print; her thought incidentally
overflows and she inherited her father’s facility with the pen.
Thus, from the depths of the old cloister swells a love-song so clear
and sweet, so humanly divine that it almost reconciles the ages. The
times were out of joint in Spain, but I am glad that this mystical
daughter of Sappho was not ordained, like poor little Charlotte Corday,
another idealist, with the blood of a great poet in her veins, to try
to set them right. I am glad that the doors of the convent were open to
this spiritual young dreamer of beautiful dreams, who sings the “Swan
Song of the Age of Faith.” You say the convent doors are open yet;
yes, but in another way—perhaps a better way. Women enter to dedicate
a broken life to all that is good. The peace is there, but the rapture
is no more. We “cannot sing the old songs now nor dream those dreams
again.”
No woman is fairer to muse upon than Marcela de Carpio. We get out
of life what we put into it. From the repose of the cloister Sister
Marcela contributes a dream. She is the poetess of the passionate
reverence of the Age of Faith. In her verse “the tender grace of a
day that is dead” is immortal. We must never for a moment overlook a
Spanish lady’s pedigree. Senorita Marcela de Carpio was the grandniece
of a Grand Inquisitor of Spain.
_Stray Leaves From Old, Old Books_
A bibliophile is expected to enter with an apology,—he is generally
called a bibliomaniac, but let your foreboded homage check your tongue;
remember, if you prefer your mother’s Bible to the one left by the
tract society, or the one left by the tract society to your mother’s
(bibliophiles are liable to any preference), you are open to the
infection and the mania is incurable.
But do not books become ours by what we, individually, get from them?
What does it matter whether it lies in the cover or the text or between
the lines? “Piece out our imperfection with your thought,” implores
the greatest poet. Though it is dwelt upon with some truth that
bibliophiles do not read their books (must we therefore infer that
other people have the contents of their libraries at their tongue’s
ends), they have their own attitude toward them—an attitude which has
proved of the profoundest service to letters.
The professional critic enters the library in state, receiving and
dismissing new books with sovereign assurance: so uniformly has he
erred that the dictum has gone forth that no age can pass on its
writers.
The gentle reader enters the library modestly; although he may read the
new books that perish, he does not neglect the new books that live, as
any one who makes a study of editions will discover; he buys the good
works of his own day. The publisher of the first edition of Shakespeare
remarked that purchase “best commends a book,” on the strength of which
idea he collected the stray plays of the Bard of the Avon. The preface
which he wrote for his edition stands forth as the modest advertisement
of history; but absurdly condescending as it is, it shows that he
foresaw a good, immediate sale; also that he foresaw no farther.