"Neither for gold nor for gifts did I undertake this book so great and difficult . . . only, I prayed that my book might be beautiful." -- Gaelic Monk, XIIth Century.
THE discovery of a romantic past and its application as a creative force in literature was due, beyond any doubt, to the genius of Sir Walter Scott. His festive mind, browsing amid heaps of ragged books which the generations immediately preceding had frowned upon, and searching the landscape of Scotland for the sites of chivalric prowess, admired the Christian Ages for their picturesque strength. Scott's neighbors had largely tired of the sour, matter-of-fact philosophy which had been provided for them, and read his tales with abounding delight. The virility of the Waverly Novels was a tremendous thing; on account of them new literary currents began to move in Europe generally, and America imbibed so much of their teaching that Mark Twain's diatribe on the chivalry of the South was by no means directed at an abstraction. Sir Walter, however, was quite content with the role of entertainer, and it was probably as much of a surprise to him as to anyone when a French disciple of Rousseau, François-René de Chateaubriand, followed him into the romantic past, accepted the old faith, and published the first part of "La Genie du Christianisme" just as the bells of Notre Dame were ringing out again, after a silence of twelve years.
In this and in his subsequent defenses of the Catholic Spirit Chateaubriand missed something of the peace of God; as a French critic says, he "presents Christianity not as a safe port amidst the storm, but rather as the storm itself which would carry men into a new world." He had more than a little of the pose of an explorer who is enthusiastic over dim vistas in the distance, but quite sadly certain that he can never reach them. Following his guidance, the European literature of the nineteenth century exhausted the force, the melody, and the melancholy of the imagination, sometimes approaching the Cross, sometimes ending in bitter disenchantment. It was an unbalanced, an unsteady movement and one is not surprised that its last great disciple should have advised people to be "always drunken." But intoxication is, after all, better for the soul than mortal thirst.
He to whom England owes the first strong and deep presentation of the Spirit of the past, not in its external prettinesses only, but in its inner radiance, is a man whose name means little to the average modern reader; whose books have suffered the saddest of all defeats, obloquy at the press; but whose message has nevertheless brought memorable joy to those who have sought it out. Kenelm Henry Digby, the author of "The Broad Stone of Honour," "Mores Catholici," and "Compitum," master of the literature of dead centuries, and heritor of the spirit of Godfrey and St. Francis, is a name to love even if that affection involves sacrifice. Who can say that he has read through this encyclopedia of Christian piety and charity, as vast in its volume as the "Comedie" of Balzac, as learned as Mommsen's "History"? Still, it was through Digby that the Catholic Spirit entered once more into English letters, got into Cambridge -- where men still follow the vision -- and moved the pen of Ruskin.
His life was given to the ancient story with the rarest filial devotion: he wrote not because men praised or even read his work, but because he loved what he had to say. Digby was the Pius AEneas of the past, "the Fra Angelico," as Canon Barry says, "of Christian Apologetics." The newer books on medievalism are simply restatements or criticisms, sometimes forceful and popular in manner, of truths which he understood, of thoughts which he cherished, of facts which he had gathered. Digby did more than study the history of Christendom; he saw it, lived in it with abandon, a master of its many moods, but sublimely and constantly aware of its central theme. Perhaps the greatest reason why he should be remembered is that he was always himself without ever being selfish. There is even a way in which he seems the complement of Dante: he stirred the ashes, so that the fire of the great Florentine might burn more brightly.
Long before Newman's voice aroused the soul of Oxford, Digby had found his way into the Church, having been baptized in 1825, shortly before the conversion of his lifelong friend, Ambrose Phillips de Lisle. The change was due quite simply to his concern with the past. Long before there had been a Sir Kenelm Digby who returned from his travels abroad a Catholic, a gentleman, and a defender of the Faith, even if a somewhat unsteady one; the blood of Sir Thomas More, that pattern of Christian knighthood, ran in the family. Was it their spirit which lead the youthful Digby into the Church? At least he went "their great and gracious ways," mingling his historical studies with journeys through all the Catholic lands until he had gathered sufficient material for "The Broad Stone of Honour." The first edition of this fine tribute to Christian tradition appeared while the author was still an Anglican, but the changes made necessary by his religious conversion were slight. It seems almost that Digby was born a Catholic, for the strength and humility with which he practiced his religion throughout life are testified to by every page he wrote. In the midst of nearly superhuman labour that was rewarded with comparative neglect, he preserved the modest poise of a gentle saint for whom the final day of beatitude is the goal of life.
The details of his career have been recently set forth in a fine volume by Bernard Holland; we shall consider here only those matters which are indispensable for a proper knowledge of Digby's work. He was born, most probably, in 1797 -- the date seems uncertain -- and died at Kensington on March 22, 1880. Trinity College, Cambridge, received him in 1815 as a candidate for the degree in Arts, and he distinguished himself by pulling "number seven" in Trinity's first famous boat. Almost to the end of his life Digby preserved a fondness for sport, and his books are dotted with enthusiastic references to swimming exploits, boating on the Thames and elsewhere, mountain expeditions, and outings in general. None the less, he devoted himself assiduously to study, having profited by the wise guidance of a splendid tutor, the Rev. Julius C. Hare, of Whewell. In those days anything smacking of medievalism was quite generally derided, and Scholastic philosophy was scorned, without being, in the slightest way, known; yet it was along these forbidden paths that Digby came into the Church. Ambrose Phillips, the intimate companion mentioned previously, fostered Digby's bent; he was a man of very idealistic principles, who later spent his forces in trying to bring the Anglican High Church as a body to Rome. The later private life of Digby was rather tranquil. He was happily married and became the father of five children, enjoyed the friendship of numerous gifted men, but bore many a severe trial and lived for some time in dire financial straits.
His personality remained charming to the end of his eighty-two years, and in personal appearance he was most striking. Fitzgerald describes him as "a grand, swarthy fellow who might have stepped out of the canvas of some knightly portrait in his father's house." A more definite reminiscence is Mr. Holland's, "A chivalric figure, over six feet in height, strongly built, with dark hair and eyes, a fine forehead." One can easily fancy such a man going on those long voyages to remote and romantic places, which carried him through Spain and France, Austria and Germany, but it is not so easy to recall him bent over aged and archaic volumes, with the scent of midnight oil strong on his own folios. Only, those tomes, with their dim records of ancient glory, were for him more golden than doubloons and more rare than Inca gems. He was the hunter of priceless words which the pirates had buried, they thought, forever. Let there be no misunderstanding of Digby's manner. Literature is quite largely a matter of style, and what shall we say of the method in which this prodigious man sought to put down his impressions? For every one of his books he made, indeed, a carefully unified plan which he took care to expound in the introduction, but which nobody could possibly follow through the maze of his writing. As he set down in language a single, sober thought, a thousand illustrations apparently crowded themselves into his pen, and he wrote out all of them, one after another, with an extraordinary disregard for sequence. The essays of Montaigne, which among other ancient writings may have served Digby for a model, are packed with quotations and examples, but these are always inlaid into the discourse with a Gallic nicety. Digby surpasses even Montaigne in the number and variety of his instances and saws, but, though they illustrate a point, they follow along helter-skelter, with a weird commingling of Greek and Latin, French and Old English, that is altogether amazing. What other writer would mass together a line from Cicero, Richard de Bury's curious instructions on the care of books, anecdotes of Blessed Thomas More, and legends of the Saints? His books are mosaics, most ingenious and sometimes most interesting, but always mosaics.
When his own English becomes master of a page or two, it is pleasantly archaic, with occasional striking turns, even epigrams, with which he says things that are as good as anything he quotes. Thus, in "Evenings on the Thames," this remark follows a formidable array of citations: "In fact, to have a taste for serene hours is to have a taste for heaven." Not even St. Francis de Sales could have uttered a more admirable sentence! It is Digby's indomitable enthusiasm which carries him steadily along; all the details of his study seemed to him so valuable that he could not bear the loss of one of them, and his profound humility led him to believe, poor fellow, that the dictum of a saint or a chevalier was infinitely more important than anything which he himself might say. Digby has chapters on ecclesiastical art, as learned as, and perhaps truer than, Huysmans' "Cathedrale" but how very much more personal and effective the latter is! Had Digby been more of an egoist he would have earned greater fame, at the price of being a meaner man. As it is, the reader will scarcely grow interested in books like "The Broad Stone of Honour" unless his enthusiasm for the ages of faith is great, unless he possesses the spiritual loadstone which will coordinate these multitudinous details as Digby did, and unless he is charmed by the utter self-abandonment of a marvelously magnanimous man. A reader who meets these requirements could live happily on a desert isle with "Mores Catholici" for his sole companion.
Digby's writing, enormous though it is in volume, is singularly unified in theme. Predominantly the historian, he read the past by the light of a beautiful philosophy, which is saved from extravagant idealism by a deep consciousness of the reality of the Faith. His teaching is happiest when done by a sort of poetic pantomime, and when he ventures into abstractions there is likely to be a touch of bathos. Above all, Digby was a man, and no trait of writing is more prominent than his affection for the heroic character. "Mores Catholici" is a vast storehouse of information on mediaeval life that lays, of course, no claim to the rigid impartiality of the modern monograph. In it Digby attempts to show that the Ages of Faith were exemplifications of the eight beatitudes, and that they built up the ideal state, from which later eras have unfortunately departed. With what affection he followed those wonderful years of the saint and the hero, years which the mass of men now think the creation of poetry or even darkness! Their songs were for him the symphony of the eternal unseen, fingering the hearts of men, and his joy in the melody was often nigh to tears. In the opening chapter of "Mores Catholici" Digby synthetizes all that he has to say in a glowing paragraph:
"The Middle Ages were ages of highest grace to men; ages of faith; ages when all Europe was Catholic ; when vast temples were seen to rise in every place of human concourse to give glory to God, and to exalt men's souls to sanctity; when houses of holy peace and order were found amidst woods and desolate mountains, on the banks of placid lakes as well as on solitary rocks in the ocean; ages of sanctity which witnessed a Bede, an Alcuin, a Bernard, a Francis, and crowds who followed them as they did Christ; ages of vast and beneficent intelligence, in which it pleased the Holy Spirit to display the power of the seven gifts, in the life of an Anselm, a Thomas of Aquinum, and the saintly flock whose steps a cloister guarded; ages of the highest civil virtue; which gave birth to the laws and institutions of an Edward, a Lewis, a Suger; ages of the noblest art which beheld a Giotto, a Michael Angelo, a Raffaelo, a Dominichino; ages of poetry, which heard an Avitus, a Caedmon, a Dante, a Shakespeare, a Calderon; ages of more than mortal heroism, which produced a Tancred and a Godfrey; ages of majesty, which knew a Charlemagne, an Alfred, and the sainted youth who bore the lily; ages, too, of England's glory, when she appears not even excluding a comparison with the eastern empire, as the most truly civilized country on the globe; when the Sovereign of the greater portion of the western world applied to her schools for instructors; when she sends forth her saints to evangelise the nations of the north, and to diffuse spiritual treasure over the whole world; when heroes flock to her courts to behold the models of re-proachless chivalry, and Emperors leave their thrones to adore God at the tombs of her martyrs!"
Here, then, was the perfect civilization, the Kingdom of God, for which Digby yearned. Through the scores of chapters which follow he brings a wealth of testimony to establish every statement in his theme: the activities of the Church, monastic life, building, missionary spirit, the effort for peace, the serene contemplativeness of philosophy and religion, are examined; the State gives forth the secrets of its administration over the poor and its concern for justice and charity to all; private life makes known its beauties, its aspirations, and its joys, with here and there an allusion to the misfortunes from which human toil can never be free. Majestic voices repeat the guiding words of Christendom, and the richest revelry is held at the courts of worthy kings. Very rarely does the author grow controversial, and then the combat is waged sadly, gently, with that modern spirit which has rifled the temples, which is so secure in its pride and possession, and so hollow in its faith. Throughout Digby's familiarity with ancient and modern literature and his historical erudition are surprising. "Mores Catholici" is like a review of an abbey library made by a scholarly saint to appease the hunger of wandering minds, or like a series of quaint windows, less brilliant than comforting, in which the artisan has written in allegory the story of the conquest of the Cross.
Kenelm Digby, however, became an historian only because he was a deeply religious thinker. Because he had found peace of heart in his studies, he somewhat naively imagined that others would adopt the principles of his belief if he told them what he had learned. Those principles are continually bobbing up in his work because they are the knots which tie his fleeting strands of fact together. The reader of "Mores Catholici" -- a rare person whose acquaintance is to be cultivated -- will have met with them often enough. It is best to look for them, however, in those books "whose study would delight the angels," as Ambrose Phillips de Lisle said, "The Broad Stone of Honour." Here the youthful, enthusiastic Digby wrote himself out in generous pages that glow with the anguish of lost chivalry, that are sweet and tearful as the memories of a long and cleanly love. "I shall but suggest things in imperfect sounds," he says modestly, with his heart set on "images of quiet wisdom, sanctity, and innocence: symbols of infinite love, of divine and everlasting peace, the daily sacrifice, the evening hymn, the sweet music of the pilgrim's litanee, the portals that open to receive the living to joy, and the dirge of requiem to supplicate rest and deliverance for the dead." Ancient chivalry was the realization of everything for which his soul yearned; it was kind to the lowly, for the Church had said, Beati pauperes; it obeyed "from the bottom of the heart, like a child"; it cultivated friendship, "that musical, poetic, religious word"; its courage was the self-sacrifice of the strong; and its hope was in God. It held the secret of eternal youth, for "how can he grow old who lives separated from all that is destined to decay, who unceasingly beholds the same bright altars and angelic forms which proclaim his own eternity?" Loyalty was the soul of knighthood, and Digby was intensely, almost desperately, loyal; he was one in spirit with Thomas More.
"The Broad Stone of Honour" is divided into four books: Godfridus lays down general views of chivalry, and says some thoughtful things about the art of government; Tancred considers the religion and discipline that prevailed during the Middle Ages; Morus answers the objections which modern thinkers have raised against the practice of knighthood; the last book, Orlandus, best and most interesting of all, presents a "detailed view of the virtues of chivalrous character, when it is submitted to the genuine and all-powerful influence of the Catholic faith." In a general way, Digby tried humbly to show that the Church of Christ, moulding the hearts of men, had given them a safe sanctuary from the blandishments and delusions of a pagan world. His philosophy was derived from the practice of a simple man; there is in it no subtlety, no "higher criticism, no Germanic phraseology. These things would probably have perplexed him if he had thought it worth his while to consider them at all.
The aching void in his soul had been filled with heavenly truth, and in the practice of kindly virtue he beheld the shining destiny of man. With Saint Augustine he was ready to say, "I am an old man and a Bishop, but I am ready to be taught by a child"; but he would probably have gone to sleep under a modern professor. In a later book, "Compitum," Digby undertook to establish the difficult thesis that "all roads lead to Rome." His road of Children, of Youth, of Travelers, is easy enough to follow if one has already begun the journey, but he was a poor apostle to those who are hindered by intellectual difficulties. He went along ancient paths of glory by the light of regal if abandoned stars, and was just as unable to lead the modern spirit as he was half-unconsciously uninfluenced by it. Noble treasurer of the words of God, he dwelt in a splendid citadel where those who follow him will find that "an angel has been charged to speak such words to men."
The human, the lovable quality that softens the somewhat unearthly erudition of Digby is his inimitable dreaming. How constantly, fervently, he seems to have anticipated the beatific vision! Going through life in the company of an imagination crowded with pictures of a hallowed era, he lived in it as completely and genuinely as a sailor lives in his boat. It was useless to tempt him with speculation, science, or gold, while he felt under his feet the strong bulwarks against the waves of the world. "From the disciple who believed because he saw Our Saviour under a fig-tree," remarks Orlandus, "to the latest examples of men who have been added to the Church, speculation and knowledge seem to have been little employed in the work of conversion; it has been accomplished by very different means, the meeting of an old man on the seashore, the answer of a child, or a dream." And in Digby's instance it was the last: a dream of sacred Faith mastering the bloody arena and the tomb; of majestic and solemn temples alive with universal yearning for the joys of heaven, and simple happiness in the beauty of the world; of nature, itself a mighty cathedral alive with multitudinous images aglow with the lavish colour of God; and of man himself, ennobled and purified by no mechanical process of "Evolution," but by the stirring advance of his will to the battle-drums of Saints.
Digby lived a religious existence which some people find it impossible to understand. Only to those who know the supreme loveliness of the road to perfection, where childlike eyes are fixed on the merciful countenance of a divine Redeemer, will it seem natural and worth while. The lofty mission of the Church, to heal the wounds of society with inspired law and to crown the humblest life with the sacramental kiss, was for the author of "The Broad Stone of Honour" the only consoling reality. He saw a thousand cloisters that had long been razed, heard multitudes of dead Saints chant the Benedicite, and encountered legions of knights whose phantom shields bore the device of eternal honour. Splendid Christian! And for him, too, at the sight of the desolation around him, there was reserved that sacred melancholy which is loved in heaven because Jesus Himself had suffered it on the walls of Jerusalem.
Let us not get the impression, however, that he lived always among ruins. For Digby the Spirit of God was a dulce refrigerium, a source of joy if not of hearty laughter. He loved the minstrelsy, the merry-making, and the hospitality of the olden time quite as much as the dizzy road to heaven. All his books breathe the tranquillity of calm human relationships, joy in nature, and fondness for domestic life. In some of his minor works, like "Evenings on the Thames," "The Children's Bower," and "The Lover's Seat" he tried to show how life could be made a graceful love story with a happy ending, rather than a tale told by an idiot. Digby explains that he seeks "the subtle essence of happiness, which is not to be found in recondite or exclusive activities but in common things." Like Wordsworth, he had followed Plato in his affection for the simplicity of nature. Not so many persons in these harrowed days of ours would, one must suppose, find his reflections on English country life interesting. Digby had little dramatic or even narrative instinct; at his best he possesses the fine, pensive quality of Walton, but at his worst he is almost stupidly pedantic. What he lacked for success in the discursive familiar essay was variety, lightness, that ounce of wit which makes the literary porridge savoury. He could not draw his mind from the enchantment of the past. "As one who beholds a beautiful picture," he says, "gazes till he ardently wishes to see it move . . . so every one who contemplates the noble images of reproachless chivalry must feel anxious that they be revived in the deeds of men." This was the sole concern of his long and devoted life.
Another charming characteristic of Digby's character was his intense delight in travel. During the course of his wanderings he must have seen most of the romantic spots in England and on the Continent. He speaks very rarely of large cities, and if an occasional notice of one is taken, he generally adds a phrase to indicate his disapprobation of its modern features. Somewhere he even upbraids Doctor Johnson for having expressed a fondness for London. In the country, however, among either the wild beauties of nature or the remains of the ancient civilization, Digby is the ideal traveler, divining the inner radiance of the one or refashioning the other according to the legend of its antique glory. How appealing is his happiness when permitted to look upon some ruined monastery, castle, or shrine, whose renown was once as great as its present neglect! "On the high Alp of the Surinam Pass," he relates, "I found a little chapel with a bell . . . time would fail me to describe . . . the dark, fearful walls of Lusignan, near Poitiers; the wonderful architecture of the curious gates and Oriental halls of Granada, its courts of the lions emblazoned with the symbols of Mohammedan superstitions; the beautiful embattled heights of Johannisberg; the deep pool and gloomy towers of Bingen, and Lichtenstein with the sun setting over the Danube." There was a place for every mood. "The Broad Stone of Honour" was inspired largely by a visit to Ehrenbreitenstein, mighty symbol to Digby of so much glory that had gone. It begins with a revel in nature. "We walked on a spring morning through the delicious groves that clothe the mountains of Dauphiny which surround the old castle of the family of Bayard" -- and ends, or very nearly, with Petersborough, "rising out of the water like a pile of grotto work." In "Mores Catholici" there is a characteristically humble confession: "For my part, if I had never seen Altenrive or Vallombrosa, Camaldoli or St. Urban, the beauties of our loveliest scenery would not delight me as they now can do. I should see them with quite different eyes. The walls would not inspire any bright consoling recollections, nor the deep forests, peace." This present "world was for Digby only a keyboard from which he could draw at will "the giant melodies of the past." Sometimes there is an outcry of pain, never savage as in Heine, or rhetorically melancholic as in Burke or Chateaubriand, but quaintly plaintive; a child might have sorrowed thus for his mother. "How many noble ruins, memories of the Gallic fury, have I met in places that one might have thought far too sequestered for its force to reach," he says; and again, "Modern poetry has only one sound, 'like the wind through a ruin'd cell.' "
Such are the marvelously beautiful though forgotten books of the gentlest modern man who has followed Christian knighthood. Kenelm Digby gave himself more fully than even Sir Walter Scott to the romantic vision; but he was less of a Don Quixote because he took the Faith. Middle Age life was not for him a mere matter of gorgeous plumes and pink-cheeked damsels, but also of the cloister and the poor, above all of the soul. One cannot but feel that he preserved to the day of his death those "clouds of glory" in which he was born. It may be quite true that he was somewhat unpractical and that his knowledge of money and banking was decidedly limited; but Barney Newcome was superior in this respect to the Colonel. If in the years that come Digby's golden books shall by some cruel alchemy be turned to dust, or rouse only a faint gleam in the eyes of collectors, his character and eagerness to serve must stand in mute testimony to a Faith by which the world was once redeemed. It was "for the real manna" that he grew mighty in learning. His humility would have asked no larger reward than that somewhere a youth reading one of his books should be stirred by the breath of the Past, or that some quiet thinker, turning the pages of "Mores Catholici" should have been reminded of the grandeur that was God's.
It would be a grave mistake, however, to believe that the effort of Kenelm Digby was entirely without fruit. His books, as Canon Barry observes, have taught teachers, who, like Julius Hare, have found in them priceless counsel. Wordsworth drew inspiration for a sonnet from "The Broad Stone of Honour," and Ruskin owed to it some of the artistic idealism which determined his career. Indeed, the author of "Modern Painters" confessed even another debt (Vol. IX, 361). "The reader will find . . . every phase of nobleness illustrated in Kenelm Digby's 'Broad Stone of Honour.' The best help I have ever had -- so far as help depended on the praise and sympathy of others in work -- was given me when this author, from whom I first learned to love nobleness, introduced frequent references to my own writings in his 'Children's Bower.' " That is sufficient praise; but surely there are hundreds of less famous men whose lives have been enriched and whose steps have been guided by his labour.
Digby, the unforgettable, the magnificent dreamer! What better tribute could be paid to his memory than the epilogue which he himself affixed to the work of his youth:
"O that the poet were not just in saying, that this is now an age of selfish men, that life is drest for a shew, while the great events which old story rings seem vain and hollow. O that some voice may raise us up again and give us virtue, that avarice and expense may be no more adored, but plain living and high thinking be again our glory. Had these rude and faint images of a faithful age been drawn by one who had indeed caught its simple spirit, he would not have let you depart without praying that you, who have followed him from the beginning to the ending would be pleased in charity to put him, who would rejoice to serve you, into your devout memento; that Almighty God might send him good deliverance while he was alive, and when he was dead and his body laid to the cold earth, when the darkness of age and death should have covered over both this book and him, through God's grace, his soule might enter Paradise. He would have prayed you all, if you heard never more of him, to pray for his soule."
BOOK NOTE
The works of Kenelm Digby are very difficult to obtain. Those of outstanding importance are "Mores Catholici," several times reprinted, "The Broad Stone of Honour," the last volume of which (Orlandus) has not, to my knowledge, been reissued since 1829, and "Compitum." "Evenings on the Thames" is worth looking into. Digby's verse, of which there is a great deal, is impossibly tedious. His erudition had ironed life out of any quatrains he might possibly make. The fine "Memoir of Kenelm Digby," by Bernard Holland, called forth several essays in review, the most noteworthy of which are those by William Barry in the Dublin Review, by Henry Lappin in the Catholic World, and by Paul E. More in the Unpartizan Review. All of these appeared during 1920.