Past and Present Part 3

But it is time we were in St. Edmundsbury Monastery, and Seven good Centuries off. If indeed it be possible, by any aid of Jocelin, by any human art, to get thither, with a reader or two still following us?

FOOTNOTES:

[3] _Chronica_ Jocelini de Brakelonda, _de rebus gestis Samsonis Abbatis Monasterii Sancti Edmundi nunc primum typis mandata, curante Johanne Gage Rokewood._ (Camden Society, London, 1840)

CHAPTER II.

ST. EDMUNDSBURY.

The _Burg_, Bury, or 'Berry' as they call it, of St. Edmund is still a prosperous brisk Town; beautifully diversifying, with its clear brick houses, ancient clean streets, and twenty or fifteen thousand busy souls, the general gra.s.sy face of Suffolk; looking out right pleasantly, from its hill-slope, towards the rising Sun: and on the eastern edge of it, still runs, long, black and ma.s.sive, a range of monastic ruins; into the wide internal s.p.a.ces of which the stranger is admitted on payment of one shilling. Internal s.p.a.ces laid out, at present, as a botanic garden. Here stranger or townsman, sauntering at his leisure amid these vast grim venerable ruins, may persuade himself that an Abbey of St. Edmundsbury did once exist; nay there is no doubt of it: see here the ancient ma.s.sive Gateway, of architecture interesting to the eye of Dilettantism; and farther on, that other ancient Gateway, now about to tumble, unless Dilettantism, in these very months, can subscribe money to cramp it and prop it!

Here, sure enough, is an Abbey; beautiful in the eye of Dilettantism.

Giant Pedantry also will step in, with its huge _Dugdale_ and other enormous _Monasticons_ under its arm, and cheerfully apprise you, That this was a very great Abbey, owner and indeed creator of St. Edmund's Town itself, owner of wide lands and revenues; nay that its lands were once a county of themselves; that indeed King Canute or Knut was very kind to it, and gave St. Edmund his own gold crown off his head, on one occasion: for the rest, that the Monks were of such and such a genus, such and such a number; that they had so many carucates of land in this hundred, and so many in that; and then farther that the large Tower or Belfry was built by such a one, and the smaller Belfry was built by &c. &c.--Till human nature can stand no more of it; till human nature desperately take refuge in forgetfulness, almost in flat disbelief of the whole business, Monks, Monastery, Belfries, Carucates and all! Alas, what mountains of dead ashes, wreck and burnt bones, does a.s.siduous Pedantry dig up from the Past Time, and name it History, and Philosophy of History; till, as we say, the human soul sinks wearied and bewildered; till the Past Time seems all one infinite incredible gray void, without sun, stars, hearth-fires, or candle-light; dim offensive dust-whirlwinds filling universal Nature; and over your Historical Library, it is as if all the t.i.tans had written for themselves: Dry Rubbish shot here!

And yet these grim old walls are not a dilettantism and dubiety; they are an earnest fact. It was a most real and serious purpose they were built for! Yes, another world it was, when these black ruins, white in their new mortar and fresh chiselling, first saw the sun as walls, long ago. Gauge not, with thy dilettante compa.s.ses, with that placid dilettante simper, the Heaven's-Watchtower of our Fathers, the fallen G.o.d's-Houses, the Golgotha of true Souls departed!

Their architecture, belfries, land-carucates? Yes,--and that is but a small item of the matter. Does it never give thee pause, this other strange item of it, that men then had a _soul_,--not by hearsay alone, and as a figure of speech; but as a truth that they _knew_, and practically went upon! Verily it was another world then. Their Missals have become incredible, a sheer plat.i.tude, sayest thou? Yes, a most poor plat.i.tude; and even, if thou wilt, an idolatry and blasphemy, should any one persuade _thee_ to believe them, to pretend praying by them. But yet it is pity we had lost tidings of our souls:--actually we shall have to go in quest of them again, or worse in all ways will befall! A certain degree of soul, as Ben Jonson reminds us, is indispensable to keep the very body from destruction of the frightfulest sort; to 'save us,' says he, 'the expense of _salt_.'

Ben has known men who had soul enough to keep their body and five senses from becoming carrion, and save salt:--men, and also Nations.

You may look in Manchester Hunger-mobs and Corn-law Commons Houses, and various other quarters, and say whether either soul or else salt is not somewhat wanted at present!--

Another world, truly: and this present poor distressed world might get some profit by looking wisely into it, instead of foolishly. But at lowest, O dilettante friend, let us know always that it _was_ a world, and not a void infinite of gray haze with fantasms swimming in it.

These old St. Edmundsbury walls, I say, were not peopled with fantasms; but with men of flesh and blood, made altogether as we are.

Had thou and I then been, who knows but we ourselves had taken refuge from an evil Time, and fled to dwell here, and meditate on an Eternity, in such fashion as we could? Alas, how like an old osseous fragment, a broken blackened shin-bone of the old dead Ages, this black ruin looks out, not yet covered by the soil; still indicating what a once gigantic Life lies buried there! It is dead now, and dumb; but was alive once, and spake. For twenty generations, here was the earthly arena where painful living men worked out their life-wrestle,--looked at by Earth, by Heaven and h.e.l.l. Bells tolled to prayers; and men, of many humours, various thoughts, chanted vespers, matins;--and round the little islet of their life rolled forever (as round ours still rolls, though we are blind and deaf) the illimitable Ocean, tinting all things with _its_ eternal hues and reflexes; making strange prophetic music! How silent now; all departed, clean gone. The World-Dramaturgist has written: _Exeunt_.

The devouring Time-Demons have made away with it all: and in its stead, there is either nothing; or what is worse, offensive universal dust-clouds, and gray eclipse of Earth and Heaven, from 'dry rubbish shot here!'--

Truly it is no easy matter to get across the chasm of Seven Centuries, filled with such material. But here, of all helps, is not a Boswell the welcomest; even a small Boswell? Veracity, true simplicity of heart, how valuable are these always! He that speaks what _is_ really in him, will find men to listen, though under never such impediments.

Even gossip, springing free and cheery from a human heart, this too is a kind of veracity and _speech_;--much preferable to pedantry and inane gray haze! Jocelin is weak and garrulous, but he is human.

Through the thin watery gossip of our Jocelin, we do get some glimpses of that deep-buried Time; discern veritably, though in a fitful intermittent manner, these antique figures and their life-method, face to face! Beautifully, in our earnest loving glance, the old centuries melt from opaque to partially translucent, transparent here and there; and the void black Night, one finds, is but the summing-up of innumerable peopled luminous _Days_. Not parchment Chartularies, Doctrines of the Const.i.tution, O Dryasdust; not altogether, my erudite friend!--

Readers who please to go along with us into this poor _Jocelini Chronica_ shall wander inconveniently enough, as in wintry twilight, through some poor stript hazel-grove, rustling with foolish noises, and perpetually hindering the eyesight; but across which, here and there, some real human figure is seen moving: very strange; whom we could hail if he would answer;--and we look into a pair of eyes deep as our own, _imaging_ our own, but all unconscious of us; to whom we, for the time, are become as spirits and invisible!

CHAPTER III.

LANDLORD EDMUND.

Some three centuries or so had elapsed since _Beodric's-worth_[4]

became St. Edmund's _Stow_, St. Edmund's _Town_ and Monastery, before Jocelin entered himself a Novice there. 'It was,' says he, 'the year after the Flemings were defeated at Fornham St. Genevieve.'

Much pa.s.ses away into oblivion: this glorious victory over the Flemings at Fornham has, at the present date, greatly dimmed itself out of the minds of men. A victory and battle nevertheless it was, in its time: some thrice-renowned Earl of Leicester, not of the De Montfort breed (as may be read in Philosophical and other Histories, could any human memory retain such things), had quarrelled with his sovereign, Henry Second of the name; had been worsted, it is like, and maltreated, and obliged to fly to foreign parts; but had rallied there into new vigour; and so, in the year 1173, returns across the German Sea with a vengeful army of Flemings. Returns, to the coast of Suffolk; to Framlingham Castle, where he is welcomed; westward towards St. Edmundsbury and Fornham Church, where he is met by the const.i.tuted authorities with _posse comitatus_; and swiftly cut in pieces, he and his, or laid by the heels; on the right bank of the obscure river Lark,--as traces still existing will verify.

For the river Lark, though not very discoverably, still runs or stagnates in that country; and the battle-ground is there; serving at present as a pleasure-ground to his Grace of Northumberland. Copper pennies of Henry II. are still found there;--rotted out from the pouches of poor slain soldiers, who had not had _time_ to buy liquor with them. In the river Lark itself was fished up, within man's memory, an antique gold ring; which fond Dilettantism can almost believe may have been the very ring Countess Leicester threw away, in her flight, into that same Lark river or ditch.[5] Nay, few years ago, in tearing out an enormous superannuated ash-tree, now grown quite corpulent, bursten, superfluous, but long a fixture in the soil, and not to be dislodged without revolution,--there was laid bare, under its roots, 'a circular mound of skeletons wonderfully complete,' all radiating from a centre, faces upwards, feet inwards; a 'radiation'

not of Light, but of the Nether Darkness rather; and evidently the fruit of battle; for 'many of the heads were cleft, or had arrow-holes in them,' The Battle of Fornham, therefore, is a fact, though a forgotten one; no less obscure than undeniable,--like so many other facts.

Like the St. Edmund's Monastery itself! Who can doubt, after what we have said, that there was a Monastery here at one time? No doubt at all there was a Monastery here; no doubt, some three centuries prior to this Fornham Battle, there dwelt a man in these parts of the name of Edmund, King, Landlord, Duke or whatever his t.i.tle was, of the Eastern Counties;--and a very singular man and landlord he must have been.

For his tenants, it would appear, did not in the least complain of him; his labourers did not think of burning his wheatstacks, breaking into his game-preserves; very far the reverse of all that. Clear evidence, satisfactory even to my friend Dryasdust, exists that, on the contrary, they honoured, loved, admired this ancient Landlord to a quite astonishing degree,--and indeed at last to an immeasurable and inexpressible degree; for, finding no limits or utterable words for their sense of his worth, they took to beatifying and adoring him!

'Infinite admiration,' we are taught, 'means worship.'

Very singular,--could we discover it! What Edmund's specific duties were; above all, what his method of discharging them with such results was, would surely be interesting to know; but are _not_ very discoverable now. His Life has become a poetic, nay a religious _Mythus_; though, undeniably enough, it was once a prose Fact, as our poor lives are; and even a very rugged unmanageable one. This landlord Edmund did go about in leather shoes, with _femoralia_ and bodycoat of some sort on him; and daily had his breakfast to procure; and daily had contradictory speeches, and most contradictory facts not a few, to reconcile with himself. No man becomes a Saint in his sleep. Edmund, for instance, instead of _reconciling_ those same contradictory facts and speeches to himself,--which means _subduing_, and in a manlike and G.o.dlike manner conquering them to himself,--might have merely thrown new contention into them, new unwisdom into them, and so been conquered _by_ them; much the commoner case! In that way he had proved no 'Saint,' or Divine-looking Man, but a mere Sinner, and unfortunate, blameable, more or less Diabolic-looking man! No landlord Edmund becomes infinitely admirable in his sleep.

With what degree of wholesome rigour his rents were collected, we hear not. Still less by what methods he preserved his game, whether by 'bushing' or how,--and if the partridge-seasons were 'excellent,' or were indifferent. Neither do we ascertain what kind of Corn-bill he pa.s.sed, or wisely-adjusted Sliding-scale:--but indeed there were few spinners in those days; and the nuisance of spinning, and other dusty labour, was not yet so glaring a one.

How then, it may be asked, did this Edmund rise into favour; become to such astonishing extent a recognised Farmer's Friend? Really, except it were by doing justly and loving mercy to an unprecedented extent, one does not know. The man, it would seem, 'had walked,' as they say, 'humbly with G.o.d;' humbly and valiantly with G.o.d; struggling to make the Earth heavenly as he could: instead of walking sumptuously and pridefully with Mammon, leaving the Earth to grow h.e.l.lish as it liked.

Not sumptuously with Mammon? How then could he 'encourage trade,'--cause Howel and James, and many wine-merchants, to bless him, and the tailor's heart (though in a very short-sighted manner) to sing for joy? Much in this Edmund's Life is mysterious.

That he could, on occasion, do what he liked with his own, is meanwhile evident enough. Certain Heathen Physical-Force Ultra-Chartists, 'Danes' as they were then called, coming into his territory with their 'five points,' or rather with their five-and-twenty thousand _points_ and edges too, of pikes namely and battle-axes; and proposing mere Heathenism, confiscation, spoliation, and fire and sword,--Edmund answered that he would oppose to the utmost such savagery. They took him prisoner; again required his sanction to said proposals. Edmund again refused. Cannot we kill you?

cried they.--Cannot I die? answered he. My life, I think, is my own to do what I like with! And he died, under barbarous tortures, refusing to the last breath; and the Ultra-Chartist Danes _lost_ their propositions;--and went with their 'points' and other apparatus, as is supposed, to the Devil, the Father of them. Some say, indeed, these Danes were not Ultra-Chartists, but Ultra-Tories, demanding to reap where they had not sown, and live in this world without working, though all the world should starve for it; which likewise seems a possible hypothesis. Be what they might, they went, as we say, to the Devil; and Edmund doing what he liked with his own, the Earth was got cleared of them.

Another version is, that Edmund on this and the like occasions stood by his order; the oldest, and indeed only true order of n.o.bility known under the stars, that of Just Men and Sons of G.o.d, in opposition to Unjust and Sons of Belial,--which latter indeed are _second_-oldest, but yet a very unvenerable order. This, truly, seems the likeliest hypothesis of all. Names and appearances alter so strangely, in some half-score centuries; and all fluctuates chameleon-like, taking now this hue, now that. Thus much is very plain, and does not change hue: Landlord Edmund was seen and felt by all men to have done verily a man's part in this life-pilgrimage of his; and benedictions, and out-flowing love and admiration from the universal heart, were his meed. Well-done! Well-done! cried the hearts of all men. They raised his slain and martyred body; washed its wounds with fast-flowing universal tears; tears of endless pity, and yet of a sacred joy and triumph. The beautifulest kind of tears,--indeed perhaps the beautifulest kind of thing: like a sky all flashing diamonds and prismatic radiance; all weeping, yet shone on by the everlasting Sun:--and _this_ is not a sky, it is a Soul and living Face! Nothing liker the _Temple of the Highest_, bright with some real effulgence of the Highest, is seen in this world.

Oh, if all Yankee-land follow a small good 'Schnuspel the distinguished Novelist' with blazing torches, dinner-invitations, universal hep-hep-hurrah, feeling that he, though small, _is_ something; how might all Angle-land once follow a hero-martyr and great true Son of Heaven! It is the very joy of man's heart to admire, where he can; nothing so lifts him from all his mean imprisonments, were it but for moments, as true admiration. Thus it has been said, 'all men, especially all women, are born worshippers;' and will worship, if it be but possible. Possible to worship a Something, even a small one; not so possible a mere loud-blaring Nothing! What sight is more pathetic than that of poor mult.i.tudes of persons met to gaze at Kings' Progresses, Lord Mayors' Shows, and other gilt-gingerbread phenomena of the worshipful sort, in these times; each so eager to worship; each, with a dim fatal sense of disappointment, finding that he cannot rightly here! These be thy G.o.ds, O Israel? And thou art so _willing_ to worship,--poor Israel!

In this manner, however, did the men of the Eastern Counties take up the slain body of their Edmund, where it lay cast forth in the village of Hoxne; seek out the severed head, and reverently reunite the same. They embalmed him with myrrh and sweet spices, with love, pity, and all high and awful thoughts; consecrating him with a very storm of melodious adoring admiration, and sun-dyed showers of tears;--joyfully, yet with awe (as all deep joy has something of the awful in it), commemorating his n.o.ble deeds and G.o.dlike walk and conversation while on Earth. Till, at length, the very Pope and Cardinals at Rome were forced to hear of it; and they, summing up as correctly as they well could, with _Advocatus-Diaboli_ pleadings and their other forms of process, the general verdict of mankind, declared: That he had, in very fact, led a hero's life in this world; and being now _gone_, was gone, as they conceived, to G.o.d above, and reaping his reward _there_. Such, they said, was the best judgment they could form of the case;--and truly not a bad judgment. Acquiesced in, zealously adopted, with full a.s.sent of 'private judgment,' by all mortals.

The rest of St. Edmund's history, for the reader sees he has now become a _Saint_, is easily conceivable. Pious munificence provided him a _loculus_, a _feretrum_ or shrine; built for him a wooden chapel, a stone temple, ever widening and growing by new pious gifts;--such the overflowing heart feels it a blessedness to solace itself by giving. St. Edmund's Shrine glitters now with diamond flowerages, with a plating of wrought gold. The wooden chapel, as we say, has become a stone temple. Stately masonries, long-drawn arches, cloisters, sounding aisles b.u.t.tress it, begirdle it far and wide.

Regimented companies of men, of whom our Jocelin is one, devote themselves, in every generation, to meditate here on man's n.o.bleness and Awfulness, and celebrate and show forth the same, as they best can,--thinking they will do it better here, in presence of G.o.d the Maker, and of the so Awful and so n.o.ble made by Him. In one word, St.

Edmund's Body has raised a Monastery round it. To such length, in such manner, has the Spirit of the Time visibly taken body, and crystallised itself here. New gifts, houses, farms, _katalla_[6]--come ever in. King Knut, whom men call Canute, whom the Ocean-tide would not be forbidden to wet,--we heard already of this wise King, with his crown and gifts; but of many others, Kings, Queens, wise men and n.o.ble loyal women, let Dryasdust and divine Silence be the record!

Beodric's-Worth has become St. Edmund's _Bury_;--and lasts visible to this hour. All this that thou now seest, and namest Bury Town, is properly the Funeral Monument of Saint or Landlord Edmund. The present respectable Mayor of Bury may be said, like a Fakeer (little as he thinks of it), to have his dwelling in the extensive, many-sculptured Tombstone of St. Edmund; in one of the brick niches thereof dwells the present respectable Mayor of Bury.

Certain Times do crystallise themselves in a magnificent manner; and others, perhaps, are like to do it in rather a shabby one!--But Richard Arkwright too will have his Monument, a thousand years hence: all Lancashire and Yorkshire, and how many other shires and countries, with their machineries and industries, for his monument! A true _pyr_amid or '_flame_-mountain,' flaming with steam fires and useful labour over wide continents, usefully towards the Stars, to a certain height;--how much grander than your foolish Cheops Pyramids or Sakhara clay ones! Let us withal be hopeful, be content or patient.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Dryasdust puzzles and pokes for some biography of this Beodric; and repugns to consider him a mere East-Anglian Person of Condition, not in need of a biography,--whose [Old English: weow], _weorth_ or _worth_, that is to say, _Growth_, Increase, or as we should now name it, _Estate_, that same Hamlet and wood Mansion, now St. Edmund's Bury, originally was. For, adds our erudite Friend, the Saxon [Old English: weowan], equivalent to the German _werden_, means to _grow_, to _become_; traces of which old vocable are still found in the North-country dialects; as, 'What is _word_ of him?' meaning, 'What is _become_ of him?' and the like. Nay we in modern English still say, 'Woe _worth_ the hour' (Woe _befall_ the hour), and speak of the '_Weird_ Sisters;' not to mention the innumerable other names of places still ending in _weorth_ or _worth_. And indeed, our common noun _worth_, in the sense of _value_, does not this mean simply, What a thing has _grown_ to, What a man has _grown_ to, How much he amounts to,--by the Threadneedle-street standard or another!

[5] Lyttelton's _History of Henry II._ (2d edition), v. 169, &c.

[6] Goods, properties; what we now call _chattels_, and still more singularly _cattle_, says my erudite friend!

CHAPTER IV.