The Abbot's Troubles
The troubles of Abbot Samson, as he went along in this
abstemious, reticent, rigorous way, were more than tongue can
tell. The Abbot's mitre once set on his head, he knew rest no
more. Double, double, toil and trouble; that is the life of all
governors that really govern: not the spoil of victory, only the
glorious toil of battle can be theirs. Abbot Samson found all
men more or less headstrong, irrational, prone to disorder;
continually threatening to prove ungovernable.
His lazy Monks gave him most trouble. 'My heart is tortured,'
said he, 'till we get out of debt, _cor meum cruciatum est.'_
Your heart, indeed;--but not altogether ours! By no devisable
method, or none of three or four that he devised, could Abbot
Samson get these Monks of his to keep their accounts straight;
but always, do as he might, the Cellerarius at the end of the
term is in a coil, in a flat deficit,--verging again towards debt
and Jews. The Lord Abbot at last declares sternly he will keep
our accounts too himself; will appoint an officer of his own to
see our Cellerarius keep them. Murmurs thereupon among us: Was
the like ever heard? Our Cellerarius a cipher; the very
Townsfolk know it: _subsannatio et derisio sumus,_ we have
become a laughingstock to mankind. The Norfolk barrator
and paltener!
And consider, if the Abbot found such difficulty in the mere
economic department, how much in more complex ones, in spiritual
ones perhaps! He wears a stern calm face; raging and gnashing
teeth, _fremens_ and _frendens,_ many times, in the secret of his
mind. Withal, however, there is noble slow perseverance in him;
a strength of 'subdued rage' calculated to subdue most things:
always, in the long-run, he contrives to gain his point.
Murmurs from the Monks, meanwhile, cannot fail; ever deeper
murmurs, new grudges accumulating. At one time, on slight cause,
some drop making the cup run over, they burst into open mutiny:
the Cellarer will not obey, prefers arrest on bread and water to
obeying; the Monks thereupon strike work; refuse to do the
regular chanting of the day, at least the younger part of them
with loud clamour and uproar refuse:--Abbot Samson has withdrawn
to another residence, acting only by messengers: the awful
report circulates through St. Edmundsbury that the Abbot is in
danger of being murdered by the Monks with their knives! How
wilt thou appease this, Abbot Samson? Return; for the Monastery
seems near catching fire!
Abbot Samson returns; sits in his _Thalamus_ or inner room,
hurls out a bolt or two of excommunication: lo, one disobedient
Monk sits in limbo, excommunicated, with foot-shackles on him,
all day; and three more our Abbot has gyved 'with the lesser
sentence, to strike fear into the others!' Let the others think
with whom they have to do. The others think; and fear enters
into them. 'On the morrow morning we decide on humbling
ourselves before the Abbot, by word and gesture, in order to
mitigate his mind. And so accordingly was done. He, on the
other side, replying with much humility, yet always alleging his
own justice and turning the blame on us, when he saw that we were
conquered, became himself conquered. And bursting into tears,
_perfusus lachrymis,_ he swore that he had never grieved so much
for anything in the world as for this, first on his own account,
and then secondly and chiefly for the public scandal which had
gone abroad, that St. Edmund's Monks were going to kill their
Abbot. And when he had narrated how he went away on purpose till
his anger should cool, repeating this word of the philosopher, "I
would have taken vengeance on thee, had not I been angry," he
arose weeping, and embraced each and all of us with the kiss of
peace. He wept; we all wept:'--what a picture! Behave better,
ye remiss Monks, and thank Heaven for such an Abbot; or know at
least that ye must and shall obey him.
Worn down in this manner, with incessant toil and tribulation,
Abbot Samson had a sore time of it; his grizzled hair and beard
grew daily greyer. Those Jews, in the first four years, had
'visibly emaciated him:' Time, Jews, and the task of Governing,
will make a man's beard very grey! 'In twelve years,' says
Jocelin, 'our Lord Abbot had grown wholly white as snow, _totus
efficitur albus sicut nix.'_ White, atop, like the granite
mountains:--but his clear-beaming eyes still look out, in their
stern clearness, in their sorrow and pity; the heart within him
remains unconquered.
Nay sometimes there are gleams of hilarity too; little snatches
of encouragement granted even to a Governor. 'Once my Lord Abbot
and I, coming down from London through the Forest, I inquired of
an old woman whom we came up to, Whose wood this was, and of what
manor; who the master, who the keeper?'--All this I knew very
well beforehand, and my Lord Abbot too, Bozzy that I was! But
'the old woman answered, The wood belonged to the new Abbot of
St. Edmund's, was of the manor of Harlow, and the keeper of it
was one Arnald. How did he behave to the people of the manor? I
asked farther. She answered that he used to be a devil
incarnate, _daemon vivus_, an enemy of God, and flayer of the
peasants' skins,'--skinning them like live eels, as the manner of
some is: but that now he dreads the new Abbot, knowing him to be
a wise and sharp man, and so treats the people reasonably,
_tractat homines pacifice.'_ Whereat the Lord Abbot _factus est
hilaris,_--could not but take a triumphant laugh for himself;
and determines to leave that Harlow manor yet unmeddled with, for
a while.
A brave man, strenuously fighting, fails not of a little triumph,
now and then, to keep him in heart. Everywhere we try at least
to give the adversary as good as he brings; and, with swift
force or slow watchful manoeuvre, extinguish this and the other
solecism, leave one solecism less in God's Creation; and so
_proceed_ with our battle, not slacken or surrender in it! The
Fifty feudal Knights; for example, were of unjust greedy temper,
and cheated us, in the Installation-day, of ten knights'-fees;--
but they know now whether that has profited them aught, and I
Jocelin know. Our Lord Abbot for the moment had to endure it,
and say nothing; but he watched his time.
Look also how my Lord of Clare, coming to claim his undue 'debt'
in the Court at Witham, with barons and apparatus, gets a Rowland
for his Oliver! Jocelin shall report: 'The Earl, crowded round
(_constipatus_) with many barons and men at arms, Earl Alberic
and others standing by him, said, "That his bailiffs had given
him to understand they were wont annually to receive for his
behoof, from the Hundred of Risebridge and the bailiffs thereof,
a sum of five shillings, which sum was now unjustly held back;"
and he alleged farther that his predecessors had been infeft, at
the Conquest, in the lands of Alfric son of Wisgar, who was Lord
of that Hundred, as may be read in Domesday Book by all persons.
--The Abbot, reflecting for a moment, without stirring from his
place, made answer: "A wonderful deficit, my Lord Earl, this
that thou mentionest! King Edward gave to St. Edmund that entire
Hundred, and confirmed the same with his Charter; nor is there
any mention there of those five shillings. It will behove thee
to say, for what service, or on what ground, thou exactest those
five shillings." Whereupon the Earl, consulting with his
followers, replied, That he had to carry the Banner of St. Edmund
in war-time, and for this duty the five shillings were his. To
which the Abbot: "Certainly, it seems inglorious, if so great a
man, Earl of Clare no less, receive so small a gift for such a
service. To the Abbot of St. Edmund's it is no unbearable burden
to give five shillings. But Roger Earl Bigot holds himself duly
seised, and asserts that he by such seisin has the office of
carrying St. Edmund's Banner; and he did carry it when the Earl
of Leicester and his Flemings were beaten at Fornham. Then again
Thomas de Mendham says that the right is his. When you have made
out with one another, that this right is thine, come then and
claim the five shillings, and I will promptly pay them!"
Whereupon the Earl said, He would speak with Earl Roger his
relative; and so the matter _cepit dilationem,'_ and lies
undecided to the end of the world. Abbot Samson answers by word
or act, in this or the like pregnant manner, having justice on
his side, innumerable persons: Pope's Legates, King's Viscounts,
Canterbury Archbishops, Cellarers, _Sochemanni;_--and leaves many
a solecism extinguished.
On the whole, however, it is and remains sore work. 'One time,
during my chaplaincy, I ventured to say to him: _"Domane,_ I
heard thee, this night after matins, wakeful, and sighing deeply,
_valde suspirantem,_ contrary to thy usual wont." He answered:
"No wonder. Thou, son Jocelin, sharest in my good things, in
food and drink, in riding and such like; but thou little
thinkest concerning the management of House and Family, the
various and arduous businesses of the Pastoral Care, which harass
me, and make my soul to sigh and be anxious." Whereto I, lifting
up my hands to Heaven: "From such anxiety, Omnipotent Merciful
Lord deliver me!"--I have heard the Abbot say, If he had been as
he was before he became a Monk, and could have anywhere got five
or six mares of income,' some three pound ten of yearly revenue,
'whereby to support himself in the schools, he would never have
been Monk nor Abbot. Another time he said with an oath, If he
had known what a business it was to govern the Abbey, he would
rather have been Almoner, how much rather Keeper of the Books,
than Abbot and Lord. That latter office he said he had always
longed for, beyond any other. _Quis talia crederet,'_ concludes
Jocelin, 'Who can believe such things?'
Three pound ten, and a life of Literature, especially of quiet
Literature, without copyright, or world-celebrity of literary-
gazettes,--yes, thou brave Abbot Samson, for thyself it had been
better, easier, perhaps also nobler! But then, for thy
disobedient Monks, unjust Viscounts; for a Domain of St. Edmund
overgrown with Solecisms, human and other, it had not been so
well. Nay neither could _thy_ Literature, never so quiet, have
been easy. Literature, when noble, is not easy; but only when
ignoble. Literature too is a quarrel, and internecine duel, with
the whole World of Darkness that lies without one and within
one;--rather a hard fight at times, even with the three pound ten
secure. Thou, there where thou art, wrestle and duel along,
cheerfully to the end; and make no remarks!