Time Travel Omnibus, page 14
Meantime, in submitting to personal incarceration (as the spider keeps himself snug within the leaf he has coiled), exercised lordly land lucrative jurisdiction over the surrounding country, and in attestation of the vulgar realities that resulted from this influence, could show stowage room enough for provender, and live-stock of all descriptions.
The main building, oblong in its general figure, rose to the height of two stories, or I should rather say, a storey and a half; for the position of the upper windows or loops, seemed to indicate that the lofty apartments, or halls of the ground floor, were surmounted by dwarf chambers, or low cloisters next the roof. A circular tower sustained each corner of the western front of the building; and these towers were curiously annulated by bold projections in the brick-work, or rings, at even intervals from the bases to the summits of the towers. In fact, any one whose head was steady, might have climbed the towers, using the belts as steps. The sides of the building were sustained and adorned by pilasters, each of which, for chapter, displayed a several sculpture, and each vying with its neighbour in absurdity.
On the southern side of the building, and close to the tower, at that angle, there was a lofty massive oaken door, with narrow panels, and broad styles, and doubly secured by heavy bars, fastening within. This door seemed to be devoted to rare occasions, for the grass grew rank about the threshold. In advance a few feet of the other, or northern tower, stood insulated, a wreathed, slender column, surmounted by a saint—I mean the image or effigy of one; and I dare say of St. Cuthbert the founder. A flight of narrow stone steps, jutting from the wall between the two towers, and secured by a slender rail, led to an open or balconied hall, or antechamber, fronted by a screen, which rested on fantastic pillars or posts. From beneath, and where I stood, one might discern the narrow apertures in the inner walls of this hall, by which light and air, in parsimonions quantities, were admitted to the apartments beyond.
I approached the sacred precincts with no ordinary curiosity; and, unbidden, passed the wicket of the outer enclosure, within which I found a various assemblage of persons, and more bustle and clatter of tongues than one would expect to see and hear in so holy a place. Several groups occupied the area in front of the monastery; some were ascending and descending the flight of steps, and as many as it could fairly hold, were to be seen in the balcony, or hall, or open corridor already mentioned. These persons, some secular, some religious, far from exhibiting the demure abstraction which one thinks of as proper to a house of piety, were engaged in eager, and some of them in jocose chat, or gossip, of which the subjects were evidently not peculiarly nice or select. Excellent jests, to judge by the bursts of laughter with which they were greeted, enlivened these colloquies; and a burly monk, whose smooth cheeks bespoke a sunshine felicity within, from whatever sources derived, actually made the echoes ring from the wall of the monastery, by the peals of his mirth, while listening to a story told by a lean, raw-boned laic, who seemed to be a traveller.
At the foot of the stone steps, with one foot raised, and in attitude of impatient detention, stood a younger rot her of the house, whose flowing tunic was submissively held at the lappet, by a serf, or villain, who seemed to be urging some claims of justice upon a dull ear, or reviving the recollections of a faithless memory. In the hall above, were some personages of higher rank, apparently both religious and secular—the officers of the house—and two or three franklins, whose bearing in converse with the brethren, though submissive, was not abject; and by the by, I could but notice that the fine stuffs and nice trim of some of these mortified persons, exhibited as well more solicitude as more cost, than was discernible in the dress of the best attired laic of the party. Apt commentary, thought I, upon the monastic aphorism of St. Gregory—“Quid est habitus monachi, nisi des, pectus mundi?” And here again I was reminded of another rule of the same holy rather—“Ne mulieres in monasterio tuo deinceps qualibet occasione permittas ascendere”—for, looking upward to near the summit of one of the before-mentioned towers, I espied, at an opening where there were placed several large rural flower-pots, a very pretty lass, whose flaxen hair reflected the fading glories of the western sky, and who was busily employed aspersing the plants they contained, with a bundle of rushes. Tell it not at Rouie! Amid these comers and goers, and merry gossips, I stood, or glided, hither and thither, unnoticed; or rather it seemed as if not one of these eyes had the faculty to fix itself upon my corporeal Substance; or as if, between my existence and theirs, the link of corporeal communication had slipped away. While, from the area below, I stood peering into the dim recesses of the hall above, desirous of ascending, and yet fearing to do so, I perceived a narrow door in the farthest corner, slowly open, and presently there appeared at the head of the steps, a portly yet infirm figure—a reverend monk, reverend in truth—reverend by the majesty of intelligence and. personal qualities. He firmly grasped the rail of the balustrade, in preparing to descend the steps, and stood a few minutes to conclude a parley with an importunate brother, who had followed him, as it seemed, from the door of his cell, and who was tormenting him with some impertinent gossip. Having courteously and vet briskly shaken off this mutquito, the monk worked his way, sliding down the steps, and easing his stiffened limbs by force of his yet powerful arm. When he reached the ground, he evidently made no little effort to edge himself through the crowd, at such a rate as should discourage any who might essay to hold him by the sleeve.
He made his way, unassailed, athwart the court, and toward the eastern end of the monastery, where entrance was had to the garden. Instinctively I pressed on to follow and accost him.
Never in my days have I happened to meet an old friend on the road, or at the corner of a street, with a more natural, easy, and uudoubting impression of familiar recognition—never have I seized any one’s hand and said, “Ah! How d’ye do? How are they at home?”—never have I looked into a well-known and smiling face, with $ feeling more assured, than that with which, while fixing my eye upon the visage before me, I exclaimed, “the venerable Bede!”
And I had no sooner so spoken, than the old man, turning himself a little about, and depressing the hood which muffled his ears with his middle finger (a characteristic action) gave me a look of reciprocal recognition, and glanced a “how d’ye do” at me. And now, strange as it may seem, it is a fact that this interchanged greeting, as if Bede and I had been old friends, excited in me no more surprise than I had just before felt when the blackened roofs of Newcastle gave place to the forest tufts, and wildness of another age.
I quickened my step; the monk slackened his, and I was soon at his side. He placed his hand, for he had the advantage of me in stature, upon my shoulder, and in easy and (may I say so?) in wonted chat, we entered the monastery garden together. It was a well-laboured enclosure, of ample dimensions, and seemed to be stocked with whatever a comfortable kitchen demands in the vegetable kind. We gained a bench, at the extreme corner of the garden, overhung by a gourd, and seating ourselves, enjoyed the still scene, dimly revealed by the glowing sky.
In endeavouring, as I have since done, again and again, to recover the earlier portion of the conversation which ensued, I have always felt as if a page, or a half page, of memory’s record had just there been torn out; so that, although every syllable of our after discourse remains indelibly fixed in my recollection, its initial part has utterly disappeared. It must suffice then to say that, at the point where I come again into perfect possession of my consciousness, the venerable monk and I were conferring, in an easy manner, upon various points connected with his age, or with mine, and both of us having a clear understanding, and perfect recollection of the fact, that, at this same moment, lie was actually living in the eighth century, and I as truly in the nineteenth; nor did this trifling difference of a thousand years or more—this break, as geologists would call it—this fault in the strata of time—trouble or perplex either of us a whit; any more than two friends are molested by the circumstance of their happening to encounter each other just as they arrive from opposite hemispheres.
“A world of things,” said I, “we might talk of, which I might relate, and you be not unpleased to listen to, concerning what has happened in merry Anglo-land, these last thousand years. And a world of things, too, you might describe to me, connected with your age, which History, capricious, niggard as she is, has not chosen to inform us of. And I promise you that this sort of information for which just now there is an eager demand among my contemporaries, I could bring to a good market—nay, make ray fortune of it well worked up. But we must husband our time, choice moments as they are; for whatever leisure you may have at command, this evening I can hardly reckon upon five minutes, for, know you, I am expecting, every instant, to be taken up by the “Leeds Mercury.”
“The Leeds Mercury!”
“Ah, I should have said Lhydes, and you would have understood me.”
“Understood you! Heaven forbid. What then, have the people of Eborascyre, so soundly reclaimed as they are from their idolatry, and fairly consigned to the bosom of the church, have they relapsed into paganism?—have they fallen away to the horrid worship of their Woden—their Mercury? And what is this taken up, which you say you are expecting are you, then, on the edge of apotheosis, or of arrest by the officers of justice?”
“Neither the one nor the other and we may better employ our flitting moments than to enter upon an. explanation of the phrases which I thoughtlessly let drop. In a word, be assured, that I am not just yet on my way either to the stars, or to a jail.”
“Let, then, this difficulty stand over till we meet again. Meantime, and as you say you are liable to be snatched away from me every moment, allow me, before we enter upon subjects more important, to ask, in a word—pardon an old man, and a secluded author, who has had little justice done him by his contemporaries—pardon me if I ask, what has become of the name and the writings of—of—the unworthy Bede?” A flush, first of manly modesty, then of religious shame and self-condemnation, came upon the old man’s clear complexion—a flush mounting to his temples, and suffusing his ample and smooth forehead with a crimson, such as the western sky was then glowing with, and with a dew too, such as was then settling upon earth, wiping his face with his sleeve, he went on before I could reply—
“Nay, I retract my unseemly question—answer not a fool according to his folly—nil tarn inglorium, quam gloriae eupidum, deprehendi.”
“Very true,” I said, “but, in simple fact, if great men and great writers could only know, in their life-time, to what a mere speck their reputation would converge, as seen at the end of a thousand years (or even at the end of a hundred) upon the broad table of the public mind, I think the most naughty would receive a sufficient chastisement, so that they might very safely, nay, profitably, listen to all that might be told them of their estimation with posterity.”
“Speak then, if it be so, that what you have to say will furnish a scourge for my overweening vanity.”
“Know then that, in England and out of it, for a thousand years, or near it, you have been ordinarily designated as “the venerable Bede,” and have been styled the light and lamp of the English Church; the star of your times; the ornament of your country; and worthy, if any one is so, of immortal feme—‘so learned (I quote the very words of pour panegyrists,) so learned that one might think you lived only for study; so pious, that one must believe you lived only for prayer’ ”
“Stop, stop—more than enough.”
“Oh, I must go on, or I shall have given you. the poison without the antidote.”
“I listen.”
“Hear it then—the works of the venerable Bede, or the best of them, have gone wherever sound learning has gone, and have taken their place in all our European libraries. Moreover, in modern times, they have been given to the world in several costly editions. Let me remember, they have been printed at—”
“Printed?”
“Ay, printed, but waive the question concerning the meaning of this new-coined word—a word that has turned, and is turning the world upside down. Be satisfied, at present, to know that the learned, in all countries, have enjoyed facilities such as you never dreamed of, for making themselves acquainted with your writings, if only disposed to avail themselves of the opportunity.”
“You mean to say, in plain words, that nearly all men in your modern Europe, moderately well taught, have read the Historia Ecclesiastical and the—
“Not quite so fast. To keep within bounds of truth, let us rather say that—taking the mass of well-informed and fairly learned men in Europe—as many as one in ten thousand might make the boast that they have just set eyes upon the cover of the Historia Ecclesiastica, and then that of those who have actually seen the book, one in a hundred might pretend to have taken it from the shelf, blown the dust from the top, and read twenty pages of it. No doubt there might be found (as one may find men with six fingers on a hand, or six toes on a foot) who have perused the venerable Bede through and through.”
The old man sunk into a reverie, as I spoke, and seemed to be revolving deep thoughts. He muttered at length a vanitas vanitatum; and turned his ear to me again. That I might the more congruously fall in with his meditations, I went on sagely to observe that—
“Fame, never so bright and broad a blaze as it may be at the first, comes, at the end of a thousand years, and often long before that time, to a mere point, like the image of the glorious sun, after it has passed through a pin bole in a card. Nevertheless you should know that the venerable Bede—“the lamp of the English Church,” was, soon after his decease, canonised by the holy pontiff, and that his office is still kept by the Benedictines, on the 29th day of October; by others on 27th day of May.”
I had hardly uttered the word canonised, when the old man started as if mortally pierced, and then fell into a sort of pallid trance, or horror—a rigour fixing every limb. I hardly knew by what means I at length brought him back to calm consciousness; but even then he trembled as one who had seen a spectre. To change the subject, and by the means of an easy transition, I went on:
“And yet, let me tell you, that how small a portion so ever of the light and warmth that is enjoyed by us moderns may fairly be attributed to the influence of the writings of the venerable Bede, it is quite true, and you ought to know it, that a very large amount of both—I mean of the light and warmth actually diffused among the people of England, in the nineteenth century—emanates, year after year, from the immediate neighbourhood of this very monastery. Yes, most true it is that the rich and the poor, the learned and the simple, daily and nightly rejoice in the radiance which is shed from this luminous district—ay, one might justly call this Gateshead, and its surrounding territory the lamp and hearth of England.”
“Blessed St. Cuthbert exclaimed the good man, “my father and good intercessor; blessed St. Cuthbert, founder and patron of this house—be it so then—(and I am well content that it should be so)—be it so, that the labours of thy unworthy son have fallen almost fruitless to the ground, or have failed from the eyes of men; yet has it not been the same with thine own—no; for it seems that this sacred foundation, the cherished work of thy piety and wisdom, has not only braved the storms and revolutions of a thousand years, but has continued, from age to age, to send forth those who have enlightened all the land! Immortal and thrice happy Sairit Cuthbert I—I will henceforward be proud only of having known and followed thee!”
It grieved me to find that the old man had so far become the dupe of my double entendre, and was beguiled to utter an encomium of his patron so poorly borne out by facts. I had not, however, the heart to disabuse him by telling him of the hundreds of thousands of chaldrons of the best Wallsend,” that every year drop down the Tyne.
“More of this,” said he, “anon; but now, in few words, tell me what has been the fate of our seven kingdoms.”
“To be melted into one—to be ravaged, and trodden in the dust, by host after host of foreign marauders, avenging the Britons, whom the Saxons drove from their homes; then to be conquered again by a fierce despot, who would not leave a rush burning after sunset, any where between Gwaede and Michaelstowe, except in his own castles. Thenceforward, England has bowed to foreign dynasties.”
“Alas, then! no doubt, this fair island, which was taking a place of honour, at last, among the nations, has fallen, and lost all glory and all power!”
“This fair island, conquered four times over, distracted by civil broils, and by contests for the crown, shaken by mighty revolutions, this rent and convulsed island, is now acknowledged queen of the sea, and mistress too of a foreign empire, more extensive than those of Assyria, Macedonia, and Rome, piled one on the other.”
“Ah, I seen then she has given birth to giants; tell me the names of your, modern Sesostris, Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar, who, singly or in series, have vanquished the world?”
“I cannot; we have had our mighty, spirits, and might boast a name even now, which a thousand years will not blot from the page of history; but in plain truth, England, sovereign as she is of many lands, has not seen a warrior prince on her throne these last five hundred years.”
“Well, then, her polity must be of the most despotic kind, and such as leaves an uncontrolled power with the monarch.”
“No democracy the sun has ever shone upon, has allowed more scope to personal liberty, or grauted much more influence to the people, in limiting the sovereign authority. The royal prerogative, in England, is the prerogative of the lion in his cage, who looks to his keeper for every bone he gnaws, and who must rise, and show himself, and roar, whenever poked.”
“Has one English king in ten died in his bed?”
