ABBOT HUGO.
It is true, all things have two faces, a light one and a dark. It is
true, in three centuries much imperfection accumulates; many an Ideal,
monastic or other, shooting forth into practice as it can, grows to a
strange enough Reality; and we have to ask with amazement, Is this
your Ideal! For, alas, the Ideal always has to grow in the Real, and
to seek out its bed and board there, often in a very sorry way. No
beautifulest Poet is a Bird-of-Paradise, living on perfumes; sleeping
in the aether with outspread wings. The Heroic, _independent_ of bed
and board, is found in Drury-Lane Theatre only; to avoid
disappointments, let us bear this in mind.
By the law of Nature, too, all manner of Ideals have their fatal
limits and lot; their appointed periods, of youth, of maturity or
perfection, of decline, degradation, and final death and
disappearance. There is nothing born but has to die. Ideal
monasteries, once grown real, do seek bed and board in this world; do
find it more and more successfully; do get at length too intent on
finding it, exclusively intent on that. They are then like diseased
corpulent bodies fallen idiotic, which merely eat and sleep; _ready_
for 'dissolution,' by a Henry the Eighth or some other. Jocelin's St.
Edmundsbury is still far from this last dreadful state: but here too
the reader will prepare himself to see an Ideal not sleeping in the
aether like a bird-of-paradise, but roosting as the common wood-fowl
do, in an imperfect, uncomfortable, more or less contemptible
manner!--
* * * * *
Abbot Hugo, as Jocelin, breaking at once into the heart of the
business, apprises us, had in those days grown old, grown rather
blind, and his eyes were somewhat darkened, _aliquantulum caligaverunt
oculi ejus_. He dwelt apart very much, in his _Talamus_ or peculiar
Chamber; got into the hands of flatterers, a set of mealy-mouthed
persons who strove to make the passing hour easy for him,--for him
easy, and for themselves profitable; accumulating in the distance mere
mountains of confusion. Old Dominus Hugo sat inaccessible in this way,
far in the interior, wrapt in his warm flannels and delusions;
inaccessible to all voice of Fact; and bad grew ever worse with us.
Not that our worthy old _Dominus Abbas_ was inattentive to the divine
offices, or to the maintenance of a devout spirit in us or in himself;
but the Account-Books of the Convent fell into the frightfulest state,
and Hugo's annual Budget grew yearly emptier, or filled with futile
expectations, fatal deficit, wind and debts!
His one worldly care was to raise ready money; sufficient for the day
is the evil thereof. And how he raised it: From usurious insatiable
Jews; every fresh Jew sticking on him like a fresh horseleech, sucking
his and our life out; crying continually, Give, give! Take one example
instead of scores. Our _Camera_ having fallen into ruin, William the
Sacristan received charge to repair it; strict charge, but no money;
Abbot Hugo would, and indeed could, give him no fraction of money. The
_Camera_ in ruins, and Hugo penniless and inaccessible, Willelmus
Sacrista borrowed Forty Marcs (some Seven-and-twenty Pounds) of
Benedict the Jew, and patched-up our Camera again. But the means of
repaying him? There were no means. Hardly could _Sacrista_,
_Cellerarius_, or any public officer, get ends to meet, on the
indispensablest scale, with their shrunk allowances: ready money had
vanished.
Benedict's Twenty-seven pounds grew rapidly at compound-interest; and
at length, when it had amounted to a Hundred pounds, he, on a day of
settlement, presents the account to Hugo himself. Hugo already owed
him another Hundred of his own; and so here it has become Two Hundred!
Hugo, in a fine frenzy, threatens to depose the Sacristan, to do this
and do that; but, in the mean while, How to quiet your insatiable Jew?
Hugo, for this couple of hundreds, grants the Jew his bond for Four
hundred payable at the end of four years. At the end of four years
there is, of course, still no money; and the Jew now gets a bond for
Eight hundred and eighty pounds, to be paid by instalments, Fourscore
pounds every year. Here was a way of doing business!
Neither yet is this insatiable Jew satisfied or settled with: he had
papers against us of 'small debts fourteen years old;' his modest
claim amounts finally to 'Twelve hundred pounds besides
interest;'--and one hopes he never got satisfied in this world; one
almost hopes he was one of those beleaguered Jews who hanged
themselves in York Castle shortly afterwards, and had his usances and
quittances and horseleech papers summarily set fire to! For
approximate justice will strive to accomplish itself; if not in one
way, then in another. Jews, and also Christians and Heathens, who
accumulate in this manner, though furnished with never so many
parchments, do, at times, 'get their grinder-teeth successively pulled
out of their head, each day a new grinder,' till they consent to
disgorge again. A sad fact,--worth reflecting on.
Jocelin, we see, is not without secularity: Our _Dominus
Abbas_ was intent enough on the divine offices; but then his
Account-Books--?--One of the things that strike us most, throughout,
in Jocelin's _Chronicle_, and indeed in Eadmer's _Anselm_, and other
old monastic Books, written evidently by pious men, is this, That
there is almost no mention whatever of 'personal religion' in them;
that the whole gist of their thinking and speculation seems to be the
'privileges of our order,' 'strict exaction of our dues,' 'God's
honour' (meaning the honour of our Saint), and so forth. Is not this
singular? A body of men, set apart for perfecting and purifying their
own souls, do not seem disturbed about that in any measure: the
'Ideal' says nothing about its idea; says much about finding bed and
board for itself! How is this?
Why, for one thing, bed and board are a matter very apt to come to
speech: it is much easier to _speak_ of them than of ideas; and they
are sometimes much more pressing with some! Nay, for another thing,
may not this religious reticence, in these devout good souls, be
perhaps a merit, and sign of health in them? Jocelin, Eadmer, and such
religious men, have as yet nothing of 'Methodism;' no Doubt or even
root of Doubt. Religion is not a diseased self-introspection, an
agonising inquiry: their duties are clear to them, the way of supreme
good plain, indisputable, and they are travelling on it. Religion lies
over them like an all-embracing heavenly canopy, like an atmosphere
and life-element, which is not spoken of, which in all things is
presupposed without speech. Is not serene or complete Religion the
highest aspect of human nature; as serene Cant, or complete
No-religion, is the lowest and miserablest? Between which two, all
manner of earnest Methodisms, introspections, agonising inquiries,
never so morbid, shall play their respective parts, not without
approbation.
* * * * *
But let any reader fancy himself one of the Brethren in St.
Edmundsbury Monastery under such circumstances! How can a Lord Abbot,
all stuck-over with horseleeches of this nature, front the world? He
is fast losing his life-blood, and the Convent will be as one of
Pharaoh's lean kine. Old monks of experience draw their hoods deeper
down; careful what they say: the monk's first duty is obedience. Our
Lord the King, hearing of such work, sends down his Almoner to make
investigations: but what boots it? Abbot Hugo assembles us in Chapter;
asks, "If there is any complaint?" Not a soul of us dare answer, "Yes,
thousands!" but we all stand silent, and the Prior even says that
things are in a very comfortable condition. Whereupon old Abbot Hugo,
turning to the royal messenger, says, "You see!"--and the business
terminates in that way. I, as a brisk-eyed noticing youth and novice,
could not help asking of the elders, asking of Magister Samson in
particular: Why he, well-instructed and a knowing man, had not spoken
out, and brought matters to a bearing? Magister Samson was Teacher of
the Novices, appointed to breed us up to the rules, and I loved him
well. "_Fili mi_," answered Samson, "the burnt child shuns the fire.
Dost thou not know, our Lord the Abbot sent me once to Acre in
Norfolk, to solitary confinement and bread-and-water, already? The
Hinghams, Hugo and Robert, have just got home from banishment for
speaking. This is the hour of darkness: the hour when flatterers rule
and are believed. _Videat Dominus_, let the Lord see, and judge."
In very truth, what could poor old Abbot Hugo do? A frail old man, and
the Philistines were upon him,--that is to say, the Hebrews. He had
nothing for it but to shrink away from them; get back into his warm
flannels, into his warm delusions again. Happily, before it was quite
too late, he bethought him of pilgriming to St. Thomas of Canterbury.
He set out, with a fit train, in the autumn days of the year 1180;
near Rochester City, his mule threw him, dislocated his poor kneepan,
raised incurable inflammatory fever; and the poor old man got his
dismissal from the whole coil at once. St. Thomas a Becket, though in
a circuitous way, had _brought_ deliverance! Neither Jew usurers, nor
grumbling monks, nor other importunate despicability of men or
mud-elements afflicted Abbot Hugo any more; but he dropt his rosaries,
closed his account-books, closed his old eyes, and lay down into the
long sleep. Heavy-laden hoary old Dominus Hugo, fare thee well.
One thing we cannot mention without a due thrill of horror: namely,
that, in the empty exchequer of Dominus Hugo, there was not found one
penny to distribute to the Poor that they might pray for his soul! By
a kind of godsend, Fifty shillings did, in the very nick of time, fall
due, or seem to fall due, from one of his Farmers (the _Firmarius_ de
Palegrava), and he paid it, and the Poor had it; though, alas, this
too only _seemed_ to fall due, and we had it to pay again afterwards.
Dominus Hugo's apartments were plundered by his servants, to the last
portable stool, in a few minutes after the breath was out of his body.
Forlorn old Hugo, fare thee well forever.