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 beautifullest 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 nether like a bird-
of-paradise, but roosting as the common woodfowl 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 frightfullest
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 Mares (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 One hundred pounds, he, on
a day of settlement, presents the account to Hugo himself. Hugo
already owed him another One 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 installments, Four-score
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 traveling 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 horse-leeches 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.