ABBOT SAMSON.
So, then, the bells of St. Edmundsbury clang out one and all, and in
church and chapel the organs go: Convent and Town, and all the west
side of Suffolk, are in gala; knights, viscounts, weavers, spinners,
the entire population, male and female, young and old, the very
sockmen with their chubby infants,--out to have a holiday, and see the
Lord Abbot arrive! And there is: 'stripping barefoot' of the Lord
Abbot at the Gate, and solemn leading of him in to the High Altar and
Shrine; with sudden 'silence of all the bells and organs,' as we kneel
in deep prayer there; and again with outburst of all the bells and
organs, and loud _Te Deum_ from the general human windpipe; and
speeches by the leading viscount, and giving of the kiss of
brotherhood; the whole wound-up with popular games, and dinner within
doors of more than a thousand strong, _plus quam mille comedentibus in
gaudio magno_.
In such manner is the selfsame Samson once again returning to us,
welcomed on _this_ occasion. He that went away with his frock-skirts
looped over his arm, comes back riding high; suddenly made one of the
dignitaries of this world. Reflective readers will admit that here was
a trial for a man. Yesterday a poor mendicant, allowed to possess not
above two shillings of money, and without authority to bid a dog run
for him,--this man today finds himself a _Dominus Abbas_, mitred Peer
of Parliament, Lord of manor-houses, farms, manors, and wide lands; a
man with 'Fifty Knights under him,' and dependent, swiftly obedient
multitudes of men. It is a change greater than Napoleon's; so sudden
withal. As if one of the Chandos day-drudges had, on awakening some
morning, found that _he_ overnight was become Duke! Let Samson with
his clear-beaming eyes see into that, and discern it if he can. We
shall now get the measure of him by a new scale of inches,
considerably more rigorous than the former was. For if a noble soul is
rendered tenfold beautifuler by victory and prosperity, springing now
radiant as into his own due element and sun-throne; an ignoble one is
rendered tenfold and hundredfold uglier, pitifuler. Whatsoever vices,
whatsoever weaknesses were in the man, the parvenu will show us them
enlarged, as in the solar microscope, into frightful distortion. Nay,
how many mere seminal principles of vice, hitherto all wholesomely
kept latent, may we now see unfolded, as in the solar hothouse, into
growth, into huge universally-conspicuous luxuriance and development!
* * * * *
But is not this, at any rate, a singular aspect of what political and
social capabilities, nay, let us say, what depth and opulence of true
social vitality, lay in those old barbarous ages, That the fit
Governor could be met with under such disguises, could be recognised
and laid hold of under such? Here he is discovered with a maximum of
two shillings in his pocket, and a leather scrip round his neck;
trudging along the highway, his frock-skirts looped over his arm. They
think this is he nevertheless, the true Governor; and he proves to be
so. Brethren, have we no need of discovering true Governors, but will
sham ones forever do for us? These were absurd superstitious
blockheads of Monks; and we are enlightened Tenpound Franchisers,
without taxes on knowledge! Where, I say, are our superior, are our
similar or at all comparable discoveries? We also have eyes, or ought
to have; we have hustings, telescopes; we have lights, link-lights and
rush-lights of an enlightened free Press, burning and dancing
everywhere, as in a universal torch-dance; singeing your whiskers as
you traverse the public thoroughfares in town and country. Great
souls, true Governors, go about under all manner of disguises now as
then. Such telescopes, such enlightenment,--and such discovery! How
comes it, I say; how comes it? Is it not lamentable; is it not even,
in some sense, amazing?
Alas, the defect, as we must often urge and again urge, is less a
defect of telescopes than of some eyesight. Those superstitious
blockheads of the Twelfth Century had no telescopes, but they had
still an eye; not ballot-boxes; only reverence for Worth, abhorrence
of Unworth. It is the way with all barbarians. Thus Mr. Sale informs
me, the old Arab Tribes would gather in liveliest _gaudeamus_, and
sing, and kindle bonfires, and wreathe crowns of honour, and solemnly
thank the gods that, in their Tribe too, a Poet had shown himself. As
indeed they well might; for what usefuler, I say not nobler and
heavenlier thing could the gods, doing their very kindest, send to any
Tribe or Nation, in any time or circumstances? I declare to thee, my
afflicted quack-ridden brother, in spite of thy astonishment, it is
very lamentable! We English find a Poet, as brave a man as has been
made for a hundred years or so anywhere under the Sun; and do we
kindle bonfires, or thank the gods? Not at all. We, taking due counsel
of it, set the man to gauge ale-barrels in the Burgh of Dumfries; and
pique ourselves on our 'patronage of genius.'
Genius, Poet: do we know what these words mean? An inspired Soul once
more vouchsafed us, direct from Nature's own great fire-heart, to see
the Truth, and speak it, and do it; Nature's own sacred voice heard
once more athwart the dreary boundless element of hearsaying and
canting, of twaddle and poltroonery, in which the bewildered Earth,
nigh perishing, has _lost its way_. Hear once more, ye bewildered
benighted mortals; listen once again to a voice from the inner
Light-sea and Flame-sea, Nature's and Truth's own heart; know the Fact
of your Existence what it is, put away the Cant of it which it is
_not_; and knowing, do, and let it be well with you!--
George the Third is Defender of something we call 'the Faith' in those
years; George the Third is head charioteer of the Destinies of
England, to guide them through the gulf of French Revolutions,
American Independences; and Robert Burns is Gauger of ale in Dumfries.
It is an Iliad in a nutshell. The physiognomy of a world now verging
towards dissolution, reduced now to spasms and death-throes, lies
pictured in that one fact,--which astonishes nobody, except at me for
being astonished at it. The fruit of long ages of confirmed Valethood,
entirely confirmed as into a Law of Nature; cloth-worship and
quack-worship: entirely _confirmed_ Valethood,--which will have to
_un_confirm itself again; God knows, with difficulty enough!--
* * * * *
Abbot Samson had found a Convent all in dilapidation; rain beating
through it, material rain and metaphorical, from all quarters of the
compass. Willelmus Sacrista sits drinking nightly, and doing mere
_tacenda_. Our larders are reduced to leanness, Jew harpies and
unclean creatures our purveyors; in our basket is no bread. Old women
with their distaffs rush out on a distressed Cellarer in shrill
Chartism. 'You cannot stir abroad but Jews and Christians pounce upon
you with unsettled bonds;' debts boundless seemingly as the National
Debt of England. For four years our new Lord Abbot never went abroad
but Jew creditors and Christian, and all manner of creditors, were
about him; driving him to very despair. Our Prior is remiss; our
Cellarers, officials are remiss; our monks are remiss: what man is not
remiss? Front this, Samson, thou alone art there to front it; it is
thy task to front and fight this, and to die or kill it. May the Lord
have mercy on thee!
To our antiquarian interest in poor Jocelin and his Convent, where the
whole aspect of existence, the whole dialect, of thought, of speech,
of activity, is so obsolete, strange, long-vanished, there now
superadds itself a mild glow of human interest for Abbot Samson; a
real pleasure, as at sight of man's work, especially of governing,
which is man's highest work, done _well_. Abbot Samson had no
experience in governing; had served no apprenticeship to the trade of
governing,--alas, only the hardest apprenticeship to that of obeying.
He had never in any court given _vadium_ or _plegium_, says Jocelin;
hardly ever seen a court, when he was set to preside in one. But it is
astonishing, continues Jocelin, how soon he learned the ways of
business; and, in all sort of affairs, became expert beyond others. Of
the many persons offering him their service, 'he retained one Knight
skilled in taking _vadia_ and _plegia_;' and within the year was
himself well skilled. Nay, by and by, the Pope appoints him Justiciary
in certain causes; the King one of his new Circuit Judges: official
Osbert is heard saying, "That Abbot is one of your shrewd ones,
_disputator est_; if he go on as he begins, he will cut out every
lawyer of us!"[12]
Why not? What is to hinder this Samson from governing? There is in him
what far transcends all apprenticeships; in the man himself there
exists a model of governing, something to govern by! There exists in
him a heart-abhorrence of whatever is incoherent, pusillanimous,
unveracious,--that is to say, chaotic, _un_governed; of the Devil, not
of God. A man of this kind cannot help governing! He has the living
ideal of a governor in him; and the incessant necessity of struggling
to unfold the same out of him. Not the Devil or Chaos, for any wages,
will he serve; no, this man is the born servant of Another than them.
Alas, how little avail all apprenticeships, when there is in your
governor himself what we may well call _nothing_ to govern by:
nothing;--a general gray twilight, looming with shapes of
expediencies, parliamentary traditions, division-lists,
election-funds, leading-articles; this, with what of vulpine alertness
and adroitness soever, is not much!
But indeed what say we, apprenticeship? Had not this Samson served, in
his way, a right good apprenticeship to governing; namely, the
harshest slave-apprenticeship to obeying! Walk this world with no
friend in it but God and St. Edmund, you will either fall into the
ditch, or learn a good many things. To learn obeying is the
fundamental art of governing. How much would many a Serene Highness
have learned, had he travelled through the world with water-jug and
empty wallet, _sine omni expensa_; and, at his victorious return, sat
down not to newspaper-paragraphs and city-illuminations, but at the
foot of St. Edmund's Shrine to shackles and bread-and-water! He that
cannot be servant of many, will never be master, true guide and
deliverer of many;--that is the meaning of true mastership. Had not
the Monk-life extraordinary 'political capabilities' in it; if not
imitable by us, yet enviable? Heavens, had a Duke of Logwood, now
rolling sumptuously to his place in the Collective Wisdom, but
himself happened to plough daily, at one time, on seven-and-sixpence a
week, with no out-door relief,--what a light, unquenchable by logic
and statistic and arithmetic, would it have thrown on several things
for him!
In all cases, therefore, we will agree with the judicious Mrs. Glass:
'First catch your hare!' First get your man; all is got: he can learn
to do all things, from making boots, to decreeing judgments, governing
communities; and will do them like a man. Catch your no-man,--alas,
have you not caught the terriblest Tartar in the world! Perhaps all
the terribler, the quieter and gentler he looks. For the mischief that
one blockhead, that every blockhead does, in a world so feracious,
teeming with endless results as ours, no ciphering will sum up. The
quack bootmaker is considerable; as corn-cutters can testify, and
desperate men reduced to buckskin and list-shoes. But the quack
priest, quack high-priest, the quack king! Why do not all just
citizens rush, half-frantic, to stop him, as they would a
conflagration? Surely a just citizen _is_ admonished by God and his
own Soul, by all silent and articulate voices of this Universe, to do
what in _him_ lies towards relief of this poor blockhead-quack, and of
a world that groans under him. Run swiftly; relieve him,--were it even
by extinguishing him! For all things have grown so old, tinder-dry,
combustible; and he is more ruinous than conflagration. Sweep him
_down_, at least; keep him strictly within the hearth: he will then
cease to be conflagration; he will then become useful, more or less,
as culinary fire. Fire is the best of servants; but what a master!
This poor blockhead too is born, for uses: why, elevating him to
mastership, will you make a conflagration, a parish-curse or
world-curse of him?
FOOTNOTES:
[12] _Jocelini Chronica_, p. 25.