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 _un_governable.
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 a 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refuse:--Abbot Samson has withdrawn to another residence, acting only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 _Talamus_, 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:'[15]--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
grayer. 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 gray! '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.[16]
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 _un_due 'debt' in
the Court of Witham, with barons and apparatus, gets a Roland 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: "_Domine_, 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
suchlike; 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
marcs 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!
FOOTNOTES:
[15] _Jocelini Chronica_, p. 85.
[16] _Jocelini Chronica_, p. 24.