Memoir of Kenelm Henry Digby

MEMOIR OF KENELM HENRY DIGBY

MEMOIR

OF

KENELM HENRY DIGBY

BERNARD HOLLAND, C.B.

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

FOURTH AVENUE AND 30™ STREET, NEW YORK

BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS

1919

702-

DEDICATED
IN MEMORY OF HER FATHER

TO MARY
THE HONBLE- MRS- HUBERT DORMER

PREFACE

KENELM DIGBY took no part in public affairs ; his
history is that of his writings and private life. My
motive in composing the present Memoir, with the
approval of his descendants, is to direct the attention
of, at least, a few readers, to the never well-known, and
now almost forgotten works of this Author, to whom
I myself owe so much that my own labour is payment
of a debt of gratitude. A record of his life is, I think,
the easiest and pleasantest method of so doing.

I must warn readers who expect to find in a Memoir
a number of letters written by its subject, that in this
case they will hardly find one. Most letters written
by men in private life who died, like Digby, near forty
years ago have been lost or destroyed, or are put away
in unreachable places, and it seems to be so in his case ;
at any rate I have not been able to discover any. It
matters little, I think, because Kenelm Digby infused
into his works a large amount of autobiography. One
can reconstruct from them his childhood, and boyhood,
and University days, and friendships, and the joys and
sorrows of his family life. But as all this is scattered
through nearly forty volumes of his books — most of them

vii

viii PREFACE

not easily obtained now — it was necessary to bring the
events together in a consecutive way.

The events of private life, when mirrored in a reflective
mind, and felt by a feeling heart, and expressed by one
who has the gift of expression, have, in narrative, this
advantage over events in political, or other active life,
that they turn on matters not transient, like those on
the public stage, but at all times intimately interesting.
For this reason a book like the Recit d'une Sceur will
outlive masses of biography of once seemingly important
men of action.

Catholic readers, not already acquainted with Kenelm
Digby, may be especially glad to be introduced to him,
but his writings ought to give pleasure to many not yet
included within the bounds of the Central Church of
Christendom.

BERNARD HOLLAND.

HARBLEDOWN,

NEAR CANTERBURY,

March, 1919.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

PREFACE '----vii

I. DESCENT ; BOYHOOD ; CAMBRIDGE 1

II. TRAVELS 18

III. CONVERSION TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 34

IV. "THE BROADSTONE OF HONOUR" 59

V. ENGLISH AND FRENCH SOCIETY 81

VI. " MORES CATHOLICI " 94

VII. "COMPITUM" 122

VIII. FAMILY LIFE 133

IX. FAMILY LIFE — continued - 162

X. LATEST WRITINGS - - - - - - - - 197

XI. CLOSE OF LIFE 235

CHAPTER I
DESCENT, BOYHOOD AND CAMBRIDGE

*' CHIVALRY is only a name for that general spirit or state of mind
which disposes men to heroic and generous actions, and keeps them
conversant with all that is beautiful and sublime in the intellectual
arid moral world. It will be found that, in the absence of conserva-
tive principles, this spirit more generally prevails in youth than in
the later periods of men's lives ; and, as the heroic is always the
earliest age in the history of nations, so youth, the first period of
human life, may be considered as the heroic or chivalrous age of each
separate man ; and there are few so unhappy as to have grown up
without having experienced its influence, and having derived the
advantage of being able to enrich their imaginations and to soothe
their hour of sorrow with its romantic recollections."

KENELM DIGBY, Broadstotie of Honour, "Godefridus."

THE Digbys, whose very name has a fascination, were
a true old English race, and what, in the way of races, is
better than that ? * They descended from one Aelmer,
who in the reign of Edward the Confessor held land at
Tilton in the County of Leicester, in the heart of England.
Some of them are said to have gone crusading. Everard
Digby, High Sheriff of Rutland, was slain at Towton
Field in 1461, fighting on the defeated and more romantic
Lancastrian side. From one of his sons descended Sir
Everard Digby, who was executed in 1606 at the age
of twenty-four, for complicity in the Gunpowder Plot.
A son of this Sir Everard was the Sir Kenelm Digby

1 There is a village called Digby in Lincolnshire, which may have been
the first origin of the name.

K.D. 1 A

2 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

of the seventeenth century, the multifarious writer and
natural philosopher, and man of society and action,
the assailant of the Venetian fleet at Scanderoon, a
Catholic and courtier of Charles I., yet a personal friend
of Oliver Cromwell, and, daring man, the husband of
Venetia Stanley, that " woman of an extraordinary
beauty, and as extraordinary fame," Lord Clarendon
diplomatically says. A poet called him :

" The Age's wonder for his noble parts,
Skilled in six tongues, and learned in all the Arts."

" His person," says a contemporary, t( was handsome
and gigantic, and nothing was wanting to make him a-
complete Chevalier."

The Kenelm Henry Digby who is the subject of this
Memoir did not, however, descend from this hero, but
in a distinct line from their nearest common ancestor,
the Everard Digby who fought and died for the Red
Rose at Towton. One son of this Everard was Sir Simon
Digby of Coleshill, in the County of Warwick, who, still
on the Red Rose side, fought, with six brothers, for
Henry of Richmond against Richard III. at Bosworth
in 1485, and was well rewarded by the winner. His
great-great-grandson was Sir Robert Digby of Coleshill,
who, in 1600, married Lettice, (afterwards) Baroness
Offaley, heiress of the great Norman-Irish race of
Fitzgeralds, Earls of Kildare. After his death she was
besieged in her castle by Irish rebels of 1642. Kenelm
Digby thus speaks of her in his Broadstone of Honour :

" Equally memorable was the conduct of that excellent
Lady Offalla, from whom those of my house boast their
descent, bearing the arms of her family, a field argent,
a saltire gules, quarterly upon their paternal Coat. This
noble woman was besieged in her castle of Geashill, in

DESCENT 3

the King's County, Ireland, by an army of those faithful
and injured men whom intolerance and injustice had
driven to insurrection. Her reply, upon their summons
to surrender, evinced a noble spirit, and, at the same
time, a degree of affection for the Irish army opposed
to her which, although rare in persons who were engaged
against them, became nevertheless a feature in the
character of her posterity. She appeals to them as to
her having been always a good neighbour amongst them,
never having done any wrong to any of them, declares
her resolution to live and die innocently, and to defend
her own, leaving the issue to God ; ' and though,' she
concludes, ' I have been, and still am, desirous to
avoid the shedding of Christian blood, yet, being
provoked, your threats shall no whit dismay me. Lettice
Offalia.' '

John Digby, a distinguished diplomat, younger
brother of the last-mentioned Sir Robert Digby, was
created Earl of Bristol in 1622, and his son, then Lord
Digby and afterwards second Earl of Bristol, who became
a Catholic, was the Cavalier leader famous in the Civil
War. This line of Digbys died out in 1698, but not so
the elder, and now Irish, line.

Robert, eldest son of Sir Robert Digby by his wife
Lettice, Baroness Offaley, was, in 1620, created Baron
Digby of Geashill in the Irish Peerage, and from his
eldest son descended the existing Barons Digby of
Sherborne, and also from the fifth Lord Digby a numerous
cadet progeny. Sir Robert Digby and Lettice had also
a younger son named Essex Digby, who became Bishop
of Dromore. The eldest son of this bishop, named
Simon Digby, in his turn became Bishop of Elphin, and
died in 1720. The Bishop of Elphin was Jacobite in
his sympathies. He saw James II. at dawn, after the
battle of the Boyne, riding south, his hat slouched for

4 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

concealment, and visited him later at St. Germain in
France, when poor James said to the Bishop that if, as
he trusted, what he had suffered had benefited his soul,
then even William of Orange would have proved his
best friend.

It was a strongly clerical family. Four daughters of
the Bishop of Elphin married Irish clergymen, and two
of his sons were ordained. The eldest son of Simon
Digby, Bishop of Elphin, was John Digby of Landestown,
the grandfather of Kenelm. He was member for
Kildare in the Irish House of Commons. One merry
night he was the only member, it is said, of that most
festive of legislative assemblies who was not intoxicated,
and on the next day, as he was known never to drink, his
fellow-members and the officials came flocking to his house
to find out what business they had done the night before.

The Landestown estate descended to Simon Digby,
the eldest son of this John. The second surviving son
of John Digby, M.P., was William, who became Dean of
Clonfert and Rector of Geashill, in King's County.

The Dean of Clonfert was a man of uncommonly all-
round talent. In his youth he was a great athlete,
skater, runner and jumper. At Lord Digby's place,
Sherborne in Dorset, he made a leap which was marked
and long exhibited as a great feat. He had a passion for
painting, also for carpentering and mechanics and
landscape-gardening. He was a Hebrew scholar, and
wrote lectures and treatises. He had travelled in Spain
and France, and in the latter land, his son hints, had a
mysterious love-affair.

" He seemed a kind of lord on his domain,
Where peace for great and small alike would reign." 1

1 Temple of Memory, Canto II.

DESCENT 5

He was a man •" supremely just," and thereby, in
Ireland, made " open and embittered foes." The boy
Kenelm loved his sire.

" Ah ! with what love he saw that figure tall
Pacing so thoughtful from their lofty Hall,
To wander in his groves so bowed the while :
As if he felt that in a little while
He must leave all things that on earth were dear,
Though till his last month none for him would fear.
Ah ! with what grief he left those walks and lawns
Where first he ran as life's sweet morning dawns." l

Evidently Kenelm Digby derived much from this
striking and original father : his love of nature, painting,
riding, swimming, travelling, and his talent, rather
discursive than concentrated.

William Digby, Dean of Clonfert, married thrice. His
first wife was Mary Anne Butler, by whom he had
children who all died young ; his second was his cousin,
Mary Digby, by whom he had three sons ; his third
was a widow named Mary Wood.

She was of " lovely face," her son says, and of Devon-
shire race, but also related in blood to the Anglo-Irish
family of Edgworth. Her great pride was to be of
kin to the Abbe Edgworth, who attended Louis XVI. on
the scaffold, and her treasure was his • rosary enshrined
in a shell. She died soon after her husband, and was
so much loved that a multitude came from all the country
round to follow her funeral procession. Says her son :

" Oh ! verdant Isle, that still so honours death,
Love thee I will, and to my latest breath." 2

By Mary the Dean of Clonfert had two sons, the
elder Richard by name, and the younger Kenelm Henry,
who was born in the last year or two of the eighteenth

1 Temple of Memory, Canto II. 2 Idem.

6 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

century, and is the subject of this Memoir.1 Kenelm
was born when his father was between sixty and seventy
and was still a boy when he died in 1812 aged near
eighty. Since Kenelm, the son of so old a father, was
tall and very strong and hardy, and himself passed the age
of eighty, the vital force in the race must have been great.

Richard Digby, Kenelm's eldest whole brother, died
in 1820. He left his inheritance to Kenelm, who in
this way, and by the fact that his wife had property,
had a good income, enough to live upon for life without
entering a paid profession, or having to earn a liveli-
hood by his pen. It is an advantage of established pro-
perty and " unearned income " that it allows some men
to pursue unremunerative occupations which are bene-
ficial to their fellow-beings. When Socialism has been
fully established, and we are all Government employes,
no one will have time to write a book like Mores Catholici.

Kenelm spent a happy childhood at his father's
rectory of Geashill, with its distant prospect of the
purple, heathy, hill-range of Slieve-bloom, in the very
centre of Ireland, playing by himself at imaginative
games, or with rustic lads, reading poetry, Shake-
speare and, above all, Walter Scott, roaming through
woods and meadows, climbing about the ruins of
Geashill Castle, which his ancestress had so valiantly
defended. Sometimes he was at Lord Charlesville's
castle, seven miles away, where a charming child of

1 The parish register at Geashill was carelessly kept, and has no baptismal
entries between 1784 and 1801. According to Mr. Rouse Ball's Admissions
to Trinity College, Cambridge, vol. iv., Kenelm Digby, at the age of
eighteen, matriculated in 1815. This would make the year of his birth to
be 1797. But according to the obituary notice in the Times he was
eighty when he died, and thus born in 1799 or 1800. Probably the date
1797 is the correct one.

BOYHOOD 7

the house seemed to him a " vision in the sky " so
beautiful she was, and gentle. This was Catharine
Tisdall, a daughter of Lady Charlesville by a former
marriage, who afterwards married Colonel George Marlay,
and became the mother of Lady John Manners. She
was an intimate friend of Kenelm Digby's later years
in London. Kenelm learned to ride from an English
groom named Jones, to whom he was much attached.

Kenelm Digby never seems to have visited Ireland
again, after he left it while still a boy, except once,
to attend his mother's funeral ; at least there is no record
of his having done so, for he never cared to go anywhere
except to the Continent ; but he cherished its memories,
.and in his writings always praised the Irish race.

" Island of Saints, still constant, still allied
To the great truths opposed to human pride ;
Island of ruins, towers, cloisters grey,
Whence palmer kings with pontiffs once did stray
To Rome and Sion, or to kindle fire
Which amidst later darkness can inspire
Lands that in fondest memory and song
Thy pristine glory fearlessly prolong ;
Thy peaceful image floating in the West
Denotes a Cause to yield all spirits rest ;
Ancient, yet never past, as years gone by,
But rising gloriously in eastern sky,
As oft as finding in the setting light
A symbol of thy grandeur in that night
Of ages, when thy fame from sea to sea
Extended as a blissful mystery.
For grandeur, nations, kingdoms have their day,
But Faith like thine will never pass away." x

After a time Kenelm was sent to school in England,
with his brother, at Petersham near Richmond. Here
his great sport was rowing on the Thames. He carried

1 Digby's Short Poems, 1866, p. 82.

8 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

this art to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he arrived
in the year of the battle of Waterloo. The " tubs that
then did serve for boats, on which the drowsy Fen-man
floats " were far inferior to the craft of the Thames. He,
and some equally enlightened friends, assisting the
enterprise with money aid, induced the boat-keeper
at the locks to construct " some boats at which the
Fen would stare." In his poem of memories, written
when he was over seventy, Kenelm proceeds to say :

" In brief, before they left the place
The University could trace
The good effects of their renown
That followed them from London down,
Until their eight-oared races proved
A school for art they long had loved ;
And then, observe, to him was given
The task of pulling number seven
In Trinity's first famous boat,
As, sooth, already someone wrote.
For never, and the fact he'll swear,
Was it with him once beaten there.
Founder of boating on the Cam,
By memory taught, he'll say, I am." x

A monument should be erected to Kenelm Digby on
the banks of Cam.

He and his friends often rowed down by the Cam and
then the Ouse, dull, muddy streams, into the fens, and,
though at first he had found those regions " dreary "
after the Thames valley, he came to discover " great
beauty in that level ground " above which long nights
of geese, or now and then wild swans, would cleave their
mysterious way. Once he and his crew rowed their
eight-oar all the way down the Cam and the Ouse to
the sea, crossed the Wash, and went up the river through
the marsh levels to Boston. Even a primitive heavy

1 Temple of Memory, Canto III.

CAMBRIDGE 9

eight-oar could hardly cross the Wash except on the
calmest days, and the crew had to return to Wisbeach
walking, while their boat travelled on a cart. In
crossing the Wash they saw seals lying on banks of sand.
Do seals ever visit these sandbanks now ?

Like Don Quixote, Kenelm Digby once challenged
a lion. A travelling show came to Cambridge. He
entered the cage of a lion named Nero and sat on his
back. Nero revolved on him an " awful eye," but did
no more. Afterwards, in a northern town, poor Nero,
weary of the tricks of men, slew a professional lion-
taming damsel, and was shot for the crime.

Kenelm Digby did not altogether neglect the dry
schools of Cambridge, though he could only just acquire
the tincture of mathematics necessary for a degree.
He took his B.A. degree in 1819. In the year 1820 he
won the Norrisian prize essay, and as by rule this had
to be printed, he for the first time had the rapture to
see himself a book. There is no book like one's first
book. It was " respectfully dedicated to the Rev.
Christopher Wordsworth, Master of Trinity." The
subject was the " Evidences of the Christian Religion."
The essay was not very closely reasoned, but showed, in
its quotations, a range of reading very remarkable in
one so young. Romilly, the Trinity lecturer, praised
Digby for a " metaphysic turn." But Kenelm's great
study now was that of books of chivalry and mediaeval
history, towards which his first bent had been given by
the heroic poems of Walter Scott. As an undergraduate
he resolved to be a knight, and getting into King's
College Chapel at nightfall, kept his vigil there till dawn.
He had a design to keep a night's vigil in Ely Cathedral
also. He had a friend of like humour, George Darby,

10 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

and at Marklye in Sussex they held a solemn tournament,
with ponies for steeds and hop-poles for spears. In
imitation of the bold Deloraine they rode one night to
Hurstmonceaux Castle, and touched its walls with their
lances. One day, as Kenelm was riding by himself, he
had a knightly adventure. A pretty damsel of seventeen
came down a side lane and said that she had been
molested by a felon. Would he let her walk by the side
of his horse, and protect her, into Hastings ? In a
vacation ramble in the Tyrol he swam by moonlight,
in hope of adventure, across a lake to a huge old castle
called Sigismundsburg, standing on an island, but found
nought but ruins, and heard nothing but owls. On an
earlier journey he first saw the castle of Ehrenbreitstein,
opposite Coblentz, on the Rhine, and conceived the title
of his book, the Broadstone of Honour.

Kenelm Digby was a chivalric figure, almost seeming
born out of his right period of history into the nine-
teenth century. He was over six feet in height,
strongly built, with dark hair and eyes, a fine fore-
head. Edward Fitzgerald, in his beautiful Platonic
dialogue Euphranor, of which the scene is laid at
Cambridge, thus speaks of him. Something was said
of the Broadstone of Honour :

" And then Euphranor ask'd me ' Did I not remember
Digby himself at College — perhaps know him ? '

' Not that,' I answered, ' but remembered him very
well. A grand, swarthy fellow, who might have stept
out of the canvas of some knightly portrait in his
Father's house — perhaps the living image of one sleeping
under some cross-legg'd Effigies in the Church.' ' And in
the same dialogue the young Alfred Tennyson is called
" A man at all points, Euphranor, — like your Digby—

CAMBRIDGE 11

of grand proportion and figure, becoming his ancient
•and honourable race."

Edward Fitzgerald went up to Trinity in October,
1826, and so saw Digby when he was still often at
Cambridge, and twenty-eight to thirty years old, or
thereabouts, in the prime of young-knightly vigour.
Fitzgerald's testimony is worth anything. What a
pity that Digby was not one of his friends and corre-
spondents in later life ! If so, Digby's memory would
have been embalmed in that imperishable record of the
Cambridge elite of near a hundred years ago.

During the years when Kenelm Digby was an under-
graduate, and those after he had taken a degree and
still made Cambridge his English headquarters, there
was at Trinity a remarkable set both of dons and under-
graduates. The College has never, perhaps, had a more
massively intellectual high table. Wordsworth, the
brother of the poet, was Master. Among the younger
tutors or lecturers, men a few years older than Digby,
were Julius Hare, tutor and classical lecturer at Trinity
from 1822 to 1832 ; * William Whewell, who was son
of a Lancaster master-carpenter, and became successor
to Wordsworth as Master of Trinity ; Adam Sedgwick,
the hearty Yorkshireman and ardent geologist ; Thirl-
wall, man of immense learning, knowing many languages,
the historian and subsequent Bishop of St. David's ;
Joseph Romilly, the Registrar of the University ; Hugh
Rose, an early High Churchman, and George Peacock.
The most stirring and vivacious of these active minds
was, perhaps, that of Julius Hare, and Kenelm Digby
well knew him in those rooms in the gateway tower of the
New Court which look down the " long walk of limes."

1 Julius Hare was born 1795, Whewell 1794, Sedgwick 1785.

12 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

The undergraduates of Trinity were also, some of themr
remarkable. The brilliant Etonian, Winthrop Mack-
worth Praed, whom Digby knew well, and T. B. Mac-
aulay, afterwards the historian, both came to Trinity in
1818. Richard Chenevix Trench, afterwards Archbishop
of Dublin and poet, went up in 1825, Frederick Maurice
in 1823, John Sterling in 1824, Edward Fitzgerald in
1826, Alfred Tennyson and Arthur Hallam in 1828, all
younger men than Kenelm Digby ; but they may have
met him or known him by sight when, for some ten year&
after his degree, he was staying a good deal at Cambridge
and reading in the Libraries ; and they certainly read,
and were much influenced by his Broadstone of Honour,
published first just before they came to Cambridge, and
re-published while they were there. It had much to da
with the " Young England " movement, which was,
mainly, a romantic young Cambridge enterprise, and.
with Tennyson's early poetry.

Digby had a special admiration for Whewell. Many
years later, Aubrey de Vere, in a letter to the lady wha
wrote a Memoir of Dr. Whewell, said :

" The friendship of Whewell and Kenelm Digby is a
thing the more remarkable when one remembers the
different characters of the two intellects. But then both
these men had in common that greatest of all gifts
(greater than any degree of genius), a great heart ; and
that, doubtless, was the source of their mutual sym-
pathy."

Digby himself, writing to Aubrey de Vere after
WheweU's death in 1866, said :

" I had reason to regard Whewell as one of the most
generous, open-hearted, disinterested and noble-minded

CAMBRIDGE 13

men that I ever knew. I remember circumstances that
called for the exercise of each of these rare qualities,
when they were met in a way that would now seem
incredible, so fast does the world seem moving from all
•ancient standards of goodness and moral grandeur."

To the same lady, Mrs. Stair Douglas, who wrote the
Memoir of Dr. Whewell, Digby wrote this letter in 1873,
from Kensington :

' You will easily understand that though my acquaint-
ance with Dr. Whewell began very early at Cambridge,
it is chiefly of his genial and generous disposition as a
friend and companion that I can speak. This anyone
could observe who knew him as intimately as I did.
Though on my first coming up to College, he consented
to have me as a pupil, I can only venture to say of him,
as a tutor, that he was always encouraging and indulgent,
possessing a singular faculty for reconciling those whom
he instructed to subjects of study for which they would
otherwise have felt no inclination.

" Having formed one of a party of Trinity men who
spent a Long Vacation with him in North Wales for the
sake of study, at the expiration of the time he refused
to take any remuneration from me, saying that he would
not be justified in doing so, as I had not paid any atten-
tion to his lectures. In fact, I liked him better on
horseback than in the professional chair, and he was
always, during the intervals of study, scouring the hills
with some of us. On one occasion, having walked with
him from Aber-Menai to the coast of Anglesea, opposite
Carnarvon, we expected to find the ferry boat ready
to take us across, but, on the contrary, it being very
late in the evening, the boat was moored out a hundred
feet or more from shore, the ferryman having retired
for the night into a little hut. On his refusing to turn
out to take us across, we asked if he would let us take
the boat, if we could get into it. On his assenting,
Whewell was the first to dash into the stream and swim

14 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

to the boat. We drew up the anchor and effected the
passage safely, while the ferryman raged on the shore
and called us all manner of names.

" The year that he went with me to Normandy,
visiting all the cathedrals and abbeys, he drew up a
table on which you saw at a glance the distinguishing
features of the different orders or epochs of Gothic
architecture — the Norman, the Early English, the
Decorated and the Perpendicular. As a travelling
companion he was unrivalled, being always ready to
rough it, and take everything in a good-humoured
way, and I shall not easily forget his riding with
me on the post-horses to visit St. Michel au peril de
la mer.

" During a long friendship I never remember hearing
him speak unkindly of anyone behind his back, though
he was free enough and bold enough spoken when he
had you face to face. He was wonderfully fond of his
friends, whom he never forgot. I remember his having
made one of them sit for his picture to Lonsdale, and
then his having given the portrait which he paid for to
a third party, a mutual friend. But it would be endless
to tell instances of his generous spirit. And, in fact, it
was that no doubt which gained him the friendship
of so many who were incompetent to profit by his
extraordinary mental powers. He conciliated all but
proud, self-conceited people, who did not like to be put
down by a word or two from him."

Whewell, says Digby elsewhere, taught him at Cam-
bridge " to distinguish the true bounds of reason."

Kenelm Digby loved Cambridge, all the more so,
perhaps, since no part of his patriotism had been deflected
into that of a great public school, and to the end of his
life he liked to summon up these memories. In one
of the carelessly- written poems of his old age, Ouranogaia,
he thus describes this long- vanished society which passed

CAMBRIDGE 15

cheerfully at this time through those old courts and
streets and gardens :

" 0 Cambridge, Alma Mater ! who but thou
Shouldst add an instance from experience now ?
While Friendship on this earth can still remain,
Turning to thee our search will not be vain.
For nature unsophisticated stays
With thee to sweeten all thy daily ways.
Thy sons are seldom stiffen'd into stone :
With thee no formal contradiction grown :
For no false, gloomy guides, as elsewhere, try
To pass off pride for truth, and manners high ;
And vessels out at sea are safe far more
Than those, steer'd wrong, left stranded on the shore.
Ah ! suffer me of some to tell and sing
Whose kindness in times past now aids my wing,

Thorpe was exact, enthusiastic Hare ;

Solid was Kose, and Sedgwick past compare,

For honest spirit and for noble mind,

The type of manhood, brave, and frank, and kind.

Hare, shall I only name him in my song ?

Right's fearless champion, pulverizing Wrong,

In depth a Plato, for the weakest mild,

A guide with Sages, and with youths a child —

Hare was a joy you thought could never end,

A light for judgments, and for hearts a friend.

Wordsworth was learned, timid, for delay,

Though conscious life was speeding fast away ;

Well skill'd on any course the prize to win,

Yet still regretting he could not begin.

Valpy was curious, critical, though shy,

In mien still lowly, while his heart was high.

A classic fancy was to Shadwell given,

To Whewell all the knowledge under Heav'n.

Famed or obscure, name them altogether —

Master or student differ'd not a feather :

For Whewell had the virtues of a boy,

Though mental strength did oft the proud annoy ;

And Romilly's or Peacock's smile would seem

E'en to their pupils like true Friendship's dream.

16 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

Grave Porter would leave fluxions for his friend ;
And Bagshaw's love with life would only end.
Oh ! that I could portray in worthy strain
Worsley's bright fancy, and the sense of Bayne,
Elmslie, who Fielding's very spirit owns,
So tuned to echo all its sweetest tones.
Aristophanic Barnes so skill'd to show
How Grecian wit in English verse should flow ;
Or Sidney Walker, whom Miltonian prose
Employ'd translating till his life's swift close,
Timid, distrustful, all whose doubts had grown
From mental sickness, as his friends would own.
Kemble's good-nature, Churchill's pluck and fire,
Than Talbot's Science some would more admire.
Then Darby was the model of a knight ;
Whatever Glennie said was always right ;
Flamank from Eton was a swimmer bold,
For whom the Cam in winter was not cold ;
With whom the three years I did breast its flow,
When ice would float and wild white tempests blow,
When fields were flooded (which delighted more),
And yellow torrents mined each green Isle's shore ;
Ah ! Friendship midst the willows then was warm,
While braving icebergs, sleet, or rain, or storm.
Poor Hastings ! an Adonis in his youth,
Aye practised goodness, piety and truth ;
Mansel had pluck'd all flow'rets that e'er grew
In English letters to present to you ;
Sage Kindersley would play each gentle part ;
And Kingdon brought you sunshine in his heart ;
Shaw, that from Westminster at first had flown,
Had guileless speech pure Innocence might own ;
And Murray, pensive, skill'd on the guitar,
Beyond the earth in mind would wander far ;
Bayley was gentle, even while" afloat
And ruling eight men in our far-famed boat,
Of whom two, Blane and Mayo, proved to be
Heroes in war, renown'd for chivalry.
Phillips, deep-read in mediaeval books,
Had Heav'n around him, Heav'n in his looks ;
Praed could find merit, be it e'er so low,
And e'en on Digby some kind lines bestow ;
Spencer — my hand too coarse should fear to paint
The English noble, and the Christian saint —

CAMBRIDGE 17

There was not one whose presence did not bring
For dulness Fairyland, for Heav'n a wing." l

A bundle of old Cambridge letters addressed to Digby
show that he was dear to his friends. One writes, " No
one is more capable of giving or receiving pleasure than
you are." He was invited to become a member of the
Cambridge Conversazione Society, usually known as the
" Cambridge Apostles," to which so many men of
distinction have belonged during the last hundred years,
but he seems to have declined the invitation.

1 Ouranogaia, Canto IX.

K.D

CHAPTER II
TRAVELS

" THUS to the Catholic Church is every thoughtful traveller directed
by the spectacle of the most lovely spots of the world ; for the
sublimest scenes produced by nature or by art, instead of chaining
his soul to earth, impel it to rise upward to the eternal beauty ever
ancient and ever new, to which all that the Catholic religion ordains is
but a passage and a preparation."

KENELM DIGBY, Compitum.

THE young Kenelm Digby was a pilgrim of romance.
In his childhood in Ireland, he says, his imagination
played in this way :

" All things were magnified to youth
Far grander than they were in truth,
Each pond was then a spacious lake ;
Each copse for forests you would take.
Childhood had Alps before its eyes,
Yea, and the bright Italian skies
In the least line of distant blue
That ever came before its view,
Or in the pale and transient gleam
Which made it of Ausonia dream." l

He delayed not long to convert his childish dreams into
those realities which themselves, in memory, so much
resemble dreams. Indeed the old traveller must some-
times ask himself what is the difference between, for
instance, the Rome or Venice one saw twenty years ago
with one's eyes, and the Rome or Venice one has seen
in pictures ?

1 Temple of Memory, Canto IV.
18

TRAVELS 19

While he was an undergraduate at Cambridge, and
during some years afterwards while he still made Cam-
bridge his headquarters, Kenelm used to spend short
vacations in rambles over England, on horse or foot,
often also visiting the house of Lord Digby, Chief of
his Clan, at beautiful Sherborne in Dorsetshire. During
long vacations he roved the Continent, sketching, and
writing notes of travel. He traversed most of Belgium,
France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, only
avoiding the Puritan North, the Scandinavian lands,
Prussia and " cold " Berlin. He wished to see nothing
of what he calls the " soul-sick Prussian nation." In
more southern Germany he was moved by what, he
says, Madame de Stael rightly called " a certain sweetness
in the voice of German women," and he loved the old
feudal castles and forests, and the storied and romantic
Rhine and Danube.

Here are some of the recollections of youthful travel
contained in the poem of his old age, the Temple of
Memory. This book, undeservedly, is known to so very
few that I need not apologize for quoting from it at length.

" In memory the Danube, Rhine,
Between their castled heights will shine,
There, in the silence of the dawn
To sweet Montpellier he is drawn ;
He sits beneath the Chateau d'eau,
And marks the rising beams that glow,
The Pont du Gard, or Nimes is here,
The Pope's old Palace will appear,
The broad blue waters of the Rhone
Reflecting not the sky's pink tone.
Then to Vaucluse with rocks so high
He hastes, and hears poor Petrarch's sigh.
The Isle-Barbe with its ruins fair,
Lyons, still pious, will be there.
Again these scenes are here that seem

20 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

Too bright for aught except a dream,
Such is that rich Aosta's vale,
So shaded with the olive pale,
Unnumbered palaces in sight
Made golden by the morning light,
The Campanile, graceful, tall,
Rough roseate crags that crown them all.
Or he sees Garda's clear, blue lake,
When o'er it the pale dawn will break,
The little coves, the tawny ground,
Olives the only green thing found,
While azure faint, or deep around
The tone prevailing all is found." 1

Like Byron, who swam the Hellespont, Digby always
dwells with affectionate complacency upon his own
daring feats as a swimmer, from the time he used to
bathe even on bitter ice-breaking days in the Cam.
Here he says :

" Then, as a swimmer rather famed,
Again Geneva must be named.
Two sites for bathing you see here
To him incomparably dear,
To whom the Danube, Elbe, and Rhine
Were known to yield such swimming fine
As did at Cette of perfumed air
The blue Mediterranean there.
The first is formed by two rocks
Which meet the azure billow's shocks,
Rising together near the town,
From which you can plunge headlong down
To ultramarine depths so clear
That sapphires wiU the ground appear ;
And he remembers well the day
When dark dull clouds above them lay,
That, having dived, when he would rise
What he thought sky did much surprise,
To see the blue then overhead
Become so clear since he was sped,
Until, emerging from the wave,
He found all dark, and dull, and grave,

1 Temple of Memory, Canto IV.

TRAVELS 21

Just as he'd left it — azure so
Keigning but in the depth below.
The second site is where the Khone
Has issued from the lake, and grown
So rapid that no diver's might
Can touch the bottom, though in sight.
There by a wooded strip of land
With no return at your command
However skilled, and bold, and strong
You're wafted like a dart along
Until you reach the snow-fed line
Of waters where the Arve will shine,
Where between heat and cold you steer,
The most courageous feeling fear." x

Perhaps these careless lines may serve as a guide to
some bold young English swimmer of to-day, who would
like to try the same sensations. And do they not make
the old long to be young again, if it were but for one
summer week ? Digby plunged into the formidable
Rhine near Drachenfels, and was carried three miles
down-stream before he could reach the opposite shore.
Does man ever feel more man than when his life depends
on his swimming in dangerous places ? At Rome he
swam down the Tiber, and the peasants on the bank,
looking down on this strange sight, called him a water-
rat. His love of swimming was hereditary, for one of his
race, an Everard Digby of the sixteenth century (not the
Sir Everard executed in connection with the Gunpowder
Plot), had written an early treatise on that noble art.

Here, too, are lines enshrining some memories of Italy
on one of these Long Vacation rambles :

" Then too, though on no purpose bent,
To Italy he ravished went,
To Italy as in a dream
Lit with Hyperion's brightest gleam.
There Venice saw him dream or rave

1 Temple of Memory, Canto IV.

22 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

When first lie saw her glassy wave,
Or climb to that proud lofty tower
To look down at the evening hour
Upon those roseate purple isles
Stretching so far and bright for miles,
Along the Adriatic there,
Reflecting that illumined air.
Then of Ravenna's silence he
As if a worshipper would be,
Theodoric's vast tomb he saw,
And ancient palaces with awe.
But what deprived him of his breath
Was to see Classe laid in death ;
He knew its woods of pine would prove
A haunt for those who Dryden love,
Byron, and Ariosto too
Whose genius there all poets woo ;
But, what he never dreamt, he found
That vast Basilica still sound,
With its huge tower all alone,
Around which spirits seem to moan.
Then, need he add, to Rome he went,
Though hardly as a pilgrim bent ;
There, passing in the street, he'd see
The Pope, and down he went with glee,
Received his blessing like the rest
And felt that kneeling is the best." *

" Ausonia's shores," he says elsewhere, " how can any
traveller pass you without being guided rightly on his
more important voyage ? 0 earth how like to heaven !
Raise thine eyes then with Henry Suso, and see with
him the country of the celestial Paradise, to which these
churches, convents, and calvaries are directing thee."

At Rome he specially loved to see the rising sun
stream on the portals of the great church of St. John,
or the ancient Benedictine convent on the side of the
valley at Subiaco, or the view from Tivoli of "the
distant rising majesty of great St. Peter's matchless

1 Temple of Memory, Canto IV.

TRAVELS 23

pile " while the setting sun coloured all the plain with
deep, ruddy hues. And here is a passage in the volume
of Mores Catholici which appeared in 1833 : l

' With the solemn magnificence of the gothic cathedral
most of the northern nations are familiar, but religion
knew how to adapt her architecture to the locality
and the climate. There is sanctity and faith, and the
deep thoughts of a revering spirit in the mysterious
piles of York and Canterbury, but there is something of
the beauty of Paradise at those eastern steps of St. John
Lateran, when the morning sun gilds the blue distant
hills of Tusculum. To form an adequate idea of that
perfect loveliness which is derived from the union of
noble edifices with the delightful aspect of nature, one
must see the dome and church of the Vatican, rising in
the midst of gardens with the mountains beyond, from
the groves of the Villa Doria Pamphili, or from the
bowers of St. Onofrio's holy cloister, or one should see
St. John Lateran and the Basilica of the Holy Cross from
the vineyards which are among the baths of Titus or of
Caracalla, or the tower and domes of St. Mary Major,
from the gardens near the gate of St. John."

And elsewhere he says :

" Rome alone seems invested with an interest which is
present and eternal ; and yet, amid the astonishing
concentration of present intellectual greatness there,
who, standing upon that awful ground, can avoid think-
ing of the past, and yielding to its immortal recollections ?
The approach to Rome is precisely what it ought to be.
Nothing can be imagined more sublime, more proper to
inspire meditation, and to fill the soul with the pro-
foundest emotions of wonder for the past and of pious
astonishment and reverence for the everlasting Ruler,
than a view of the vast and solemn plains of the Cam-
pagna, in which the history of the world seems written
in ruins, where no object appears but here and there

1 Vol. i. p. 383.

24 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

some isolated fragment of an arched aqueduct or of a
sepulchre, some aged cork-tree, or some spreading pine,
near which shepherds are seen sitting together round a
fire at night, keeping watch over their flocks. The
thronged and noisy suburbs of a modern capital would
belong to an order of ideas to which you would there
deny admittance, for they would indicate too much of
worldly solicitude to be in accordance with what naturally
fills the breast of the Christian pilgrim as he approaches
Rome." »

Kenelm Digby was fortunate to have first entered
Rome before the age of railways, tram-cars, motor-cars,
offices, and tenement buildings — all invasions of her
ancient calm and brooding dignity. But when he first
came there, in a Cambridge Long Vacation, he was not
yet a Catholic, and perhaps in this romantic time of
youth Rome pleased him less than scenes of wild nature
and northern castles and churches. Not till some years
later, in 1832 or 1833, " when the sixteenth Gregory sat
in Peter's Chair," did he behold at Rome

" an assembly of the sacred college, which seemed to
me the most august, majestic spectacle that could be
furnished by humanity, in harmony with its Creator's
will. Youth " [his own] " which was solitary, or
conversant with the poor, amidst its favourite haunts
had escaped from hearing the calumnies of men, and
therefore there were no lurking vile delusions to obscure
the vision. I marked in that audience the impress of
every noble spirit ; I could distinguish the wisdom of a
Justinian, the gentleness and goodness of a Rohan, the
dignity and platonic majesty of a Micara, the unsated
thirst of an Odeschalchi, the frankness and manly
sincerity of a Zurla, and the unaffected humility of him
who once ruled the towers of Lulworth. There was in
one whose name is dear to Genoa, the air of a Gregory

1 Mores Catholici, Book VII., chap. iv.

TRAVELS 25

of Tours, in another the penetration of a Jerome, in
another the simplicity of a Fenelon. These things did
attract my soul's regard, and enable me to discover
new beauties in history, and to feel the grandeur and
tenderness of many scenes, the description of which may
seem a rhetorical exaggeration, if one has not, from experi-
ence, an internal sense responsive to the writer's word."

Does the reader like this, or does he prefer the wild
and ignorant ravings against priests of poets like Shelley
or Swinburne ? Dis-moi ce que tu aimes, et je te dirai
ce que tu es.

Here is another little travel-picture, from Switzerland
this time.

" I remember to what a golden world of bright and
peaceful images I used to be transported, when straying
of a summer's morning without tjie walls of Soleure,
immediately after the first mass in the churches of the
town. There one might walk through delightful
meadows interspersed with groves like a continual
garden, watered with a number of clear rivulets, sparkling
amidst violet beds, studded with beautiful convents,
chapels and crosses, with villas and pavilions adjoining.
There one heard ascend through the clear air the sweet
liquid symphony of the bells of the different monasteries,
which are tolled at every elevation of the sacred mysteries,
and these too seem to answer one another from hill
to hill. There one saw the happy and courteous groups
that passed along ; the children, angel-mild, intent
upon some office of domestic duty, the cheerful scholar,
so anxious to salute the stranger, and the venerable
old men, whose smile is like a benediction ; and, if one
entered to say a short prayer in the church of the
convent, there would be seen at his devotions some
noble proprietor of an adjacent castle, who always
desired to be at the mass of the community. The
humble little cloister too is open. See the poor devout
prints which cover the walls, and the sweet flowers which

26 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

grow within the little court ; and, through one of the
small windows above, you catch a glimpse of some holy
friar, who is meditating in his cell. What a peaceful
and holy calm reigns around ! the groves and meadows,
the gardens and the surrounding hills seem to have
imbibed the celestial tranquillity of the blessed enclosure."
" Ah," he says elsewhere, " those morning walks
through fairest bowers of Italian shore, those mountain
walks o'er moor and snowy Alp, those friends and
comrades of our elastic youth, those enchanting moments
of inhaling the sweetest loveliness of nature ? Where
are they ? Who will give them back to us ? At times
men believe they are returning, but they mistake memory
for hope. They are gone, yet not for ever perished.
He who gave them can restore them ; they were in his
mind before we existed, and they will exist there,
when we shall have removed hence. Ah ! in heaven we
may have again those early walks, fresher than ever the
balmy breath of incense-breathing morn yielded on
this earth. In heaven again we may have them all
again, lakes, woods, mountains and Ausonian skies,
the angels ever bright and fair, the friends and com-
panions of our youth." l

Such may also be the consolation of those who
mourn

" To leave unseen so many a glorious sight,
To leave so many a land unvisited ;
To leave so many worthiest books unread ;
Unrealised so many visions bright."

Kenelm Digby's works are full of these charming
travel-pictures, and I hope that these few samples will
attract to them some readers who like to be taken back
into past days which did actually shine before a seeing
eye. Digby in these early travels had the advantage
that he could not go by trains, for there were none.

1 Mores Catholici, vol. iii. p. 67.

TRAVELS 27

He travelled on horseback, or on foot, or in post-chaises,
or on the top of old diligences, and saw the world both
closer and more romantically than the modern traveller
by train, or even by motor-car. The old slow road-
travelling brought men into much closer touch with
each other, and, as Digby says, the chief use of travelling
is to teach men to love and understand those of other
nations. But he points out that, as, perhaps, an excess
in this direction, the risks of amours de voyage were
also greater. So many more nights were spent in lonely
inns, there was so much more time for lingering con-
versation by the road, before the English invented
railways, and vast hotels began to rise. " Speed has
suppressed adventures," said a French writer of his time,
Fromentin. It might chance that in Italy, when
travelling with a hired veturino your fellow-passenger
might be some one " rather used to a casino," who,
needing some distractions by the way, might be inclined
to " meddle with your heart," or, of an evening, darts
might be shot by eyes across a narrow old street, or at
an inn, where some " silent, shy one brought your
cu'nner," a little too much tacit sympathy might arise,
.and just as you mounted your horse to ride away
there might be something in a look to cause remorse.

" Tis certain in those ancient and slow times
Were things that would not strictly suit these rhymes." l

On the whole, the express train, flying in a night over
four hundred miles of France, or Italy, or Germany, is
safer, though less romantic.

" What sweet companions often too by chance
He met in England, and no less in France,

1 Temple of Memory, Canto VII.

28 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

What invitations sometimes intervening,

While youth knew not, in truth, their real meaning.

What opportunity for many pranks,

And for which others vainer would give thanks." 1

Such little adventures, or incipiencies of adventure,
make half the charm of solitary roaming in days of
youth. Nothing so tempting as amours de voyage,
precisely because, by their very nature, they are so
transient. Why are beautiful things transient ? is the
question put to the deity in Goethe's epigram r
" Because only transient things are beautiful," answers
the god.

Kenelm Digby liked to travel with little baggage, and
raggedly, so as to save trouble and have unshackled
freedom, and also to be more at home with the real people
of the lands which he traversed, the humble and poor.
Because of this he says in one of his books :

" I have been received as one of the people by those
who loved them best " [priests] " and asked, in the
confidence of holy affections, if I knew how to read.
Because smiles were excited by my briar-torn clothes,
I have been asked to guide belated travellers through
dangerous lanes ; for not ' stalking up and down, and
wearing gentleman in my cap,' I have been invited
civilly to read some lines too pale for delicate eyes, and,
as if my place were waiting at a gate, like some knavish
page or horse-boy, to hold the horses of an unknown
idame. For being noticed daily as among the first
comers, I have been archly asked by a friendly fellow-
pupil in the Louvre how I happened to be proprietor
of a watch ; and merely because my hands were brown,
I have been taken one time for an heir apparent to a
poor fisher's boat, and at another for a dusty-footed,
wayfaring scholar through the olive grounds of southern

1 Temple of Memory, Canto VII.

TRAVELS 29

Prance, and, though some may disdain such motives,
or even prove incapable of comprehending them, there
are others for whom it does not form the least of the
attractions of Catholicism to find that it rather approves
than condemns the inclination which may be felt by one
claiming landred, through Montacutes and Nevills, with
the pale ashes of the House of Lancaster, to be indis-
tinguishable from the sons of the poor." l

Digby's dark hue and not at all English appearance
came to aid his attire in achieving this object. With all
his pleasure in foreign travel, he still loved to roam in
shorter holidays, through England. Nowhere, he says,
is the stranger so free from police suspicion and sur-
veillance, and in no country are there so many pretty
and charming girls.

" It is young women here who are supreme,
Who seem to change life to a summer's dream ;
'Tis not the hedge or garden here that shows
Most the tall lily or the fragrant rose,
The sweet carnation, or the blooming thorn,
For like a flower here each girl seems born." 2

There is something, he says, in English country towns,
the walks by rivers, across fields, through woods, over
downs, something especially in the footpaths and stiles,
which he had never found outside England ; and he
thought that this " something " lies in the connection of
these things with young women of the less assuming and
more simple and natural classes, who, in this country,
move in freedom which is cheerful and also usually
innocent. Certainly an English stile calls up the shy
vision of an English girl. He found abroad much that
was grander and more picturesque and interesting, but
nothing like " our sweet English homes." However,
he thought that every race should be seen in its own

1 Compitum, vol. i. p. 276. 2 Temple of Memory, Canto V.

30 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

surroundings, the English amid corn or hops, and not
amid the vineyards and olive-gardens of the South, the
Spaniard or the Italian in their own, and not in an
English landscape.

It happened that in the second week of September
1824, Kenelm Digby was driving homeward from a
southern tour on a mail coach to Paris. At Besangon,
early in the morning, he heard that Louis XVIII. was
very ill, and at Dijon that he was in danger. At
Troyes, next morning, there was rumour that the king
was dead, and at Provins, in the evening, it was said
that the Paris theatres had been closed.

" 'Twas the last

They heard that night ; for onwards then they passed
While risen high the moon hung pale and bright,
Which into Paris would their last stage light.
He always thought it solemn drawing near
To any capital ; and so 'twas here.
The Mail, so certain in its steady flight,
Seemed to bring laws of nature to his sight,
As if from nothing else could ever be
Such sure and constant regularity ;
But never felt he this impression more
Than now, as he can read in memory's store.
You know those endless avenues which shade
All roads to Paris. Theirs that night was made
More solemn still when they at times were passed
By some express who galloped by them fast,
No other signs of life in all around,
Such solitude upon the road was found,
By trees o'ershadowed, with vast plains in sight,
And scattered hamlets clear in lunar light.
In mind he wandered o'er the landscape there
And felt some change was pending in the air,
While as he gazed upon the moon so high,
He thought of Louis, then about to die,
For, after all, howe'er we spend our breath,
There's more than common in a monarch's death.
Arrived at last, the king was not yet dead,
But the last prayers around him had been said,

TRAVELS 31

While he, expecting death, did calmly lie,
Evincing great and noble constancy." 1

Louis died at four in the morning of September 15th,
the last of the long line of kings of France who was to
die in his palace. His body lay in state for two days
at the Tuileries, and the funeral at St. Denis was on
the 23rd.

Digby, as the king lay dying, found crowds of people
of all classes in prayer at Notre Dame and St. Roch.
The morning of the 15th, at six, he saw King Charles X.
driving out from the Palace Court to St. Cloud. When
the Grand Almoner approached to hear the last con-
fession, the dying king had turned to his brother and
said, with a dignity worthy of Louis XIV., " My brother,
you have affairs which claim your presence, I also have
duties to fulfil."

Then Digby heard all the solemn bells of Paris tolling,,
the Bourdon of Notre Dame deep-sounding above them
all ; and on the 23rd he witnessed the procession, last in
the long history of the kings of France, across the plain
to St. Denis, according to ancient ceremonial, some
hundred poor men, monastically hooded, filing by, among
the rest, with tapers. The full brief bloom of the
pleasant and fruitful Restoration period was now over.

Six years later, Kenelm Digby was passing the
summer working at his great book, Mores Catholici,.
in a lodging in the Rue Grenelle at St. Germain, near
Paris, and often came in, chiefly engaged in his favourite
pastime of old-book hunting along the " Quais." At
that time, even more than now, Paris, after so many
libraries of chateaux and monasteries had been dispersed
in the Revolution, was the earthly paradise of this

1 Temple of Memory, Canto VII.

32 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

kind of sportsman, and the centre was the great
bookshop of the famous Merlin.

1 With what enthusiasm," says Digby, " used I to
stride along those intricate alleys from the quay of
St. Augustine to the street of straw, immortalized by
Dante . . . streets that at another time at least seemed,
and in many instances with truth, to preserve, as in a
last asylum, the homely ways and serene thoughts of
poetic and scholastic times, where one house had its
store of knightly romances, so costly and so curious,
another its books, in binding emblazoned with the
arms of noble owners, of falconry and hunting, another
its monastic philosophers and poets, in solid boards with
clasps of iron, another its venerable vellum-bound
chronicles, another its works of forest literature." *

Then Digby would carry off some prize and make his
first dip into it under the trees in the Tuileries gardens,
or in the Luxembourg gardens, frequented by students
and their pretty friends, and think that this would be
an addition, some day, to a house he would have in
England. Alas ! the utilitarian rage of the Third
Republic for broad, straight, dull avenues, such as
the Rue Raspail, has almost destroyed that " Latin
country " with its " narrow, picturesque streets, where,
in so many sunny vine-clad courts, and up so many
antique turrets, and within so many homes of almost
cloistral seclusion, reigned still [in Digby's Paris days],
or might be thought to reign, the manners and habits
of the ' menagier de Paris/ or of the middle classes in
the days of St. Louis."

Wednesday, July 27th, 1830, was not a day favourable
to the calm pursuit of book-hunting in the pays Latin.
The day had been too intensely hot to do anything, and

1 Evenings on the Thames, chap. xii.

TRAVELS 33

book-hunting, which involves long standing about, is
fatiguing. Digby spent most of it in the cool shades
of St. Germain, and towards evening, tired of reading
and note-taking, came in to Paris, about sunset, to
drink coffee and look at the newspapers, since politics
just then were rather exciting. The sky was still
" pale with golden light " when he entered the cafe of
Desmarcs, an aristocratic resort of men of the ancient
regime kind. A waiter who knew him whispered,
" Monsieur, take care to go round the Palais Royal and
not into it, on tire sur le peuple" The " three days "
had begun. Digby watched the fray with caution. He
heard the firing and saw many dead bodies floating
down the Seine those days. Digby would not wear the
tricolour in the streets, though there was danger in not
doing so. His sympathies were with the fallen Mon-
archy, not with the democratic Revolution, and when
he returned to London he found himself out of touch
with all the journals which said that these were glorious
days for France. No wonder, since the immediate
cause of the movement was the attempt by the Govern-
ment of Charles X. to curb the license of the press.
Besides, the mass of the English always do like, of all
things, to see the fall of a foreign throne, for this, more
than anything else, confirms them in the good opinion
which they have of the excellence of their own popular
institutions, and, sometimes, of their compromise in
religion, their moderate and rational Church. They
look complacently, as it were, from their solid-seeming
shore upon ships wrecked by ocean storms. This
attitude was especially characteristic of our happy and
prosperous age of Queen Victoria, after the Reform Bill
liad made our shore more solid-seeming than ever.

CHAPTER III

CONVERSION TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

" BUT for you these difficulties are removed ; the night is past ;
a bright and everlasting day has dawned ; there is an end of wander-
ing and uncertainty, of doubt and disputation. All the articles of
faith and all the truths of revelation are immoveably and definitely
settled." KENELM DIGBY, Broadstone of Honour, " Morus."

AT the end of the year 1825 Kenelm Digby was received
into the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church. He
relates the story of his spiritual voyage in the eleventh
canto of his poem called The Temple of Memory.

Digby's immediate paternal family was intensely
Protestant, Anglo-Irish Protestant, and had been in
the past closely connected with the good things of the
Irish ecclesiastical Establishment. Whence came his
own disposition ? Perhaps through his Devonshire-
descended mother, of whom so little is known ; and then,
his boyish mind, like that of so many others, was turned
in a Catholic direction by the chivalrous poems of Walter
Scott, and other writers of the inflowing romantic tide.
To read The Lay of the Last Minstrel, and at the same
time to be living on Irish soil but among Irish Protes-
tants, might well produce in an imaginative and romantic
youth a ground fit for the reception of Catholic doctrine
and ritual.

At school, at Petersham by the soft gliding Thames, as
it happened, Kenelm Digby came across two learned

34

elderly Catholic gentlemen, Mr. Charles Butler and
Sir Henry Englefield.1 They spoke mainly of classic
themes, Homer and Virgil, never about religious ques-
tions ; but the boy was impressed by a certain tone
and reserve and mysterious stamp about them. Charles
Butler was a man of much worth. He was born in
1750, so that he was over sixty when the boy Kenelm
came across him. He was nephew of the learned
Alban Butler, who wrote the Lives of the Saints. He
had been educated at a Catholic school near London
and afterwards at the English College at Douai. He
became a conveyancing draftsman and consultant at
Lincoln's Inn, and obtained a large practice. The Act
of 1791 graciously allowed Catholics to be called to the
Bar without denying the doctrine of Transubstantiation,
the Sacrifice of the Mass, and Invocation of the Blessed
Virgin and the Saints ; and Butler took advantage of
this, and at last became a King's Counsel and Bencher
of Lincoln's Inn. He was a Liberal in politics, following
with moderation the ideas of Fox, and strongly " Galli-
can " in church views, being a member of the Cis- Alpine
Club established in 1792, and, at one time, on strained
terms with the Vicars-Apostolic, especially Dr. Milner.
He was, all the same, a thorough Catholic of the
school of Bossuet, and was a strong advocate in defence
of the Church and its doctrines, and had a controversy
upon these subjects with that bitter anti-Roman, the
writer Robert Southey, of the Lakes. Butler wrote
nearly fifty books and pamphlets on various legal and
religious-historical matters. He said that he got through

1 Sir Henry Englefield, Bt., 1752-1822, wrote much on scientific and
other subjects, also in defence of the Church. Charles Fox said that he
" never left his company uninstructed."

36 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

so much work in addition to his large conveyancing
practice by following these maxims — worth record :

" Very early rising, a systematic division of my time,
abstinence from all company, and from all diversions
not likely to amuse me highly, and from reading, writing,
or even thinking on modern party politics, and above all,
never permitting a bit or scrap of time to be unemployed,
have supplied me with an abundance of literary hours.
My literary acquisitions are principally owing to the
rigid observation of four rules, to direct my attention
to one literary object only at a time, to read the best
book on it, consulting others as little as possible ; when
the subject was contentious to read the best book on
each side ; to find out men of information, and, when in
their society, to listen, not to talk."

Charles Butler died in 1832, at the age of eighty- two.
No wonder that a mind so solidly fortified and stored
had its effect upon the impressionable boy, even though
the talk was not directly of religion, for thought can pass
without speech.

Thus Kenelm went to Cambridge, influenced already,
without knowing it, in the direction of the Centre, and
after he was established there he began to travel abroad
in Long Vacations. Never, he says, can he forget the
" visions in his soul " when he first entered a Catholic
church beyond the sea, for he had never entered one
in Ireland or England, and saw the lighted altars, the
kneeling figures. But when he wrote this in his old age
he perhaps over-estimated the effect which this first
impression had immediately made, although it was
considerable. In his first Long Vacation journey,
Digby, with some friends, landed at Ostend, whence
they travelled through Belgium up the Rhine, through
Switzerland to the Italian Lakes, and back by the

CONVERSION TO CATHOLIC CHURCH 37

Simplon, Genoa, Lyons and Paris. A travel journal
of his, still extant in MS., and adorned with numerous
sketches, relates this voyage. It was at Ostend that
Kenelm Digby, then about eighteen or nineteen, entered
a Catholic church for the first of thousands of times.
The journal says :

" On entering this Church we had our first view of
Popish superstition. There were persons at their devo-
tions and a dead silence reigned around. The effect was
imposing. The women, wearing black hoods, were
kneeling before the altars. The men opened their arms
and grasped their hands with fervour. One knelt by
himself in a corner praying very earnestly to some thin
wax candles on which his eyes were ri vetted."

At Ghent he says :

" In all these churches one is particularly struck
with the attention and propriety of the people present.
Indeed I do not believe that there is a man in
existence who would not be struck with reverence on
entering these solemn places, where, if we except the
service and operations of the priests, there is every-
thing in character with the awful purpose to which
the place is dedicated. Undoubtedly the attention of
the people is sometimes observed when an Englishman
of the most sober disposition can hardly refrain from
laughter. For instance, when the priests, like so many
conjurors, are going through their incomprehensible
operations before the altar. What can be more ridiculous
than to see these grave persons turning themselves
about like so many idiots, etc. ... Yet during all this
time there is not a single individual to be observed
either inattentive or behaving irreverently. To a simple,
honest Englishman this seems quite a paradox. He is
told and he believes that the religion of his country is
infinitely more pure and sublime, and yet he knows that
the behaviour of the people in the English churches is

38 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

as strongly characteristic of levity and inattention, as
that of these persons is of reverence and decorum. A
little philosophy will remove this mystery by teaching
him that there is a natural tendency in the human mind
to love error rather than truth."

This shallow philosophy was much affected by English
writers of a hundred and more years ago, even by a man
so distinguished as Archbishop Whateley, but Digby
was soon to learn to reason more correctly, from effect
to cause. At present, however, he was in the mental
condition of the usual Protestant youth who first comes
across the Catholic religion. At Paris, in the same tour,
Digby inserts in his journal a plea for Voltaire and
Rousseau.

" No characters are more deserving of pity. They
were men of vast genius and of powerful understandings ;
they were disgusted with the cruelty, the injustice, and
cold-blooded corruption of their own Church, and
knowing no other Christianity but what was united with
Popedom, indulgences, and all the train of wickedness
and follies attached to the system, in the warmth of
their zeal they were nearly renouncing it all. But let
no man judge them for what they thought ; but rather
let everybody be thankful who has been born under
different circumstances, and who cannot help seeing
things under a different point of view."

Kenelm forgot that Rousseau, at least, had not been
born and bred a Papist. He saw King Louis XVIII. at
Mass in the Tuileries Chapel in full state. " Never
was there a greater complication of folly." After Mass
he saw the old King " waddling " before a rather chilly
public across the Palace garden, and thought of the
different scene when Napoleon returned from Elba and
was literally borne into the Palace on the shoulders

CONVERSION TO CATHOLIC CHURCH 39

of the people. ' Where," asks Digby, " is the man who
would not gladly see the continuance of those days
[of Napoleon] rather than the return of that dark
empire when Priests held a dominion over the minds
and bodies of men, which kept all Europe in ignorance
and misery, which was the disgrace of Christianity, and
the scourge of human kind ? " Yet, notwithstanding
this condemnation by his young mind, those kneeling
figures had made an ineffaceable and operative impres-
sion. In his old-age poem, The Temple of Memory, he
says that he asked himself, " Is this what men mean
when they talk of prayer ? " In his travels during
the next few years this first impression of the reality of
the Catholic cult was deepened, especially by what he saw
in the monasteries of Austria and Switzerland and Italy,
while his ignorance was enlightened and prejudice re-
moved by reading and conversation, especially in France.

As to these first impressions made by the cult, the
novelty and the contrast was obviously far greater then
than it would be now to one accustomed to modern
" high " ritual in Anglican churches. For this reason
modern conversions rest upon a deeper and sounder
and more permanent basis than some of the early ones.
A man must now feel— " I have all the cult in many
Anglican churches that I could have in Catholic churches,
and yet . . ."

Kenelm was now led by impressions in further travels
abroad, and by his reading, in the Catholic direction.
He was now writing his Broadstone of Honour, so that
his line of reading can be easily traced. He studied
in Trinity College Library St. Augustine and Bossuet,
who teach as to the Church the same thing, yet, for a
space, he was still held enchanted by the spell of College

40 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

chapels. The strength of the Church of England lies-
in music. Could he ever resolve, he says, to cease to
hear at evening prayer the soft " Lighten our darkness,"
or on chill Advent mornings the " Now in this our time
of mortal life " ? Nothing, certainly, is more beautiful
than sounds like these in some historic chapel like
King's at Cambridge, or St. Mary's at Eton, or St.
George's at Windsor. These services seem to suit such
buildings, built on the eve of the Renaissance, or
St. Paul's Cathedral in London, better than they suit
mediaeval cathedrals. Like the Renaissance archi-
tecture, the good old Anglican service is clear-cut,
distinct, reasonable, restrained and temperate — the
triumph of common sense over imagination.

' What," Digby now asked himself, " did the learned
men of Cambridge believe ? " The great teacher of
religious philosophy at Trinity was then Julius Hare.
He taught his young hearers to distrust the guidance of
reason, pure and simple, la raison raisonnante, to despise
Locke and Paley, and to deem Bishop Burnet, the
historian of the English Reformation, " a vulgar fool.'*
Foreign Catholic writers, it seemed, were, according
to Julius Hare, chiefly to be honoured, such as the
French authors de Bonald and the ultramontane Count
de Maistre, and the German authors Stolberg, F. Schlegel,
Goerres, Hurter, Vogt. Julius Hare lent to Kenelm
German books inspired by the Catholic Faith in its new
romantic guise. Yet, to the dismay of the ardent
Kenelm, Julius Hare would to the last call Luther
" that god-like man." 1

1 Hare used to say that it was from Luther he learned to " throw inkpots
at the Devil." An excellent account of him is given by Augustus Hare in
Memorials of a Quiet Life.

CONVERSION TO CATHOLIC CHURCH 41

Kenelm Digby also read histories of the Reformation
which gave original documents, especially the voluminous
records of that honest old Protestant, Strype, who lived
not far from the period and shows things as they really
were. It seemed to Digby that the leading motives of
the men who broke with Rome and made essential
changes in the ancient doctrines and ritual of religion
in England were of the most material and secular kind,
and that they were a minority forcing their policy upon
a mostly reluctant people who had no real voice in the
matter, and lost by the changes then made. A most
learned and thorough English historian, not himself a
Catholic, Dr. Gardiner, has written :

4 That Rome exercised her spiritual power by the
willing obedience of Englishmen in general, and that
they regarded it as a really wholesome power, even for
the control it exercised over secular tyranny, is a fact
which it requires no very intimate knowledge of early
English literature to bring home to us. ... It was only
after an able and despotic king had proved himself
stronger than the spiritual power of Rome that the
people of England were divorced from their Roman
allegiance, and there is abundant evidence that they
were divorced from it at first against their will."

First came the breach, the act of will, and then, to
justify it, theories arose about the Church. And these
theories have ever since been in a Protean process of
perpetual change and variation, in accordance with the
changing humours of various times.

In addition to the history there was the immense
attraction of Rome for a chivalrous spirit and a very
human heart. Kenelm Digby knew by instinct that
the ancient religion of his forefathers would give him
the something, at once divine and universally human,

42 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

for which his soul craved. He loved all the rites of the
Catholic Church, as he had seen them abroad, and felt
at one with her true sons and daughters in all lands
and of all races and of all social orders. By the year
1823 he was already in heart a convinced Catholic.

At Paris — in the autumn of 1825 — he asked an aged
friend, M. Chevalier, to recommend him some priest
who would receive him. His friend advised him to go
to a learned divine of the Sorbonne, who met him, when
he learned his intention, ' ' with blank dismay. ' ' Monsieur
was too young, said the priest ; what would his relatives
say ? He would like to know that first. Kenelm was
too young, imprudent and romantic ; besides, said the
priest, living at the Sorbonne, he did not wish to mix
himself in such affairs, and, enfin, he said, pointing
to a loaded table, he had a great deal of proof-correcting
to do, and no time, just then. Let his young friend
go home and consult his family. If he then should
wish to proceed with his design he would, no doubt,
find in England some one more skilled to deal with things
of this kind. "Adieu, Monsieur, au revoir"

Returning to England after this discouraging begin-
ning, Kenelm heard of a priest who lived in Castle
Street, in the depths of London, and, without delay,
went from Cambridge to find him. This priest received
him very drily, asked where he was staying in town,
.and advised him to repair to another priest who lived
in the slums of Westminster. Kenelm sought him, but
found him not at home that day, nor the next. He
then called on the lawyer, Charles Butler, whom he had
known in Petersham days. Mr. Butler gave him a
letter to Father Scott, of the Society of Jesus, who, at
last, guided him, through the narrow door where one

CONVERSION TO CATHOLIC CHURCH 43

must bend one's head, into the internal space and
freedom of the eternal and universal Catholic Church.
Kenelm Digby, in his later book, Compitum, gives a
noble description of this Father :

" From his deep, practical knowledge of the world
statesmen might have learned wisdom of government,
while from his daily exercises of piety children could
learn the simplicity which is their sweetest attribute.
Deficient in no branch of human learning, yielding to
no one in the depth of his admiration for all that belongs
to the. highest mysticism, he retained what is most
difficult, as Tacitus says, and perhaps as the greatest of
Christian philosophers would also admit, ex sapientia
modum"

After this, Digby mostly lived at Cambridge, when not
abroad, for some years, reading in the libraries books
not often in modern days disturbed from their secular
repose, and decanting their contents into volumes of
his own making. The authorities of Trinity College
kindly allowed him for some time to have rooms in
Bishop's Hostel, just south of the Great Court. They
were tolerant and wide-minded men. One day the
famous geologist, Adam Sedgwick, sent his " grave-faced
gyp " to ask Mr. Digby to step across to his rooms after
dinner. Kenelm went in some alarm, asking himself,
" What can the great Sedgwick have to say to me ? ':
Sedgwick had some books of divinity on his table, and
as Kenelm entered, was turning over the leaves of a
volume of Barrow. He laughed, and remarked that he
did not think that these Church of England writers
knew what they wished to say, and that Barrow only
seemed to irritate himself when writing on the power
of the keys. Sedgwick then replaced that learned
author on the shelf and said :

44 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

" Perhaps you will laugh when you know for what
a small reason I have sent for you. You know that
some people blame me — I need not say who they are—
because I like to greet anyone I meet without any regard
to their creed. Well, I have been all this Long Vacation
in Styria and Carinthia, where I have seen Catholic
populations, and I swear ! I don't care what our Dons
say, believe me, that never, never, did I see a people
I liked better or whom I would rather remember, as
the best of mankind. Of course I know very well what
you are now, and I thought you would like to hear me
tell you this, as it was sure to please you. So come
again, and soon."

This little episode must have been in the autumn
term of 1829, for the Life of Adam SedgwicJc shows that
his geological tour in those regions was in the Long
Vacation of that year. Jn a letter to a friend, written
on September 14th, 1829, from Gmunden, near Salzburg,
Sedgwick says that Styria is " a most lovely country,
peopled by a most beautiful race, who are simple and
kind-hearted beyond everything I have ever seen."

Not only Sedgwick, but all the Trinity Dons were
kind, it seems, to Digby, in spite of his strange lapse.
He says the real reason was that they looked on him
as an eccentric youth, and that such a change, hardly
ever heard of then, some years before the Oxford Move-
ment began, seemed to them " a kind of mad-cap
trait " so strange and new that it was almost pleasing.
He would have few imitators, they said, if any. " Clearly
it was chivalry that led him, and there's not much to fear
now from that taste." Whewell, he says, consistent
throughout, continued to be "a dear and constant
friend" till his death, the most indulgent of all. No
doubt, after the Oxford Tracts began to circulate, the

CONVERSION TO CATHOLIC CHURCH 45

Cambridge authorities would not have been quite so
placid ; yet toleration has always been a note of Cam-
bridge. Sobered perhaps by the calm and abstract pur-
suit of mathematics and science, Cambridge has never
been so much under the influence of mirage as Oxford.

Then, again, men like Whewell, Sedgwick, Romilly,
Julius Hare, were all Liberals in religion and politics,
and all, in opposition to the Tory prejudice, still so strong
at both Universities, were supporters of the cause of
Catholic Emancipation. Thirty years of arguments
in this cause had disposed the Whigs to find, at any rate,
harmless virtues in the Catholics whose cause, though
not at all for Catholic or religious reasons, they had
espoused. Digby, throughout life, preferred these kindly
and genuine Protestants to men of the Oxford Tractarian
School, whom he thought dangerous, though well-
meaning, mis-leaders, nor did he ever share the admira-
tion of his friend Ambrose Phillips de Lisle for these last,
or his enthusiastic hopes for " corporate reunion." He
thought that, as he says,

" Vessels out at sea are safe far more
Than those, steered wrong, left stranded on the shore ; "

and that the Liberal Cambridge Protestant, sailing
cheerfully on the unfathomed deep, was, on this prin-
ciple, safer than the Oxford Tractarian, driven by the
Catholic wind on to the rocks of the Roman shore.
Kenelm Digby had so few near kinsfolk, and saw so
little of these, since they lived in Ireland, that he was
not much troubled by family reprehension. A half-
brother of his, Benjamin Digby, a good deal older,
who was a Rector, arid even an Archdeacon in the
Irish Church, a very pious clergyman of Calvinistic
views, who thought (he wrote) that " Romanism was

46 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

nothing but Pelagianism," expressed vast surprise that
Kenelm could do a thing so obviously ridiculous and
erroneous and contrary to Scripture, but afterwards, as-
before, maintained an affectionate correspondence with
his erring junior.

After October 1826 Kenelm Digby had for two years
one young Catholic friend " ensconced in NevilPs Court,"
in Trinity, who had a store of precious books bound in
white vellum, Latin, Italian, French, Spanish. He was
nine years younger than Kenelm, of angelic character
and fervent religious zeal, and many were attracted
to resort to his rooms. A Trinity tutor, seeing them
together one day, said, " I wish I could make a third
with you two." This young friend was Ambrose Lisle
March Phillips, who afterwards took the name of
Phillips de Lisle, of Garendon and Grace Dieu in
Leicestershire. He became a Catholic at fifteen, on
21st December, 1825, and went up to Cambridge at the
same time as Edward Fitzgerald in October 1826. He
and Kenelm Digby were then probably the only Catholics
at Cambridge. In a letter to Ambrose on 9th February ,
1827, Bishop Poynter, then Vicar- Apostolic of the
London district, wrote : "I am glad that you have
such an excellent companion in Trinity College as Mr,
Digby. He has been so good as to send me the second
edition of Morus, which I open when I have a leisure
moment, and read with pleasure." In another letter
the Bishop said : " Pray give my best compliments
and wishes to Mr. Digby, when you write to him. You
cannot cultivate a more valuable correspondence than
that which you hold with him." *

The conversion of another distinguished Cambridge

1 Life of Ambrose Phillips de Lisle.

CONVERSION TO CATHOLIC CHURCH 47

man, the Hon. and Rev. George Spencer, afterwards
known as Father Ignatius of St. Paul, the Passionist,
did not take place until 1830. " Holy Spencer," he is
called by Digby in The Temple of Memory. He was
the son of the second Earl Spencer. He was almost
exactly the same age as Digby, for he was born in 1799,
and after Eton, came up to Trinity College, Cambridge,
in 1817. Digby seems to have known him only slightly
at Cambridge, where Spencer belonged, though re-
proached for it by his own conscience, to the " smart
set." Afterwards, Spencer took orders in the Church
of England, and in 1830, under the influence partly of
foreign travel and partly of Ambrose de Lisle, if indeed
one can ascribe these things to such influences as
secondary causes, he became a Catholic. He became
a Passionist Father, and after a holy "and laborious life,
died in 1864, twelve years before the death of de Lisle in
1878, and sixteen before that of Kenelm Digby in 1880.
These three Cambridge men, Digby, de Lisle and
Spencer, a trinity of Trinity, all became Catholics before
the Oxford Movement had begun. Each of them
contributed his share to the return towards Catholic
principles which brought many to the Chair of St.
Peter, and brought far more to the half-way shelter
which began to arise within the Anglican Church.
Kenelm Digby contributed to this by his writings,
Ambrose de Lisle by his enthusiastic propaganda in
action, and Spencer by his personal influence. Thus
the Catholic movement began, as a matter of fact, not
at Oxford, but in the more decidedly Protestant Univer-
sity of Cambridge. The reason, perhaps, is that
Cambridge was less isolated than Oxford then was in
narrow self-esteem, and more open to Continental

48 KENELM HENEY DIGBY

influences. Thus it was sooner touched by the great
wave of the romantic return to the mediaeval spirit,
which was sweeping over Germany and even France,
as a reaction against the strictly classical spirit of the
French Revolution and the Napoleonic period. Chateau-
briand, in France, was the first to launch his gallant
boat upon the new tide. But the movement came
about chieflv from the revival of the ancient and

•/

romantic national spirit of Germany against the classical
spirit of the French Revolution culminating in Napoleon,
and since England was for twenty years in a virtual
and often also fighting alliance with Germanic powers,
the English had for a time more sympathy with Teuton
ideas than they ever have had before, except, perhaps,
in Luther's time, or certainly since. One can see this
in the poems and ballads of Walter Scott, the writings
of Coleridge, and in the early writings of a near con-
temporary of Digby's, Thomas Carlyle.

Although the movement of return to Rome thus began
at Cambridge, it has not been so prolific in results at
that University as in the more emotional Oxford. Mr.
Gordon-Gorman, in his work called Converts to Rome,
reckons that in the sixty years ending in 1910 Oxford
had given 586 converts and Cambridge 346, not a large
number, certainly, out of the thousands who passed
through the two Universities in that period. Of the
346 Cambridge converts 102 were Trinity men, a larger
number than produced by any college in either Uni-
versity. As a nursery of converts to the Catholic Faith,
Trinity has held, among colleges, the same dominant
position as Eton among public schools. This is probably
due not only to the fact that Trinity is, in numbers, the
.greatest of colleges and Eton of schools, but also to

CONVERSION TO CATHOLIC CHURCH 49

the fact that a larger, serener and more spacious moral
and intellectual atmosphere prevails in these two great
institutions than in any others, favourable to an open,
noble and generous view of history and religion.

When Digby became a Catholic, English Catholics
still were disqualified from sitting in Parliament. It
was not long since they had received more than the
barest toleration in the practice of their religion. Acts
of Parliament had been directed against them in every
reign, except that of James II., from Elizabeth till
George II. As Charles Fox said in a speech in 1791 of
this system :

" Such persecution and oppression as existed in
England did not exist in any country. In all the King
of Prussia's dominions universal toleration prevailed,
in the united states of Holland, in the united states of
America, and in France there was likewise to be found
universal toleration. . . . Yet, although toleration fully
obtained in a monarchical and in an aristocratical
government, as well as in two democracies, under our
boasted constitution it was narrowed and confined in
shackles disgraceful to humanity."

The Act of 1791 provided (inter alia) that no person
who took a certain oath with regard to any papal claims
to temporal jurisdiction in England (which Catholics
could take, though not in the opinion of all of them)
should any longer be liable to prosecution, under a
number of previous Acts, for not attending the parish
church, or keeping servants who did not attend. It was
also enacted that no person who took the oath should
be liable to punishment, in some cases that of death,
strictly speaking, " for hearing or saying Mass," or for
performing or attending other ceremonies of the Church

K.D.

50 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

of Rome, or for " being a Papist," or for belonging to
an Order in that Church, or for " being educated in
the Popish religion." This Act also legalized Catholic
churches and schools, for the first time, though it made
it illegal for such a church to have a steeple or a bell,
a characteristic English compromise. An alien church
might be visible, now, but not too visible.

This Act, very easily passed by Pitt's Government,
contained a number of limitations and safeguards in
order to smooth its passage, but it was a fair concession.
Not till many more years had passed were Catholics
allowed to sit in either House of Parliament, or hold
any national or local public office, or Commissions in
Army or Navy, or take degrees in the Universities.
Still, as Burke said in the debate, it was no longer to
be the law of England that " a man who had worshipped
God in his own way was liable to be condemned for
high treason." *

The concession to Catholics by this Act certainly was
not excessive, but it raised their spirit from the weight
of degradation, and relieved them from the sense of
existing, as they had hitherto done, merely on sufferance

1 The following story shows how obsolete these penal laws had become.
Some informers brought an action in 1765 against a Vicar-Apostolic,.
Monsignor Talbot, for saying Mass, and the case came on before Lord
Mansfield. If the fact were proved, the Judge had no option but to direct
the Jury to find the accused guilty, and then had, strictly speaking, to
condemn him to be hung, drawn, and quartered. Lord Mansfield waa
determined not to do this. He asked the first witness how he heard the
priest saying Mass. "Through a door, my Lord." "What did you
hear him say ? " "I heard him beginning with ' Confiteo? my Lord."
Lord Mansfield turned to the Jury and said, " This witness is a liar, we all
know that the Mass is in Latin. Confiteo is not Latin. This case must be
dismissed."

He did not think it necessary to tell the Jury that Confiteor was a Latin
word.

CONVERSION TO CATHOLIC CHURCH 51

and non-enforcement of law. Soon afterwards Bishop
Douglas, Vicar-Apostolic of the London district from
1790 to 1812, wrote, " The Catholic Religion is now
beginning to flourish, and, as public services and sermons
in the chapels are now permitted, many conversions
are the result."

Before 1791 the Established Church, or rather, the
Protestant Religion, had been strictly protected in
England, so much so that even foreign books of devotion,
rosaries, crucifixes and so forth could be, and often were,
seized and confiscated at the ports as contraband and
prohibited goods. They had to be smuggled in like
foreign lace or spirits. But now began to dawn the
era of free-trade in religion at the same moment that
saw the first beginnings of free-trade in commerce. In
both cases there was a reaction against the exclusive
and protective policy of the Whig aristocracy dominant
in the eighteenth century, who, after 1800, when they
had become a minority in opposition, went in for
Catholic Emancipation, leaving to the Tories their
discarded principles of protection in religion and trade.
The long oppressive and suppressive period had all but
destroyed Catholicism in every part of England except
Lancashire, and nowhere was it weaker than in the
eastern and south-eastern counties, although London,
as the common resort from all parts, had a certain pro-
portion of Irish and other Catholics in its miscellaneous
population. The poet Crabbe, drawing his experience
from Suffolk in his poem The Boroiigh, written in 1809,
thus depicts the remnant of the faithful in that region,
only a few years before Digby went to Cambridge.

" Among her sons, with us a quiet few
Obscure themselves, her ancient state review,

52 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

And fond and melancholy glances cast

On power insulted, and on triumph past.

They look, they can but look, with many a sigh

On sacred buildings doomed in dust to lie ;

Of seats, they tell, where priests 'mid tapers dim

Breathed the warm prayer, or tuned the midnight hymn,

Where trembling penitents their guilt confessed,

Where want had succour, and contrition rest."

" Such is the change they mourn ; but they restrain
The rage of grief, and passively complain."

After 1791 the horrors of the French Revolution and
the war of England against the atheistical Government
of France led to a still kinder view and better under-
standing of the Catholic and Roman Church, especially
since England was now filled with Catholic refugees,
as she had once been by French Protestant refugees,
and French priests became teachers in many English
families. But the result of the long suppression in
England was that, unless in Lancashire and London,
and here and there attached to the house of some
Catholic squire, there were very few Catholic places of
worship in England. In 1825, when Digby became
a Catholic, there was no Catholic church or chapel in
Cambridge. Twenty-six miles away, in Hertfordshire,
at Old Hall, was a house of English Seculars established
in 1568 at Douai, and driven back to England in 1793
by the French Revolution. St. Edmund's College had
been founded here in 1795. It was a seminary for
theologic students and a school for boys.

Digby, with Ambrose de Lisle, while the latter was at
Cambridge, rode over there, fasting, on many Sundays
to early Communion, High Mass, Vespers. He rode
back in the evening, through darkness in winter, usually
arriving in Cambridge as St. Mary's bell chimed nine

o'clock and, according to its invariable custom at that
hour, repeated the number of days in the month till
then. He rode the twenty-six miles each way in two
hours and a half, so that his horse " Cannon-Ball " must
have been, as he says, a stout trotter. The authorities
kindly dispensed in favour of Digby and de Lisle with
the then prevailing rule, that no University man might
ride a horse on Sunday.

He loved the " still, fair chapel " of Old Hall and the
solemn strains, so unlike, he says, in depth and sincerity
of feeling to the beautiful but soul-less chantings of a
mercenary choir. He used to dine with the fathers, and
loved the conversation of these solid men of good- will.
' The type of college dons was here unknown." He
was much struck by the difference of their talk from
that of college high tables ; no studied airs at Old Hall,
or intellectual pose, or desire to " show off," or intima-
tions of a secret knowledge of high life, or wish to seem
acquainted with the world. They were content to be
and seem what they were, than which nothing is more
restful, or charming in intercourse, with a certain
homely air about their real learning. In all his travels
Kenelm Digby visited monasteries in divers lands, many,
or most of which, alas ! have now been destroyed by
Liberal Governments. No layman has seen more of
this kind of life, or written more beautifully or instruc-
tively about it.

Digby could, however, also go, and often did go, to the
domestic chapel in the ancient Catholic house of Sauston
Hall, near the slopes which are humorously named the
Gog Magog hills. He gives an account of this place
in an old-age volume of verse called Little Low Bushes.
The house belonged to a family named Huddleston.

54 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

Sir John Huddleston had, for one night, entertained
Tudor Queen Mary, and, the day after she left, his
house had therefore been burnt down by a fanatic mob
issuing out of Puritan Cambridge. The Queen ordered
Cambridge Town to pay the cost of rebuilding, but this
had not been finished when she died, and never was ; and
as, until the reign of George III., the family had to
pay £20 a month for not attending parish church, they
had been kept poor. It was a weird old house, with a
chapel and priest's hiding-hole on the top floor, and a
few Spanish pictures. Its then owner, who had been
educated abroad by Dominicans, was a man of character
and deep learning, Major Huddleston. Young Kenelm
made his friendship, and his metrical description of him,
though long, is a picture worth quoting. After describ-
ing the house at length, and the appearance of the old
Catholic gentleman, he says of him :
" Humanity, that great and holy word

Without which all is false and vain, absurd,

Did stamp its character upon his mind

Where all soft, tender things you ever find,

Versed from his boyhood in patristic lore,

Enriched with maxims from the schoolmen's store,

Accustomed to behold the darts of those

Who, hostile to his faith, would still propose

That ' foolish babbling ' which our martyrs thought

More painful than the wounds the rack had wrought.1

Familiar with the ancient good and wise,

He still was modern, which can some surprise.

His ways were gentle, to all others sweet

And simple as the lads that fill the street.

No harshness or severity was there ;

His learning he would daily bring to bear

On all the passing matters of the day

In such a mild and unpedantic way,

1 1.t. the " foolish babbling " of Protestant chaplains or ministers which
the martyrs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had to endure in
prison, and even at the gallows.

CONVERSION TO CATHOLIC CHURCH 55

You knew not which to wonder at the most,
His sense, or inability to boast.

And then, in fine, his studied moderation
Presents a theme, indeed, for contemplation :
Since it would seem at present as if we
Did want, what it demands, much energy ;
For weakness rushes on to find the end,
But strength on each small item time will spend.
To leave at rest was, sooth, his constant rule
Intricate questions, fitted for the school.

Though subtle and most learned, still was he

Inclined to what you'd call Faith's poetry.

The genius of Religion was for him

Not a web-woven, theologic whim,

A dusty, dry expansion, by some brain

Acute, but narrow, all truth to contain ;

He rather, like Chateaubriand, comprised

In that expression what all hearts have prized

Not as poetical to them first known

But as old custom, and familiar grown.

As for the men who vilified his Creed,

Of facts alone he said they stood in need ;

He found that their objections spring at first

From pure mis-statements, whence their anger-burst ;

From men's confounding errors of an age

With what at all times knew and taught the Sage.

Mere pagan gloom, and all dark superstition

Were objects of his own old Faith's aversion.

He said no pleasure ever with her dies

Unless through her consuming ecstasies.

Humanity and Faith for him were one,

The horrid phantoms conjured up were gone ;

He gave you but a plain unvarnished view,

The darkness vanished, and the light was new

To those who long had been led far astray

By wandering fires that danced across their way.

Right strict in each observance as of old,

He said that each did some wise end enfold,

Just in the least as in the greatest things,

Impartial sentence on himself he brings

Uncompromising where he is the man,

Yet find excuse for others still he can ;

56 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

Extenuations fertile to invent

You'd think to plead for all men he was sent.

Patient and tolerant, forgiving, he

Displayed the type of all true sanctity.

No views immoderate did darken there

The pure bright light of this wise man of prayer.

He'd smile at times, and say some went too far,

But as to praising them he knew no bar,

Because, opinions still dividing schools,

No mind that's absolute e'er wholly rules.

He saw no reason to correct the phrase

Of Vincent, in those very ancient days,

That unity in faith must still abound,

With liberty in dubious things around,

While still in all things charity must be,

Or else the whole deserves our mockery.

Exaggeration, finally, to him

Seemed nought, unless some one man's foolish whim.

The best things, once thus pushed as to extreme

He thought a fitful and distempered dream.

So now you have his portrait standing there

As if to that old house you did repair ;

It was a face Velasquez' hand should paint,

The English gentleman, the scholar, saint."

Is there not something rather refreshing in this plain
and Crabbe-like verse, in these days when poetry ha&
become so very subtle and clever and misty ? Edward
Fitzgerald would have thought so, but he never came
across the old-age verse of the Kenelm Digby whom he
saw and admired in undergraduate days at Cambridge.

Ambrose de Lisle always remained an affectionate
friend of Kenelm Digby 's and maintained a long corre-
spondence with him. In one letter, written in 1842,
De Lisle reminds him of the

" excursions of which we made so many together in
those happy days at Cambridge. For happy days I
must call them, and a very sweet memory they left to-
me, though indeed God has given me so many sub-
stantial blessings since that I might be tempted to

CONVERSION TO CATHOLIC CHURCH 57

forget those others. And yet why should I ? Has not
each period of human life its appropriate blessings, as
each season of the year its peculiar charm ? So it
is, and therefore I never look back upon those happy
days of my early youth, in which my chief happiness is
associated with the remembrance of you — I say I never
look back upon them without a sigh, for they are gone,
and when one says that, one says enough to call forth
deep melancholy."

This chapter may fitly end with a passage in the
Broadstone of Honour, breathing all the fresh enthusiasm
of youth :

" 0 thou, my spirit's guide, on the depth of whose
deep mysteries my heart would ever gaze ! 0 thou
Church most holy of immortal Rome, whose solemn
prayers first taught my reason that there was a bright,
blessed place hereafter, a heaven beyond the dark foul
grave, cheering me every night with dulcet breath and
the vision of that peace which the world cannot give,
calling me to thy bosom by signs and accents, by smiles
and tears, ' a voice like the voice of my own soul,' heard
in the stillness of thought in which childhood knew and
felt its mother, ' calming me as the loveliness of heaven
soothes the unquiet sea,' thou that lovest and sanctifiest
all that of which the image will delight my heart.

Dum memor ipse mei, dum spiritus hos regit artus.

Youth and innocence and simplicity, and the reverence
of early days, all that in this beautiful world is fair and
lovely, mountains, woods, rivers, and Ausonian skies, all
sweet sounds and gracious harmonies that give a glimpse
at nameless joys, such as make an infant smile, or, if
eyes needs must weep, as can make ' our tears all wonder
and delight ' — thou, whose wisdom is as the ocean,
from which flowed in narrow streams all that is profound
in Plato, all that inspired ' the kings of old philosophy,'
whose angelic strains I pray may sound to me in my

58 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

last hour — within whose holy walls at eventide priests
and innocent children, after their pretty little stately
walk in timid order to the sound of richest melody,
kneel down in adoration before lighted altars that are
decked with flowers and fragrant with sweet incense,
where all appear to be ' like forms and sounds of a
diviner world, like the bright procession of skiey visions
in a solemn dream, from which men wake as from a
paradise, and draw new strength to tread the thorns
of life ' — thou, whose wrongs have roused the weakest
and most worthless of thy sons — thou much injured,
calumniated guide that wouldest make me all I dream
of, happy, high, majestical, that wouldest have me ' love
and pity all things,' that wouldest have me cast away
all human passions, all revenge, all pride, and think,
speak and act no ill — that wouldest ' quench the earth-
consuming rage of gold and blood, till men should live
and move harmonious as the sacred stars above,' thou
that art pure as light, lasting as the world, I salute thee,
immortal Mother of learning and grace and sanctity !
Salve magna Parens ! "

Poetry, men will say who trade in mere prose ; but it
is poetic truth, that is to say, Reality expressed in
poetic language, a variation on the theme of David,
" If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem." The Christian religion
is a love affair, and the complete consummation so far
as it can be on earth is in or through the Catholic Church.
Between mere friendship and love completed there is
for him who has once felt the attraction no firm standing
ground any more than for the earthly lover in the
conception of " Platonic love." Those who have never
been real lovers can be friends, but those who have been
can hardly fall back upon the line of friendship, If they
retreat at all they must retreat much further into the
wilderness of uncertainty and doubt.

CHAPTER IV
" THE BROADSTONE OF HONOUR "

" OUB Saviour, Jesus Christ, is become the chief and eternal king
of all the really free, generous, and heroic spirits that exist upon
the earth. Vidimus et venimus is henceforth the cry of generous
chivalry. Procidentes adoraverunt eum."

KENELM DIGBY, Broadstone of Honour, " Godefridus."

' WHERE do you wish that we should sit down and read
this tale of ancient chivalry ? ' said one of our company
as we walked on a spring morning through the delicious
groves that clothe those mountains of Dauphiny which
surround the old castle of the family of Bayard. We
proposed to turn aside along the banks of the stream,
and there sit down in peace. We were all familiar
with Plato, and that spot reminded us forcibly of that
charming episode where Phaedrus and Socrates are
described as congratulating each other on being bare-
footed, that they may walk through the water ; and our
light and careless livery was no impediment to our
march to the opposite shore, though the stream was
rapid and of considerable depth. Upon the opposite
bank we found a lofty chestnut with wide-spreading
branches, and beneath it was soft grass and a gentle
breeze ; and there we sat down ; near it were shrubs
which formed a dense and lovely thicket ; and many
of them bearing now a full blossom, the whole place was
most fragrant ; there was a fountain also under the
chestnut, clear and cold, as our feet bore witness ; and
that nothing might be wanting to remind us of those
banks of the Ilissus described by Plato, there were some

59

60 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

statues from which the ancients would have supposed
that here too was a spot sacred to the Nymphs and to-
Achelaus. But our ifissus possessed objects of a higher
interest than the memorials of Boreas and Orithyia ; for
within a few hundred yards of the spot where we sat,
lower down the bank, there was an altar and a rustic
chapel, embowered in arbutus, where, in the summer
season, a priest from the neighbouring monastery used
to repair to say the holy mass, and to instruct the
shepherd youth who had to watch the flocks during
these months in places remote from any habitations of
men. Who could describe with what refreshing and
delicious sweetness the gentle breeze cooled our temples !
The summer song of the cicadae had already begun to-
resound in sweet chorus ; the grass was most beautiful
and rich with varied flowers. Chaucer used to say, at
dawn of day walking in the meadow to see these blossoms
spread against the sun was a blissful sight, which
softened all his sorrow. From this enamelled bank,
promising to receive so gently the reclining head, we
could discern across the river the grey ruins of that
majestic castle which recalled so many images of the
older time, and which was distinguished by a name so
peculiarly dear to chivalry that it seemed symbolical
of the very bent of honour. It was here, then, that we
began to read aloud from a certain romantic volume
which first inspired me with the desire to study the
counsels and to retrace the deeds of chivalry." *

If the inspiring conception of Kenelm Digby's first
book took place in pastoral Dauphiny, its title flashed
upon him, he says, when he saw the ruined castle of
Ehrenbreitstein, on the opposite bank of the Rhine to
the ancient city of Coblentz. Ehrenbreitstein means, in
English, " Broadstone of Honour."

Digby wrote at Cambridge, and published in 1822, two

1 The Broadstone of Honour, " Oodefridus," chapter i.

' THE BROADSTONE OF HONOUR " 61

parts of the book to which he gave this fine name, those
called Godefridus and Tancredus, after the crusading
chiefs. He describes in the Temple of Memory how
eagerly he used to await in Trumpington Street the
advent of the mail-coach bringing down his proof-sheets
from the printers in London. The youthful work was
well received, and a second edition came out in 1823.

The Broadstone of Honour, or " the true sense and
practice of Chivalry," was a book like Newman's Essay
on Development, or Hugh Benson's By What Authority,
which completed or accompanied the conversion of the
author to the Catholic Church. After his conversion in
1825 Kenelm Digby was dissatisfied with his book,
bought up all the copies he could, and in 1826 published
& new Broadstone, much enlarged. His old Cambridge
teacher, Julius Hare, wrote in his Guesses at Truth,
shortly before the appearance of the 1826 edition, some
high praise, not too high, of the original Broadstone.
He is speaking of—

" that wisdom of the heart, that esprit du cceur, or mens
cordis, which the Broadstone of Honour inculcates so
eloquently, and so fervently, and which, if it be severed
from the wisdom of the head, is far the more precious
of the two ; while, in their union it is like the odour
which in some indescribable way mingles with the hues
of the flower, softening its beauty into loveliness. No
truly wise man has ever been without it ; but in few
has it ever been found in such purity and perfection,
as in the author of that noble manual for gentlemen,
that volume which, had I a son, I would place in his
hands, charging him, though such prompting would be
needless, to love it next to his Bible."

Could there be higher compliment ? But after Digby
iad published the revised and enlarged edition in 1826,

62 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

the Rector, as Hare had become, of Hurstmonceaux
could not express such unqualified admiration. He
wrote, in a later criticism : J

" To this new edition, I regret to say, I cannot apply
the same terms. Not that it is inferior to the former
in its peculiar excellences. On the contrary, the
author's style, both in language and thought, has become
more mature, and still more beautiful ; his reading has
been continually widening its range ; and he pours
forth its precious stores still more prodigally ; and the
religious spirit which permeated the former work,
hallows every page of the latter. The new Broadstone
is still richer than the old one in magnanimous and holy
thoughts, and in tales of honour and piety. If one
sometimes thinks that the author loses himself amid the
throng of knightly and saintly personages whom he
calls up before us, it is with the feeling with which
Milton must have regarded the moon, when he likened
her to ' one that had been led astray through the heaven'*
wide pathless way.' If he strays it is ' through the
heaven's wide pathless way ' ; if he loses himself it is
among the stars. In truth this is an essential and a
very remarkable feature of his catholic spirit. He
identifies himself, as few have ever done, with the good,
and great, and heroic, and holy, in former times, and
ever rejoices in passing out of himself into them ; he
loves to utter his thoughts and feelings in their words
rather than in his own ; and the saints and philosophers
and warriors of old join in swelling the sacred concert
which rises heavenward from his pages."

Who, after reading these glowing words, would not
wish to plunge into the pages of the Broadstone ? But
the cautious and responsible Archdeacon and Rector of
Hurstmonceaux, fighting against himself, adds :

1 Guesses at Truth, 15th series, p. 233.

< THE BROADSTONE OF HONOUR " 62

" Nevertheless the new Broadstone of Honour is not
a book which can be recommended without hesitation
to the young. The very charm, which it is sure ta
exercise over them, heightens one's scruples about doing
so. For in it the author has come forward as a convert'
and champion of the Roman Church, and as the impla-
cable enemy of Protestantism."

Hare goes on to make the criticism that Digby, while
gloriously producing the noblest and most beautiful side
of the mediaeval period, has dwelt little on the darker
side, while on the other hand he has depicted, for choice,
the indefensible aspects of the Protestant Reformation,
and the most unpleasing aspect of its consequences
in modern times. This process, Julius Hare said, was
pursued still further in Digby's later work, the Mores
Catholici, or Ages of Faith.

" I trust," he concludes, " that nothing I have said
will hurt the feelings of one, who fulfils, as very few
men have fulfilled, the idea his writings give of their
author, and whom I esteem it a blessed privilege to be
allowed to number among my friends."

This " guess at truth " was written in 1837, before the
full efflorescence of the Oxford Movement. Ten years
later, in 1847, Julius Hare, alarmed by the Rome- ward
progress, wrote, in a further series of Guesses, a note
on Digby's works in a much more hostile and damnatory
spirit.

Five years earlier, in 1842, Julius Hare had written
two painful private letters to Digby, with reference ta
the last published volumes of Mores Catholici. He
charged Digby with what he called, most incorrectly,
" virulent bigotry."

34 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

" I do not," he wrote, " complain much of any
exaggeration that there may be in your praises of
your favourites ; I love to see admiration and love,
even in their excess. But when you come to speak
of still greater and wiser, and as holy and godly, men,
of men raised up by God for the grandest work which
has been performed since the first diffusion of Chris-
tianity, the greatest benefactors of mankind since the
holy Apostles — alas ! I can only feel deep sorrow and
indignation at the manner in which you calumniate
them. My own earnest desire and prayer always is
that I may never speak ill unjustly of any man. I
should rejoice to recognise all that is good and great in
Hildebrand, in Innocent, in Becket. But at the same
time I would claim that Luther and Calvin shall not
be slandered and belied, that single expressions shall
not be picked out and often greatly misrepresented and
distorted into heinous offences. Luther is the man to
whom I feel that I myself, and that the whole world
owes more than to any man since St. Paul. And such
a man, my own great and beloved benefactor, I cannot
patiently allow to be traduced."

Julius Hare's criticism that, in the Broadstone of
Honour and the Mores Catholici, Kenelm Digby depicts
the beautiful and passes over the reverse side of mediaeval
life and religion, has a certain justification. But a
writer should be judged according to his professed aims.
Kenelm Digby never pretended to be a judicial, scientific
historian like the German Ranke, or the French Guizot,
exactly weighing with cold deliberation the merits and
demerits of men and times, but rather as an advocate
who wished to set forth the good of his cause. For
nearly three centuries in England nothing had been
written, except timidly, though rather effectively, by
some cautious antiquaries, nothing at least had been

" THE BROADSTONE OF HONOUR " 65

written by any dominant guide of opinion, which did
not treat the Middle Ages as barbarous and hold up in
an odious light the Church which has everywhere its
circumference but its visible centre in Rome. Except
by a few obscure and unheeded writers, all that was in
the nature of abuses had been exhibited with monstrous
distortion and exaggeration to the English, and all that
was good had been almost entirely suppressed.1 It
was full time that the other side of things should be
represented by some one who was deeply instructed
and knew how to write.

Digby, then, dwells, and rightly, far more upon the
heroic virtues of the " ages of faith " .than upon the
vices which have no doubt existed, more or less, in the
€atholic Church from the days in which Tertullian
denounced them two centuries after Christ, but it is
not true to say that he ignored them altogether. Look,
for instance, at this passage, and many others might
be quoted, in the volume of Mores Catholici which was
published in 1835. It was read by Julius Hare before
he published his criticism of 1837. Digby says :

" Much, I am aware, remains to be said respecting
the vices which desolated society during the Ages of
Faith. Great and beyond all description were the
calamities of the city of God, when those two luminaries
and immortal columns of the Church, Dominick and
Francis, came into the world. As the historian of the
Minors observes, * the demon having persecuted the
infant Church by tyrants, and the more advanced by
heretics, endeavoured now to oppress with both the
joyful and flourishing Church, afflicting it with horrors

1 One might perhaps add Walter Scott as a pro-Catholic influence but
that he was always so very careful to dilute his wine of Catholic sentiment
with cold Protestant water.

66 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

on all sides, perils of the sword without, heresies within,
and the iniquity of corrupt manners.' But then," says-
Digby, " historians of all ages, like modern newspapers ,
are more inclined to record deeds of violence and sin
than to record quiet virtues, of which yet we can know
if we search the humble and not the most ostentatiously
striking of popular records.

' Who can estimate the multitude of the golden
angelic souls, candid, puerile, and at the same time
profound, to which the Middle Ages gave birth, and
which passed without observation, or leaving behind
in history any vestige or memorial of their transit ? It
was enough for the just that their death was precious
in the sight of God, and that their lot was amongst the
saints."

In the volume of Mores Catholici which was published
in 1842 Kenelm Digby replies at some length to the
criticisms made by Julius Hare on the earlier part of
that book and on The Broadstone of Honour.

" In answer," he says, " to this accomplished scholar
who would convict me of being a false spy, I must
declare that in no part of these books have I set up
noblest stories culled out of fifteen centuries, as the
whole picture of what the Ages of Faith actually were.
Their faults and crimes were not concealed or palliated,,
though their devotion led me to the conclusion at which
a French historian (Ozanam) has arrived, that much
will be forgiven them on account of their having loved
much, a conviction which will not be treated with
disdain by those who remember that, as St. Augustine
says, * The Apostles were defeated by the robber who
then believed when they failed.' If their iniquities
were great, great also was their reparation, great their
struggle to correct themselves, great their repentance.
Yet with all their defects, such is the contrast they
present to heathen times, that the anticipations of the

' THE BROADSTONE OF HONOUR " 67

first apologists seem so far verified as to force the
ridicule of Gibbon to recoil upon himself, for what
Lactantius expected, and almost ventured to promise,
did arrive. Ages of comparative innocence and felicity
did return ; the worship of the true God did moderate
war and dissension among those who mutually considered
themselves as children of a common parent. Impure
desires, angry and selfish passions, were restrained
by the knowledge of the gospel, and in many places
the magistrates might sheathe the sword of justice among
a people actuated by the sentiments of truth and piety,
of equity and moderation, of harmony and universal
love.

"... Neither is it just to say that I have culled these
stories as if rare passages from ancient books ; for
whoever has pursued studies of this kind must be aware
that the difficulty arises from the infinite multiplicity
rather than from the deficiency of such evidence."

He denies also that he has failed to see what is good
in the modern age, although he never ceases to desire
that to this goodness might be added the happiness and
peace and mental security given by the Catholic Church,
and given by it to many even here in England where
conditions are so adverse. And he adds —

" there are, besides, other lands where still faith is
found fruitful. Beneath Ausonian skies all these deeds
of love are practised, and Catholic manners as of old ;
and this I know to be so true, from what I saw and
heard, that, in this distance of years, long separated, I
feel that there is danger of mistaking Italy for heaven.'*

Those who point rather to the crimes and barbarities
of the Middle Ages than to the virtues, are apt to forget
what a fearful task it was to bring order out of chaos,
and to subdue to the yoke of Christ, even in some degree,

68 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

the wild passions of the youthful vigorous tribes who
invaded and conquered the decadent Roman Empire.
It is far more surprising that the Catholic Church
effected so much than that it effected so little. The
immense mass of quoted evidence which Digby brought
together in his three chief works, The Broadstone of
Honour, Mores Catholici, and Compitum, to prove the
good side of the Catholic Church throughout its history,
is certainly, at least, sufficient to rebut the charge that
he made up a case with straining endeavour. There
can be no doubt that his work was needed. Consider
the education which the English people had received
in these matters for three hundred years— the positive
teaching, as well as the negative teaching given by the
destruction of all the signs and symbols of the old
religion. One of the sixteenth-century " Homilies "
which were authorised documents of the national re-
formed Church says (and it is quite " the limit ") : *

" In this pit of damnable idolatry all the world, as it
were, drowned, continued until our age by the space of
above eight hundred years ... so that laity and clergy,
learned and unlearned, all ages, sects, and degrees of
men, women and children of whole Christendom (an
horrible and most dreadful thing to think) have been
at once drowned in abominable idolatry, of all other vices
most detested of God, and most damnable to man."

This strange teaching, " a horrible and dreadful thing
to think," indeed, was enforced and carried out in

' 1 The Elizabethan article 35 directs that the Homilies, which, it says,
" contain a godly and wholesome doctrine and necessary for these times,"
should be " read in Churches by the ministers, diligently and distinctly,
that they may be underetanded of the people." It was a Government
operation through the pulpit, the ' Press ' of those times.

" THE BROADSTONE OF HONOUR " 60

practice, and in England and other reformed countries
a devastating assault was made, not only upon the
unity of the Church, but upon the joy and grace and
tenderness of religion.

" Only just think," wrote John Ruskin, " of the
sudden abrogation of all beloved custom and believed
tradition, all that had been closest to the hearts of
men or most precious for their help, faiths that had
ruled the destiny and sealed the departure of souls
that could not be told or numbered for multitude ;
prayers that from the lips of mothers to those of children
had distilled like sweet waterfalls, sounding through
the silence of ages ; hopes that had pointed the purposes
and ministered the strength of life, brightened the last
glances and shaped the last syllables of death ; charities
that had woven chains of pitying or aspiring communion
between the world and the unfathomable beneath and
above ; and, more than these, the spirits of all the
innumerable, undoubting dead, beckoning to the one
way by which they had been content to follow the things
that belonged to their peace."

Finely said — although this great sensitive writer,
swayed by contending influences, did not, as Digby
remarks, draw " the natural conclusion." * Perhaps,
indeed, the " abrogation " was not so sudden as all
that, but by the beginning of the eighteenth century

1 Ruskin, it is fair to note, says in Modern Painters (part v. ch. 19) that
" Modern Romanism is as different from thirtaenth-century Romanism as
a prison from a prince's chamber," and he often throws out observations
of this bitter kind. He seems to base his judgments too much upon the
infidelities and transformations of the Fine Arts and intellectualists, and
to have inadequate knowledge of the actual men and women of the Catholic
world in modem times. He was brought up in a narrow sect of Pro-
testantism, and then fell under the dominion of a stronger and more mascu-
line intellect, the Calvinist-bred Thomas Carlyle.

70 KENELM HENKY DIGBY

it was very complete, except where the old religion
lingered here and there in its integrity. It has now,
happily, become almost incredible how the damnatory
view was rammed into the popular mind by the Scribes
and Pharisees. This was the tone of the popular Press
and far the greater part of the Reformed Pulpit.
Even " High Churchmen " joined in the chorus. The
non- juror, Dr. Brett, in Anne's reign, informed his
readers that the rubrics of the Roman Missal were
" corrupt, dangerous, idolatrous, and utterly unworthy
of the gravity of so sacred an Institution." The total
exclusion of Catholics from all national services unless
they would publicly deny the distinctive doctrines
of their religion, much enforced this teaching in the
popular imagination. It was felt that men could not
possibly be treated like this unless they deserved it.

The voice of Catholic writers and apologists was
hardly heard at all. In the earlier half of the eighteenth
century Catholics had been so thoroughly oppressed
and cowed that their attitude was timid in the extreme.
So Challoner, in his book about the heroic English
Catholic martyrs, prefaced that he published it " only
as a supplement to English history, that might give
pleasure to men of all persuasions who desire to read
of the lives and the deaths even of the most notorious
malefactors, presenting it without any pretension to
make panegyrics of any of them, or to act the apologist,
but only narrating them as a historian." Probably
unless he had given this explanation no one would have
ventured to print his volume.

It is precisely because the invincibly ignorant, anti-
Catholic prejudice largely declined in the nineteenth
century, partly through the labours of Kenelm Digby,

' THE BROADSTONE OF HONOUR " 71

that these labours now seem less necessary. Yet the
feeling still smoulders in many corners, and perhaps, on
the whole, has not so much disappeared as subsided into
silent and latent antipathy.

The truest view seems to be that this long period to
which is given the name of " Middle Ages," extending
for a thousand years from the fall of the Roman Empire
to the fifteenth century or thereabouts, was a blend in
faith and morals of that which is good and true from the
beginning, now, and for ever, and that, also, which was
part of the intellectual and moral childhood of the new
European races. Those erred, perhaps, a little, who
would not sift the eternal from the temporary, but those
erred far more who would not leave both together to
grow till the coming of the Lord of the harvest, and
violently rooted up the wheat with the weeds and wild
flowers. Digby never dwells upon, though he never
assails, miraculous incidents rather deficient in evidence,
or more or less mythical stories of the Lives of Saints,
stories that were, as de Maistre says, rather dramatized
truth than verified facts. What he does is to show by
most ample evidence the deeper and holier and essential
thought of the Mediaevals, and its incarnation in their
practice ; to trace the lines which connected this thought,
or " ethos," with that of the best pre-Christian thinkers
and poets, and the best of the Catholic, or even non-
Catholic, Moderns, and to show how the Catholic
religion flowering, with whatever incidental faults,
most freely, visibly and beautifully in the " Ages of
Faith," was, and is, and ever will be in harmony, if
rightly understood, with all purest joys, and profoundest
instincts, and noblest activities of life. Like Milton's
philosophy, and far more truly, the Catholic Church is

72 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

" not harsh or crabbed as dull fools suppose, but musical
as is Apollo's lute." *

Chateaubriand, when he wrote the Genius of Chris-
tianity, held, like Digby, the belief that the time had
come when the old scholastic methods, however sound
in themselves, were no longer of practical avail against
antagonists who refused to accept the elementary
assumptions of the faith and the sacred texts from which
they were deduced, and that the Christian religion and
the Catholic Church must now be justified by its good
fruits in making men better and happier, and inspiring
life in all its provinces with the spirit of sincerity,
generosity, chivalry, justice, beauty and charity. The
defenders of religion of the eighteenth-century school
did not perceive, he says, that " it was no longer a
question of discussing this or that doctrine, since the
foundations were absolutely rejected. Speaking of
the mission of Jesus, and proceeding from consequence
to consequence, they established no doubt very solidly
the truths of the faith, but this way of arguing, good
for the seventeenth century, when the foundation was
not contested, was no longer of any use in our days.
It was necessary to take the contrary road, to pass
from the effect to the cause ; not to prove that Christi-
anity was excellent because it comes from God, but that
it comes from God because it is excellent."

The Genie and Digby's works were good answer to
Voltaire and Gibbon and their company, who alleged

1 Montalembert says (Monks of the West, Book xii.) : " The fact is that
in true history there is no ' golden age.' All ages, without exception, are
infected by the evil which proceeds from man's natural corruption. All
bear witness to his incurable weakness, but at the same time all proclaim
his greatness and freedom, as well as the justice and mercy of God, his
maker and redeemer."

1 THE BROADSTONE OF HONOUR " 73

or suggested that the Christian and Catholic Religion
was a decadence and product of darkness and bar-
barism, but the more modern attack is different. It
is said that Christianity is a stage in evolution, and
Catholicism a stage in the evolution of Christianity ;
that the phase of things denoted by these words was
inevitable but transient, and has passed, or is passing,
away. What is the reply ? The distinction between
the eternal and the transitory, the admission that in
the religion itself there are some things which, gently
and slowly, pass away with the flowing stream of
time, and others that stand fast like the walls and
towers of Zion.

This truth was known to the men of old. Vincent
de Lerins, before A.D. 450, asks :

" Shall there then be no progress (profectus) in the
Church of Christ ? " and answers, " There shall be
progress, and even the greatest progress, for who would
be so envious of the good of men, or so cursed of God, as
to prevent it ? But it will be progress and not change.
With the growth of the ages and centuries, there must
necessarily be a growth of understanding, of wisdom,
and of knowledge, for each man as for all the Church.
But the religion of souls must imitate the progress of
the human form, which in developing and growing
with years, never ceases to be the same in the maturity
of age as in the flower of youth."

It must be repeated — for this is important— that,
when Digby began to write, the English public had hardly
heard anything except attacks for near three centuries
upon papistry, superstition and monasticism, and had
been fed with every story upon that side of the account.
There were as yet none of those later attempts to restore,

74 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

without submission to the Apostolic See, the Catholic
cult and spirit. For a hundred years and more, since
the fall of the seventeenth-century High Churchmen,
the tide had been flowing entirely in the opposite
direction. Additional criticism of the Catholic Church,
either in the past or the present, was at that date quite
superfluous. What was needed, to restore the balance,
was a strong defence of Catholic principles, and a record
of innumerable and forgotten good fruits of them,
supported by solid evidence, and by a very great deal
of it. This work was done by Kenelm Digby with
results in the way of modification of English opinion,
and correction of English ignorance upon this subject,
which have rarely been credited to this almost forgotten
author.

In his much later book, Evenings on the Thames,
published in 1864, Kenelm Digby has some observations
upon the danger of too zealous pursuit of " systems."
He quotes the French writer, de Sacy, who says, with
regard to the fall of the once ultramontane Lamennais,
" Beware of systems," and who. adds : " It would have
been eventually better for Lamennais had he from the
first been one of those poor Gallicans whom he pursued
so fiercely and so unmercifully, and who, for all their
views, were ready, as events proved, to suffer death
any day rather than violate their fidelity to the Holy
See." Digby agrees, although he was himself more in
sympathy with ultramontane than with Gallican ideals,
and remarks :

" In questions of history, too, there is the same
necessity for avoiding systems, though some that I need
not name [himself he means] may have been rather
hastily accused of having fallen into that pit, as if they

' THE BROADSTONE OF HONOUR " 75

had given out the Middle Ages for the uninterrupted
Teign of peace and charity upon earth, which they
really never did, or at least meant to do, having in
fact at no time any system in their heads which re-
quired for its support such an idle sacrifice of historical
truth." 1

One can readily believe this, for surely no writer was
ever more the reverse of systematic than Kenelm Digby.
The Catholic Church, as Pascal says of ' Nature,' " has
perfections to show that she is the image of God, and
defects, in order to show that she is only his image."
One can lay more stress upon the perfections without
being a system-maker.

The Broadstone of Honour (to return from this digres-
sion), as revised, extended, and published in 1826,
appeared in a new edition in 1828, and in another,
appearing in four separate parts, between 1844 and
1848. A handsome edition in five volumes of 550 copies
was printed by Mr. Quaritch, on his own initiative, in
1877, three years before Kenelm Digby died, and then
sold very slowly. The romantic movement of the
age-spirit, strong in England, France and Germany
during the first half of the nineteenth century, had died
away, and natural science and the idea of evolution
and continual automatic progress from the worse to the
better were now dominant. But this scientific tide
touched high- water mark towards the close of the nine-
teenth century, and has since been ebbing, and men
may be more willing to turn again now, with a difference,
to the side of life of which Kenelm Digby was an
exponent. Generosity, sweetness, humility, peace of
heart and mind, unambitious simplicity, obedience and

1 Chap. xvii.

76 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

loyalty in religion and social life, beauty and reverence
in manners and in worship, chivalrous treatment of
opponents, realized unity through membership of a
visible and organic Church common to all and diffused
throughout all nations — it is possible that before long
ideas of this kind will appeal far more strongly to men
and women than they did in the nineteenth century.

The Broadstone of Honour consists of four parts,
named respectively Godefridus, Tancredus, Morus, and
Orlandus. The first two are so named after the heroes
of the Crusades, the third after the Catholic martyr,
Sir Thomas More. The main object of the book is to
describe the heroic and chivalrous spirit, intimately
bound up with the religious faith, as it appeared in the
Middle Ages. But in Morus and in part of Orlandus
are stated those undeniable facts about the Protestant
Revolution in England, and on the Continent, the public
exhibition of which gave so much offence to the excellent
Rector of Hurstmonceaux. In one of his latest works,
written when he was over seventy, Digby admits that
in his youth he wrote things in religious controversy
possibly too wounding to others, and expressed more
strongly than he would have expressed them in old age.
This is a very common reflection in old age concerning
ardent and intolerant youth, which has the defects of
its qualities. All the same, in England, in these days,
it is well to be definite and lucid in order to avoid
misinterpretation. From his early youth till the end
of his very long life Kenelm Digby never wavered for
one moment in his definition of the Catholic Church.
It is, for him, that religious society existing throughout
the world, of unbroken historic continuity, and consisting
of people of all nations and languages, which is visibly,

" THE BROADSTONE OF HONOUR " 77

avowedly, and organically connected with the central
Apostolic See at Rome, and it is nothing either more or
less than this. In his eyes this society was identical
with the Catholic Church to which his favourite author
St. Augustine of Africa was converted, or re-converted.
Digby was as willing as St. Augustine to admit and
praise that which was good in individual character
outside this one Catholic Church, nor for a moment would
he have said that the moral division between good and
bad coincided, or had ever anything like coincided,
with the division between Catholic and non-Catholic
people, although he did believe that the former, however
imperfectly, followed true central principles, and that
the latter were good notwithstanding that they followed
untrue, or only partially true, principles. He never
admitted the assertion made by some moderns that the
Catholic Church consists of " all who profess and call
themselves Christians," or the more exclusive assertion
made by other moderns that it consists of an imagined
combination, of certain Churches having properly de-
scended episcopal institutions.

The Broadstone of Honour is a book alive with all the
noble virtues of youth. It might, perhaps, even now,
if republished, be more popular than Digby's other
works, for it is written in a style which is more vigorous
and concentrated and has more movement in it. He
had not yet fully developed the use, not constant indeed
but frequent, of those very long and parenthetic sentences
which, though common in the great writers of Christian
antiquity, and in those of the seventeenth century
such as Milton, and Clarendon, and Hooker, and Jeremy
Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne, had been abandoned
in the nineteenth century by almost every writer except

78 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

ohn Ruskin in his earlier works, who undoubtedly
modelled his flowing style on Hooker. There is a
certain affinity between the earlier Digby and the
earlier Ruskin, although Ruskin is the greater stylist.
Neither of them could write verse really well, although
both copiously essayed to do so. The reason is that
poetry is the opposite to oratorical eloquence. Its
essence is concentration and speed, the saying as much
as possible in the fewest words, and both Ruskin and
Digby were naturally diffuse. They both were writers
of poetic prose, and ardent handlers of the pencil and
paint-brush. In their way of looking at things there
was also, with all their differences, much resemblance
between them, and no doubt the thoughts and books of
Digby, who was the older by twenty years, influenced
Ruskin.

Digby much admired and very often quotes Ruskin
in his later works, and Ruskin in all his voluminous
writings makes one single but remarkable reference to
Digby. It is in Modern Painters, in the section, entitled
" Vulgarity," in which he very finely analyses the
character of the " gentleman," and distinguishes it
from that of the " vulgar " man.1 He says in a footnote,
" the reader will find every phase of nobleness illustrated
in Kenelm Digby's Broadstone of Honour. The best
help I have ever had — so far as help depended on the
sympathy or praise of others in work which, year after
year, it was necessary to pursue through the abuse of
the brutal and the base — was given me, when this
author, from whom I had first learned to love nobleness,
introduced frequent reference to my own writings in.
his Children's Bower.''

1 Modern Painters, vol. v. chap. ix.

< THE BROADSTONE OF HONOUR " 79

Perhaps Digby's titles, the Lover's Seat, the Chapel
of St. John, the Children's Bower, suggested to Ruskin
the charming titles of his own later minor publications.
The Children's Bower and the Chapel of St. John should
have been enough to convince Ruskin that the religion
which had inspired Dante and Fra Angelico and Giotta
and Bellini was not, as he and Carlyle seem to suppose,
dead long ago, but, although older and therefore not the
same superficially, was still alive, true to type, and
producing its good and noble fruit as ever in the lives
of men and women and children. Ruskin says, in one
passage, that after the Reformation " it was no longer
possible to attain entire peace of mind, to live calmly
and die hopefully." Hundreds of modern instances
quoted by Digby should have shown him the exaggera-
tion of this statement.1 Meanwhile it is much that
Kenelm Digby taught Ruskin to " love nobleness," a
lesson which this disciple taught again in his excellent
writings to the English-speaking world, of whom some
received the word gladly, while in others the seed went
the divers ways of the seed in the Parable.

The Broadstone of Honour shows a range of reading
astonishing in one who was so young as Kenelm Digby
when he wrote it. It is true that he had neglected the
regular school and university course of education, and
such neglect is an immense economy of time, provided
that the time so saved is well employed. The Broadstone
is not, though perhaps his most charming, Kenelm
Digby's greatest work. It is his Mores Catholici that
deserves this name. The Broadstone of Honour was,
however, for reasons peculiar to the time, more popular

1 In a passage of Modern Painters, vol. v. p. 209, Ruskin admits that there-
are exceptions to his assertion.

80 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

when it first appeared than were any of Digby's later
works, and for this reason — just as William Law is
always connected with his Serious Call and not with his
later more profound and important writings — so Digby
is inseparably connected with the words Broadstone of
Honour. Few, I am afraid, now living have read this
book, but many who have not even heard of any of his
later and riper writings vaguely connect its title with
the name of Kenelm Digby.

One tribute to The Broadstone of Honour must have
given special pleasure to Digby. Father Scott, the
Jesuit who had received him into the Church three years
earlier, wrote to him about the volume called Morus,
the volume which so much displeased Julius Hare.
" I assure you that I never perused a book with so much
pleasure as I did yours, and was quite astonished at the
immense learning displayed in almost every page."

Charles Butler, the lawyer, wrote to Digby that
the Broadstone was " excellently calculated to serve
the cause of honour, Christianity and the Catholic
religion," and added : "I desired Colonel Stonor, my
son-in-law, to give it to Alban, his son, as the very best
book he could possibly place in his hands. Such I really
consider it." This praise from a man of sound and solid
learning, practical knowledge of the world, and very
moderate temper, and unprejudiced way of thinking, was
really worth much.

CHAPTER V

ENGLISH AND FRENCH SOCIETY

"0, SUN and dulcet air of brilliant France,
What heart will beat that thou canst not entrance ?
Oh yes ! thou dost possess a potent spell ;
Though what it is exactly, I can't tell."

KBNELM DIGBY, Temple of Memory.

THE Broadstone of Honour achieved a certain fame at
the time of its appearance. It was even seen by a
friend of Digby lying upon the table of the dignified
Dr. Coplestone, Head of Oriel College, Oxford, who,
questioned as to its contents, replied, " The design of the
author appears to be to revive the principles of loyalty
and generosity which are almost extinct among man-
kind." The book suited the mood of the time better
than his later works suited the mood of Victorian
England. It caught the rising tide of romantic reaction
which was soon to culminate in the Oxford Movement.
Thus Digby's name became known, and, though he
did not move, or wish to move, in London intellectual
circles, he came across two or three men of note. One
was Walter Savage Landor, who lived at Bath from
1836 to 1857. Digby calls Landor an " eloquent and
truly fearless Sire," * " thoughtful " and " full of unfeigned
and infinite respect for the old Catholic and Roman
Church." Landor, says Digby, often contrasted the

1 Temple of Memory, Canto VI.

K.D. 81 F

5-2 KEXELM HENRY DIGBY

easy and unaffected " bonte " — we have not exactly
that word in English — of Catholic priests and bishops
with the character of " ministers who followed the new
law," and illustrated his contention by tales of his own
experiences in Spain and Italy. Landor would some-
times say, with a sigh, that it would be wefl for himself
if he could die like a good Catholic.

Certainly one would not have imagined this vein
of sentiment from Lander's writings, the beauty of which
is marred by his numerous and bitter attacks on the
Catholic priesthood and religion. But men do not
always think exactly as they write.

Much as Digby differed in opinions from old Landor,
the two men really had something in common. Both
were quite fearless and independent in their views, both
wrote like gentlemen to please themselves and any one
else who might like the results, and not to gratify the
tastes or serve the prejudices of the " reading public,"
and, in consequence, the readers of both were few,
though select. Each had an immense range of know-
ledge in history and literature, so that their books are
delightful to those whose tastes lie in those regions.
Landor was the greater artist, and wrote with a
self-control which did not appear in the management
of his own affairs. Digby had an Irish discursrvenaB
and loose texture of style, and wrote as the spirit led
him. never able to resist a divagation from the high
road of his theme.

Digby also met Wordsworth, " playful though grave."
he says, who " when quoting verses almost seemed to
rave, so deeply did he feel the truths he sung." * Digby
found that Wordsworth also was not really averse to

> Temple tf Memory, Canto TL

ENGLISH AND FRENCH SOCIETY 83

the old religion of England. The poet told him that had
he lived in an earlier age he himself would have felt the
need of and obeyed " that scorned, most ancient creed."
Among English Catholics whom he well knew, Digby
mentions his own guide, "the holy saint, revered, wise,
Father Scott " ; Charles Butler, " skilled in both law
and school divinity " ; Bishops Poynter and Bramstone ;
Maguire, whose deep, invincible and strong reasoning,
skilled to reply to every question, served to make him
rise, " quite far from earth, conversant with the skies.'*
Nicholas Wiseman he also knew, the future Cardinal,
and restorer of the Catholic hierarchy in England.

" Musician, artist, poet, sage, and saint,
Whom no skilled human hand could justly paint ;
Yielding to none in theologic lore,
Yet than all schools prosaic knowing more
Sweet Heaven's great secrets and the heart of man,
Whose depths mysterious he would ever scan." 1

In Paris, Kenelm Digby was in touch with a wider
and more brilliant circle than in London. There never
was better society in Paris than during the thirty years
which followed the fall of the first Napoleon. The
first half of this period, the fifteen years before the
society-dividing Revolution of 1830, was the most
pleasing. Under Napoleon there was no free expression
of thought. The Restoration of 1814 was a restoration
of liberty in thought and action, and it was followed
by an outburst of intellectual production.

In his Temple of Memory Kenelm Digby enumerates
some out of the great number of men who at that time
adorned literature, science and art : Chateaubriand,
Ozanam, de Bonald, de Maistre, Segur, Dam, Custine,

1 Temple of Memory, Canto VI.

84 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

Michelet, Guizot, Migny, Thierry, Thiers, were names
well known in history and political philosophy. There
were excellent scholars in Digby's own mediaeval sub-
jects, such as Roche jaquelin, Gallais, Mazas, St. Victor,
Gueranger, Fauriel, Marchangy, and others. Bournoulf
and Boissonade were mighty scholars in Oriental and
Grecian lore. Albert, Prince de Broglie, was both
orator and historian. Ballanche and Victor Cousin,
Ste. Beuve, Villemain, De Haller and Jules Janin, shone
as critics and philosophers. Joubert was a critic of
supreme taste. Among the poets were Lamartine,
Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset, Alfred de Vigny,
Beranger ; among the novelists Dumas, Karr, the young
Balzac —

" Balzac himself had breathed that epoch's air,
With whom, though later, no one could compare." l

Girodet and Gros, Gerard and Ingres, Horace Vernet,
Eugene Delacroix, Paul de la Roche were distinguished
painters. Never has there been in France, not even
under Louis XIV., a more lively and energetic con-
stellation of intellect.

Digby describes some of his own French friends in
the Temple of Memory. One was the " white-haired "
M. Chevalier, who had been secretary to Talleyrand
in the days of the Directorate, and had tales of the
Revolution, curious or horrible, one of them singularly
horrible. Digby knew well the Comte de Montalembert,
and Lacordaire, the Dominican, of whom he says,
remembering his Conferences at Notre Dame :

" It is the holy, gentle Lacordaire,
Whose words of flame did fire my youthful breast,
In whose remembrance fond my age would rest.

1 Temple of Memory, Canto VII.

ENGLISH AND FRENCH SOCIETY 85

For where, oh where else could you ever find
Such neutral tints of thought, so deep and kind,
That while the holy Christians would admire
To hear him speak no srnners e'er would tire,
As if 'twas them he loved on earth the best
And hoped they'd be for ever with the blest." 1

Among bishops and priests of his acquaintance he
mentions Forbin de Janson, the nobly-born and saintly-
souled Bishop of Nancy ; Olivier, cure of St. Roch, and
afterwards Bishop of Evreux, and Afire, who in 1848
was to be the martyred Archbishop of Paris. With
him Kenelm Digby often walked conversing through
the old forest of St. Germain. Another great friend of
Digby in Paris was Count Peter Yermoloif, a convert
to the Catholic from the Russian Church, who told him
stories of the persecution of converts by the Russian
Government.

Digby frequented the salon of another Russian
convert, that woman of strong and solid mind, Madame
Swetchine. Here he met men like Lacordaire, Lamartine,
Bonetty, Ozanam. One friend of his was Jules Janin,
of the French Academy, an excellent writer and student
of the eighteenth century. He knew also the historian
Michelet, much of whose history he admired, while
deploring his bitter anti-Catholic spirit. Michelet indeed
felt the charm of Catholicism, though his reasoning
condemned it. It gave pleasure to Digby that Michelet
once quoted and praised the Mmes Catholici in a lecture
to a great class of students at Paris. Ste. Beuve, Victor
Cousin, Guizot and Thierry were also moving in these
circles. Kenelm Digby knew also the old Chateaubriand,
whom he first beheld at earliest mass at six o'clock in
a church of Paris, on the day of St. Ignatius. Afterwards

1 Temple of Memory, Canto VII.

86 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

he used sometimes to meet him. Chateaubriand saw
in the young Englishman a saddening reflection of his
own earlier enthusiasm for the romantic and chivalric
side of Catholic life. He told Digby dejectedly that
the Broadstone of Honour seemed to be a " mere ana-
chronism," only suited to dreaming youth. Words
of a man disillusioned by age, firmly though he held
to the central faith. He told Digby that he mistook his
own Age, and that now it was not possible to paint
Faith and Honour, the theme agreed so little with its
demands, and so little he feared with that which a later
generation would require. Chateaubriand, at last so
infirm that he had to be daily carried up into the
salon of the now blind Madame de Recamier, lived just
long enough to hear the cannon of June, 1848, and then
ended his insatiable and never-satisfied life. Forty
years earlier he had been the most brilliant Genius
and she the chief Beauty of France. Chateaubriand
in his later years was overwhelmed by the ennui and
melancholy which had always been the foundation of
his character. He saw the romantic movement which
he had led under the Empire fading away in the utili-
tarian age of common sense. When he was ambassador
in London in 1822 he wrote :

" Burke retint la politique de 1'Angleterre dans le
passe ; Walter Scott refoula les Anglais jusqu'au
moyen age ; tout ce qu'on ecrivit, fabriqua, batit,
fut gothique ; livres, meubles, maisons, eglises, cha-
teaux. Mais les lords de la Grande Charte sont
aujourd'hui les fashionables de Bond street, race frivole
qui campe dans les manoirs antiques, en attendant
Parrivee des generations nouvelles qui s'appretent a les
en chasser." *

1 Memoir es cf Outre- Totnbe.

ENGLISH AND FRENCH SOCIETY 87

Christian and Catholic — this Chateaubriand became
more and more profoundly, but from all enthusiasms,
to attempt to revive the Past among them, he returned.
' Voici ce qui m'est arrive," he wrote in 1841, in his
old age. " Voici ce qui m'est arrive ; de mes projets,
de mes etudes, de mes experiences, il ne m'est reste
qu'un detromper complet de toutes les choses que pour-
suit le monde. Ma conviction religieuse, en grandissant,
a devore mes autres convictions ; il n'est ici-bas Chretien
plus croyant et homme plus incredule que moi." l At this
stage Chateaubriand was when Kenelm Digby talked
to him in Paris, and one can well understand the feeling
with which he saw the enthusiastic young Englishman
who stood where he himself had been for a brief space.
No race is more free from illusions than the French, and
no Frenchman was ever more free from illusions than
the sincere and noble-minded Chateaubriand. Kenelm
Digby himself, as he grew older, was, like most of us,
a little disenchanted, and he certainly learned, since
few people would read or notice his later books, that, as
Ohateaubriand had warned him, he was writing for an
Age almost deaf to his appeal. Tasso says in one of his
wonderful sonnets :

" The Chief I sang and the arms which, moved by
piety, tore away from impious folk the sacred land in
which Christ suffered death and made immortal our
humanity ; and so clear was the sound that this Age
returned to admire the ancient honour, but my song
drove neither foot nor horse to camp beyond the Taurus,
beyond the Euphrates. Nor know I whether it caught
up to heaven beautiful spirits, but often he who heard
my notes coloured with pious affection. Me then

1 Memoires cPOutre-Tonibe.

88 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

certainly my song bore away, and some word from
heaven inspired me, or a muse, or other goddess ;
Ah ! may it ever inspire me, and fill my breast with
itself."

So Chateaubriand for a brief space had made France
return to the thought of religion and chivalry, and so,
in a less degree, had Digby touched some hearts in
England, but the influence died away before the modern
rush of other ideas and aims. And yet the influence
did not die, but streamed on in a narrower channel, and
will, we may trust, yet again, confined between less
steep and rocky banks, expand into a wide and noble
river.

Ste. Beuve remarks that the great literary movement
which followed the restoration of the French Monarchy
in 1815 was the result of a Catholic and Chivalrous
reaction.

" It has often been observed," he says, " that a striking
disaccordance exists between the advanced political
principles of certain men and their literary principles
obstinately fixed. The Liberals and Republicans have
always shown themselves as strictly classic in literary
theory, while from their opponents have come the
poetical innovations and the brilliant and successful
audacity."

Perhaps man instinctively feels that he cannot let
himself go free in all directions at once. Thus those
who hold the ancient faith may be the most adven-
turous in other directions.

The Comte de Montalembert was a true friend
of Digby. When the fifth volume of Mores Catholici
appeared in 1834, he wrote, on Christmas Eve, in
English :

ENGLISH AND FRENCH SOCIETY 89

" I have been reading your fifth Book with the most
heartfelt delight in a place well worthy of such a lecture,
in the newly established Monastery of Solesmes. Accept
my best thanks for such a noble homage to our faith
and our glories."

When Montalembert was kept in Paris by his last
illness Digby, visiting him, said that he hoped next
time to find him in the country. " Dites dans ma vraie
patrie — 'tis there alone I wish to go," said Montalembert.
Another friend throughout life was the Comte d'Esgrigny,
at whose Breton chateau Digby often stayed. Another
was the Marquis de Montaigu of La Bretesche, in the
same region.

" In whose proud castle he could often feel
At home, as perfect ease would quite reveal,
Amidst a circle beautiful and gay
In which a month would seem a summer's day,
While to them both alike he then did owe
His thorough knowledge of the French chateau,
Most sweet remembrance, like a potent charm
To chase all foolish thoughts which mortals harm ;
In fact a kind of close initiation
Into the noble manners of a nation,
That, while to all the graces ever given,
Has never lost in fine the thought of Heaven." l

Digby says elsewhere that in this Restoration period
one could see in France the Christian family in its per-
fection, free from domestic quarrels, dignified, cheerful
and peaceful, entirely devoid of affectation, pride and
ambition.

" Such were the manners of the French chateau,
Provincial nobles to the last were so,
As when at Klin near Guerand he once knew
The kind Du Minchys, and their portraits drew.

1 Temple of Memory, Canto VT.

90 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

For many were the types it offered there,
The sons so courteous, and the daughters fair,
And fair with that inimitable grace
In which no consciousness of art you trace ;
The matrons worthy of your veneration,
And yet so gay you felt but admiration ;
The father loving country life so well,
Content with goodness ever there to dwell." l

Nothing, perhaps, is better in the way of mankind
than a French gentleman who is also a true Christian.

Kenelm Digby married in 1834 (as will be told in a
future chapter) a wife intimately connected, although
not French but Irish, with the Catholic and Royalist
Society of France. She spoke French with perfection
and grace. The rooms which they had at different
times in Paris, down to the year 1848, at 22 Rue de la
Ville L'Eveque, at the Rond Point of the Champs
Elysees, in the Place Vendome, and in the Rue Tronchet,
became a resort of many friends. His wife would not
have thought of herself as having a " salon," and yet
says Kenelm Digby :

" She could not, while in Paris, prevent people from
being attracted by goodness of heart and nobleness
of soul. There was then the natural foundation of a
true salon, which springs up of itself, and is the result
of habit, and not of premeditation. Though she did
not seek the pleasure of great receptions, no one, in an
innocent way, enjoyed them more. Her mind and
manners, though perfectly natural as belonged to her
condition, had a certain vivacity which was ever
restrained by an exquisite politeness always negligent
and always distinguished. Her drawing-room was
neither a narrow conventicle, nor a literary coterie, nor
a philosophical school, nor a political circle, nor a worldly

1 Temple of Memory, Canto VII.

ENGLISH AND FRENCH SOCIETY 91

assembly. Excepting as far as politeness required she
seemed anxious to be unregarded herself, and to draw
out others. It was her object, through kindness to
her guests, always in her own house to have the con-
versation kept up, but never to engross it. She was
the soul of the company, not their doctor or their
patroness. Her house, at other times, solely in conse-
quence of her own influence, was leisure, recovery of
health, freedom for all, gaiety for some, reverie and
calm study for others. Her evening receptions did not
differ much from those of a protracted visit of days ;
for every one felt quite at home, and at ease, and com-
fortable and secure, where she presided. She would
always have her table elegantly, but not expensively
maintained, and she liked to have her rooms brilliant
with lamps and tapers." 1

English women are often too shy and self-conscious
to be the best kind of hostess, and French women are
sometimes too sparkling and clever. Perhaps no one
can be the soul of a pleasant and easy social circle so well
as an Irish woman with a French education.

" Disputes in her society," says Digby, " were left
to die out of themselves, and that was quickly. . . .
Hers was the tone of that kind of society in which there
is nothing sharp or cutting ; no collisions, no noise. . . .
However there were shades to come over even her
innocent brightness ; so true it is that to whatever
shelter one flies, no one here below can pass his life in
absolute peace and repose. Political debates would creep
in imperceptibly. Accustomed and willing to hear
discussed the dearest prospects of England along with
those of Christianity, she recoiled from the vain turmoil
of mere earthly complications, and in Paris she was to
be fatigued by the conflict, when her best friends were

1 Chapel of St. John, p. 137.

92 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

defending, step by step, that alluvial soil regained by
the house of Bourbon from the revolution of 1789."

At that time Conservative people used to talk of la
Liberte as if agreeing with Jules Janin, who said of it,
" C'est un gros homme en tilbury." Mrs. Digby waa
condemned to hear oftener than she liked of Chambers
and ministers, of journals and new pamphlets. Even
in those quiet salons people at that time used to feel
uneasy about the emeute.

" They used to ask, ' What day will be the next
revolution ? Will there be scaffolds, or will pillage
content them ? ' At last events arrived to verify many
fears, but of these disasters, which profoundly affected
her, for she shed tears when she heard the Republic
proclaimed beneath her window, it is not necessary for
me to speak. But while all the divisions, all the struggles
which preceded the revolution of '48, had living echoes
in her drawing-room, where the graver events of 1830
had left a poignant memory, her society presented an
asylum of comparative peace and cheerfulness which
was not easily found elsewhere. She could accommodate
herself to the most opposite characters, detect the good
side in each, and excuse what was weak. People that
would never have met elsewhere found a point of union
with her company, and she would never suffer any one,
however less agreeable to others, to leave her presence
slighted or discouraged."1

This could not easily be achieved in Paris between
1830 and 1848, because the unfortunate and unchivalrous
acceptance by Louis-Philippe of the throne of which
the elder branch of his house had been violently dis-
possessed, introduced a schism into the royalist and

1 Chapel of St. John.

ENGLISH AND FKENCH SOCIETY 93

Catholic society in which the Digbys lived. Chateau-
briand, at the fatal moment in 1830, advised Louis-
Philippe not to accept the throne, but to act as Kegent
for the child, Henry V., in whose favour Charles X. had
now abdicated ; but, he says, he saw " in the eyes of
Louis-Philippe," as he spoke, " the desire to be king."

CHAPTER VI

" MORES CATHOLICI "

" THEY find themselves compelled to look around for some great
bond of fellowship which may embrace all who love order and free-
dom, light and justice ; all men of every climate, and language, and
people."

KENELM DIGBY, Broadstone of Honour, " Godefridus."

I

IN 1829, or 1830, while Kenelm Digby was living partly
at Cambridge and partly at St. Germain on the Seine,
he began to compose the longest and greatest work of
his life, the Mores Catholici, or " Ages of Faith," and was
engaged upon it for the next ten years.1 He wrote it
between his thirtieth and fortieth year, in the age when
men best combine vigour with experience. From the
age of little over twenty to the age of nearly eighty
Digby wrote very continuously, besides painting or
copying in an amateur way a multitude of pictures, to-
give to churches, so that he cannot be accused of the
mortal sin of sloth. It will be convenient here to give
a chronological list of his published works :

I. PROSE PERIOD

Published

Evidences of the Christian Religion, Norrisian Prize Essay - 1820

Broadstone of Honour — 1st edition - - 1822

2nd edition, much revised and enlarged - 1826

3rd „ - 1828

TThe title was probably suggested by St. Augustine's treatise called
De Moribus Ecdesiae Catholicae.

94

" MORES CATHOLICI " 95

Mores Catholici — Published

1st volume - - 1831 7th volume - - 183&

2nd - - 1832 8th - - 1837

3rd

4th
5th
6th

- 1833 9th „ - 1839

- 1833 10th „ - 1840

- 1834 llth „ - 1842

- 1835

Between 1844 and 1848 came out a new edition of
fifty-five copies of Mores Catholici, and also the revised
edition of the Broadstone of Honour in four volumes.1
He then began

Compitum —

1st volume - - 1849 5th volume - - 1851

2nd „ - 1849 6th „ - 1852

3rd „ - 1850 7th „ - 1854
4th „ - 1850

Lovers' Seat, 2 vols. - - 1856-

Children's Bower, 2 vols. - - 185&

Chapel of St. John, I vol. - - 1861

Evenings on the Thames, 2 vols. - - 1864

II. VEESE PERIOD

Short Poems - 1865

A Day on the Muses' Hill - - 1867

Little Low Bushes - 1869

Halcyon Hours - - 1870

Ouranogaia, 2 vols. - - 1872
Last Year's Leaves, including poems published in 1872 under

title Hours with the Falling Leaves - - 1873

Temple of Memory - - 1875

Epilogue to Previous Works in Prose and Verse - - 1876

1 The M ores Catholici and Compitum were printed by Rivingtons and
sold by Joseph Dolman of Bond Street, The. Chapel of St. John by
T. Richardson of Paternoster Row. Messrs. Longman & Green published
the Lovers' Seat, Children's Bower, Evenings on the Thames, and Temple
of Memory. Edward Lumley, of Chancery Lane, published the 1844-4&
edition of Broadstone of Honour, and Mr. Quaritch the edition of 1877.

96 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

Quaritch's edition in five volumes of the Broadstoiie
of Honour was published in 1877, and Kenelm Digby
died in 1880.

Digby published all his works at his own risk and
cost. It is a melancholy reflection that while a smart
novel brings in large profits to authors and publishers,
and dull biographies of uninteresting political or ecclesi-
astical persons pay their way, a book like Mores Catholici
can only get published if the author is rich enough
to meet most of the cost. Digby has had more honour
in the United States than in his own country, for an
edition of Mores Catholici was produced at Cincinnati
in the year 1905.

He frequently indicated at the beginning of a volume
some Catholic charity or purpose, to which all the money
produced by the sale, not only any profits, but the
total receipts, would be applied. The receipts would
probably in every case have failed to meet the cost of
publication, had he chosen to use them for that purpose.
The buying public was not large. Digby's books were
opposed to all the ideas and tastes of the rationalist
and utilitarian Liberals, so much in the ascendant
during the nineteenth century ; they were entirely
objectionable to thorough-going Protestants, and were
not in one main respect acceptable to the Oxford School,
since Digby denied their special theory, and book-buying
Catholics were neither numerous nor wealthy. Most
reviewing journals were silent as to his works. Many
less learned readers must have been deterred by the
numerous quotations in Latin and Greek, of which
Digby does not usually supply translations. His method
of bringing out Mores Catholici and Compitum by a
volume or two at a time was most unfavourable to

" MORES CATHOLICI " 97

sales, and also has had the result of making it difficult
to procure complete copies of either work. This method
is also the best way in which to escape notice, for, after
the first volume or two, reviewers are naturally dis-
inclined to take up the topic afresh.

It would be excellent, if the eleven long volumes of
the Mores Catholici, at least, could now be republished
in England, but no publisher would undertake this at
his own risk, as a commercial venture, and so, unless a
patron intervenes, this immense storehouse of wisdom
and beauty and knowledge must remain in the possession
of the few who are lucky enough to possess complete
copies. The same may be said of Compitum, which is
really a continuation of the Mores. Republication is
the more needed, since neither of these works (except in
the scarce edition de luxe of 55 copies of the Mores
Catholici printed 1845-48) was printed in type large or
well-spaced enough to be agreeable to the eyes of men
and women in mature life or old age, the readers, perhaps,
who would most appreciate them. A well-printed
edition would be almost sufficient literature for advanced
old age, so much do these works contain suitable to that
autumnal and meditative season. It is tantalising to
think how easily a wealthy man could republish the
Mores Catholici with money often applied to less useful
benevolent objects. Would that these words could
inspire some such benefactor with the idea ! It would
be a gift to the Catholic Church and to all those who
love noble literature.

Digby's books are not in the form of continuous history
or reasoning, and may fairly be accused of being too
discursive, but one advantage of this is that one can
take them up at any time, and open them on any page,

98 KENELM HENEY DIGBY

and read in them for a short time or a long equally.
In this way I have read them for twenty years or
more, with refreshment and consolation, and never have
found them stale or wearisome. I know, however, how
much tastes differ, and I can quite well imagine people
of a different type of mind, even those in sympathy, who
might be almost unable to read writing of this kind.
The books, even more in style than in substance, were
out of harmony with the spirit of the age in which they
appeared. Never was there a writer more independent
of public opinion, or less obsequious to its fashion, than
Kenelm Digby.

Catholics, notwithstanding any difficulty of this kindr
should read the works of Kenelm Digby, because by
them they will learn to take a wide and noble view of
their own religion and be greatly confirmed in their
allegiance. They will learn, while holding to it with the
utmost strength, and without concessions on essential
matters, to look generously and charitably on those
outside the central Church. It is possible to be a strong,
unyielding, and yet quite friendly opponent, and those
who possess the most definite and lucid conception of
their own cause will feel and give rise to less exasperation
than those whose minds are not clear and firm.

II

Digby says that the idea of the book Mores Catholici
first entered his mind at Vespers in a monastic church,
and at the close of the work he recalls this in a passage
of fine unmetred poetry, for life to him was a poem.

" Reader, you may remember that it was on the day
when souls are kindled, as the flame of embers is en-
livened at the breathing of the wind, on the day of All

" MORES CATHOLICI " 99

Saints, and as the sun, then entering the eighth degree
of Scorpio, was sinking to its bed, that we began this
journey back in contemplation through past ages.
After leaving the church, my insatiate eyes had travelled
to the spangled firmament, where the stars, in magnitude
and lustre, shining forth with more than wonted glory,
seemed to declare the beatitude of those whose justice
was an efHuence of Him whose seat is thus inlaid with
thick-studded gems. These planets, to which the sun
appears so much more glorious than he does from our
own earth, globes in which his heat is so intense, which
move with such amazing velocity that the Greeks even
gave them the name of divine messengers ; some so
near the sun as to be seldom visible, being lost in the
effulgence of its rays ; others more remote, alternately
rising in the morning and in the evening ; but, whether
bringing light or love, constantly turned towards the
source of their illumination — these stupendous bodies,
moving thus in such obedience, and contributing to the
happiness of beings so remote as men, seemed to invite
the mind to continue meditating on those living
splendours, that see face to face Him who is the light
of all intelligence, that glow with flames of love pro-
portionate to their distance from its everlasting fountain,
and that, by its sweet influence, are to their ever constant
swiftness winged, impelled by Him that moves the
sun in heaven and all the stars. In Ages of Faith men
witnessed order in the Church resembling such as in
these stars is seen. That evening, that I first conceived
this work, the moon, then in the twenty-sixth degree
of Taurus, was nearly half-illumined, as her sixteenth
day would indicate, and in the sky all night. I remember
it well, for she did me good service in the gloom of the
deep wood through which I had to journey. When
the monks left the choir, the sun had already touched
the forest on the plain beneath, and ere I left the cloister,
through its broad arches could be traced some pale
splendours. Capella and Cassiopeia lay over the north-

100 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

east ; the Pleiads nearer to the Orient, Aquila towards
the south by west, and Cygnus nearly over-head. Lyra
was fainter in the west ; while the Great Bear paced
his circle in the north-west. When I rode forth, some
I had watched were sunk, and others risen in their
stead. The Twins and Orion towards the north-west
with undulating glance played along the horizon, the
Belt just rising below Aldebaran ; the Bear was mounting
to the Pole. Before I pulled the rein it was midnight,
and still increase of beauty. Orion fired the south-east
nearly half-way from the earth to the summit of heaven's
concave ; the Pleiads moved aloft verging to the
south. Sirius and Pegasus had caught my gaze. Asso-
ciated in my memory with that eve of All Saints and
vigil of the dead, when the first thought of this long
history darted across my mind, I can thus easily recall
their places as they wheeled through the serene air
from fall of night till the twelfth hour, star by side of
star, and now, after ten solar circles, the inclination of
the axle on which our world spins ever night and day
recalls the same great solemnities of the Church, and
again she chants her own beatitude, as truly blessed
mother. But while our earth has been performing these
revolutions through the unimaginable space, while spirits
beyond number have been added to that crowd above,
and we, still journeying through the obscure atmosphere
of mortal creatures, have been enjoying deeper and
deeper insight into the manners and events of past ages,
accumulating proofs with every change of position
produced by the silent flight of time, the circuit of our
vision widening from day to day, causing increase of
beauty and of wonder since those first vespers, when we
heard sung, ' 0 quam gloriosum est regnum in quo cum
Christo gaudent omnes sancti ' ; while heaven as well
as earth has thus participated in the advance of years,
it seems as if for us time had been stationary, the one
All Hallows lasting without interruption while we were
composing the works which were to illustrate it, as when

" MORES CATHOLICI " 101

the brief space of another holy season sufficed for that
mysterious voyage to the three worlds which the monarch
of celestial poesy describes. ... It is that, when high
and glorious themes have seized the faculties with
sensations of delight, time passes, and a man perceives
it not."

And on the last page of the Mores Digby says :

;{ The anthems for the festival of All Saints which
first suggested this course of historical inquiry, may be
repeated as the best conclusion, and with the voice
of holy choirs let us end. ' Admirabile est nomen tuum,
Domine, quia gloria et honore coronasti sanctos tuos.
Domine, spes sanctorum, et turris fortitudinis eorum,
dedisti hereditatem timentibus nomen tuum, et habita-
bunt in tabernaculo tuo in saecula.' " l

Mores Catholici is a book of great dimensions based
upon a very simple ground-scheme. Digby takes the
eight beatitudes named in the Sermon on the Mount,
and shows by a multitude of citations in what ways
each of them was realized in practice, at least in some
degree, in the Ages of Faith, the Faith which though
still continuing, was, he thinks, broken and diminished
by, and since, the religious revolution of the sixteenth
century. The eight Beatitudes are these :

1. Blessed are the poor in spirit ; for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.

2. Blessed are the meek ; for they shall possess the land.

3. Blessed are they that mourn ; for they shall be comforted.

4. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice ; for they
shall be filled.

5. Blessed are the merciful ; for they shall obtain mercy.

6. Blessed are the clean in heart ; for they shall see God.

1 " Admirable is thy name, Lord, because thou hast crowned thy saints
with glory and honour. Lord ! hope of the saints, and tower of their
strength, thou hast given the inheritance to those who revere thy name,
and they shall dwell in thy tent for ever."

102 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

7. Blessed are the peace-makers ; for they shall be called the
children of God.

8. Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice sake ;
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

These were ideals laid down by an Authority as to
whose divine nature there was then, among professed
Christians, no doubt or question raised, at any rate, in
a public way. They were the ideals of humility, mild-
ness, penitence, justice, mercy, purity, peacefulness,
endurance of wrong. Digby shows how in rude ages of
nations slowly issuing from the pride, savagery, coarse-
ness, lust, intemperance, cruelty and love of fighting
characteristic of barbarians, these ideals were powerfully
and steadily upheld by the Catholic Church, and did
really largely prevail and leaven every part of life,
industry, government, the family, the schools, the fine
arts, literature, the professions, and even war. The
success was within limits, and the Protestant Reforma-
tion was, in a sense, a revolt of the still only partially
tamed Teutonic tribes, in these islands and in all
northern Europe, against the spiritual Roman Empire,
which had for a while suffered from its own success
and prosperity. But the true principles of the Sermon
on the Mount remained in the Catholic Church, what-
ever may have been the faults or lapses of many of
its children, and they were revived by the northern
storm, while the Reformation movement swept onwards
towards regions still further remote from the central
principles and the realm of peace.

At the beginning of Mores Catholici Digby says of
the view which he recommends to his readers :

" Such a view would present a varied and immense
horizon, comprising the manners, institutions, and spirit

" MOEES CATHOLICI " 103

of many generations of men long gone by ; we should
see in what manner the whole type and form of life
were Christian, although its detail may often have been
broken and disordered ; for instance, how the pursuits
of the learned, the consolations of the poor, the riches
of the Church, the exercises and dispositions of the
young, and the common hope and consolation of all
men, harmonized with the character of those who
sought to be poor in spirit ; how again, the principle of
obedience, the constitution of the Church, the division
of ministration, and the rule of government, the manners
and institutions of society, agreed with meekness and
inherited its recompense ; further, how the sufferings
of just men, and the provisions for a penitential spirit
were in accordance with the state of those that were to
mourn and weep ; then, how the character of men in
sacred order, the zeal of the laity, and the lives of al]
ranks, denoted the hunger and thirst after justice ;
again, how the institutions, the foundations, and the
recognized principle of perfection proclaimed men
merciful ; moreover how the philosophy which prevailed,
and the spiritual monuments which were raised by piety
and genius, evinced the clean of heart ; still further
how the union of nations and the bond of peace which
existed even amidst savage discord, wars and confusion,
as also how the holy retreats for innocence which
then everywhere abounded, marked the multitude of
pacific men ; and finally, how the advantage taken
of dire events and the acts of saintly and heroic fame
revealed spirit which shunned not suffering for the sake
of justice."

This sentence summarises the scope of the eleven
crowded volumes of Mores Catholici. Written upon
these lines the book is a wonderful collection of sayings
and happenings illustrating every side of life during
the ages of unbroken ecclesiastical unity in Europe,
that is, in all the Christian world save those parts which

104 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

were decaying under the Greek Emperors, or were
submerged beneath the flood of Islam.

Digby, in the Mores Catholici, was in advance of his
time in reinstating the intellectual position of the
Middle Ages. Fewer people would now speak, like
Ernest Renan, so late as 1883, of " I'efEroyable aventure
du moyen age, cette interruption de mille ans dans 1'his-
toire de civilisation." i Digby, on the contrary, says, and
it is surely the more reasonable and true view that there
was no such terrific chasm in intellectual continuity :

" To a Catholic, not only the philosophical but also
the literary history of the world, is prodigiously enlarged ;
objects change their relative position, and many are
brought into resplendent light, which before were
consigned to obscurity. While the moderns continue,
age after age, to hear only of the Caesars and the philo-
sophers, the Catholic discovers that there lies between
the heathen civilization and the present, an entire
world, illustrious with every kind of intellectual and
moral greatness ; the names which are first upon his
tongue are no longer Cicero and Horace, but St. Augustin,
St. Bernard, Alcuin, St. Thomas, St. Anselm ; the
places associated in his mind with the peace and dignity
of learning, are no longer the Lyceum and the Academy,
but Citeaux, Cluny, Crowland, or the Oxford of the
Middle Ages." 2

All this world used to be carefully hidden from the
view of Englishmen, and, though it is probably rather
better now, certainly so late as the time that I was
myself at Eton, there was nothing in the school course
to inform a boy that there was any literature or philo-
sophy worth notice between Tacitus and Shakespeare.
A deep-thinking American writer has said that the

1 Souvenirs de Jeunesse. 2 Mores Catholici, vol. iii.

" MORES CATHOLICI " 105

thirteenth century was the European " Age of Pericles." l
One may certainly ask whether in solidity of learning,
and laborious and patient thought, there has not been
a gradual decline from that period to this present age
of brilliant disintegration, and the same question arises
with regard to Art in architecture, painting and sculp-
ture. Are we not arriving, that author suggests, at a
second edition of the Lower Empire ?

There was a true appreciation of Mores Catholici in a
book, published in 1838, called Reminiscences of Rome, by
an anonymous author who styles himself " A member
of the Arcadian Academy," an institution of that city.
He says :

" And here let me pay a passing tribute of grateful
homage to a philosopher, though to me personally
unknown, whose works, redolent with the choicest
flowers of religious poesy, have contributed not a little
to banish the ennui of many a cheerless hour of my
existence. In the sublimity of his views the author
of Mores Catholici, not unlike his favourite device,
the Cross of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, appears
to stand isolated and alone in the Republic of Letters.
His graphic pen describes scenes so refined, so philo-
sophic, and, withal, so devout, as to make the fictitious
and guilty episodes of novelists and romance-writers
paltry and vulgar in comparison. The holiest imaginings,
the purest tendencies, and the noblest aspirings after
all that is chaste, love-worthy and true characterize
the pages especially of his later productions. The
exalted tone of his religious and moral feelings, and the
mystic images wherewith he clothes them, added to
the not unfrequently eloquent and melodious style of
his diction, seize upon the fancy of his reader, and
raising it, as it were, upon angelic wings to a sphere

1 Brookes Adams, Law of Civilization and Decay.

106 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

above this earth, introduces the soul to communion
with those purified intelligences that once adorned his
now, alas ! I fear for ever by-gone ' Ages of Faith.' '

This writer found that Digby's works had power to
" banish the ennui of many a cheerless hour." This
is most true. From time to time, especially in more
advanced years, almost every one must feel a certain
taedium vitae. One is, perhaps, unoccupied for the
time being, and feels solitary ; yet, as one looks round the
books on one's shelves there is none that seems to suit
the mood. Then take out a volume of Mores Catholici,
or Evenings on the Thames, and the weariness will
depart. To read most authors is like hearing one
person talk, and as Keats says, " Where's the voice
however soft one would hear so very oft ? " But Digby
is like a friend who introduces one into a wide circle
of charming persons, and these are not one's own co-
temporaries, of whose conversation and ideas one may
have had enough, but men and women, the elite of all
times down to the middle of the nineteenth century,
and of many countries. One meets them too in a setting
of pleasant places in this country and on the Continent.
All these persons belong in some sense or another to
the Catholic Church, because if they are pre-Christians
or non-Catholics, they are only quoted when they express
Catholic wisdom or feeling. Adversaries are, indeed,
quoted, but only as shades against which the Catholic
beauty stands out in relief. Read for an hour, and
your weariness will have passed away, and you can
face the world again.

A writer in the Dublin Review in 1840, commenting on
the first nine volumes of Mores Catholici, says :

" MORES CATHOLICI " 107

" It was impossible that, through vague assertions,
generalities, and fine writing, we could entertain a fit
conception of the all-pervading spirit of those Catholic
ages, and accordingly the author has sought to prove
his theories in the only way in which the subject admitted
& proof, — by such immense research, such stores of
illustration as we confidently assert to be unparalleled
in modern literature. We are quite astonished at the
quantity of learning which is dispersed through this
work ; but so completely is it rendered subservient to
the author's main object, that we lose sight of it in
the train of new and interesting ideas the book excites
in us. The author is not only familiar with the whole
range of the classics, and perfect master of the Greek
and Latin, but in Italian, Spanish, French and German,
in these languages and in his own, he has read probably
every work that is worth notice, and that not of one
period only, but including the whole range of their
literature, not upon one class of subjects only — he has
left none of them untouched. Divinity, History,
Poetry, and Memoirs have been his favourite studies,
his mind is imbued with them, he appears to have
delighted in the old romances. . . ."

Here also (it is sixty-five years later) may be quoted
a notice of the American edition of Mores Catholici
which was published in 1905. It was given in the
Ecclesiastical Review of Philadelphia. The writer says :

" Catholic communities, especially librarians who have
not a copy of Digby's Ages of Faith, will be glad of the
publication of a work which, like the Monks of the West
by Montalembert, or Christian Schools atid Scholars,
possesses the permanent value of both a Classic and a
History. It is true that Mores Catholici cannot be
styled a history in the critical sense in which the term
is now commonly understood, as designating exhaustive
and accurate collections of statistical documents and

108 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

elaborately certified annals. Probably we should not
consider its actual worth as great as it is, if it were a
work of such a character, for then it could never have
exercised the intellectual and religious influence arising
out of its exposition and valuation of the ethical elements
that furnished the sub-soil wherein the seed of all that
is noble in European civilization was planted. Digby's
power lay in his ability to create an atmosphere at once
healthy and agreeable, He had an instinct for whatever
was beautiful, and his aim was to communicate it and
realize it for the adornment of religion and the uplifting
of man to the level of religious perfection. His extra-
ordinary capacity for storing varied information was
something like that of Cornelius or Lapidi. He seems
in the intellectual order to be what the gardener
was, who designed the terraced paradise of Isola Bella,
one of the Borromean islands in the beautiful Lago
Maggiore, a lover of flowers and trees, collecting the
beautiful and useful growth from every part of the
globe to illustrate the culture of the human soul under
the unchanging spring-like influence of the Catholic
Faith. In Mores Catholici the author has collected ' the
fragrance of past Ages,' — that is a true appreciation.
He was a young man when, still outside the pale of the
Church, he published that masterpiece of Christian
ethics, the Broadstone of Honour, in which he identified
himself with the good and great, the heroic and holy,
in former times. Sterling, no mean judge of Christian
chivalry, tells us, after reading one of Digby's books,
that he never pored over a volume * more full of gentle-
ness and earnest admiration for all things beautiful
and excellent.' These judgments are not exaggerated
when applied to the author's present work in particular.
Aside from the didactic instruction in the Ecclesiastical
History and moral philosophy it gives our youth, such
a work might well be employed as a sort of accompanying
torch to illuminate the way to a practical appreciation
of all serious study in the field of religion and ethics.

" MOEES CATHOLICI " 109

There is danger that the new methods of criticism in
history cause the average reader to over-estimate the
necessity of dwelling upon the darker side of historical
facts, and of lapsing from the extreme of optimistic
fanaticism to that of immoderate objectivity, which,
under the plea of investigating truth, loses sight of the
primary object aimed at in all teaching of history. That
object is to make the experience of the past the caution
of the future, rather than to lay bare the evil for the
multitude to gloat over. Digby's Mores Catholici is
an excellent antidote against this tendency. From it
we learn what is profitable for society or the individual.
It gives us a right estimate of the value of religion,
without subjecting the mind to either the strain of hard
theories, or the delusive sense of unreality in matters of
faith. The author tells the story of those great and
good teachers of the past whom Grotius, though by no
means an enthusiastic admirer of the Scholastics, admits
to have been safe guides in all human conduct, irre-
spective of times and places. ' Ubi in re morum consen-
tiunt, vix est ut errent ' (Proleg. De Jure Belli etc Pacis).1
" For the priest in particular there are few works that
offer more refreshing and instructive matter of thought
and fact told with a certain amount of fervour and
beauty of diction, the frequent reading of which can
hardly fail to impart the habit of good style and fluency
of language, together with an atmosphere or temper
most valuable for understanding rightly the methods
and manners of the ages of faith."

It might be added that a priest who possessed the
Broadstone of Honour, Mores Catholici and Compitum
would have an inexhaustible store of ammunition from
which to feed his sermons. On every page he will find
quotations from the best ancient and modern thinkers
and poets suggesting trains of thought to himself, and

1 " Where these agree in the matter of morals, they can hardly err."

110 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

many a tale of heroic and saintly deeds to illustrate his
themes. Those works would be invaluable to those,
the great majority, who cannot have a large library of
their own. They are a library in little.

The Mores Catholici pleased that noble son of France,
the Count de Montalembert, and assisted him in writing
his great work, The Monks of the West. In the Intro-
duction to that book he says : "I know no writer who
has better comprehended and shown the happiness of
monastic life, such as it is described and authenticated
by ancient authors, than Mr. Kenelm Digby, in the
tenth volume of the curious and interesting collection
entitled Mores Catholici. It has served to guide me
in this attractive study, and has afforded me a pleasure
which I would wish to share with all my readers by
referring them to this valuable work." And, again,
Montalembert says, " The best book to make the Middle
Ages known and loved is the work of a layman,
and of a layman gone over from Anglicanism to the
Church. ... It is right to acknowledge that the defec-
tive aspect of the Middle Ages (what the Germans sa
justly call the Schattenzeite) has not been sufficiently
brought to light by Mr. Digby." Montalembert' s own
study is, perhaps, the fairest of all books in this respect
so far as regards monastic institutions.

Ill

The charge is often made against English Catholics,
and some of them perhaps give occasion for it, that they
do not sufficiently appreciate the piety and moral virtues
of their non-Catholic fellow-countrymen. This charge
could not rightly be brought against Kenelm Digby,

" MORES CATHOLICI " 111

all of whose books furnish evidence to the contrary.
His feeling is well shown by the following passage,
written in 1842, near the end of Mores Catholici. Why,.
he asks, should we despair of England ?

" Have we not reason to hope that she will not for
ever scorn the sacred mysteries of faith and Rome that
watches over them ; that she will not continue to ridicule
the name of priests, as though they were next inheritors
to fools ; that she will not continue to jest at their
reverend and holy ceremonies ; but that she will be
brought to believe, with the Apostles and holy fathers,
that these things are full of divine truths ; to believe
with all learned historians that these priests having
from Rome their mission, were the first bringers in of
all civility ; to believe with philosophers, so well repre-
sented by Picus of Mirandula, that without them
morality is an empty sound ; to believe with political
economists that their institutions can alone preserve
society from the horrors of pauperism and servile wars ;
to believe with those who have found pleasure in the
preceding books that the manners which they taught
were truly those inculcated from the mountain ; lastly,
to believe the one voice of these past ages themselves,
when they tell her they will make her happy and glorious
by their faith. Yes, let us hope that England may be
won ; that the words of Isaiah may be applicable to
her. ' Quae arida erit in stagna et sitiens in fontes
aquarum,' l for, once enlightened, her wishes rest here
for ever — won by that which she of her own generous
nature covets most — won, the country of Cowper by
fervent, true, and undefiled devotion ; the country of
Johnson, by the inestimable riches of good sense ; the
country of Milton, by the love of heavenly musings, and
of embodying the sacred lore in bright poetic forms ;
the country of Bacon, by whatever tends to the augmen-

1 " She who was dry shall be turned to lakes and the thirsting to fountains
of waters."

112 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

tation of solid learning, and to the stability and decorum
of the social state ; the country of Addison, by the
food prepared, as if expressly for its instinct of the
correct and orderly, which quells every unruly passion ;
the country of Shakespeare, by that which makes every
flower of genius to germin in eternal peace ; the country
of Sterne, by pity mild, deep and tender sentimentality ;
in fine, the country of so many saints, poets, moralists
and philosophers, by the tears and graces of that Holy
Mother, of the everlasting counsel ordained to be to
mortal men, of hope, of charity and love, the living
spring, the sole ennobler of their nature. Then will
she learn from her own experience that, in the holy
Catholic and Roman faith, is all sustenance for the
high intellectual and moral life of a people ; that it
alone possesses the great secret for inheriting both
earth and heaven, all that can sweeten and compose to
order the uncertain wanderings of the human existence,
and all that can exalt with innocence as a preparation
for everlasting beatitude, the dignity and happiness
of man." *

This passage contains the key-note of all Digby's
writings from first to last. He did not deny the existence
outside the Catholic Church of all the virtues any more
than he denied the outside existence of so many truly
Catholic souls, but he held, without doubt or deviation,
that in the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church
all these scattered rays are focussed, and gathered up,
and find their true and complete fulfilment and exist-
ence, and that outside the Church they are, so to
speak, disembodied and acting in the void. This belief
can be maintained without lack of charity. No one
held more firmly than Digby the orthodox doctrine
that many belong to the soul of the Catholic Church,

1 Mores Catholici, xi. p. 467.

" MORES CATHOLICI " 113

though not to its body, just as many belong to its
body, but not to its soul.

Many, now, in England say : ' We agree with all
that you say about the Catholic Church ; we agree in
the main with all its doctrines, except that the Church
is not, as you believe, that body which is in union with
Rome, and has there its energizing centre, but is some-
thing "much wider" — all who profess and call themselves
Christians, some of us think, or all those who recognize
certain episcopal institutions, as others more restrictedly
assert."

With these Digby could not agree, or even argue.

" You say," he replies, " for even to this outrage on
historic truth our ears are destined, that the system
which the law of England recognizes as the state religion
is in reality Catholic as of yore ; that it has been per-
secuted by kings and parliaments, and that it would
not otherwise have departed, as in some points you
admit it has, from the discipline and doctrine of anti-
quity ; that it is your mother, to be excused and forgiven.
To all this, one conversant with the dead will deem
silence the best answer. Possunt haec credere, as St.
Leo says, qui possunt talia patienter audire.1 An his-
torical study of the events which led to the catastrophe
is a bad preparation for assent to the propositions
which are generally advanced by those who do not
view things from the centre of Catholic unity."

Digby, in his latest years, might have written this
more softly, but certainly there is something rather
irritating in those who, with their predecessors in title,
have fully enjoyed the material benefits and supremacy
of the State Church since the days of Elizabeth, and

1 " Those can believe such things who are able to hear them with
patience."

K.D. H

114 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

now picture it as a " branch " of the Catholic Church
long-oppressed by heretical kings and parliaments. No
doubt this much is true, and a reason for hope, that
there has always been in the Church of England a
section, sometimes very small, as in the eighteenth
century, sometimes expanding, as in the seventeenth
and nineteenth, who have regretted the separation from
the Centre of Unity, and the breach with Catholic
doctrine and consequent ritual.

Although Digby could not admit that separated com-
munions in East or West are as much part of the Catholic
Church after separation from the centre of unity as
they were before, he held that these bodies are not untrue
in belief or practice, but in various degrees incompleter
and all of them incomplete because divided from that
centre. He illustrates this by a similitude in his book
called Evenings on the Thames :

" If the whole truth were told by travellers I believe
it would be found that what we English, on going abroad,
like most in the scenery of foreign countries is something
that, under a form which is new to us, puts us in mind
nevertheless of what we loved at home in dear old
England. That grey ruin, for example, on the hill,
that path by the river, that stile on the road-side, leading
into a wood ; that shady lane at the entrance of the
village ; that solitary church ; that blue horizon ;
that babbling stream with the plank across it ; all
of these objects are only a French, German, Italian
or Swiss version, as it were, of what was familiar to us
from our childhood ; but then one must confess also that
generally this version of an old favourite comes, for
some reason or other, nearer to the ideal of what we
loved than the original ever did. There is somehow
more meaning in it ; there is besides generally more

" MORES CATHOLICI " 115

sun in the picture ; a warmer tone of colouring ; there
is more history in it, more antiquity, more pleasing
terror, more that we cannot fathom, more mystery,
more romance, and. in some instances, more sub-
limity."

" Now," continues Digby, " all this holds in religion.
The Catholic Church, for those whose youth was passed
out of it, comes upon them like a familiar image trans-
formed, like a remembrance of what was best loved
in their earliest days ; but it is a remembrance that
is allied with an increase of attraction in the subject ;
as, in point of fact, it is the Catholic view which imparts
reality, and meaning, and legitimate cause for wonder,
to what they once loved and reverenced, without much
exercise of logic, and merely as children, without fully
possessing even the power of enjoying what they beheld,
and heard, and wished to love and to admire, more
than strict truth, at that time, would have given them
grounds for."

This was always Kenelm Digby's thought. The
Catholic religion, centred as to its visible organization
in the Chair of St. Peter at Rome, is the completion, and
sanctification, and elevation of all that is good in other
religious bodies, and in social life, and in nature. It is
the central sun, itself receiving light and fire from God
through Christ, which warms and illumines all else, and
gives colour to things, and so transfigures all that it
touches.

St. Augustine's meaning was the same when he spoke
of the African Donatists, the lineal succession of whose
Bishops from the Apostles, and the validity of whose
sacraments, he did not deny. He said to them, " What
are you doing, my brother ? We are brothers ; we
call upon the same God ; we believe in the same Christ ;
we hear the same Gospel ; we answer with the same

116 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

Amen ; we celebrate the same Easter. Why are you
without " (the Catholic Church) " while I am within ? " *
According to some modern theories, St. Augustine
was mistaken, which is of course possible, and the
Donatists as well as himself and the Bishops with whom
he was in communion in Africa, were, as they themselves
held, within the Catholic Church. Again, he says in
his letter to Theodorus :

" Who can say that he has the charity of Jesus Christ
so long as he does not remain in his unity ? When,
then, they (the Donatists) re-enter the Catholic Church,
they do not receive there that which they already had ; but
that which they had not, and that which makes useful
to them that which they had, since they are now grafted
upon the root of charity by the bond of peace and the
unity of the Spirit, by which all the other sacraments
of truth which they already had become useful to them
for salvation."

The words italicized summarize the thought, which
Digby was for ever expressing, and he extended their
range to all people who have the natural good qualities
of humanity, in which, perhaps Digby, living in a long
christianized world, believed more strongly than did
Augustine, living in a world decaying and still half
pagan. Cardinal Newman has expressed the same thing
with his usual lucidity when he says (Essay on Develop-
ment, chap, i.) that a gradual conversion

" consists in addition and increase chiefly, not destruc-
tion." ... :< True religion is the summit and perfection
of false " (i.e. incomplete) " religions ; it combines
in one whatever there is of good and true separately
remaining in each. And, in like manner, the Catholic
Creed is for the most part the combination of separate

1 Enarr. in Psalmis, liv. 16.

" MORES CATHOLICI " 117

truths, which heretics have divided among themselves,
and err in dividing. So that, in matter of fact, if a
religious mind were educated in, and sincerely attached
to, some form of heathenism or heresy, and they were
brought under the light of truth, it would be drawn off
from error into the truth, not by losing what it had but
by gaining what it had not, not by being unclothed,
but by being clothed upon. That same principle of
faith, which attaches it to its original wrong doctrine,
would attach it to the truth ; and that portion of its
original doctrine which was to be cast off as absolutely
false, would not be directly rejected, but indirectly,
in the reception of the truth which is its opposite. True
conversion is ever of a positive, not a negative character."

IV

All through these years Kenelm Digby maintained
correspondence with his old Cambridge ally, Ambrose
Phillips de Lisle, of Garendon and Grace Dieu in the
county of Leicester. I may quote here two passages
from de Lisle's letters relating to Mores Catholici. The
first, dated at Garendon, 18th November, 1834, refers to
the fifth volume published that year. It was addressed
to Digby at 22 Rue de la Ville L'Eveque, Paris.

" MY DEAK DIGBY. — I was thinking of you, and saying
to myself how much I longed to hear from you again
when I was greeted by the arrival of your delightful
letter. I was also on the point of writing to you, and
you have cause to think me ungrateful for not having
sooner thanked you for your most welcome present of
your Book, which arrived here quite safe. But first I
must tell you how enchanted I am with your book. I like
it the best of all your books. When I read the third
volume of the Mores Catholici I thought you never
could write anything again that could equal that in

118 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

sublimity of style or in the interesting views it gives
of Christian history, but this seems to me to surpass
all you have ever before written ; it is indeed beyond
all praise ; in reading it I seem to be listening to one
whose voice fills one with the most enchanting delight
and calm contentment. How you discover to every
one the sublime views of the Church ! What a world
of good must result from this, for how few Catholics
in England enter into the spirit of the Church, but no
one can read your book without catching the flame
which burns throughout it. Mr. Kirk of Lichfield told
me that he had begun to read it aloud to his people
on the Sunday, after Vespers, in the beautiful new
Gothic church which he has built at Lichfield, and that
he intends to go completely through with it. I never
beheld any picture more admirable or more lovely than
that which you place before our eyes in the very com-
mencement of the book. Your vision of the saintly crowd
of all degrees whose pursuit is the thirst after justice
is quite enrapturing, and one imagines such an har-
monious shout of heavenly melody bursting from the
venerable multitude as melts the very soul. But how
sad it is to turn from such a scene to contemplate the
melancholy change that has taken place all over
Europe. . . ."

His second letter, dated llth January, 1835, relates
to the next volume of Mores Catholici.

" I have done nothing but read and meditate upon
your Golden Book ever since I last wrote. I cannot
describe the impressions it produced on me, and what
I said in my last letter only makes me ashamed that
I can express myself so poorly in praise of a book to
study which would delight the Angels. You tell me
sometimes that I look at the bright side of things ; well
now, you shall never tell me again that I am too hopeful,
for your book of itself is enough to convince any rational
being that the age that could produce such a work is

" MORES CATHOLICI " 119

one pre-eminently calculated to inspire hope, and to
justify the brightest anticipations. To praise your
book, my dear Digby, would require an angel's tongue.
I assure you it has many times overpowered me as with
a, torrent of celestial delight ; the disquisition on the
ecclesiastical Chant and Musick is sublime ; I could
fancy myself listening to the melodies of the Angels.
The beautiful histories too with which you have illus-
trated the whole are most affecting. That story of
the Friars of St. Francis reconciling the Bishop and
Governor of Assisi is enough to melt into a flood the
most frozen heart, and your admirable description
makes one almost hear them singing that holy song
which changed hatred into love. When I think of
your book I am filled with amazement. You say in
your letter, my dear Digby, that you look upon my
friendship as one of the most happy events of your life.
What then must I say of your friendship ? No words
of mine can express what I feel, what I owe to you. . . .
I hope you will not forget what you tell me about return-
ing to England in the spring, and then you know with
what longing desire Laura and I will expect your arrival
.at the shady groves of Grace Dieu, and if your Lady is
fond of musick, we can at least boast of our nightingales
in the wood. We have got a most curious room at
the very top of the house which has a very extensive
view in two directions, one to the East and the other
to the West, and it looks over leads and pointed roofs
beyond which rises the cross on the end of the Chapel,
at one side of which is the little Belfry with our Angelus
Bell, at the sound of which all the neighbouring parsons
are said to quake. ..."

At the close of Mores Caiholici Digby bids farewell to
his book in touching words :

:< The thought of having done, of having had life
prolonged to finish any work by the permission and grace
of Him in Whom all things live, is solemn. 'Tis like

120 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

the sound of the sea or the murmur of the grove, after
the departure of a friend whose presence on the previous
day had tuned it to unmixed gladness ; it is like the
sorrow of one who casts a last lingering look on the
beautiful cities of Italy, or at the snow-capped mountains
of the bright warm South, which he is leaving never to
see them more ; or like recalling to mind the journeys
which were made along the beautiful shores of Alpine
lakes, when one was a boy, the thousand innocent
transports to which the heart yielded with such ardour,
as one walked through vineyards, rode through valleys,
clomb rocky mountains, and swam in the placid or rushing
waters of those delicious climes."

It is true, perhaps, that no conversions are directly,
or absolutely, due to books or conversation, but only
to events in life and to the mysterious magnetic attrac-
tion which works through and from the central Catholic
Church and draws into it those hearts which have the
right steel in them. Yet it is within the province of
Reason to judge whether this attraction is to the higher
or lower parts of human nature, and to advise the
deciding Will, or Self, whether to yield to, or resist, it.
Books like those of Digby play an important part in
enlightening the Reason, and, like a midwife or doctor,
assist in the " accouchement " of the soul. In this
sense Digby probably assisted many to make the great
decision, when his books were more widely known than
they are now. Mother Anne Pollen, of the Sacred Heart,
in her excellent Memoir of Mother Mabel Digby, gives
one such instance. Mabel Digby 's father was Simon
Digby, of Osbertstown, County Kildare, a near cousin
of Kenelm and, though a strong Protestant of the
Orange brand, always a good friend of his. His wife,
much influenced, says Mother Pollen, by Mores Catholici,

" MORES CATHOLICI

121

was received into the Catholic Church in September
1852 at Montpellier, and was soon followed by her
three daughters, Geraldine, Mabel, and Eva. Mabel
was received in 1853, at the age of eighteen, and became
a postulant of the Order of the Sacred Heart at Mar-
moutiers on 19th February, 1857. She made her
novitiate at Conflans, took her first vows there in March,
1859, and, after years spent in convents in France, and
then at Roehampton, was elected in 1895, in succession
to a French Superior, to be Superior General of the
whole of this great international Order, the first English
woman to become this. Her noble life and character are
beautifully described in Mother Pollen's Memoir. She
died in the year 1911, and was buried at Roehampton.
It was Mabel Digby who steered the Order through its
great crisis of expulsion from France, and founded anew
in other lands the forty houses lost in that country of
its birth.

Mabel Digby 's conversion was not in the least due
to reading or study, — she was not a girl of that kind, —
but to a sudden movement, under a radiation from the
altar, in a church in France, which to her young friends
at that time seemed miraculous. The conversion of her
mother, however, was one of the long and slow kind,
much assisted by Kenelm Digby's writings.

CHAPTEK VII

" COMPITUM "

" MILLE viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam
Qui Dominum toto quaerere corde volunt."

A lanus.

IN the year 1849 Kenelm Digby published the first two
volumes of the last of his three largest works, entitled
Compitum. This is the Latin word for a point at which
roads meet, or to which roads converge, like the straight
drives one sees in such forests as Compiegne or Fontaine-
bleau, meeting at a point from which they radiate like
spokes in a wheel. The meeting point in the book is
formed by the central principles of the Catholic Church,
in which alone is found the happiness and peace of those
who travel by the many roads. The roads are the
various phases of human life, such as the road of
children, the road of youth, the road of the family,
that of old age, that of the schools, that of travellers,
of joy, of sorrow, of death, of contemplation, of wisdom,
of warriors, of priests, of kings, of active life, of the poor,
of friendship, and many others, through seven long
volumes, crowded with admirable quotations and reflec-
tions. In the first pages Digby thus describes the genesis
of this idea. The scene is his favourite haunt, the forest
of St. Germain.

" On the elevated range which prematurely hides
the setting sun from a city of France, whose ancient

122

" COMPITUM " 123

is better than its recent fame, and yet in which many
of this age have followed gentle studies in their youth,
there is a gloomy forest bearing the venerated name of
the great saint whose huge abbey towers still form one
of its chief ornaments. . . . During the summer months
the stranger,1 coming to reside at the very skirts of the
wood, became familiar with many of its secrets. In
the house where he was lodged, there was a small upper
room, of which the window received the light of the
setting sun, and displayed in full beauty the vast undu-
lating tract of the forest, as far as eye could reach. An
old map of all its alleys, suspended there time out of
mind, was the only decoration of that delicious little
chamber, and on that map he used often to trace his
walks, unravelling the intricate mazes through which
he had wandered during the day. A certain palmer-
like guest one night, as he remained with him alone,
observed that it would be well to draw out a map of
the intellectual forest through which men travel from
youth to age, noting each turn of the various tracks
that predecessors, as if with human feet, have worn,
and showing how wonderfully nature has provided
avenues and attractive openings to guide all pilgrims
safely to their end. There was, besides, here, a local
peculiarity, which seemed to add force to the suggestion,
for far in the level forest's central gloom was one bright
spot where stood a convent, girt by a smooth, sunny
lawn, towards which innumerable paths conducted
from all sides the least practised wanderer. Once a
monastery of Augustine Friars, a holy sisterhood now
possessed it."

The road-pierced forest idea is carried out throughout
Compitum. Kenelm Digby had studied deeply books
of forestry, and he makes many observations, in them-
selves good reading, like Evelyn's Silva, on the

1 Digby speaks of himself throughout the book as " the stranger."

124 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

nature of various trees, always symbolizing them with
facts of the human-moral sphere, after the fashion of
St. Francis of Sales, from whose writings quite a good
book on natural history might be extracted.

St. Augustine compares the Catholic Church itself to
one of the great imperial roads of Rome, well guarded ,
running straight to the celestial city. Digby says that
if you know the line of the high road running straight
to its goal through the forest, you are safe. You can
deviate here and there into pleasant and curving by-
paths, keeping always the same direction, and you are
sure, when you are tired of them, to recover the high
road, which will take you to your destination.

If there are parallel by-ways safe to follow, there are
also others which are tempting but fatally misleading ;
and some of these Digby indicates, the road of evil, of
sin, of pride, of the " dry tree," of the " four winds."
It is by knowing to what quagmires or hopeless jungles
they lead, that the true and saving character of the
right road is also, negatively, proved. The road of
the " four winds " is that of " false, cold and denying
doctrines," by which men are blown about.

The great modern deviation into the road of the four
winds was when the Protestant Reformers abandoned the
principle of a living Authority and Interpreter. As
Balmes said, " By the principle that the Bible is the reli-
gion of Protestants, and that each is to judge of it by his
own understanding, Protestantism is self-condemned, for
it lays down a principle by which it dissolves itself." *
And Digby says, in this chapter, " the history of the
march of these opinions is the record of a succession
of prodigious mistakes which have been maintained by

1 Le Protestantisme compart au Caiholicisme, ch. vi.

" COMPITUM " 125

men appealing to their own personal conviction indepen-
dent of all authority for their warrant. . . . Surely to
give a plain unvarnished statement of Calvinism, or
Anglicanism, is to refute it. Yet impassioned men
will cling to this, or rather, like the charmed vest of
Hercules, heresy will attach itself to the very flesh of
the man who unconsciously clothes himself with it.
Hence St. Augustine says, ' Nihil infelicius est homine
cui sua figmenta dominantur ' (' Nothing is more un-
fortunate than the man who is dominated by his own
fictions '). But, if the Catholic should err, we find that
his fictions sit lightly on him. At the first word of
the Church he flings them from him to the winds."
"Men," says Digby, referring to the conflicting
Protestant theories of the Church, " men who contra-
dict themselves cannot be expected to agree with one
another. Accordingly the want of harmony and unity,
even under their own banners, may be regarded as
another signal directing all wanderers wearied with
discord to the centre at the Catholic Church."

From the day when St. Peter confessed that Jesus
was the Son of God, the Christian religion has had faith
or trust for its foundation. It demands not individual
reasonings primarily, but individual acts of faith, the
choice of the individual either to accept the results
of collective intuition, embodied in formulas, or to
reject them. The Catholic believes and accepts not
only the verity of the New Testament, books received
on the authority of the Church, but the collective
inspiration of the Church interpreting and developing
the doctrine down to the present day. Private judg-
ment applied to Scripture was, and is, the fundamental
principle of every form of Protestantism. Living Autho-

126 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

rity is that of Catholicism, and the Catholic has a firm
and definite idea of what that Living Authority has
been, and is. That is the great issue between Catholics
and Protestants, and it has been that from the first.
St. Augustine says, in his De utilitate credendi, the work
so much commended by the philosophic Leibnitz, that
" heretics " (the dissentients on fundamentals) attack
the " Catholic Church " because it commands those who
come to it to believe, " Quod illis qui ad earn veniunt
praecipitur credere " ; while those dissentients them-
selves boast that they " do not impose the yoke of
believing, but open the fountain of teaching," in the
name of Reason, " in nomine rationis," thereby flattering
human vanity. He adds that religion must first be
believed (i.e. accepted de fide), and afterwards under-
stood, and can in no way be rightly entered upon
without a grave command of Authority, " sine quodam
gravi auctoritatis imperio iniri recte nullo modo potest " ;
and that nothing in the Catholic Church is so salutary
as that authority precedes reasoning, " quam ut rationem
praecedat auctoritas." Again, he says in argument
against the Manichaeans that " if they deny that there
should be belief in Christ unless undoubted reason can
be given, they are not Christians " ; " The Pagans say
the same thing against us," he adds, " foolishly indeed,
but not inconsistently," because they did not even
pretend to accept any Authority. Augustine gave full
value to the intellect (" intellectum valde ama "), but
in its right place, and for its right purpose. He thought
that reasoning should be founded on faith, not faith on
reasoning. He said, " I believe in order that I may
understand; I do not understand in order that I may
believe."

" COMPITUM " 127

" Dogma datur Christianis," said St. Thomas Aquinas,
is given to them from outside, to be recognized and
intellectually apprehended by them individually. The
mediaeval Richard of St. Victor says that we ought to
try to comprehend by reason what we hold from faith.

Kenelm Digby's works never had a popular circula-
tion, but they were read by those interested in these
subjects, who themselves write and influence others.
His continuous output of volumes all bearing on the
same central point, from 1822 to 1854, had a real and
considerable, though little recognized, effect upon the
rise and development of the Catholic movement, whether
it took the form of change inside the Church of England
and other bodies more remote from the Centre, or
whether that of conversions to the Catholic Church.,
and the moral and intellectual stimulation of that
society in England.

When Digby began to write he was almost alone in
this country in his view of the Middle Ages, and was
deemed a Don Quixote ; but he had the singular aid of
a very different writer, the Radical William Cobbett,
whose popular history of the " Protestant Reformation,"
published in 1827, written not from a religious but a
social and economic point of view, ran fiercely and
absolutely counter to all the accepted and orthodox
ideas of English history so forcibly voiced by Macaulay,
the great writer whose time at Cambridge nearly
coincided with Digby's. By the time that Digby had
published the last of the seven volumes of Compitum,
the Catholic hierarchy had been restored in England, and
a number of clergy and laity in the national Church
now virtually accepted all Catholic doctrine, except
that of divinely ordained unity under the rule and

128 KENELM HENKY DIGBY

guidance of the successors of St. Peter at Rome. Some
accepted even this, as more do at the present day. Of
these some passed over ; others were detained, partly,
perhaps, by the idea of " corporate re-union." Is it
possible — yet so it seems to be — that any one who
really believes in the visible organic and Catholic Church
centred in the Apostolic See, should wait to re-unite him-
self with that Church until every one else is ready to do
so ? He is like the rustic of Horace who waits to cross
until the river has flowed away and left the channel dry.

" Rusticus expectat dum defluit amnis, at ille
Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum."

The man who really accepts the idea will not wait
until the rolling eternal river has flowed away; and,
if he waits, this shows that he has not really accepted
the idea, although he may think that he has accepted
it. Action is the test of belief.

" Men " (says Digby) " take leave of error with too
much ceremony ; they speak too much about their
nation, about the world, seeming to forget that each
one of us here, let the nation and the world believe, or
not believe, has, as Carlyle says, ' a life of his own to
lead, one life ; a little gleam of time between two
eternities ; no second chance to us for evermore.' You
sfeould, therefore, look to yourselves, and, having once
caught sight of truth, hoist all your sails to follow her,
heedless of the nation, or of the world's remonstrance.
If you must wait for all to follow, I fear, as Dante says,
' Your choice may haply meet too long delay.'
' Eia age, rumpe moras ; quo te sperabimus usque ?
Dum, quid sis, dubita,s jam potes esse nihil." x

Ulysses again, through desire to save them, makes

1 Martial, " Up ! act ! no more delay ! Till when shall we hope for
you ? While you doubt what to be you may already be Nothing."

" COMPITUM " 129

his companions weep. After they had tasted the lotus
none of them wished to return. Thus should men act
towards brethren, when they find them so infatuated,
as to think no more of escaping to their true country."

So that it is legitimate, he thinks, to give some pain
to others to prevent them from passing the rest of their
lives in the island of the lotus. Elsewhere Digby says :

" Some of those whom we have now, perhaps, with
weak words grieved, are gentle and humane writers,
whose instinctive reverence, and I know not what kind
of poetic affection for all that pertains to the holy
Catholic Church, which they view from a distance only,
should render them, even without reference to diviner
motives, the objects of our tenderest sympathy and
sincerest love ; but, if honour be due to their genius,
and affection to their noble capacities, truth and sin-
cerity are no less a sacred debt, which we should render
to them, heedless of the loss and injury and multiplied
sorrow, which may result too surely to ourselves." 1

To such sincere and seeking people as these might be
applied the beautiful passage in a Latin poem of St.
Hildebert, applied by him to the invisible City of
Heaven, which may thus be rendered :

" Founded on the rock securely,
Holy city, beauteous city !
Tossed on seas of dubitation,
From a distance I salute thee,
Call to thee, and seek for thee,
In thy haven is salvation ;
In thy haven ships may anchor,
By thy circling hills defended
From the storms of desolation
Which destroy the hearts of mortals.
Heavenly city, peaceful city !
From a distance I salute thee,
Sigh for thee, and long for thee."

1 Mores Catholici, vol. iii.

K.D. I

130

De longinquo te saluto. " Almost yon persuade me
to be a Christian," said the Roman Proconsul to St.
Paul How many, in these days, are almost persuaded
to enter the Catholic Church ! They stand by the river
" tendentesque manus ripae ulterioris amore." But
there is a Charon, who, " into his boat now receives these,
now those, but keeps others far away from the shore."

" mme hoe, nmc accipit flkjo*
Ast afios knge sdbmotos anefc sremL"

In one way the CompUum is more important than
the Mores Catholici. In it Digby develops, from many
points of view, his idea of the Centre of Unity, the
guardian of what he so often calls " central principles "
of life in all its provinces. Like St. Augustine he
regards the visible Church, with its visible centre, as
the sacrament of unity and charity. It is easy enough
to show that during the very earliest centuries the Sec
of Rome was not the visible centre in the full sense of
later times ; but if evolution in history is accepted, and
if evolution is to be deemed, as Christians must hold,
the operation of the divine will, this is not, as the old
Protestant controversialists supposed, a conclusive argu-
ment against the central living Authority. We need
not deny that the acorn was not the oak in outward
appearance. Those who have, since the schism of the
sixteenth century, adhered to the Church of Rome,
notwithstanding specious reasonings, and notwithstand-
ing internal faults or scandals, have maintained unity
against anarchy, life against dissolution, centripetal
forces against centrifugal. We may hold in principle,
and with all our heart and mind, that the Church centred
in the Chair of St. Peter is the one Catholic Church,
outside which is no safety ; but in practical discussion

"COMPITUM" 131

with non-Catholics, it is, perhaps, wiser to maintain
it as the Central Church without which there never
has been, and never will be, any possibility of real
unity. And without the visible and ruling centre at
Rome there never has been, and never could be, unity
within the Central Church which comprises, as it must
comprise, people of all nations, races, languages, and
degrees of civilization and education. According to
Our Lord, and according to his great follower St. Paul,
the unity of the Christian Society is to be the unity of
a living body. This is something quite different from a
political confederation, or league, of nations or churches.
The Catholic Church, centred at Rome, and diffused
throughout the world, is, to say the least, the realized
part of the Catholic Church as it should be. Other
Christians, organized in national, or racial, or sectarian,
bodies, are, in this sense, the unrealized part of the
Catholic Church. Beyond this outer circle, or, as
diplomats say, " sphere of influence," extend the vast
spiritual regions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Mahom-
medanism, which still have to be brought within the
central Christian civilization, and would be brought
in the sooner if the realization of the whole of the
Catholic Church within the limits of that civilization
were completed, and if altar were no longer raised
against altar throughout the world.

The Compitum, like the Mores, shows the extraordi-
nary range of Digby's knowledge of theology, history
and literature of all ages. His favourite authors at
this period were Homer, the Greek tragedians, Plato,
Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, Livy, St. Augustine chiefly among
the Fathers, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante, St. Bona-
venture, St. Bernard, Victor and Richard de St. Hugo,

132 KENELM HENEY DIGBY

Shakespeare, Walter Scott. But these were only
great stars in his firmament amid a myriad authors,
ancient, mediaeval and modern, and of all the nations.
He had very perfect knowledge of the offices and hymns
of the -Catholic Church, and they sound through all his
writings, as they do, like an undertone, through Dante's
Commedia. " En clara vox redarguit, obscura quaeque
personans." He had -read all the old chronicles and the
older French Memoirs, and was well versed in much
of the literature of his own day. He is an excellent
guide in reading to those who prefer literature somewhat
mellowed by time to the last books from Smith's or
Mudie's, and the solid wisdom of ages to the latest
theory in circulation.

Kenelm Digby was accused by some of his critics
of want of " original thought." If this were true,
which I should not admit, yet is it not an even better
service to have collected the wisdom of the wise and
the beauty of poets, and tales of noble deeds, and to
have arranged them in good order to support and
elucidate a central theme of the highest interest ? I,
for one, would certainly rather have books of this kind
on my shelves than the volumes of a good many " original
thinkers " whose thoughts usually prove to be not so
very original, after all.

CHAPTER VIII

FAMILY LIFE

" OH ! say what is thy children's bower
But Heaven here in a finite hour."

KENELM DIGBY, Ouranogaia.

I

KENELM DIGBY married, in the year 1833, a young
Irish lady, Jane Mary Dillon, who was then only sixteen,
about half his own age. She was the youngest daughter
of Thomas Dillon, of Mount Dillon, and of Eadestown,
in the County of Kildare. Her father was descended
from Edmund Dillon of Ardenegarth, in County West-
meath, who died in 1629, a brother of Theobald, who
was created first Viscount Dillon on 16th March, 1621.
Their early ancestor, Sir Henry de Leon, went to Ireland
with John, Earl of Moreton, afterwards King John,
in 1185. Jane Mary's father, Thomas Dillon, married
a lady of the family of Plunkett, and had three daughters,
but no sons, except one who died young. The eldest
daughter, Helena Maria, married Sir Michael Dillon
BeUew, Bt., of Mount Bellew in Co. Galway. The
second daughter, Mary Anne, married in 1834 the Hon.
Arthur Southwell, and her son Thomas became the
fourth Viscount Southwell, succeeding his uncle, and
one of her daughters married Lord Fitzgerald, P.C., and
another Evelyn Wood, the future Field-Marshal. Jane

133

134 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

Mary, the youngest daughter of Thomas Dillon, married
Kenelm Digby, and brought to him £10,000, her share
in her father's personal property, the family silver, and
the Eadestown estate in County Kildare. She was
her father's favourite child.

Jane Mary used to say that one ought to be proud
of being a Catholic in a country not Catholic. She
came of a purely Catholic and Irish race, and would say,
with a laugh, that she had not one drop of non-Catholic
blood in her veins. During a century and a half,
English, Scottish and Irish Catholic gentlemen were
debarred by the Test Act from all public service, military
or civil, and if they wished to have a commission in
army or navy, or to be in the diplomatic service, had to
migrate to the Catholic kingdoms of France, or Spain, or
Austria. For this reason some of the Dillons, relatives
of Jane Mary, had long been naturalized in France.
One of them was the celebrated Count Edward Dillon,
" le beau Dillon," who was put to death at the head of
his own troops, a victim to the Revolution. In his
early days in Paris, Kenelm Digby knew the old widow
of " Beau " Dillon, a lady who had once been Am-
bassadress of France in Florence. He knew also the
Countess de Rochefort, who came of Dillon blood.

" Aged, but still sprightly, beautiful e'en yet,
And one whom no one ever could forget." *

Jane Mary Dillon herself had been educated in France
and spoke French perfectly.

Kenelm Digby used to go to evening receptions and
balls at Lansdowne House in London, and there first he
met his future wife. One night he was with a party,

1 Temple of Memory, Canto VI.

FAMILY LIFE 135

including the girl, at a theatre. Next morning he
started for Cambridge on a mail coach, but had not gone
ten miles before the desire to see the lovely being
became too strong for him. He slipped off the coach,
leaving his luggage to go on, and walked the ten miles
back to London. The loved one had, he found, departed
to Ramsgate in the Isle of Thanet. Kenelm followed,
with " sudden, unexpected, firm resolve," that which
comes to true lovers of the divine or human like an
inspiration; and there she became his betrothed. In
one of his later poems Kenelm attributes his success
to his writings — the Broadstone or the first volumes of
the Mores. He says of Jane Mary :

" To learning grave she opes the door
And sets great value on its store,
All she deems merit wins her grace
And finds in her a resting place ;
Her not with gold or jewels I
Could erst have moved, so tender, shy,
But what she thought a gracious book
Prevailed on her on me to look,
For her it was a poem bland ;
She yielded me her heart and hand." 1

But probably it was less the " grave learning " than
the wild personal charm of the chivalric Kenelm that
won the heart of the young Irish girl. They were both
of Ireland, she of the early Norman-Irish breed, he of
the later Anglo-Irish.

They were married at Dover " in a kind of granary

which served the few Catholics at that time for Chapel."

' The children of the place," Kenelm Digby wrote long

after, " might have sung before her, with Jasmin, while

1 Chapd of St. John, p. 25.

136 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

throwing a few flowers or green leaves upon the pave-
ment,

' Les chemins devraient fleurir,

Tant belle epouse va sortir ;

Devraient fleurir, devraient grener,

Tant belle epouse va passer.' "

They drove on their wedding day about twenty miles,
over the high chalk downs and then across the marsh
levels, and up the chalk again, to Ramsgate.

Jane Mary was beautiful and charming, natural,
loving, deeply religious, penetrated through and through
by the spirit of the Catholic faith. Digby inserted in
the fourth chapter of the first volume, published in
1851, of his book named Compitum, the following
" mere sketch by a rude hand " of his wife, without
naming her :

" When she hears of the death of any one whom she
has ever known, however slightly, and who she thinks
has not left any pious friends, she sends to the nearest
church to have mass said for his soul. When she hears
of any one being sick, besides sending all temporal
assistance, she has masses offered for his recovery.
The devoted suppliant of blessed Mary, to one who
spoke before her of exceeding the due limits, she replied,
with an earnestness that might have raised a blush
for having uttered such suspicions, ' It is always in
the name of Jesus that we ask for everything ; but we
implore the intercession of his blessed mother.' Her
views of all events are supernatural ; and therefore
sometimes, while the weak and worldly lament, she
seems to triumph, though indeed the tears that overflow
her eyes prove that the human affections still live within
her heart. Her scrupulous love of truth and justice
appears in the least things, as well as when the conse-
quences would demand from her an immense sacrifice.
Her zeal for God's glory renders the most timid the most

FAMILY LIFE 137

courageous of hearts. The very officials of great
temples instinctively obey her directions when as a
stranger she denounces an abuse. Of the utmost
delicacy of constitution, she endures with cheerfulness
whatever can occur to cause displeasure. * It does not
disturb me, I am no fine lady ' is her smiling answer to
those who would remove it. Still young, she has
conquered both the world and herself, rendering it
impossible to suppose that God would ever have placed
so much virtue in a juvenile heart, if eternal felicity
was not prepared in another life for those who resemble
her. Not from the day when on this earth I first beheld
her charms have I ceased to follow her with an interior
and applausive song."

The following much earlier passage also, in the volume
of Mores Catholici published in 1837, tells of Jane
Mary:

" One I have known, who not from the day when
on this earth I first beheld her charms, has ever ceased
with inward song adoring to converse with Christ, his
blessed mother, and the saints. 0 thou pure and loving
soul, what will it be after so many prayers, so many
genuflexions, so many stolen vigils in the stilly night,
so many communions prepared for with all thy poor
strength, so many kisses bestowed upon the crucifix
and holy relics ever next thy bosom, so many Aves
muttered on the beads, so many tears and prostrations
while singing ' Tantum ergo ' and ' 0 Salutaris Hostia '
at the benediction of each closing day, which to thee
even in youth was joy, mirth, rapture, everything,—
what will it be, I say, after all this life of expectation
and desire infinite, of alternate joy and sorrow, of light
and darkness passing through the heart, to behold thy
God, where days end not, where blessed moments change
not, where the vision of glory fades not through eternal
years ? 0 spirit, born for joy, who, in the rays of life

138 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

angelic, dost already taste that sweetness, what will be
thy radiance then ? And where will be the poor heart
dwelling within this dost that can now only wonder at

thy beauty?"1

This was written when Jane Mary was hardly twenty,
although she had already been a wife for three or four
years, and a mother. After her death in 1860, Kenelm
Digby consecrated to her portrait a whole volume, the
really beautiful though forgotten book entitled, The
Chapel of St. John, or A Life of Faith in the Nineteenth
Century. Neither in this book does he ever mention her
marriage surname, nor ever say that the writer is her
husband, but the book records every shade of her manner
of life, tastes, actions, and ways" of looking at things.
No picture of a wife so complete and minute has ever,
I think, been drawn by a husband, nor one so complete
of a true Catholic woman, living in the world. The
present memoir is intended chiefly to direct the attention
of those who do not already know them to the writings
of Kenelm Digby ; and, with The Chapel of St. John in
existence, it would be foolish to attempt to draw in
these pages a new portrait of the adorable soul flowing
over with love and bonte and generosity, fed, as it were,
from within by streams of Paradise, and diffusing them
through her surrounding world.

The mother of Jane Mary, the widow Marcella Dillon,
lived with the Digbys until she died, the same year as
her daughter, in 1860 ; and as neither Kenelm nor his
wife possessed the smallest business capacity, the
practical Marc€lla was of much service to them in
managing their worldly affairs. Digby says of her
in The Chapel of St. John :

1 Mont Ca&oliei, voL viiL p. 570.

FAMILY LIFE 139

" She was a lady of most confirmed honour, of an
unmatchable spirit, and determinate in all virtuous
resolutions ; yet shrinking from the employment of an
influence which attached itself irresistibly to her own
merit, she would be just against herself, and fearful of
using what another would long to use without deserv-
ing to possess it. ... A poet paints to the life this
venerable lady when he says :

' Hers was

A mounting spirit, one that entertained
Scorn of base action, deed dishonourable,
Or aught unseemly.

Wise she was

And wondrous skilled in genealogies,
And could in apt and voluble terms discourse
Of births, of titles, and alliances ;
Of marriages, and inter-niarriages ;
Relationship remote, or near of kin ;
But these are not her praises, and I wrong
Her honoured memory, recording" chiefly
Things light or trivial. Better 'twere to tell
How with a nobler zeal, and warmer love,
She served her heavenly Master. ' '

But the affairs and alliances of families are not really
by any means " things light or trivial," they are of the
essence of life ; nor is the knowledge of them a science
to be disdained. We do not, perhaps, nowadays, give
enough credit to the part which feelings of pride, or
interest, in race have played in maintaining a standard
of energy and duty and honour. Old ladies should
be the priestesses who preserve the records of this
religion of the family, and keep it alive in the hearts
and minds of the young. Patriotism begins at home, and
one chief motive which makes men strive to serve their
country is the desire to raise and adorn their family name.

Kenelm Digby's eldest son was born in 1835, and,

140 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

after that, came other children. Seven, in all, were
born before 1849. These years were spent partly in
a house in the Rue de Lorraine at St. Germain near
Paris, partly in various apartments in Paris, and partly
in different places in England, in summer-time and
autumn ; such as Clifton, Bath (at 19 the Circus),
or Tunbridge Wells, or near the New Forest. Few
married people, except soldiers or Anglo-Indians, have
lived in so many different houses as the Digbys, until
they settled down in Kensington in 1857.

In 1842 a thing happened which might easily have
brought the family to an end altogether. They were
then living in a house called Springfield House in " the
Paragon," in the outskirts of Southampton. The
Oxford Movement had now begun to bring a few con-
verts to Rome, and one of these early ones was the Rev.
Mr. Sibthorpe, a Fellow of Magdalen College, a disciple of
Newman. He was received into the Church in October,
1841. This step was less frequent than it became
soon afterwards, and Mr. Sibthorpe was viewed with
indignation by Protestants. The new convert arrived
at Springfield House on a visit to the Digbys, on
Saturday, 1st January, 1842. On Sunday a sermon
was preached in a local dissenting chapel in which the
congregation were told that Mr. Sibthorpe " deserved
to be burned." On Monday afternoon Mr. Sibthorpe
left. Next morning at 2 A.M. the house was found
to be on fire ; the family were fortunate to escape
with their lives, and everything in the building
was destroyed, including volumes of manuscript notes
by Kenelm Digby. Affidavits made at the time show
pretty conclusively that the fire was not accidental but
malicious. Suspicious persons had been seen the

FAMILY LIFE 141

evening before prowling about the place, and the house
had evidently been entered through a ground-floor
window and fired. And the worst of it was that Mr.
Sibthorpe after all was not worth the sacrifice, for he
was a weak character, and presently reverted to
Anglicanism.

II

The Kevolution of 1848 ended Digby's abiding in
Paris, though to the close of his life he made frequent
visits to that city.

" One beautiful summer day," he says in Compitum,1
" the stranger " (Digby) " was serving as a guide to
two venerable priests and an illustrious friend, long
versed in diplomatic life, through the forest of St.
Germain. He was looking at the stately trees and the
beauteous flowers, and inviting his companions at every
step to admire their grandeur and their loveliness. The
visitors, for they had only just arrived from the capital,
were holding sad, foreboding talk on the probability
of fresh political disturbances and new woes prepared
for their unhappy country. ' But look,' said the
stranger, deeming their apprehensions at least exagge-
rated, ' look at the heights beyond this forest. See the
wooded uplands of Marly, and the vast chestnut trees
on Montaigu.' Insensible to the invitation, they gazed
mournfully at those solemn groves. He wondered at
their obduracy, but lo ! in a few months the horrors
of revolution burst, not only upon that devoted land, but
upon nearly the whole of Europe."

In June, 1848, Kenelm Digby once more heard the
voice of cannon in Paris. His last son, John Gerald,

1 VoL v. p. 306.

142 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

had just been born, and doctors advised that in such
dangerous and menacing times it would be best, for
his wife's sake, to leave Paris. They packed up
hastily and drove away, effacing the Digby arms, which
contained the reactionary fleur de lys, upon their
carriage, to escape the wrath of the mob, and found,
as Digby says, in England the true Liberty, Equality
and Fraternity for the idea of which blood was being
vainly shed in Paris.1

The Digbys passed two or three years after 1848
first at Clifton and then at Tunbridge Wells, and then
in 1851 took a house at Ramsgate, where they lived until
the end of 1856. It was Number 2 Royal Crescent,
at the western end of Ramsgate, a crescent of early-
Victorian houses, with a large and cheerful common
garden in front, good to pace in after breakfast, with a
cigar, in the sun and the finest air in England. Beyond
the garden fence is a broad paved parade, at the edge of
a steep chalk cliff, going down straight as a wall to the
sea. From here is a noble view over wide distances of
sea and land. At the western end of Royal Crescent
stands the beautiful Catholic church which was built
by Pugin, who lies there buried, at his own expense.
It had been begun in 1847, and was opened for worship
in 1851. It is not a large, but a nobly massive, church,
and has been called " Pugin's gem." He intended it
to be a parish church, but when the Benedictine com-
munity, trained for the purpose at - Subiaco, came in
1856 to Ramsgate, and founded the now adjoining
monastery of St. Augustine, the church was attached
to it.

Kenelm Digby loved this Kentish region, in which*

1 Temple of Memory, Canto VII.

FAMILY LIFE 14a

near twenty years earlier, he had begun his happy married
life. He has left a beautiful description of the scenery
in his book, the Chapel of St. John. The passage is
long, written in his leisurely style, which some, possibly,
may find reposeful in these days of impressionist and
staccato writing; and as the book is scarce and not
easily obtained, some readers, especially those who know
East Kent, may be grateful if I quote it here. Digby
says, then :

" Passing down the Thames, or crossing the land in
a more southerly direction, we come to that region of
England which Tacitus describes as being in its climate,
and even in the manner of its inhabitants, more similar
than any other of its districts to those of France. One
breathes, certainly, along its white cliffs, which in the
shades of evening assume a dusky hue, a more elastic
air ; the sky is generally clearer, and you perceive as
much of that magic splendour of the sun as our northern
latitudes can ever enjoy. It is not indeed that we can
hope to be presented with such a spectacle as is offered
by the enchanted coast of Chiaja, or by tKe shores of
the island of Capri, or even by those of our own Devon-
shire, but that in reality there is no part of the British
Islands where the climate so nearly resembles that of
the Continent. Nowhere is there more effulgence of
that

TTCLVTUIV
. AiOqp KQIVOV <pdo$ etA/crcrwy.1

And as, after all the deficiencies of the general scenery,
there is ever before your eyes the blue sea and an un-
obstructed horizon, with a sky that is most frequently
clear and cloudless, there is enough to refresh and
satisfy those who from time to time experience a want

1 " Pure essential air, the common light of all circling things." Aeschylus
in Prometheus Vinctus. The Greek word KWr/p needs adjectives to giv&
its meaning in English.

144 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

to soliloquize a little while gazing, as we say, on the
face of nature. Besides there are certain indentures
of the coast which present the appearance of bays, that
are by no means without picturesque beauty. Then
you have also, intersected by long dykes and almost
blending with the sands, vast marshy tracts, over which
herds of cattle wander, forming a landscape full of
attraction for those who have a taste for Cuyp scenery,
and not less for those who in a boyish way are enamoured
of the brooks and rushes and the green lowlands, and
are fond of spending hours thus with a dog or two and
some choice companion amidst the calm of rural solitude,
while hearing, as they saunter along, what the old
poet calls

TOfTtjW T€ KV/J.aT(t)V

'AwjpiO/mov /yeXacr/xa.1

" Then from plains that gently rise above these salt-
marshes the amplest range of prospect may be enjoyed—
low brown or purple tracts, where a winding river
stagnates, are stretched out westward; beneath, right
at the cliff's southern base, you have the ocean breaking
audibly, not far distant from the Goodwins ; and south
of them, far away in pale-tinted regions, forming a
long ridge, that some might take for a perishable cloud,
you behold the coast of France, the cultivated fields
that streak its tawny summits, its churches, and even
its golden image of the Virgin shining from a dome,
being at all times discernible, while the revolving lights,
after sunset, cast a fitful gleam upon the dark waters
from its desert capes. Again, looking northward, you
have the open champaign country, which has also a
certain beauty of its own, constituting what a great
author 2 distinguishes as that of field-lands, which,
though capable only of an inferior and material art,
and apt to lose its spirituality, present, however, the

1 " Innumerable laughter of ocean waves." Aeschylus, Prometheus
Vinctus.

2 Ruskin.

FAMILY LIFE 145

advantage of having sight of the whole sky, and of the
continued play and change of sun and cloud, and also
of greater liberty, being like the moss-lands, at least
at certain seasons, the freest ground in all the world,
while commanding all the horizon's space of changeful
light. On a spring morning the voice of waters must
here be softened down into a vernal tone ; a spirit
of desire and enjoyment, with hopes and wishes from all
living things, must seem to pervade the entire region.
Beast and bird, the lamb, the shepherd's dog, the
linnet and the lark, must appear to be all comply-
ing with their Creator's invitation to rejoice and be
happy.

" Some, who in later months of the fine season chance
to walk alone beneath these cliffs at sunrise, or above
them with this sauntering crowd, that, like one family,
is listening to music under the rising moon, are not
left without memories of affections old and true. At
all hours, inland for many a mile, the elm-grove murmurs
with a sea-like sound, though still the habitual sight
of fields with rural works is cheerful. Far towards the
north-western limits of your view, lies an ascending
country, dappled over with shadows flung from many
a summer cloud ; those many spots lie in long streaks
determined and unmoved, with steady beams of sunshine
interposed, pleasant to him who on the soft cool moss
extends his wearied limbs.

" Now is the day declining, and the faint evening
breeze plays on the meadow. Why is there not a
Claude here to see and paint these groves and these
long undulating tracts which mount up to purple eleva-
tions, with the zig-zag road that breaks the uniformity
of tone, and leads to these mills that stand like towers
for a sea-mark ? How would an artist have delighted
in this foreground too, of rich entangled weeds, with
its goats and sheep, and the rough dogs that watch
them ! Then, sufficient in itself to form a picture,
you come ever and anon to some old broken bridge

146 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

across a rivulet, seeming to be half rock, half brick,
here covered with plaster, there lined with weeds and
beautifully interwoven plants ; beyond it are the fields,
now undistinguishable, as they are fast darkening in
the twilight, while the horizon is coloured with the lovely
hues of sunset, diffused higher up amidst some rosy
clouds, fringed with gold, thinly floating motionless
in an azure so calm and profound, that you can hardly
imagine its being anything else but heaven.

"So, without anything that an untrained eye would
deem in the least remarkable, our travellers find them-
selves, they know not how, soothed and satisfied — a
few tufts of pine or elm, the blue or warm radiance of
a lake-like bay, a meadow or a corn-field, the edge of a
cliff, and the distant shores that mingle with the clouds-
such is the nature that contents them.

" Disdained by some, as being thronged in summer
with a motley crowd of Shakspeare's ' Sunday citizens/
the whole scenery of the district recommends itself to
those who hold with a great authority in matters of art,
that ' all true landscape, whether simple or exalted,
depends primarily for its interest on connexion with
humanity, or with spiritual power/ 1 and that even
' fragrant tissues of flowers, and golden circlets of clouds,
are only fair when they meet the fondness of human
thoughts, and glorify human visions of heaven.'

" Nor is the interest attached to historical recollections
wanting to this region ; for on one of these upper solitary
plains the Anglo-Saxons had their place of solemn burial.
Here first Caesar saw Britain, and here Augustine landed
to bring light and immortality."

This is a beautiful and true description of scenery
which moved Hasted, the eighteenth-century historian
of Kent, to more prosaically expressed enthusiasm.
He says of the superb view from the chalk down above

1 Ruskin, Modern Painters.

FAMILY LIFE 147

Minster over all this region, the most interesting view in
England :

" From this place may be seen not only this island
[of Thanet] and the several churches in it ; but there
is a view at a distance of the two spires of Reculver,
the island of Sheppey, the Nore, the mouth of the river
Thames, the coast of Essex, the Swale and the British
Channel ; the cliffs of Calais and the kingdom of France ;
the Downs and the town of Deal, the bay and town of
Sandwich, the fine champion country of East Kent, the
spires of Woodnesborough and Ash, the ruins of Rich-
borough Castle, the beautiful green levels of Minster,
Ash, etc., with the river Stour winding between them,
the fine and stately tower of the cathedral of Canterbury,
and a compass of hills of more than one hundred miles
in extent, which terminate the sight."

So that, when you are on the hill above Minster in
Thanet, you know where you are, locally and historically.
But it seems to me that this view is now less clear than
when Kenelm Digby saw it, or when I myself saw it
as a boy. One seems less often to see the coast of
France with that wondrous distinctness. This may be
due to the increased smoke emitted by the far more
numerous steamships in the Channel and, in some
winds, to the coal-mines of the Pas de Calais. And
now East Kent, once so purely rural, except for its
fringe of cheerful and not too large sea-side towns,
is threatened by its own coal-mining and consequent
developments, and places once sweetly untouched, like
Sandwich and Ebbsfleet and old Reculver, are in
danger of being destroyed by sea-side villa building.
The delicious low shell-strewn shore from Sandwich
to Pegwell Bay is no longer quiet and unfrequented,
and behind it during the War has arisen an unnatural

148 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

kind of town, erected by Government. It is a pity,
but apparently the progress of " Civilization " cannot
be arrested. Descendants may be sadly glad that
Kenelm Digby knew this region in its more Arcadian
days, and has left in writing so lovely an impression.
Those who visit this land fifty years hence, when it may
have become a black industrial country covered with
chimneys and slag heaps and mining and smelting
villages, may like to have this description of it when it
was still one of the most peaceful, untouched, and rural
parts of England.

Ill

These years, from 1848 to 1856, spent in English rural
places, especially those five, until the last, at Ramsgate,
in the fine, cheerful-making air of East Kent, were,
surely, the happiest in Kenelm Digby's life. He was
now in the first half of his sixth decade, a season corre-
sponding to the bright and reposeful and fruitful month
of September in the English year. There is less gaiety
than in spring, but also more certain warmth and no
really bitter winds. Then his family was now in its
fullest and most perfect bloom, almost intact and all
together. Every family has its most perfect moment.
The Digbys had lost one child, Frances Mary Venetia,
who died at eighteen months old, but they brought six
to Ramsgate. Their names were in this order of birth :
Thomas, Marcella, Kenelm, Mary Anne Letitia, John
Gerald, and Mary, boys and girls alternating so as to
form a most pleasing garland. Kenelm Digby says
much of this family in his book of 1858, called The
Children's Bower, or What you like. The family were the
more united and homogeneous because none of them

FAMILY LIFE 149

had been sent away to boarding-schools or convents ;
they had all been educated at home by tutors and
French governesses. They had had the education
given by a cultivated home, and, in the case of the elder
ones, by intimate touch with some good French families
and priests, and that which is given by living in more
than one beautiful or interesting place. Digby says :

" The imagination of these children and youths
had been nourished by places rendered beautiful both
by nature and by art. Moderately, not greatly, favoured
in this respect, they had not seen Italy, they had not
seen even a mountain. From their window was not
beheld, as from that of Titian's house at Venice, the
chain of the Tyrolese Alps, where every dawn that
reddened the towers of Murano lighted also a line of
pyramidal fires along that colossal ridge; but they
were familiar with such scenes as delight Ruskin —
the beautiful grove of aspen poplars, the fountain and
the meadow — as meet the eye of the traveller every
instant on the much-despised lines of road through
lowland France, scenes to them, as to himself, quite
exquisite in the various grouping and grace of their
poplar avenues, casting sweet tremulous shadows over
their level fields and labyrinthine streams. On the
continent they had seen what he ascribes to its scenery,
comprising works of human art, the links unbroken
between the past and present, the building as at St.
Germain des Pres and Calais tower of the eighth or
tenth century standing in the open street, the children
playing round it, no one wondering at it, or thinking
of it as separate and of another time, the ancient world,
a real thing and one with the new, being all continuous.
Then they had seen smiling plains, solemn churches, the
wood of Boulogne when it was wild and solitary, the
forest of St. Germain, Marly and Montague, where
they were all ' assueti silvis.' Thomas, mounted on his

150 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

fiery little charger, knew every path and pass of those
woods extending to Versailles, as well as if he had been
one of those king's pages that the ancient friends of his
family had been in their youth, and whose adventures
they used to describe to him so often that he might
almost have thought that he had lived himself in those
times. Then the whole party knew later Clifton with
its rocks and downs, then the upland wilderness of
Tunbridge Wells, lastly the Sandwich marshes, so
frequented by the strange water-fowl that Bewicke
copied, and the adjacent harbour with the sea-roads
of that town1 which from the cliffs, whose sides are
yearly wasted by the deep, St. Augustin's grey massive
tower dominates ; town of midsummer mirth, if you
will, town of children and of those who in their cheerful-
ness resemble them, as if each thought himself again a
child, but town of humanity, with all the virtues which
that word implies, sorrow for the dead being one here
by me most gratefully remembered, town not deserving,
like that Italian city, the epithet Superb ; not proud,
not ambitious, like so many others where arrogance
and grandeur keep their vain, melancholy state ; but
only an unpretending sunny place of simple and, liter-
ally, childlike recreation for the common inhabitants
of London, aspiring, like one family, after nought but
air and mirth, health and freedom, gathering shells
on summer eve, ladling sand, and breasting the ocean
wave." 2

The eldest boy, Thomas, usually called Tom, had
reached the age of twenty-one in 1856, the last of these
happy Ramsgate years, and had just received a com-
mission in the army. He was the young hero of the
family, " tall, gay, gallant, the pride of all these young
hearts, though himself the humblest of the humble ;
the lover of horses and boats, and nets and guns, the

1 Eamsgate. 2 Children's Bower, ch. v. p. 141.

FAMILY LIFE 151

gentleman, as common persons that know him say,
* every inch of him.' The gay songster, and the skilled
on the sweet silver cornet. The inspirer of joy wherever
he enters."

Next came Marcella :

' We must try to imagine dignity and grace combined
in a tall girl, with a mind well-stored, like those we
read about in medieval histories, as skilled in many
tongues, and able to discourse with scholars in their
own Latin ; possessing a deep heart of nature's moods
of grandeur and solemnity, and light and shade

' With each anxious hope subdued,
By maiden's gentle fortitude
Each grief, through meekness, settling into rest.'

Words which I picked up from a verse which I happily
did not cast away, though little suspecting that I should
live to have need of them, when we were to see her one
day like sorrow's monument." 1

After Marcella came Kenelm, " grave and courageous,
serious and firm, very steady," and after Kenelm came
Mary Letitia, " a gentle tall one, a creature flowing with
what might appropriately be termed the ' oil of glad-
ness,' oleum laetitiae, a sensitive creature, whose little
girlish fears it is delightful to behold, a child of nature,
with a heart inspired with the love of all beautiful, all
glorious, all quiet, or impassioned things."

Then came John Gerald, who was eight years old
in 1856, " the sweetest companion that ever man
bred his hopes out of, so loving and so joyous that
none need dread the depth of his dark meditative eye."
He was one of those youngest children, whom one some-
times sees, in an affectionate family, whose love and

1 Children's Bower, vol. i. p. 44.

152 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

gaiety seem to be brought out in an uncommon degree
under the sun of so much concentrated and united
affection. The " visible angel of the house " his father
calls him.

Lastly came Mary, the only one of this fair ring of
children who still lives on this earth. :' How vivid,
how delicate her glee!" says her father. "How arch,
how frolicsome ! No living man need fear the worst
of fortune's malice, were she at his side, wanting only a
wand to be a fairy."

So this happy group lived these few years at Ramsgate,
riding and hunting, boating, fishing and swimming,
rambling over the cliffs, sands, and marsh-levels, studying
and reading and singing, frequenting mass and vespers
and benediction at the beautiful new church of St.
Augustine.

Looking back, when he was half-way between seventy
and eighty, upon this delightful time, Kenelm Digby
wrote in his poem Ouranogaia, or Heaven on earth :

" Oh ! say what is thy children's bower
But Heaven here in a finite hour ?
For me to think of little John
On earth, then Heaven with it is one.
Letitia, Mary, Thomas, me,1
Did spread around felicity ;
Neither was tall Marcella found
A flower foreign to such ground ;
Nor yet Kenulmus, ever grave,
And less inclined to romp and rave,
But all enjoyed, and did impart
Of these bless'd fields not small a part."

But now came the first of the great blows which were
to break up the happy circle. Little John Gerald, in

1 A Saturday Reviewer was very severe upon this bold inversion, and
indeed it does need apology.

FAMILY LIFE 153

his ninth year, was caught by a malignant fever, and
died eight days later, on the 25th June, 1856.

A few Sundays earlier his father had looked at him
during Benediction in the Abbey Church. He beheld
him "with his little head bowed down, and forehead rest-
ing on the rail, so innocently and so devoutly praying "
that his father turned away his eyes, as if they wer&
" not worthy to sustain the vision of such pure inno-
cence." Little John seemed to have a presentiment.
He used to talk of being in heaven first, and seeing his
elders come there after him.

" There was a song he used latterly to sing, laughing r
every day at the dining-room door, where he waited
to see pass one whom he greatly loved. This was the
burden of it :

' Oh Maunie,

When I am dead and buried,
Cry no more for me.'

" Every Sunday he used to walk with Anne, one of
the domestics. Shortly before he sickened he bought
for her a broach set with forget-me-nots. ' Oh,
how pretty ! ' she exclaimed. He replied, * You will
soon have a handsomer one.' Three weeks after, she
received a valuable gold broach filled with the dead
boy's hair. The last present that he gave his good
young governess was a little print of his own choosing,
representing a Trappist digging a grave, with this
inscription, ' To-day for me, to-morrow for thee.' " . . ..

The last day that the child heard mass, his father
turned round to look at him in his corner, and

" almost shuddered, so struck was he with the boy's coun-
tenance. There was something in it more than gravity,
and yet it was so sweet." ... " The last time that little

154 KENELM HENKY DIGBY

John ever went to take a drive, lie sat on the coach-box
as usual. It was the day before he sickened. It was
late in June, the carriage was open. ' Why are you so
silent, John ? ' asked his mother, knowing how he used
always before to like chatting with the coachman.
John replied not, only smiled. ' He is full of thought,'
said the driver, turning round and laughing. ' Why,
mamma,' said John, ' it is only that I have nothing to
say.' '

Kenelm Digby adds :

" Only to think of that little sweet soul left to meet
death alone. Snatched from life, from mother, sisters,
brothers, and all the charms of existence. He is driving
out now through the dear scenes he loves, but next
week he will have to travel alone beyond the stars
into eternity. So God seems to communicate to him a
sense of what he is about to witness. To-day he sees
what he doats upon, the horses, and the fields, and the
waving corn, but he heeds them not. He sits by the
friendly coachman, with whom he loved to chatter, but
speaks not. He sits before his mother, with looking at
whom he could never he satiated, but he turns not a
joyous face, as he was wont, to nod at her ; he is
silent. ' He is full of thought,' said the old coachman,
laughing."

Kenelm Digby tells in the Children's Bower in moving
words the last days and the end.1 An hour after that,
late at night, the poor father saw his two remaining
sons

" seated in silence on the balcony of the next room.
The casement stands open. 'Tis between twelve and
one. The moon rises slowly over the sea. Those boys
are watching it ; not a word is uttered ; only the distant
wave is heard. 0 God, can he [the father] ever live

1 Children's Bower, chap. v.

FAMILY LIFE 155

to forget that silence and that spectacle. ' A breath
from the region of spirits seemed to float in the air of
night.' Where now is his little companion ? The
brothers sat in silence gazing on it — one of them little
aware that he was himself so soon to be initiated in
the same mysteries of eternity. More than half the
darkness now is past. Night will soon fly before the
beam when poured on the hill. The young day will
return, but John returns no more. It was an hour to
look inward.

' While thoughts on thoughts, a countless throng,
Eushed, chasing countless thoughts along.' "

A few days later the body of little John was buried
at Hales Place, in St. Stephen's, close to Canterbury,
in the vault of the old Catholic and Kentish family of
the Hales. The funeral came by road some seventeen
miles from Eamsgate. Kenelm Digby thus describes
the tender-sad scene in his impersonal way :

" On a fine day, amidst all the triumph of the summer's
youth, in a southern county of England, some strangers
are passing outside the wall of a well- wooded park. The
nightingale, the cuckoo, and the linnet, have long opened
the beautiful season in these groves ; the lark is singing
overhead ; only the heat at this hour suspends the full
concert. It is Wednesday, the 2nd of July, 1856. But,
lo, something must have happened lately in the neigh-
bourhood not in visible accordance with this smiling
serenity of nature. Many young men and other persons
are standing silently in groups under the shade, collected
round the ivy-bound gates of a long plane-tree avenue
which leads to a great house, which is the well-known
seat of an old historic family. A priest clad in his
vestments, and many acolytes and children are waiting
about the lodge, ready, it would seem, to do all rites
that appertain to a burial. Several soldiers too are

156 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

straying about, while others of their company are
expressing regret that they can wait no longer, as duty
calls them elsewhere. The strangers stop and join the
groups, as if they had no other occupation but to observe.
At length, about two o'clock, between the dusky treesr
and along the road through the open green, comes gliding
on serene and slow, soft and silent as a midsummer's
day dream, a funeral procession.

" There is a hearse with four tired horses and white
trophies, preceded by tall bending vapoury plumes
that wave their swan-like purity over the summer corn.
There are two coaches, and all the horses seem to have
come from far. The broad gate swings on its hinges.
Some mourners alight. If there was a diviner of the
future to whisper in your ear, you would take especial
notice of that tall and handsome youth, wearing over
his deep black a white scarf. As it is, they who know
him remark his graceful, noble 'air, and think that it
never struck them more forcibly than at this moment.
You would say now how well he looks. You do not
yet see death about him. . . . Then from the second
carriage some women descend, all clad as maidens in
their silvery livery, as if with mirth in funeral, and dirge
in marriage, in equal scale weighing delight and dole.
The coffin, of an ivory hue, as if white to figure purityr
is then taken out, and borne on men's shoulders. The
priest receives it processionally, and all move on, singing
as they walk the funeral chant appropriated for those
peace-parted souls who died in their innocence. The
psalm, ' Praise the Lord, ye children,' is entoned with
a dear voice ; and to that music the little train moves,
up the avenue.

' How like a gentle stream shaded with night
And gliding softly, with our windy sighs,
Moves the whole frame of this solemnity ! '

The view on both sides of the leafy aisle, which is fra-
grant with the perfume of a thousand flowers, that grow

FAMILY LIFE 157

within an open garden on one side of it, is smiling as
if in spite of death. The groves at least seem happy.

Non canimus surdis ; respondent omnia silvae.1

And, in fact, those who follow the train said later, that,
after a long journey along scorching roads, and across
vast, open, shadeless plains, and, latterly, through the
streets of an adjacent city filled with strange faces,
where, though all respected, no one recognized as his
own the symbols of their ancient faith, on coming to
this spot, where for ages it had reigned uninterruptedly,
and where so many friends were waiting for them with
their hymns, encompassed by the charms of nature, that
seemed to join in with its own responsive voice, they
felt as if they had reached the gate of that Paradise
which was to receive the little one.

" But let us mark all as if we were unconcerned
spectators. They move on. Observe their order. First
glides the processional Cross, with its attendant acolytes
carrying lighted tapers in their hands. Then

' Village girls in robes of snow
Follow, weeping as they go.'

The song is then changed to Our Lady's litany ; the
clergy preceding the body close the procession, which is
like the subject of it, simple, — acolytes and schoolboys,
a few women mourners in white, and thoughtful-looking
soldiers compose the chief part of the train, but the
avenue is lined on each side with people that in the
burning sun walk with forgetful sadness. Arrived at
the Chapel which adjoins the house, the coffin is laid
down in front of the altar. An aged priest who had
come with it places on it wreaths of flowers, while round
it are arranged the customary lights. Then the choir
sings ' Praise ye the Lord from the heavens,' and the
organ, causing long pent up tears to burst forth, accom-
panies the chant. After this little office the procession

1 " Not to the deaf we sing ; the woods make answer to all things."
Virgil, Ed: 10.

158 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

is formed towards a monumental cave of death behind
the altar. Here the coffin is sprinkled with holy water,
and the cold vault fumed with incense. The poor
remains are then deposited in their sacred resting-place,
the priest taking off his own sacerdotal girdle, to offer
it to those who let it glide down, as if he thought nothing
too precious to use on such an occasion. The priest
and his attendants then return to the altar, singing the
Canticle of the Three Children, ' All ye works of the
Lord, bless ye the Lord,' and then, turning to the people,
he speaks a few simple words, which for aught a stranger
knew, might or might not be commonplace, while he
seems to struggle with himself, as he looks at some
before him, saying, ' Noli flere, noli flere, melior est dies
mortis quern dies nativitatis.' " *

The writer gives some account of this little sermon,
how the priest spoke of the goodness of the child,
" that really heaven seemed about him, and yet that
he had all the innocent graces of common youth,
so that wherever he entered joy seemed to come in
with him."

The groups melted away down the avenue, but some
few lingered by the vault to take a last farewell, and
scatter flowers.

Thus Kenelm Digby has illuminated in the darkness
of the past this sad-sweet pageant of sorrow over sixty
years ago. It is strange that a beautiful description
of another funeral, twenty-nine years later, at the end
of April this time, coming up the same avenue to the
same chapel, remains in print, in the Letters of Mary
Sibylla Holland, who was born the same year as Marcella
Digby, and died a year earlier than her.2 It was that

1 " Weep not, weep not ; better is the day of death than the day of
birth."

2 At page 102 of 3rd edition, published by Edward Arnold, 1907.

FAMILY LIFE 15&

of Mary Hales, the last of that old Catholic and Kentish
family, whose body was brought, also along the road
from Thanet and through Canterbury, from her retreat
at Sarre Court, to be buried with those of her ancestors.
Probably, as a girl of about twenty, Mary Hales saw
that child's funeral in 1856. In the Ramsgate days
the two elder of the Digby children, Tom and Marcella,
used sometimes to come over and spend a night
or two at Hales Place. That house became in the
'eighties a College of the Jesuits, not allowed to have
schools in France, and it now is a seminary of French
Jesuits. From the seventeenth century, at least, the
sacrifice of the Mass has there been continuously
offered.

No one without experience knows what these heart-
rending pains are. Happier those parents or sisters,
whose dear young ones die suddenly on a distant field
of battle, than those who see them die before their eyes.

" Impositique rogis juvenes ante ora parentum."

Three months later the Digbys, still at Ramsgate,
received a new blow so crushing that they needed all
the wonderful consolations of the Catholic religion.
Their eldest son, the bright and manly Tom, died also.
Like his little brother he seemed to have some presenti-
ment. A few weeks before he sickened he said to a
friend, " I like that black horse of mine. I wish he
might be led after my body at my funeral." The last
day that he hunted he came home early. He was
thoughtful and grave. His bay mare, he said, refused
to take leaps such as she had never before refused.
Only once more he went out on horseback with his
father (who also, after this, rode no more), and this time

160 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

came back lamenting that he had lost from his neck a
locket containing little John's hair, and this went on
troubling him. The last time he was ever out of doors,
returning home, apparently in usual health, he met a
friend who asked him where he was going. He replied,
" I am going home to have my last sickness." He came
home chilly and unwell, and early next morning desired
to see the priest, who came and gave communion. Tom,
also, had been seized by a malignant fever, and in nine
days he died. " I know I am dying. I am quite
happy," were among his last words.

"It is Sunday the 12th October. Slowly had that
day passed in bitterness. The bell of the neighbouring
church of St. Augustine now tolled for vespers. He
grasped the habit of the young Benedictine who knelt
by his side, and implored him not to leave him. There
was another priest in the church to say them, and he
did not leave him. Moreover to the last, too, he saw
round him female heads that expressed * sorrow, dignity,
and faith in God.' In fine, recovering composure
somewhat before the setting of the sun, he took his last
leave of this fading light, and with his soul sought for
beams eternal. Gently he breathed, and without a
sigh expired, his face immediately assuming for a short
interval a look of boyish beauty, which had distinguished
his earlier years. . . .

" So the gay young English sportsman, the sweet,
clean, noble gentleman, loved by all classes through an
entire county, the bold horseman, the joyous songster,
the friend so noted for his generous, delicate, open, and,
in the old English sense of the word, merry heart, the
familiar comrade of the local youth, the desired at every
ball-room — after seeing twenty sweet summers died like
3, Bayard, like the Cid. . . ." 1

1 Children's Bower, vol. ii. p. 288.

FAMILY LIFE 161

Thomas Digby was buried close to the north wall of
the Church of St. Augustine on the spot where his parents
had already resolved to build an outside Chapel of
St. John, and thither to bring back from Hales Place,
as they afterwards did, the body of their little John
Gerald.

CHAPTER IX

FAMILY LIFE— Continued

" Do what you will, and think what you will, but know this, and
make up your mind to it, that from your cradle to your grave you
move amidst a vast system of grief, where, if you yourself are spared,
grief is mistress, making others pay that tribute which she disdains
to accept from you. . . . Whatever be the reason for this being
written, it is written, and by a hand apparently firm to its purpose.
Oh ! then, there is peace in acquiescing in this general order, in
suffering willingly, in order that some one else may be relieved ; for
whoever so suffers, at the feet of Christ, removes suffering from
another, in accordance with the principle of solidarity amongst
us all." LACORDAIRE.

I

AFTER these sad events the Digbys left Ramsgate and
went to live in London. They took one of those roomy,
eighteenth-century houses with large gardens which
were then to be found on the road from Kensington to
Hammersmith. It was called Shaftesbury House, and
stood on the south side of the road a little west of what
is now the Kensington Underground railway station.
The house has years ago been pulled down and the site
covered by great shops. Here Digby lived till he died in
1880.

In his first year at Kensington he endured a new and
bitter loss. Marcella, his eldest daughter, was of all his
children nearest to himself in mind, tastes and interests.
He had given her a strong education. She had learned,
with her brothers, Latin and Greek, from their tutor,

162

FAMILY LIFE 163

a Cambridge convert and a fine scholar, and she had
read much history and literature for her age. She
loved the outdoor life, and especially riding, and was
rather fond, too, of dress and jewels. But the sudden
deaths, in 1856, of her youngest and her eldest brother
had a tremendous effect upon this girl of nineteen. It
was Marcella whom her father saw looking like " sorrow's
monument." If this is life, she said, "it is better to
give one's whole self to religion." She had also been
much impressed by her father's defence of the monastic
life in his books. She now asked his leave to become
a Nun, and he refused to give it. Like Montalembert's
charming and high-spirited daughter Catherine, to her
father, when she had made the same resolve, Marcella
quoted his own writings against him, silently handing
to him, says Mother Pollen, a Volume of Compitum.1
Montalembert, when his daughter became a novice of
the Sacred Heart, was heart-broken. Kenelm Digby
was not the first, nor will be the last, father who
has entered the Catholic Church, and has then seen his
children go beyond him in devotion. That same attrac-
tion which brings some into the Church draws others on
further still. It is, in this sense, a dangerous religion.
But those who believe in, and therefore join, the Catholic
Church, must be prepared to take all the consequences
of their action.

What happened to Marcella is related in an MS.
account of her written by a French nun of the Sacred
Heart, which the Mothers at Eoehampton have allowed
me to see and to use. The writer was with Marcella
in Chili, and saw her life and death there, and heard from
her such recollections of the past as her reserved nature

1 In her Memoir of Mother Mabel Digby.

164 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

allowed her to give. During an absence abroad of her
father she obtained her mother's permission to make a
Retreat, at a convent about thirty miles from London,
conducted by a then well-known Jesuit priest. She
told her desire to this priest, and asked him to direct
her to a community which would receive her at once.
He mentioned the Convent of the Sacred Heart, at
Roehampton, but required her first to write to her
mother telling her of this, and promising to conform
with her wishes. Mrs. Digby replied that if Marcella were
certain of her resolve, it would be best that she should
go straight to the Convent, so as to decide the question
without further painful discussion. Later, Mrs. Digby
admitted that when, with many tears, she wrote this
letter, she was persuaded that her daughter would not
act upon it. But, as soon as the Retreat was ended,
the resolved Marcella went straight to Roehampton,
passing her Kensington home, sitting in a corner of a
vehicle, well-shrouded in veils, so fearful was she of
being seen. She used afterwards to speak of the
anguish of this journey. This was in December, 1856.1

" Desormais," says the French MS., " on put suivre
dans cette ame si genereuse comme une double action,
1'attraction victorieuse de son cceur eleve vers un de-
pouillement absolu, une immolation complete, et les
revendications d'une nature fiere, peu dominee et
fantasque, mais que la grace et un amour ardent pour
N.S. devait subjuguer entierement et transformer."

Marcella for some time was occupied in small employ-
ments about the house. "She passed usually" (says

1 1 gather this date from what Digby says in the Chapel of St. John,
pp. 305 and 311. She spent the following spring and summer at
Roehampton.

FAMILY LIFE 165

the MS.) " the hours of leisure at the window of her room
which looked on a meadow bordered with trees and
enamelled with flowers. Numerous birds flew about, and
our postulant regarded with envy these pretty neigh-
bours, asking herself if she would have the courage to
endure for ever the yoke of a voluntary captivity."
From the window she could also see the road along which
would come sometimes a groom of her father's, bringing
letters or parcels, and that mounted upon her own
darling horse. This was the bitterest trial or temptation
of all, but she overcame these natural weaknesses by
the conviction that she must fulfil the will of God.
" Besides, when she was summoned to the parlour, she
felt herself changed, in a way which she herself did
not understand, and those of her family who came to
visit her went away satisfied seeing her so calm and so
happy." l

In September, 1857, Marcella was sent to the House of
the Order at Conflans in France for her novitiate. Mabel
Digby, about two years older than herself, had begun
her novitiate at Conflans a few months earlier, and the
two cousins were together there until 1859. On the
13th September, 1859, Marcella took her first vows there,
and remained in that House for two years. She returned
to Roehampton on 23rd September, 1861. "In the
community," says the French MS., " she was silent
and reserved ; one felt that she experienced interior
pains, and went to God by ~a way little usual. The

1 St. Theresa, after describing the violence of the agony of parting from
her parents, says :

" At the moment when I took the habit, God made me conscious how
he blesses those who deny themselves for his sake. This internal struggle
was known to him only ; on the surface nothing appeared in my conduct
but courage and firmness."

166 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

complete rupture in which her well-loved father persisted
was for her heart a painful thorn."

Kenelm Digby had made no formal opposition to the
reception of his daughter into the Order of the Sacred
Heart, but he could not reconcile himself to the renuncia-
tion. Once he came to the Convent and asked to see
Marcella, but did not give his name. The Mother
Superior, in giving permission to Marcella to see the
unknown visitor, directed the Mother Clifford to accom-
pany her. Mother Clifford sat down by a remote table,
and Marcella advanced towards the visitor. Marcella
and her father looked at each other without speaking a
word, and in a few seconds the latter took up his hat
and walked out of the room. Then Marcella said to
Madame Clifford, " It is my father." Kenelm Digby,
mortified to see his daughter accompanied, on this first
meeting since their separation, could not trust himself
to speak, and Marcella was so taken by surprise by this
sudden and unexpected appearance of the loved and
long unseen father whose displeasure she had incurred,
that she lost her presence of mind, and could not speak
in time either. She did not, according to the French
narrative, and if this correctly states what she told the
Nun who wrote it, see her father again for years, till
just before she started from Paris for South America, in
1876, never to return to England. All that can be
said is that Kenelm Digby had suffered so much in
1856 that he could not yet endure this further loss, of
the daughter most like to himself, and that he was
deeply wounded by her flight without his consent. He
thought that she and her mother had not been fairly,
and that he had not been honourably, treated by the
priest who advised her, or the Order who received her.

FAMILY LIFE 167

It may be suggested that it would have been wiser
to advise Marcella, as her cousin Mabel had been advised
at eighteen or nineteen, to wait for two or three years to
test her resolution, and to see whether then she could
gain her father's consent. I think that most experienced
spiritual Directors would agree as to this. She was
hardly twenty, and was acting under the influence of
a very great and recent shock, the deaths of two
brothers within three months, so that her father had a
good deal of reason on his side. He would probably
not have refused to assent two or three years later.
Mrs. Digby also, perhaps, did not act in the most judicious
way in advising her daughter. It is, however, difficult
or impossible, and also unwise, to form a judgment on
a matter like this, especially without knowing much
more in detail what really was said and written,
and I should not, perhaps, have said even so much
were it not necessary, in directing attention to Digby's
writings, to explain certain otherwise mysterious pas-
sages in the Chapel of St. John and in Evenings on
the Thames.

Marcella might have quoted against her father one
of his own favourite saints, the cheerful and far from
austere Francis of Sales, who told a young lady, in like
circumstances, that " if one had to obey the advice of
parents in such matters few people would be found to
embrace the perfection of Christian lif e . ' ' But, if Francis
of Sales had had the conduct of this affair of Marcella,
he would have managed it wisely and gently (doucement
was his favourite word), so as to break the pain to a
father's heart, or even to convert it into sad joy. In
a memoir which has been printed of the English Jesuit
who advised Marcella, it is written :

168 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

" The impression which his whole being conveyed was
that of a strong and many-sided nature brought under
by a great self-renunciation. One thing alone mattered
to him, the extension of God's kingdom on earth. Every-
thing else was secondary and could be brushed aside."

There is danger in a disposition so absolute, even
from the point of view of extending the kingdom.

Kenelm Digby could not soon or easily reconcile
himself to that which had happened, although he did,
in the end, resume affectionate correspondence with his
exiled daughter. Perhaps he had, all through a happy
life, enjoyed his own free way too completely, and had
not learned in the workaday world to accept the
unavoidable. And greater joy in family life involves
corresponding pains, no doubt.

In February, 1868, Marcella Digby was sent from
Roehampton to Paris to the Convent rof the Sacred
Heart, in the Rue Varennes, since then destroyed. Here
she worked with great devotion, but found some difficulty
in keeping the French girls in order.

" Rien ne decouragait cependant " (says the MS.)
" notre chere sceur, qu'on trouvait toujours prete a s'effa-
cer. La concentration de son caractere et Foubli dans
lequel elle affectait de vouloir vivre, ont fait que peu
de personnes ont su penetrer les aspirations de cette
ame si belle qu'il fallait deviner en faisant la part d'un
caractere original, qui etait comme le voile jete sur
des vertus sofides et un merite reel."

Marcella Digby made her final profession at Paris
on the 17th October, 1873. She had long ardently
desired to be sent to a distant mission, and at last she
was allowed to form one of the Sacred Heart Colony
which in 1876 was sent to Chili.

FAMILY LIFE

" Kien ne pent rendre 1'allegresse de Mme Marcella
quand elle vit ses esperances realisees. Son excessive
reserve disparut pour faire place a une aimable ex-
pansion, et son courage en communiqua aux membres
de sa famille reunis a Paris pour les acfieux."

Marcella worked first at Valparaiso, and after 1882
at Lima. She taught girls, but no employment was too
humble for her. Once when her Superior wished to
release her from some humble and wearisome night
task, Marcella said :

" Ma mere, vous ne savez pas quel bonheur c'est pour
moi de me sentir au service de N.S. et le jour et la nuit."

" All that she had known and loved hardly now seemed
to exist for her ; it was literally that, following the
counsel of the Apostle, our good mother wished to forget
all that was behind her, but with the particular com-
position (trempe) of her character she would have done
it with a pious excess, breaking entirely all relations with
the old world, to lose and hide herself in oblivion "
—had not her Superior made a rule to the contrary, and
said she must sometimes write.

After 1884 Marcella was placed at the head of a Sacred
Heart institution for coloured women. She wished to-
give her whole life and energy to the service of the
poorest. The Chilian school-girls of the bourgeoisie
declared that Mother Digby cared for no one who was
not in rags. Some very poor and ragged girls sat some-
times in a dim corner of a certain room. Some young^
ladies ensconced themselves there one day, and Mother
Digby, whose sight had become feeble, came toward
them with extended arms and unwonted animation.

170 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

" Les etourdies " jumped out crying, " Now we know
whom you love most, Mother."

So the years passed on. Once or twice she was able
to go with some of the community in their school holidays
to a rough kind of house they had in the country by
the cliffs of the sea. Then she became more expansive
and they saw how much she enjoyed the rural scenes
and the solitude. At the end of 1890 her sight almost
failed her ; she had to give up playing the organ, and
could do no more than sing in choir. In 1892 she fell
ill, at the age of fifty-five, of a mild form of typhoid
fever, too much for her exhausted strength, and received
the last Sacraments. " And you will leave us to sing
without you ? " said the Mother Superior, by way of
saying something. Marcella, with a vivacity out of
keeping with her weakness, said, " Au del, au del,
nous chanterons." She sent a message to the Mother
General. " Tell her that I am happy to die in the
Society, and in the Mission to which she sent me. Thank
her again. — To die in the Mission, what happiness ! "
These were almost her last words.

Madam d'Arcy, of the Sacred Heart, who is still at
Roehampton, tells me that she remembers seeing Mother
Marcella Digby at the Rue de Varennes and being much
struck by her.

" She was very tall, with a very striking Digby face,
the forehead and eyes rather like our other Mother Digby,
her cousin, whose life you have read. We walked
about the beautiful garden, and I gave her some English
news, to which she listened with a far-away look in her
eyes. Our Mother Mabel Digby was then at Roe-
hampton, and she was always glad to hear us speak of
her, for even then she thought her very holy. I saw

FAMILY LIFE 171

Mother Marcella make her profession at Conflans. She
begged to delay it far beyond the usual time because
she considered herself so unworthy. But our Mothers
would gladly have received her to profession even
before the usual time, so convinced were they of her
great virtue. I have often thanked God that I knew
these holy and charming Mothers Digby."

A girl who enters the Order of the Sacred Heart
adopts a life of deep interest, that of religion and teaching.
But she can never again see her father's home, or have
one of her own, gives up the world with all its adventures,
chances, and varying interests and pleasures, must
always be within the walls and gardens of a convent,
except when she moves from one convent to another.
It is a great renunciation, say what you will, and to
none can it have been more so than to the well-born,
beautiful and active girl who in 1856 was living in the
cheerful home circle at Ramsgate, and riding with her
father and brothers about the sunny Kentish downs
and levels. Marcella gave up, not like some, a dull
or sordid home, and disunited or unsympathetic rela-
tives, but everything that was united and detaining,
while yet good and innocent. Is it the call of God when
some are drawn to make such sacrifices, and even, some-
times, to inflict bitter pain on their dearest ones ? One
must believe so, if one is a Catholic. One dares not say,
" No." What, after all, would Religion be if it meant
merely social reform or mildly improved general morality,
and did not sometimes urge the young, at least, into
heroic and chivalrous action ? It is almost always the
young ; after a certain age very few can do these things.
It is that the greater reality kills the less. As in another
sphere a great war makes diversions like tactic-politics

172 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

and many other things seem but the shadows they
are, so a near and vivid apprehension of God makes
everything, to those who have it, seem relatively unreal
except his direct service and union with Him. This is
why those who love this present world ; not only those
who love its corruptions but those who, like Kenelm
Digby, love all its good and innocent pleasures, may,
even if they are Catholics, instinctively resist the ulti-
mate calls to a few chosen souls of the religion which
is of this world and yet also of another world. It is an
instinct of self-preservation, this resistance, which, no-
doubt, is also necessary as part of the divine scheme, if
the world is to go on. The reason why the Catholic
Church, centred in the Apostolic 'See, is in this sense
dangerous to family life, as in the earliest centuries,
is that by strongly settling all questions of order and
discipline, and by firmly and unchangeably defining
doctrine, it liberates souls for these higher flights, to
which also it encourages them, thus bringing them, as
it were, by solid Roman roads, rapidly and smoothly
to the desolate border of that austere and solitary region
where men, like Moses in the Wilderness of Horeb,
most vividly apprehend the presence of God. These see
around and above them no other visible and organic
Church to which they could possibly transfer their
allegiance, so that this question, at least, does not hold
them up or delay them in their higher flight towards
infinite Reality.

In the fifth volume of his Monks of the West, there
are some sad and beautiful pages which Montalembert
must have written with tear-dimmed eyes, thinking of
his own darling daughter. He says at the end of his.
chapters about the Saxon nuns of England :

FAMILY LIFE 173

' Twelve centuries after the Anglo-Saxon maids
whose devotion we have related, the same hand falls
upon our homes, upon our desolate hearts, and tears
away from us our daughters and sisters. Never since
Christianity existed have such sacrifices been more
numerous, more magnanimous, more spontaneous than
now. Every day since the beginning of this century"
(the nineteenth) " hundreds of beloved creatures have
come forth from castles and cottages, from palaces and
workshops, to offer to God their heart, their soul, their
virgin innocence, their love, and their life. Every day,
among ourselves, maidens of high descent and high
heart, and others with a soul higher than their fortune,
have vowed themselves in the morning of life to an
immortal husband. They are the flower of the human
race, a flower still sweet with the morning dew which
has reflected nothing but the rays of the rising sun. . . .
They are the flower, but also the fruit, the purest sap,
the most generous blood of the stock of Adam, for daily
these heroines win the most wonderful of victories by
the manliest effort which can raise a human being above
all earthly instinct, and mortal ties. . . . Thus they
go bearing to God, in the bloom of youth, their hearts
full of those treasures of deep love and complete self-
renunciation which they refuse to men. They bury
and consume their whole life in the hidden depths of
voluntary renunciation, of unknown immolations. When
this is done, they assure us that they have found peace
and joy, and in the sacrifice of themselves the perfection
of love. They have kept their hearts for him who never
changes and never deceives, and in his service they find
consolations which are worth all the price they have
paid for them, joys which are certainly not unclouded,
for then they would be without merit, but whose savour
and fragrance will last to the grave. It is not that they
would forget or betray us whom they have loved, and
who love them. No ; the arrow which has pierced our
hearts and remains there has first struck through theirs.

174 KENELM HENKY DIGBY

They share with us the weight and bitterness of the
sacrifice. Is this a dream, the page of a romance ? Is
it only history, the history of a past for ever ended ?
No, once more, it is what we behold, and what happens
among us every day. The daily spectacle we who speak
have seen and undergone. What we had perceived only
across past centuries, and through old books, suddenly
rose one day before our eyes, full of the tears of paternal
anguish. . . . How many others have also, like ourselves,
gone through this anguish, and beheld with feelings
unspeakable the last worldly apparition of a beloved
sister or child." *

Montalembert says that, while there are these deeds
of heroic self-devotion, those who accept the teaching
and example of Jesus Christ cannot doubt that what-
ever may be defects of the Church in other directions,
it is animated by His divine life, and by the Holy
Spirit. He ends these pages thus :

" Who then is this invisible Lover, dead upon a cross
eighteen hundred years ago, who thus attracts to him
youth, beauty, and love ? who appears to their souls
clothed with a glory and a charm which they cannot
withstand ? who darts upon them at a stroke and
carries them captive ? who seizes on the living flesh
of our flesh, and drains the purest blood of our blood ?
Is it a man ? No, it is God. There lies the great
secret, there the key of this sublime and sad mystery.
God alone could win such victories and deserve such
sacrifices. Jesus, whose God-head is amongst us daily
insulted or denied, proves it daily, with a thousand
other proofs, by those miracles of self-denial and self-
devotion which are called vocations. Young and

1 Pp. 360-361 of vol. v. of the authorized translation into English (1861)
of the Monks of the West. I omit a touching and beautiful passage which
follows. It is almost too personal to Montalembert.

FAMILY LIFE 175

innocent hearts give themselves to him, to reward
him for the gift he has given us of himself ; and this
sacrifice by which we are crucified is but the answer of
human love to the love of that God who was crucified
for us."

It is delightful and consoling to know that, at last,
after this sorrow and trouble, all was well and in order
between Kenelm Digby and his daughter Marcella.
The following letter, so loving and so tender, was written
by Marcella to her father from Valparaiso, dated " The
Feast of Kings," at the end of December, 1879. In those
days, before railways crossed South America, the journey
was long, and if the letter reached him in time, it can
only have been shortly before he died, on the 22nd
March, 1880 :

' ' My own dearest, dearest Father. A Merry Christmas
and a Happy New Year, — better late than never, I hear
you exclaim. I wanted to wait for the holidays to have
a little more leisure to chat with you at my ease, so this
will be my excuse to-day. So accept it, like a dear,
good father, as you are. On Christmas Day the Prizes
were given, and the next morning early all the little
pigeons flew away. It really seems more sensible, after
all, that, with the real year, the scholars' year too should
terminate, and so we can celebrate this holy festive
season in perfect peace, around the Crib of Bethlehem.
I was enchanted to hear that you had enjoyed another
autumn at Pouliguen, and I do entreat of you to say
all that is most affectionate and loving to our dear
friends there whenever you write to them. I can never
forget their kindness, and pray for them daily during
the Holy Sacrifice. Tell me something about Kenelm
Vaughan ; it appears he is in Peru still, and expected
to return here sooner or later. If so, I shall certainly
see him, for he comes often to our Convent, they

176 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

and all are greatly edified by his fervour and sanctity.
It will be quite a pleasant visit for me ; it is such an
event here to see any true-born Briton, or to hear our
tongue in its native purity. So, if you have any message
for your namesake it would also be an agreeable surprise
for him, I am sure. His father, if I remember correctly,
was and is still a great friend of yours. What news
from England ! How many conversions ! Deo gratias
et Mariae ! But Germany is still under the iron yoke,
is it not ? and France rather agitated ? Rare and far
between are the tidings that reach me of co-temporary
events, so never be afraid of prolonging your chat too
much, or of exhausting my patience in reading your
letters. On the contrary, send me a long journal of
everything you think of, important or trifling ; all will
be welcome and gratefully received. I want you to feel
me, though so far away, as ever at your side, and talk
to me as you would if you had me there with you, for
truly it is so, my dearest father. You cannot imagine
how often, how fondly, I gaze upon you, for your image
is vividly impressed upon my heart. Time and Distance,
Oceans and Mountains, what are they, to intercept
the close union of souls linked together by God's eternal
chains of love ! As for me, the bonds that unite us
seem firmer and stronger, and more dear than ever.
Have always on your table a letter commenced for the
little absent wanderer from home, and, if it were but a
word, add something to it every day, until the thickly
covered sheets and the coming mail warn you to close
the long-wished-for missive and send it to its destination.
If you do so, and if it could please you, I shall do the
same, though you might be bothered to have to read
such trash. We are enjoying the beautiful season,
while you are shivering over your blazing logs. Yet
it will be early Spring when these lines reach you, and
this thought delights me, for I know your objection to
the frost and snow. May this note then greet you as
pleasantly, dearest father, as the voice of the gentle

FAMILY LIFE 177

herald of Europe's bright season. We have no cuckoo
here to sing for us, nor nightingale either, and the only
feathered friends we have to cheer us with their voice are
miserable in comparison to other countries. Anything
so monotonous as their notes, so uncouth, so insipid, if
I may say so. you cannot conceive. As I want to write
to May, you must let me say good-bye, dearest father.
May our dear Lord continue to bestow upon you his
choicest gifts and every blessing during the coming year.
Such is the fond and ardent prayer of your tenderly
attached and devotedly loving until we meet never
more to part daughter, MARCELLA M. DIGBY.

" Love to all the noisy little tribe around you, and
to their Papa, with Aunty's best wishes to each and all,
not forgetting old Anne, who has quite forgotten me,
no doubt."

II

But now we must return to the year 1 860. Mrs. Digby
had suffered in 1856 the most crushing blows that can
befall a mother, in the loss of the sweet vision on earth
of her eldest son and her youngest. Then came all the
trouble about Marcella, the loss of her girl, and, even
more, the way in which her poor husband took this loss.
He was, perhaps, like most men of poetic and artistic
temperament, never quite easy to live with, in his
changing and capricious moods — he seems to admit this
himself in his Chapel of St. John 1 — and his gloom and
vexation after the flight of Marcella must have been
trying even to her love and faith. He says of his wife :

" The common sorrows of humanity in which she had
been steeped, her faith could teach her to endure with
calm courage. . . . But sorrows not sent her by God,
as far as seemed to many probable, to spring out of the

1 P. 318, etc.

M

178 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

very element of supernatural joy, but faith itself to
be inordinately enlisted against her maternal heart . . .
circumstances made to appear as if requiring a viola-
tion of what she thought she owed to others ! This was
a trial. For herself she was resigned to everything in
advance ; but then she feared to behold shocked the
feeble understanding of another whom she loved only
too well." i

A page, written two or three years later, in Evenings
on the Thames (vol. ii. p. 471) shows that Kenelm Digby
had come to feel that some, perhaps too much, self-
regard had mingled with his pity for Marcella, hurried, as
he thought, into the conventual life too young, without
time for reflection, and in what might have been a
passing mood, and with his pity for her mother who
had lost her. ' Whatever," he says of himself, " he
may have thought, it may have been somewhat for
himself all the while that he was feeling. When lives
and memories are cemented together by affection, it is
difficult to separate the sufferings that belong to each.
No doubt a man pities himself a little at times."

Apart from these sufferings of the heart, Jane Mary
had, perhaps, become a mother too young. Since she
was sixteen she had borne seven Digby children, and
her physical health was now worn out, although in 1860
she was only forty-two years of age. Poor mother !
She said once to her husband, " I see many sweet little
fellows, but somehow not one of them is like our little
John."

On the 2nd January, 1860, her mother, Marcella
Dillon, who had always lived with her, and had shared
all her joys and sorrows, died at the age of seventy- two,

1 Chapel of St. John, p. 324.

FAMILY LIFE 179

and was buried at Ramsgate, in the now finished Chapel
of St. John, where her two grandsons, Thomas Digby
and little John Gerald, whose body had been brought
back from Hales Place, were already interred.

Public events combined with private sorrows and
troubles to cloud her last days, for in 1860, the " mili-
tarism," then dominant in France under Napoleon III.,
very nearly brought on a war, for no good reason,
between England and France, so recently allied in the
war against Russia on behalf of the decaying Turkish
Empire. Digby says of his wife, " Her last weeks
beheld the whole nation in suspense. . . . Dover heights
and Castle, beneath which the last week of her life was
spent, sent forth each morning the thunders of experi-
mental artillery." * Such a war would have been
heart-rending to one so intimately connected with each
of these great nations. Jane Mary felt that her life
was near its close. She used to say, " in a careless
way, ' I have suffered so many afflictions of late that
I often think I shall die suddenly.' In her last months
she used to say, ' I am not what I was. I feel my
nerves shattered, my heart somehow affected; I shall
never recover my former health ; but what of that ! ' " *
Digby says, " The last blows in fact had gone through
and through poor Jane Mary's heart." After her death
an Abbot who knew her well, wrote, " The departure
of her mother and sons made her more and more sigh

after her own rest. She has entered into it, and we are

• *

called on to rejoice."

Mrs. Digby became less and less willing to leave her
house and garden in Kensington. " For myself," she
said, when summer came in 1860, " I should be well

1 Chapd of St. John, p. 325. 2 P. 342.

180 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

content with this sweet garden were we to remain here
the whole season, but one must think you know of
what the interest of the others requires." So in the
middle of July the family went to Dover, the place
of her marriage, for change of air. On Wednesday,
18th July, there was in the morning an eclipse of the
sun, which she hardly seemed to notice, as she was
finishing some household affairs. About three o'clock
in the afternoon Kenelm Digby went out to roam over
the hills with his two other children, leaving Letitia
with her mother, when she called to him from her room.
" The stairs were high and the others were already
outside the door. For the first and only time in his
life he did not hasten to her when she called him. Tis
true a sweet girl's voice, echoing her mother's, replied
from the top of the stairs that it did not matter. He
ran out after the others, and from that hour never again
did he see alive Jane Mary."

It had been agreed that they were all to meet at the
Catholic Chapel at a certain time, and soon Mrs. Digby
also left the house with Letitia, and they walked to
a pier which stood east of the harbour, and here she
sat down, and opened her book of prayer. It was
the day of St. Camillus de Lellis, patron of those in
their agony, and the collect runs, " Deus, qui sanctum
Camillum ad animarum in extremo agone luctantium
subsidium singulari charitatis praerogativa decorasti,
ejus quaesumus meritis spiritum nobis tuae dilectionis
infunde ut in hora exitus nostri hostem vincere, et ad
coelestem mereamur coronam pervenire, per Dominum
nostrum Jesum Christum." x Presently Jane Mary

1 " God, who hast adorned holy Camillus, for the aid of souls struggling
in the last agony, with singular prerogative of charity, we pray thee by

FAMILY LIFE 181

suddenly said to her daughter, " Poor dear, ever since
thy birth thou hast had sufferings and sorrows." Then
they went to the Catholic Chapel, and she prayed some
time before the altar. After half an hour she left the
Chapel, and had hardly walked a few steps before a poor
woman, to whom in former stays at Dover she had
often given charity, who had also been in the Chapel
and followed her out, saw her stagger, and running to
her made her sit down on a stone. Her daughter and
maid, who had been in the organ loft, went out, and
missing her, found her there ; they called a passing
carriage, and drove homewards. Very soon the palpita-
tions of her heart became worse, and she said she must
alight. She entered a chemist's shop opposite, and
asked the chemist, whom she knew, for a glass of water.
Shown into the back shop, and lying on a sofa, she
reclined her head upon her daughter's breast, and
then said, "Is it possible that this can be dying ? "
She was heard, as in the carriage, praying, uttering
" Jesus and Mary," and repeating the " Memorare "
to the last instant. Her husband arrived a few minutes
later.

' There she lay, with eyes that are now dimmed by
death's black veil, though still her old accustomed
smile lingered upon her face ; the loved one, she who
' clave to her,' standing motionless at her feet ; the
poor woman kneeling at her head, kissing the scapular
which had been round her neck, but had now fallen from
within her dress, and with expanded arms praying, and
proclaiming with a sort of ecstasy that she was in heaven.
Besides these two no-one present. In death quiet,

his merits, infuse into us the spirit of thy love, that in the hour of our
death we may deserve to conquer the enemy, and attain to the heavenly
crown through our Lord Jesus Christ."

182 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

gentle as she lived. . . . Truly a celestial blazon never
yet conceived in heraldry. Supporters of a novel kind,
and very appropriate, Weakness, with tender devotion
in the person of her child, and Holy Poverty in that of
the grateful beggar. In life she loved the Poor ; well,
at her death she saw them thus. It is not every rich
person who has at her death one of the poor of Christ,
calling out that the soul departed must be in Abraham's
bosom."

Then entered a Dominican friar, who happened to be
passing by with the priest of the town, and said to Digby,
" Trouble not yourself, it's all over now, and I promise
you it is well with her ; I knew her from a child." 1

" How full of consoling thoughts," wrote to Digby a
gentleman of ancient Catholic race, " is the departure
of one whose whole life was directed towards heaven ! "
" Quelle noble fin et digne d'une telle vie ! " wrote a
French nobleman long intimate with her. " Entre la
priere et la charite — sur 1'epaule de son enfant et le
sourire au bord des levres." Another wrote, " Je suis
emu jusqu'au fond de Tame. J'ai un mortel regret de
n'avoir revu cette chere sainte que j'ai toujours et
depuis tant d'annees aime tendrement." " I feel I
have said nothing," wrote an English priest. " But
then it is such a sorrow. No one but God can reach
to the depths of such a grief." An old priest in Paris
wrote that he had wept like a child, and said, " 0 my
God ! What a world is this ! another name to add to
my memento of the dead. 0, my God, what a loss, and
what sadness in this life ! " " For myself too," wrote a
Russian friend, "it is a most cruel loss, as I had from
the bottom of my heart attached myself to that angelic
person."

* Chapel of St. John, p. 366.

FAMILY LIFE 183

" As a benefactress, churches prayed for her, and by
the desire of distant friends, many an altar in foreign
countries heard whispered the name of Jane Mary. A
solemn dirge for her soul was sung in the two monasteries
at Subiaco, of St. Scholastica and St. Benedict, also in
the monasteries of Praglia, Genoa, and Pierre-qui-vive,
besides, by order of the Abbot, a daily mass, for a long
while, at Ramsgate."

The body of Jane Mary was borne from Dover to
Ramsgate along the very line of some twenty miles of
road, over the chalk downs and across the marsh levels,
" so full of tender poetry are the sternest events of
life's drama," which on the day of her marriage had once
beheld her pass as bride. What a different journey for
Kenelm Digby, as he followed in this sad procession ! She
was buried under her Chapel of St. John, where lay the
mortal remains of her two darling boys and of her mother.

Soon after this Kenelm Digby went to Paris, for a
space, and sadly visited the Churches where he could
so vividly recall her, especially Notre Dame des Victoires,
" the sanctuary of her heart, where one might still
seem to see her kneeling with eyes bedewed, you knew
not whether with joy or pure devotion, and when you
expected almost every moment to distinguish in the
holy melody the sound of her sweet voice." He found
all these places " embalmed, and in a human way, one
might dare to say, sanctified, by her gentle memory.
Her very smile would seem to meet one before each
altar." He visited also again St. Germain, and roamed,
disconsolate, through the forest so dear to his youth.
" It would be in the deep and silent shade of the wood,
in the green lanes of that sublime forest, and on the
cheerful terrace where she used so often to sit and gaze

184 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

upon her children, that you can imagine the past, with
all its incomparable attractions, returned with a sense
of ghostly reality." He could see where she used to sit
" to watch her eldest boy frisking on his pony, and
the rest admiring him." He could see the " grass-grown
street of ' Lorraine ' ' there, " where in happy days
she lived with all she loved about her — the house now
shut up, the very number changed." He could recall
her " walking along the street with her mother every
morning to and from the church, often with all her
^children about her, and her baby in the nurse's arms,
herself smiling and so purely happy." Nor could he
revisit without weeping " that parish church of the
Stuarts in which she used to kneel."

Ill

A fifth great sorrow, and this the last, was to be added.
Mary Letitia, the second daughter, had also, about the
same time as Marcella, wished to become a nun, in the
Benedictine Order, but had deferred this project in
order not to leave her mother, or to increase the sorrows
of her father. After her mother's death she undertook
the household cares in Kensington. Now in 1861 she
was found to be in a stage of consumption. Then
for a year the disease seemed to have vanished, and
immense depression in the father gave way to un-
warranted hope. In 1863 the disease reappeared in
an advanced form. She was taken for the summer
to a country place. Nothing, however, availed, and
Letitia died in the last week of December, 1863, on
Holy Innocents' Day, making a little before, by special
permission, her vows of profession as a nun in the

FAMILY LIFE 185

Benedictine Order. Her father describes her character
and her departure from this world in his book named
Evenings on the TJiames : l

" Tall, most beautiful, with large and singularly
expressive eyes, of exquisite grace in all her movements,
so as to be regarded in that respect as a model by the
French, and everywhere to be remarked for a singular
delicacy, lofty and yet humble, producing an unaffected
elegance of manner ; of an innocence that spoke to every
one's heart, in her smile, in her voice, and in all she
uttered, affectionate and playful like her mother, in-
tensely loving, so as to have no rest through solicitude
for others, she retained during twenty summers the
qualities which had endeared the child to all who knew
her. Latterly there was in her smile, as she passed
you returning from Mass, an eternity of love of which
certain eyes could hardly sustain the expression, accord-
ingly they dropped before it. Heroic and uncom-
promising when it was a question of speaking the plain
truth to people, she practised literally the precept of
the rule of St. Benedict which says, ' Veritatem ex
corde et ore proferre.' 2 Firm as granite when duty was
in question, dissolved in tenderness when love alone
had claims on her, living in a world of her own of sweet,
deep, holy thoughts, endeared to all who had the faculty
of appreciating the delicate and beautiful in its sweetest
and most sublime expression ; admired by all for some-
thing that seemed to each, according to individual
predilection, most prominent, by a brother for what
he called her pluck, by a confessor for her innocence
unviolated from the font, by a father for the qualities
that he himself most wanted, and no doubt, as regards
this last relation, it was so with others, between whom
and her there may have been the attraction of opposi-
tion. . . . Her pleasures and enjoyments were charac-

1 Evenings on the Thames, vol. i. p. 460.

2 " To set forth the truth from the heart and mouth."

186 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

teristic. It used to be her pride to work with her own
hands in embroidering for the ornaments of churches. . . .
In the field, where seemed to be the only recreation
that she cared much for, she was a dauntless and graceful
rider. In music, which was for her more than an amuse-
ment, she proved herself a genius, but of the tenderest
and highest order, ready to play anything that was
asked for, but suffering all the while intensely if the
strain did not correspond with the elevation and instinc-
tive purity of her heart. In the sciences, to the study
of which she was led by a strong natural inclination,
skilled and even impassioned — but with what an angelic
passion — to read the wonders of the stars, as if really
it were from being herself a thing enskied. ' D'une
constitution excessivement delicate,' said her venerable
preceptor, ' d'un caractere ferme et resolu, d'un esprit
reflechi, meditatif, et propre aux etudes serieuses, elle
avait un gout prononce pour rastronomie. A peine agee
de vingt ans, elle avait fait, dans cette science, de rapides
et surprenants progres, qui faisaient esperer, pour un
temps donne, des connaissances peu ordinaires.' Then,
again, all who knew her had remarked her power,
unconsciously possessed, of elevating souls, the moral
influence which she exercised over others ; her pensive
sadness when confronted with evils in any form ; her
loyal and amiable sincerity in the daily intercourse of
life ; her intimate affinity with things innocent like
herself. Worthy, indeed, of being noticed, was that
peace which encompassed her, that child-like joy at
the least happy incident ; that genuine simplicity which
filled worldly people with a feeling that they could not
interpret to themselves ; that rare and solid judgment of
things ; that keen discernment of characters ; that horror
for what is mean and base and selfish ; that natural
repugnance to what is vulgar ; that gratitude for the
smallest act of attention ; and, in fine, that invincible
courage, so marvellously visible at her supremely happy
death. ' What ! at home ! too ill to go to Vespers ! '

FAMILY LIFE 187

O God, I knew what those words implied. They instan-
taneously produced the first anticipation of the loss
which two years later overthrew our hopes. Con-
sumption, that seemed miraculously arrested in its
course, then for a year quiescent, suddenly declared
itself with violence only a month before her departure.
Is there for some natures peculiarly delicate and angelical
a secret intuition of the heaven that awaits them ? Be
the effects of that affinity, which here below connects
them with it, what they may, her calm and profoundly
conscious state with regard to the future, became now
more than ever a thing to wonder at. Eesigned to the
Divine will, with a mind, as she herself quietly said,
made up either to stay or go, wishing to stay for the
sake of others, hoping to the last to have her wish in
that respect granted ; loving this life for the sake of the
service that she knew she rendered to some dear to
her, though to her of late its joys, so spiritual for her,
had been mixed with both physical and mental suffering,
saying to one who loved her, ' Don't be so anxious
about me. It is the very way to lose me,' for she saw
the action of Providence in everything, and its justice
too ; absorbed every morning for some space in God,
though ever ready to welcome the chance visitor ; she
evinced to the last hour of her life the sweetest and
noblest qualities, that bespeak natural delicacy, noble-
ness and honour. There was no fanaticism in her
mind. It was a human and solid one. Nevertheless
there were secrets not yet disclosed, with respect to her
view of the world and its mutability ; she had never
liked it, or rather worldly people in it. Attached to
her family, as the tenderest and most affectionate child,
she would add no drop of bitterness to the cup of others,
already as it seemed to her sufficiently replenished.1

1 This means that she had for some years ardently desired to become
a Benedictine novice, and so a nun, but had consented to defer it because
her father who had already lost so much could not bear to lose her sweet
company.

188 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

On the contrary, she devoted herself to household cares,
accepting duties from which she might well have excused
herself ; and fulfilling them without the pleasures which
make them sweet to mothers ; but it was clear all the
while that she looked to a religious life as to an asylum
of peace, safe from the intrusion of all that was not
elevated and congenial to her heart. God did not wish
that her desires in this respect should be frustrated.
Some days before her departure, having extorted the
confession from her physician that there was no hope,
she entered the order of St. Benedict, and, in virtue of
a ' Bref ad hoc ' of the Sovereign Pontiff, she made,
secretly, between the hands of a superior of that Order,
her profession and her great vows. But still, to the
household, and to all who came to see her, nothing
was to be visible but her sweet humanity, her tender
affections, her resignation, and her patience. So, to her
father leaving her room on one of the last days, she said,
' Come back soon, let me see you as long as I can.' To
her confessor she said, ' I fear it is presumption in me,
but somehow I am not afraid to die.' In truth, that
was clear to those around her. Sacramentally visited,
encompassed with divine protection and consolation,
privileged even in regard to ecclesiastic discipline, for,
being allowed to have Benediction in the house, she
heard, the last evening of her life, even the music that
she so much loved to play herself, the ' Adeste, fideles '
and the ' Adoremus in aeternum ' by Herman ; passing
away thus with Heaven about her, elevated, trans-
figured by faith and its holy instruments, charmed even
by art and its inspirations of which she knew the source,
she woke at four in the morning of the Holy Innocents,
when calling on her brother to feel her poor hand, as she
termed it. The moment seemed supreme. Again, and
now for the last time, before re-joining him, visited
by her divine Saviour in holy Communion, she expressed
her wish to speak to each of those who were in the
room. So then, with a ' distant softness ' she made,

FAMILY LIFE 189

to use her expression, a few last requests. ' Don't
speak much about me,' she said to one whose garrulity
she distrusted, while ' Don't forget me, I fear you will
soon forget me,' was what she uttered to another, to
whom her whole life had been an inspiration. To the
very last minute she was in possession of the fullest
intellectual health. She continued kissing the cross
and smiling at it. Then suddenly raising her large blue
eyes to Heaven she passed away, the body falling back
on the pillow, while you heard for a moment a faint
rattle, like the spring of a watch that snaps and runs
down. All was over, at six in the morning of the Holy
Innocents, herself one of them, who might truly say, in
the words of the office of that day, ' Anima nostra sicut
passer erepta est de laqueo venantium ; laqueus con-
tritus est, et nos liberati sumus.' 1 Yes, even under the
mere impressions of nature we say, * delivered ' ; for
she took away with her, so to speak, such an observ-
ing intelligence of all created things, combined with love
for their Author, such an intense and human perception
of what is sublime, and beautiful, and sweet, that you
can no more imagine that she, possessing and exercising
such faculties, has perished, than that the stars and the
flowers and the harmony have perished, which, without
such a creature, would be deprived of part, at least, of
the very object and reason of their creation."

" 0 philosophe," said in a letter an old French priest
who had in France been the tutor of Letitia and the
other young Digbys, " qui niez ce qu'il y a de plus
certain au monde ; qui vantez les deux ou trois sages
que le paganisme a produits, voyez done la vie et les
derniers moments d'une vierge Chretienne, dans une
maison du monde, mais dans une maison ou la foi vit
toujours, et dites nous qui de vos sages pai'ens, qui de
vos amis incredules, a vecu et est mort en leguant au

1 " Our soul is torn away as a bird from the net of the fowlers ; the
net is broken, and we are delivered." — Psalms.

190 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

monde de pareilles vertus; tant de resignation, tant
d'heroique courage."

With all the consolations which religion, and above
all the Catholic religion, can give, no suffering exceeds
that of a parent who sees a darling child dying, and this
experience had thrice within the brief space of eight
years, in addition to the loss of his wife, been that of
Kenelm Digby. Perhaps it is all the harder for a man
whose life and work has always been in his own house
and family, and who has not the enforced attention
and absence from home which the outside professions
require. He looked back, in his now almost empty
home, upon happy days in France, with his wife and
young children around him, and recalled this loved
Letitia " the earliest of the risers, out laughing before
the dawn, and hurrying forth with her little sister before
any one else in the house was awake, and for that reason
the despair of aged priests who did not like to be fore-
stalled at the divine altar ; then returning full of praises
at the beauty of the sky and the sweetness of the morning
air, as if the sole object of such eccentric proceedings
had been to admire and enjoy them."

"0 tenderness of the ways of God ! " Kenelm con-
tinues. " Our mothers taught us His name when we
were children ; the wife engraved it on the soul of the
youth ; the beloved daughter, when left to him, repeats
it to the aged man, and communicates a last youthful
and virginal revelation on her bed of death. Such are
the transfigurations of the Christian woman."

" Impia jam pietas, animam lugere beatam,
Gaudentemque Deo flere, nocens amor est." »

1 " It is an impious piety to lament a blessed soul, and an ill love to weep
for one who is rejoicing in God." These words of a mediaeval poet are on
Letitia's tablet in St. John's Chapel at Ramsgate.

FAMILY LIFE 191

In Digby's volume of poems of 1866 there are some
verses about his lost Letitia :

" I see her in the wondrous eye of mind,
Our joy, our pride, as if still one with us,
So tender, delicate, so gracious, kind,
Mysterious beauty compassing her thus.

Her large blue eyes, cast down upon me, smile
As once, on earth, when issuing from Mass,
When she would draw me upward to beguile
The sorrow deep in which she saw me pass.

Yes, in the downward look of those blue eyes
While somehow struggling upward to burst free,
There was a sign that pointed to the skies,
To warn, to cheer, to guide and comfort me."

And he could think of her as a small child, sitting, for in-
stance, at the foot of a great tree in the forest of St. Ger-

' " Methinks I see her seated there,
Her soft blue eyes, her flowing hair,
The gnarled roots, I see them still ;
No tears were then my eyes to fill.
Oh, yes ! it was a magic hour,
'Twas there began my children's bower."

IV

Mary Letitia also was buried under the Chapel of
St. John Evangelist at the Church of St. Augustine's
Abbey at Kamsgate. The Benedictine Abbey, founded
from Subiaco, had been built between 1856 and 1859,
and the Church previously built by Pugin, who had
a house at Ramsgate, as a parish church at his own cost
(and he is himself buried there) and opened for service
in 1851, had been annexed to the Abbey.

" On the last line of cliffs (says Digby),

' Where Ocean mid his uproar wild
Speaks safety to his island child,'

192 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

on the grassy summit, where the chalk, emerging from
the yellow clay for the last time, grows proudly ram-
parted, there stands a dark solemn pile, made up of
church and tower, of cloistered cells and halls that
announce themselves, as in the ancient style, monastical.
Pass within the portal. There is at the north entry,
and at the intersection of the two sides of an arched
cloister, a chapel under the invocation of St. John,
being a chantry over the bones of the dead. There is a
monumental slab, and solemn imagery representing
some who sleep below." 1

Kenelm Digby's wife had built this chapel or chantry,
on Pugin's design, and Digby himself had contributed
to the cost of the cloister adjacent. Mrs. Digby, when
she left her garden in Kensington at all, wished to go
nowhere else than to Ramsgate.

" She loved the place where she had built this chapel,
of which she so admired the beauty, from which she
hoped that some spiritual good might flow to others, that
it seemed as if her eyes could not be satiated with
beholding it. ' How graceful it is,' she used to say, ' and
how cheerful.' And yet, after all her pains and sacri-
fices to leave it as you see, and all her desires to hear
Mass again over the remains of those she so dearly loved,
she consented for the last summer, as it proved, that
she was to pass in the world, not to visit it, but to
remove elsewhere (Dover) for the sea-bathing, and this,
in opposition to all her combined feelings of preference,
and merely to comply with the desire of those who
thought that, if she had come hither, she would have
passed the whole of each day in the church, praying at
her mother's grave." 2

So, in another, and, for her, happier way, she was to
come that summer to the Chapel of St. John, and Mass

1 Chapd of St. John, p. 6.

2 Idem, p. 244.

FAMILY LIFE 193

was to be said there when her senses could not hear
or see. And now, in 1863, the vault was opened for the
fifth time to receive the mortal part of Mary Letitia.
Her brother Kenelm Thomas was also buried here when
he died in 1893, a year after his sister Marcella.

The following description of the Chapel is taken
from a little book about St. Augustine's Abbey, printed
in the Monastery Press in 1906 :

" Immediately within the outer entrance door at
the north corner of the West Cloister is

The Chapel of St. John the Evangelist.
The Digby Chantry.

" This Chapel, designed by Edward Welby Pugin, was
erected in 1859 by the late Mr. Kenelm Digby, the
talented author of the monumental work Mores Caiholici,
at the cost of over two thousand five hundred pounds,
as a burial place for himself and the members of his
family.

"It is altogether a work of art. An arcade of red
marble pilasters in a double row standing upon elegantly
carved bases and elaborately sculptured capitals set
upon a low stone wall, the arcades enclosed by grilles of
wrought-iron work, shuts it off from the North Cloister.
Entrance is gained from the West Cloister through gates
of wrought iron set in a carved stone doorway. In
the tympanum of the doorway is an elaborate carving
in alto relievo of the armorial bearings of the Digby
family — a shield carrying a fleur de lys, surmounted
with the crest of an ostrich holding in his mouth a
horseshoe. Among the mantlings runs the label with
the motto of the Digbys, ' Deo non fortuna.'

" The walls on either side are pierced with large quatre-
f oil-shaped openings, through which views may be
obtained of the interior, and Mass heard, by persons in
the cloisters without. The oak-panelled roof is sup-
ported on grey marble pilasters with richly carved stone

194 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

capitals and bases, resting on brackets comprised of
three- quarter-length figures of St. Benedict and his
first disciples St. Maur and St. Placid, his nun sister
St. Scholastica, St. Augustine, the Apostle of England,
and St. Thomas of Canterbury, its most glorious martyr,
each having its proper distinctive emblem.

" The roof is divided into compartments, containing
over the altar painted representations of seraphim,
the other panels carrying a diaper work of golden fleur
de lys on a sky-blue ground. The floor is covered with
elegantly designed tiles. The chapel is lighted by three
windows on the South side, each of two lights containing
figures of the name saints of the family. Chief and
unique among them is the figure of the martyred boy
king, St. Kenelm, the founder's namesake. The others
include Our Blessed Lady with the Holy Child, St. Jane
of Valois, St. Marcella, the friend of St. Jerome ; St.
John the Evangelist and St. Thomas the Apostle.

" The entire head of the arch above the cornice of the
reredos of the altar forming the East wall is filled with
stained glass set in heavy stone tracery. The subject
is the Doom or Last Judgment. In the centre our
Blessed Lord is depicted reigning as a king with orb, &c.,
throned upon a rainbow within a star-shaped compart-
ment. This is surrounded by six trefoils showing the
dead rising from their graves to receive reward or
condemnation. To the first an angel offers a crown, to-
the latter is presented the flaming sword which drives
them from the presence of the Great Judge. In the
lowest compartment an angel is seen weighing souls
against the Demon, while in the highest Abraham
receiving into his bosom the spirits of the Just made
perfect.

" The marble and gilded altar is supported on pillars
of richly veined green marble with carved stone capitals
and bases. Behind is a tomb of alabaster pierced with
vesica-shaped apertures, enshrining the relics of the
boy-martyr St. Benignus translated from the Cemetery

FAMILY LIFE 195

of St. Priscilla, 25th June, 1859. The altar in which is
inserted relics of Sts. Florentina, and Arista, and other
Martyrs was consecrated by Bishop Grant on the
22nd March, 1859. It is backed by a reredos of carved
stone enriched with gilding, having as its central figure
the Eisen Christ bearing aloft His victorious banner in
one hand and bestowing His benediction with the other.
In the four side compartments He is accompanied by
figures of adoring angels, St. Mary Magdalene with her
pot of precious ointment, the other Maries, St. John
and St. Peter with his keys. On the front of the altar
gradine are cut these words in Gothic characters :

" ' 3De prof un&fs clamavf ab te 2>omtne, Bomine ejauM
vocem meant/

" Affixed to the South wall between the windows are
two carved and gilded marble tablets with the following
inscriptions. On one tablet is written :

" ' Impia jam pietas animam lugere beatam ; gaudentemque Deo
flere, nocens amor est.'

" ' Dulcissimae ac carisimae Virgin!, Mariae Annas Benignae, ordinis
Sti. Benedicti, MARIJE ANN.^ L&IITLM DIGBY, paterno nomine ;
quartae e septem liberis immatura morte abreptae ; perenne luctus
monumentum posuit pater infelicissimus ; quae cum innocentissime
vixisset cum suis usque ad supremum diem, in SS. Innocentium
Festo decessit anno salutis MDCCCLXIII. " Anima nostra sicut
passer erepta est de laqueo venantium ; laqueus contritus est et
nos liberati sumus." Jhesu Maria, Jhesu Maria, Jhesu Maria, vestra,
est ; accipite filiolam meam I ! '

" On the second tablet is written :

" ' Juxta in Christo requiescunt :
JOANNES GERALDUS DIGBY, qui decessit

MDCCCLVI, XXV Jun., annos natus VIII.
THOMAS EVERARDUS DIGBY, qui decessit

MDCCCLVI, XII Oct., annos natus XXL
MARCELLA DILLON, horum avia, quae decessit

MDCCCLX, II Jan., annos nata LXXII.
JOANNA MARIA DIGBY, mater, Marcellae filia, quae

decessit MDCCCLX, XVIII Jul, annos nata XLIL

196 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

" ' Hie superimposito requiescit pondere terrse,
Cara suis mater, cara marita viro,
Cara Deo, servisque Dei, quos ilia fovebat,
Pauperibus : luctum pauperis urna tulit ;
Non illi fatum diro languescere morbo,
Nee longa vires imminuisse die :
Occidit, ut medium via jam transegerat sevum,
Rapta licet propera morte, parata mori ;
Pauperis optarat mortem ; Deus aure benigna
Audiit ancillae tarn pia vota suse :
Dives in obseuram periit delata tabernam
Languentesque oculos clausit egana manus.'

" There is also a memorial brass inscribed as follows :

" ' In pace Christi, hie quiescit KENELMUS THOMAS DIGBY, natus
die XXIX Decembris MDCCCXLI, vita functus die XX Novem-
bris MDCCCXCIII. Cujus animse Deus misericors propitietur.
Kequiem ^Eternam dona ei Dne et lux perpetua luceat ei.' "

Those who visit Ramsgate should also visit the Chapel
of St. John, and breathe a prayer for the repose of
these souls, and that the perpetual light may shine
upon them.

CHAPTER X

LATEST WRITINGS

" QUONIAM eripuisti animam meam de morte, et pedes meos de
lapsu, ut placeam coram Deo in lumine viventium."

Psalms.

AFTER Letitia's death, in 1863, Kenelm Digby, now
half-way between sixty and seventy, was left with one
surviving son, Kenelm, and one daughter, Mary, living
at home. No family group is more than a fair bubble
floating a little way down the stream of time, and
brief is the period of full flowering during which father
and mother, brothers and sisters, are all there, and all
together. In the Digby family this period had been the
longer in that none of the children had left home for
school, but the collapse, when it came, had been swift.
Less than eight years before the death of Mary Anne
Letitia, Kenelm Digby had been living so happily at
Ramsgate with his wife and six fair children ; what
a contrast his life was now in the Kensington house,
" rooms becoming deserted one after the other, obser-
vances hallowed and dear to memory rendered impos-
sible for want of instigators and admirers, of agents
and players." 1 " There is a change here," said a visitor
friend when he came in.

1 Chapd of St. John, p. 361.
197

198 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

" Efface ce sejour, 6 Dieu, de ma paupiere,
Ou rends le moi semblable a celui d'autrefois,
Quand la maison vibrait comme tin grand cceur de pierre,
De tous ces coeurs joyeux qui battaient sous ses toits." 1

Some passages in Digby's book of 1864, Evenings on
the Thames, will find an echo in the hearts of those, like
so many of us who are in the later part of life, and have
tasted of the same bitter experience. He says that
there are as many different kinds of sorrow as odours
in the flowers of a garden.

" The grief for your little boy's death, however
intense, is not the same as grief for your eldest son;
grief for such a son is not the same as grief for a dear
friend, however entwined within your heart ; grief for
a mother is not the same as grief for a wife — there's
something quite new in that ; grief for a wife is not
the same as grief for a daughter, in whom your own life
seemed blended inextricably ; and that grief even,
which appeared to reduce you to a state of utter exhaus-
tion, or, if you will, of being quite full, and to overflow-
ing, leaves space, nevertheless, within you for that
different grief with which you feel yourself at last left
in the world, in your own house, perhaps, with all your
books, and pictures, and trinkets, and memorials of the
bygone, quite by yourself, alone." Such, he adds,
" have taken their degrees in grief, and, as far as regards
suffering at least, may be said to have gone out in
honours."

The " frozen conventionalism of modern life," as
Digby says, stands in the way of forming new friendships
which might console, nor can even the best friends help
very much, and in vain will you direct such a sufferer
to literature or poetry as a consolation.

1 Lamartine, La vigne et la maison.

LATEST WRITINGS 199

" His reply may be in the lines so instructive in more
ways than one :

' Difficile est, quod, amice, mones ; quia carmina laeta
Sunt opus, et pacem mentis habere volunt.' l

" No, more is required than all that ; therefore as the
orator even says : ' pergamus ad ea solatia quae non
modo sedatis molestiis jucunda, sed etiam haerentibus
salutaria nobis esse possunt.' 2 These consolations may
be referred to two sources, the hope of a future life, and
the reconciliation to the thought of death as the passage
to that other country of which we are all fellow-subjects."
These thoughts, he says, " are at the bottom of much
endurance, and of much silent, patient acquiescence in
the state of things actually around us. People submit
to a great deal that they would otherwise, however idly
and fatally, perhaps, revolt against, for the reason that
they think it is not to be perpetual."

This thought, or rather feeling, no doubt also sub-
consciously supports, in some degree, even those who
do not accept Christian doctrine, because, as Spinoza
says, * We feel and know by experience that we are
eternal,' " Sentimus experimurque nos aeternos esse,"
but it must be distinguished from the mere callous
turning away of the mind and memory by those who are
insensitive, or are preoccupied with the transient
shows of this world. And, even for the sensitive, there
is, as Digby says, something left behind by a great and
critical sorrow which is often far worse than the sorrow
itself has been.

1 " That which you advise, my friend, is difficult, for joyful songs are
a work, and require peace of mind."

2 " Let us go to those consolations which are not only pleasing when
troubles have been allayed, but even while they still are clinging, can be
salutary to us." (Cicero.)

200 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

"It is a change in the inner man, which strands
him on the shoal of the present ; which warns him
from dwelling on the past, and, enforcing the lesson
of the vanity of human wishes, strikes from his
reckoning, as far as this life is concerned, hopes in the
future."

There is, he says, in the days immediately succeeding
to a great loss, something of the heroic, which consoles,
and then we still seem to feel on the stairs, in the rooms,
in the garden, the close presence of the loved one,
and so many visible traces still remain ; but most of this
gradually fades away, or becomes dim, by operation of
time and the natural process of memory.

" When the hour of this weaning comes for us ; when
the influence of these memories begins to fail, and the
heart grows hardened against their failing potency ; it
is then that your beloved ones are gone ; it is then that
you feel left quite alone ; and that, let me tell you, is
the grief of griefs ; a sort of epoch of chaos, a sort of
desolation within you for which there are no words, with
no one, not even yourself, audibly to deplore it ; or,
we might say, that is the entire breaking up of the
wreck, and the dispersion one by one of even the floating
planks, and the final triumph of the sea and the tem-
pest, when, as far as your perceptions are concerned,
the last vestige of what you doted on is dissipated
and lost, and nothing is left to gaze upon but the
trackless ocean that represents the unknown and the
eternal."

Lamartine has said, very beautifully, to the same
effect :

" Le temps, ce ravisseur de toute joie humaine
Nous prend jusqu'& nos pleurs, tant Dieu nous veut sevrer ;
Et nous perdons encore la douceur de pleurer
Tous ces chers trespasses que 1'esprit nous ramene."

LATEST WRITINGS 201

All, then, that remains, Digby continues, is

"resignation, deep, religious, Christian resignation,"
the peace which comes of acquiescing in the general
order decreed by the will of God, in the " vast system
of grief" in which, as Lacordaire says, it is willed that
men should here move. Resignation is the supreme
test, or mode, of the love of God, " Who, in a manner
inconceivable to us, is to restore all things. Quare
tristis es, anima mea, et quare conturbas me ? demands
the priest every morning at the commencement of the
holy mass, to whom it is answered, Spera in Deo.
Yes, the great God, the personal God, is the only true
consoler for the miserable ; though the valid consolation
emanating from him comes to us at times in a way that
we neither foresee nor understand. . . . The spirit of
resignation, then, on the whole, causes the particular
will to be lost and dissolved into the general and higher
Will ; causes the mind to love that Will as our end, as
being itself most just, and right, and good, and imparts
to the most impassioned an affection and loyalty to the
Governor of the Universe, which will prevail over all
private, indirect desires of our own, enabling them to
acquaint themselves with God and be at peace."

" Circumdederunt me gemitus mortis, et in tribulatione
mea invocavi Dominum, et exaudivit vocem meam.
Diligam te, Domine, fortitude mea ; Dominus firma-
mentum meum, et refugium meum, et liberator meus." x

And yet, with all the consolations of religion, what
pain to be without these loved ones, and to remember
happy hours.

" Do what we will," says Digby, " do what we will,
the departed, though it be only the ' puer Ascanius/ or

1 " The lamentations of death have surrounded me, and in my trouble
I have called upon the Lord, and he has heard my voice. I will love
thee, Lord, my strength ; Lord, my foundation, and my refuge, and my
deliverer."

202 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

the playful girl, must accompany us on or off the Thames ;
it matters not ; there is no denying them. Like the
vision of the child in Macbeth, they can't be commanded.
You thought, perhaps, at one time, that in the soul are
no affections — that, as the poet says :

' We pour out our aSections with our blood,
And, with our blood's affections, fade our lives.'

Death's eloquence has now taught you better ; and you
believe that those whom you have lost take somehow
an interest in you still. You thought them left upon
the wind-swept cliff that beetles o'er the main, alone
within the dark sepulchral chamber, or under the soft
green sod ; but no ; they dwell within the luminous air ;
they enter the boat with us ; they mount the garden
steps with us ; they sit by our side, or play near us
as we gaze on the gliding river. They haunt our houses,
too.

' We meet them at the doorway, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.
There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited ; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.' l

Yes, it is so with us, and, as the chorus in Euripides
says, ' What greater suffering than this canst thou find
for mortals, than to behold their children and their
loved ones dead ! '" 2

Although the house of Kenelm Digby, by the end
of 1863, was left so desolate, new youthful life came to
cheer his later years. In 1865 his youngest daughter
the last left to his home, Mary, married, very young,

1 Longfellow.

2 The above quotations are from Evenings on tJie Thames.

LATEST WRITINGS 203

Hubert, a son of the old Catholic family of the Barons
Dormer. In order that her father should not be left
quite alone, it was arranged that, as Mr. Dormer was
in a London Government office, the young couple should
live with him at Shaftesbury House, and so they did
until he died, fifteen years later. They soon had several
children, and the house was refreshed by young faces
and voices.

II

Something must now be said about Digby's later
writings. After he had completed Compitum in 1854,
a certain reaction took place in him as to the study of
Christian antiquity and mediaeval history. He had
always protested against those who too much exalted
severe and serious studies and* writings and pursuits, and
turned their faces away from the simple pleasures and
tastes and literature of the common folk. While he
was living in the Isle of Thanet, with its summer London
trippers and modest, cheerful tea-gardens and simple
pleasure resorts, he wrote the book named The Lovers'
Seat, published in the year so fatal to him, 1856. The
alternative name of the book — he always gave an
alternative name — was Kathemerina, or Common Things
in relation to Beauty, Virtue and Truth. The scene
introducing this book is laid not, as in the Broadstone,
on the banks of a stream in Dauphiny, nor, as in the
Mores Catholici, in a romantically situated monastery,
nor as in Compitum, in a forest of the kings of France,
but in a tea-garden on the suburban hills where now
stands the Crystal Palace.

" From long solitary study," says the author, " from
the elevated roads of honour and chivalry, from the

204 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

schools of history and philosophy, from the sacred
limits where divinest truths are incidentally presented
or elicited, our readers may repair, seeking rest and
contentment and delight, to the lowly retreats where,
like Antaeus when suffocated by the gripe of Hercules,
by touching their mother Earth, they can renew their
strength and recover what is the most precious of
intellectual gifts, universality of mind and unlimited
benevolence, by habits of conversation with the loving
side of nature. And, perhaps, after all, the subject
itself, independent of all reserves, is as elevated as any
other. It may be allowable to observe that the beauty
of the earth, the common things and common persons
of the world, are called upon by the high voices that
we have heard in churches to praise our Creator ; it
is not only the angels that are so exhorted ; it is the
waters, the sun, moon and stars, the shower and the
dew, and heat and cold, the hoary frosts, the ice and
snow, the nights and days, the light and darkness, the
lightning and clouds, the earth, the mountains and
hills, all the things that spring up in the earth, the
fountains, seas and rivers, the fowls of the air, the beasts
and cattle, the sons of men, young men and maidens,
the old with the younger, and all people, or in other
words, all the common visible things around us, which,
if they were not worthy of being much thought about,
would hardly have been called on to fulfil such a pure
and exalted ministry."

Such is the theme of this very miscellaneous book.
Certainly it is good to remind religious people sometimes
of this wide scope of religion, which they may be apt to
forget in the temples, though saints like Augustine and
Cyprian, Francis of Assisi and Francis of Sales, never
did forget it.

The Lovers' Seat, although, like all Digby's books,
no " popular success," was in accordance with the mood

LATEST WRITINGS 205

of the 'fifties. General benevolence and cheerfulness
was in the air. Dickens was writing still, and his
books had given a true and charming picture of all this
side of life. Dickens, says Digby, not only sees, but
forces us to see, goodness in very minute things. Another
writer, less known now, Mayhew, collected in his book
called London a vast and admirable store of humble
conversations from the streets and markets. It is the
best book of its kind ever written. He is often quoted
by Digby to show the artless and truly human goodness
of the Many.

In the Lovers' Seat Kenelm Digby protests against
all kinds of excessive dogmatism, fanaticism, intolerance
or contempt of others, and intellectual or religious
arrogance. On the whole he thinks, unlike Milton,
that it is better to toy harmlessly (bien entendu) with
charming Amaryllis in the shade, or with the tangles
of Nseera's hair, in a tea-garden, or a boat, or on a river-
bank, or on a bench by a suburban wood, than to
exhaust mind and body in the pursuit of fame, or exact
and precise metaphysical truth, closing eyes and heart
to the beauties of this earth and human nature.

The Lovers' Seat contains a passage1 which may be
quoted here because it is of an interesting autobiographi-
cal kind. Digby has been urging that disputes between
Catholics and non-Catholics ought not to be waged with
asperity, and that the former, at least, should express
themselves in more tolerant and considerate language
than they always do. But, he says,

;' I hear it asked by others, Who are these persons to
admonish each other thus ? Do these counsels come
from one who has elsewhere written hastily, harshly,

1 Vol. ii. p. 345.

206 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

unfairly, with the very thoughts, words and, we suspect,,
looks of intolerance ? Well, is there no place for a
palinode, supposing even that it were so, as is possible.
For

' In what we love faults oft take gloomiest hue,
And thus, my countrymen, I warred on you.'

And yet, if an advocate so accused were allowed to-
make a personal allusion, he would say, perhaps truly,
that the mischief at the worst was only skin-deep ;
for if any one had then [i.e. at date of Mores Catholici,
etc.] turned towards him, moved by the gravity of
words borrowed from others and of examples cited from
others, and had said, I must yield myself up ; I am
persuaded ; I cannot resist this eloquence, this logic,
this extraneous force, wielded by the genius and experi-
ence of so many others, he [Digby] might now tell us
that he would have stopped him ; that he would have
said to him, If you are only inflamed by the words
of another, persuaded, enticed, or forced or driven,
by the eloquence of these passages, by the fears that
they produce, by the hopes that they kindle, by the
views that I take, by the feelings that I experience-
resist them, turn from them. Think not to build up
with the same instruments with which formerly it was
overthrown [viz. human agencies] that which once
stood upright. Be true to yourself, leave others and
forget them. But if you are thus moved because you
find in your own heart a spontaneous voice, an accordant
echo, because you know that by so yielding you are
leaving extraordinary for common thoughts ; vanity
and inconstancy, tempestuous emotions and libidinous
opinions, for common, certain, and defined law ; because
you are moved by the antiquity and constancy of
examples, by the authority of letters and monuments ;
because you know that by so yielding you are about to
embrace a union favourable to all the sweets of life and
to the exercise of all the endearing and precious offices
of humanity ; that you are yielding, not to this man or

LATEST WRITINGS 207

that, but to a greater love of divine and human things,
convinced that these views will cause you to love
yourself less, God and men more ; that you will love, if
possible, your country, and all its venerable institutions
with more loyalty, your friends with more affection,
your enemies with more truth, your contemporaries
with more sincerity, the dead with more reverence,
that you will have a wider, broader ground on which
to develope all the sympathies of your nature ; that
you will be able better to embrace in your love all ages,
nations, and all mankind ; then see whether you owe
this change to the bigotry of another that would destroy
all the springs of your own action, whether it is not to
yourself rather that you yield, whether the result is due,
not to another's intolerance, but to y6ur own freedom."

This would be a good line of self-examination for one
who meditated uniting himself to the ancient Catholic
Church of Christendom, or even for one who had long
so united himself — to test the results of his action.

The Lovers' Seat is full of quotations, like all Digby's
works, and even now the great and wise, especially
Augustine, have their part, but more of the quotations
are from lighter Literature, such as the writings of
Charles Lamb and Hood and Hazlitt, and innocent
popular sentimental verse of the nineteenth century.
It is a book, one would say, that a wounded soldier,
home from the wars, would like to have by his bed
of convalescence. Or it is a good book to take in
one's pocket for a summer day of lounging in woods,
or on the river. Like Digby's other later books, it
did not attract much notice, and it was blamed by
some religious critics of the strict and severe order,
who may have deemed it aimed against their own
rather gloomy predilections. Digby was grateful to his

208 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

friend the Count de Montalembert, as one of the few
who praised the book, and blamed its blamers.

" Mere gratitude alone makes him desire
To tell of friendship that would e'en admire
His Lovers' Seat. Montalembert did blame
Those who condemned it. I need no one name.
The praise he gave it I dare not repeat ;
From such a pen the words must have been sweet ;
But thus much can be sung, when at the end
He styled himself a true devoted friend,
' For ever grateful,' too, he chose to add
For the same pages others said were bad.
But what's the blame of critics, when we know
That he was pleased with what they counted low ?
Montalembert will outweigh all their store,
When he approves what mortal can ask more ? " 1

Montalembert wrote, in English, from the Athenaeum
Club, 22nd May, 1858, to Digby :

" MY DEAR FRIEND,

" I have been detained here some days longer
than I expected on account of the Duchess of Orleans'
death, and during my melancholy excursion to Rich-
mond and Claremont. On that occasion your delightful
Lovers' Seat has been my constant companion. I have
not yet read more than the best part of the first volume,
but I am quite charmed with your talent and your
style. Your loving and generous soul has never shone
out to greater advantage. Who can be the narrow-
minded, bad-hearted people who have abused those
exquisite volumes ? I wish I knew them, and could
abuse them as they deserve. They must be some of
Veuillot's satellites in English clothes. All I can say is
that I agree with every word of what you have written.
I intend to read the rest on my way to Paris, but cannot
refrain from thanking you des d present for the extreme

1 Temple of Memory, Canto VI.

LATEST WRITINGS 209

gratification and edification you have afforded me.
Believe me, your obliged and devoted friend,

" C. MONTALEMBERT."

Digby's wife rather regretted his deviation from his
severer studies of old. " Where are those fine old books
you used to read ? " she said to him. " I like to see
their very outsides." " Oh, you must and will," she said
to him a few days before her death, " before this summer
ends, write something that may do good." But some
books can only be written at one time of life ; others
at other times, because man himself is never exactly
the same two years together. No man, said the Greek
sage, " dips his foot twice in the same river."

Ill

Some passages have already been quoted from Digby's
next two books, the Children's Bower, published in
1858, after the death of his two sons, and the Chapel
of St. John, published in 1861 after that of his wife.
After the events of 1856 the light-heartedness of the
Lovers' Seat was not to be looked for. Digby at the
beginning of the Children's Bower speaks of himself, in
his usual way, as if he were speaking of another unnamed
person, as " prostrated by irresistible calamity coming
upon him in an unexpected form, the death of those
he loved." '

But, he says, " however stunned, disheartened, struck
to the quick, such a person has something more to do
than to feel. He will still move and work mechanically,
as muscles after life has left them. He cannot remain
long at rest, crossing his hands before him, and wholly
abandoning the pursuits which had hitherto deluded

1 Chapel of St. John, p. 179.
K.P. o

210 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

him with the idea of his being not wholly a dead weight
upon the earth. The often repeated saying, ' It was
so easy for the author not to have written it ' does not
apply in every instance. It is not so easy always not
to write, especially when the imagination and the heart
have been struck, to say nothing of something else
having been deeply and powerfully moved. Therefore
in spite of all discouragement, finding no other advantage
in the process but only the losing of hope by time,
without the prospect of any pleasure resulting to himself,
he returns to his former habits, and proposes to offer
some sketch that, while in harmony with his own condi-
tion, may possibly, however little his pretensions, prove
not wholly uninstructive or unsuggestive to others."

The subject of the Children's Bower was that then
nearest to his own heart, childhood and early youth,
its innocence, cheerfulness, simplicity, unaffectedness,
naturalness — all the virtues which made Christ set a
little child in the midst of his disciples — interwoven
with lovely memories of his own two lost boys. Like
all Digby's books, the Children's Bower is not exactly
a work of art, but a garland of beautiful things gathered
by the way, and, like all his books, its discursive character
makes it impossible to describe. Those many who
have loved and lost a darling child, or a youth on the
brink of manhood, just now so vast a legion, would
find it of some consolation to read this book.

" A child, like little John, stay of our steps in this
life, and guide to all our blessed hopes hereafter, abso-
lutely calls on us to see and hear what is divine. He
seems to have a mission ' illuminare illos qui in tenebris
et in umbra sedent,' so that one may apply to him the
words of St. Augustin, ' Corruscasti et splenduisti,
et rupisti surditatem meam.' " l

1 " Thou hast shone forth with splendour, and broken my deafness."

LATEST WRITINGS 211

At the close of the Children's Bower, Digby speaks of
his general aim in the book ; a lofty aim it is :

" I have wished to arrange, as it were, a vast and an
imposing procession ; I have sought to call forth, as
assistants at the funerals of this child and this youth,
some, at least, of their ancestors and, as one might say,
living relatives, that is, representatives who resembled
them in their character, persons collected from the
human race, taken from the one family of the innocent,
the heroic, and the religious, the vast brotherhood of
nature and grace, of blood and of spirit. I have not
shrunk from inviting even those who in antiquity seem
to have aspired at what they of Christian times alone
could realize. Hence have passed as it were before us
Plato and St. Augustin, Pindar and David. To assist
at it I have called some from the dead and others from
the living. There have been fellow-countrymen, and
those who from foreign nations have passed the seas
obedient to our call. Contingents there were from the
court of the great monarch who heard Bossuet, and
from the schools of the religious who knew One only
that is great. Deputations there have been from the
nobility of the world, ushered by ducal and princely
authors. Things splendid and illustrious from every
sphere have had their place in it, from the pomps of
nature to the chosen of human grandeur, from an order
of thoughts all contemplative and spiritual, to the
ephemeral joys of our early dreams. And if the idea
has not been realized, if the execution has proved only
the feebleness and disorder of the mind that was en-
trusted with the conduct of this great and, I may add,
pious solemnity, at least let the immensity of its pains,
conveying an idea of the worth that prompted them, of
the beauty of the examples that they were intended
to transmit, of the love that they sought to manifest,
claim indulgence, and bespeak pity."

And his aim was " to bestow such honours on the

212 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

beloved dead as might prove not merely gratifying to
the heart of those who lamented them, but salutary and
efficient in the highest sense — a service to the dead by
conferring benefit on the living."

Perhaps no books do more practical good than those
unassuming ones which show by example what a family
life can be — the happiness of so many family groups is
ruined by the want of an ideal, and by the absence of
sweet manners. The Catholic religion, at its best, is the
great mistress of courtesy, charity, forbearance, and
good manners.

A reviewer, in the Tablet, of the Children's Bower, said
that the appearance of a " work by Kenelm Digby is
of more importance to Catholics than a change in the
Ministry," and went on to make some very true observa-
tions on his writings in general, which it is well to quote
here. The writer said :

" Others may exhort, teach and argue — others may
establish political maxims, dispel historic doubts, refute
polemical calumnies ; some may undertake to defend
us against hostile attacks, others to open our eyes to
our own shortcomings ; logic, sarcasm and invective may
be employed to convince, to sting, and to coerce us, — all
may do their parts well, but we do not believe that they
will do as much for us as one book from Kenelm Henry
Digby.

" We take the special value of his writings to consist
in this, that, whereas others take us as we are, and
leave us as they found us, supplying us only with
facts, arguments or inducements of which we may, or
may not avail ourselves, the author of the Ages of Faith
goes to work in a wholly different way. He acts on the
individual reader himself, moulding, swaying, and
transforming him by an unconscious process. He exalts
the mind, ennobles the feelings, he purifies the hearts

LATEST WRITINGS 213

of his readers. He appeals to nothing that, as Catholics,
they do not know to be good and true ; he describes
nothing that they do not feel to be beautiful and holy ;
he presents them with a standard of excellence as the
natural measure of their thoughts, acts, and feelings,
which it requires a deliberate exercise of their will to
repudiate in favour of something lower and more
debased. He exercises a most gentle, but powerfully
constraining influence on his readers by setting before
them what they recognize instinctively as true types
of Catholicity, and leaves them to appropriate them.
One of the great praises of the monastic institute, in
addition to its effects on those who embrace the religious
state, is justly said to be that, even for those who do not
embrace it, it preserves the ideal standard of virtue, in
their minds, and prevents them from lowering it to the
level of their own practice."

Digby's next book was called The Chapel of St. John,
or, a Life of Faith in the Nineteenth Century. It was
written after his wife's death, and published in 1861,
and her character is its central theme. As he says in it :

" It is true that we still are presented each year with
biographical notices of persons in one way or another re-
markable ; of some of whom the words are deemed oracles
for mankind, whose science is known to all countries, and
whose discoveries are destined to sound through all ages,
but, however interesting such records may be in a general
manner according to the ideas of the day, it is well, and,
even in the interest of the world itself, it is important ,
to keep up the ancient custom also of leaving to posterity
a memory of persons living in the midst of it, practising
what a noble French writer lately calls the monotonous
life of the Gospel, lest persons like ourselves should
begin to suppose that what used to be called a life of
faith, with the manners consequent upon it, ought to
be regarded as merely an ancient theory, or, at the most,

214 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

as a vestige of the past ; for, in fact, such a life spent and
practised in the world, has for the last two hundred
years been so seldom a theme in England for literary
composition, that we might truly say in the style of
Tacitus, that within such domains we should have lost
the memory of it, if it had been as much in our power to
forget as to be silent."

The Children's Bower and the Chapel of St. John are
books of the kind that Ste. Beuve had in mind when he
wrote these words :

" However agitated may be the times we live in,
however withered or corrupt you may imagine them,
there are always certain books, exquisite and rare,
merely in consequence of the materials of which they are
composed, which manage to appear. There are always
hearts to produce them in the shade, and other hearts
to gather them. They are books which are not like
books, and sometimes even are really not books. They
are simple and discreet destinies thrown upon cross-roads
off the great dusty highway of life, and which, when you
are wandering yourself off it, when you come up to them,
arrest you by their sweet odours, and purely natural
flowers, of which you thought the race extinct. The
form of these books varies, sometimes it is a collection
of letters from the drawer of a person lately dead ; some-
times it is a surviving lover, who consecrates himself to
a faithful remembrance, seeking to transmit and per-
petuate it. So, under an exterior more or less veiled,
he gives to his reader a true history. There are examples
of other forms among those productions of hearts, and
the form is a thing indifferent, provided there is still a
simple, naked record of the circumstances experienced,
with as little view as possible to the creation of a novel ;
for those sort of treasures should never be turned into
romance, according to the notions of those times when
the Astree was in vogue, with all their fancies about

LATEST WEITINGS 215

Idealization, and ennobling, and giving the quintessence
of real things."

The Ee'cit d'une Sceur, by Pauline de Ferronays, is,
perhaps, the best-known instance of books of this kind,
which are all too rare.

Near the close of this very beautiful Chapel of St.
John, Kenelm Digby makes a veiled but unmistakeable
confession that he had not always, in temper and kind-
ness, been worthy of so much love and sweetness, and
<;are for him, and unselfishness and goodness. It is,
alas, a confession which most men have to make, at least
to themselves, when they look back on married life
from a time when it is too late to make amends, except
by contrition, to the loved and lost.

IV

After the Chapel of St. John, Digby wrote his last book
in prose, called Evenings on the Thames, or, Serene Hours
and what they require, which was published in two
volumes in 1864. During his earlier years at Kensington
he was fond of organizing rowing parties on the lower
Thames, having tea at such homely places as the " Sun "
gardens at Kingston, or the tea-gardens at Kew and
Hampton Court, or the " Bells of Ouseley," at Old
Windsor, near Eunnymeade, well-known to Etonians.
He calls it the " never-to-be-forgotten hostel of the
Five Bells " . . . " an old haunted-looking house, that
stands solitary with some gloomy elm-trees in front, at
a, turn of the river, skirting majestic woods." Or his
crew might row past the Eton meadows to Surley Hall,
or even to Monkey Island. The calm wide reaches by
Eichmond and Twickenham, or in the level country by

216 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

Weybridge and Chertsey, where the Thames seems to
be resting from its travels, pleased him too. He loved
to let the boat lie amid the tall rushes at the end of some
swan-haunted eyot, and even now swam the river
sometimes, resuming the favourite exercise of his youth.
In this book are many delightful word-pictures of the
Thames, the ideal boating river, calm, serene, and well-
controlled, of which the poet Gray so truly remarked,
" Rivers which have lived in London and its neighbour-
hood all their days, will not run roaring and tumbling
about. No ; they only glide and whisper." Digbymust
have loved, if he knew it, lonica by William Johnson,
with the delicious Eton Boating Song and other verse
breathing the very spirit of the River. The Thames
seems to glide and whisper through Digby's two volumes,
bearing on its calm and gentle stream, like so many
light craft or swans, a multitude of charming thoughts
and quotations. For pleasure in a boat serenity in the
company is above all things necessary, especially on so
tranquil a river, and this gives the theme. What is it,,
in thought, and way of life, and religion, that most tends
to make men and women serene ? Whom would one
choose for companions on a June evening on the Thames ?
Would one, for instance, choose an ardent Radical
Reformer, a rigid Puritan, an assertor of Woman's
Wrongs, a hot argumentative controversialist in any
cause, a restless financier, a man to whom " time i»
money," a pompous plutocrat, a woman of the nothing-
but-fashionable world, or one who delights in no con-
versation which is not maliciously critical ? Or would
one prefer those for river company who are bred in the
school of respect for authority and reverence for the
things of old, the young and simply gay, or perhaps

LATEST WRITINGS 217

rather silent and dreamy, sometimes, maybe, a quiet
old priest, who at intervals, as Digby says, will read his
breviary while others are bathing, or wandering a little
from the bank ?

The boat often passed by Petersham, where Kenelm
in his boyhood first made the acquaintance of the serene
river — how much, by the way, he would have enjoyed
Eton as a " wet-bob "

" Petersham — who that only navigates on the river
knows much about it, hid away as it is among the woods ?
And yet, when you have landed, and turned down yon
lane where the tall elms are casting their shade over it,
you will soon find in that village a place very friendly
and favourable as regards the purpose we always have
in view. What majestic avenues, all leading to the
great house that gives to Ham so historical a character,
recalling Thomson and Armstrong, and the good Duke
and Duchess of Queensbury, Prior's Kitty, who nursed
their friend Gay there when he was ill. Then what
sweet meadows down to the river ! and those sloping
lawns which front it on the opposite shore, how beautiful
are they ! I know a bank on that side where you can
pass, with those who like it, a very serene hour. It is
fragrant with the hawthorn that blooms behind it." *

A nephew of Kenelm, still living, Mr. John Digby,
recollects taking an oar in some of these expeditions.
Digby wrote the Evenings on the Thames during the
period of comparative cheerfulness between the time
when there was hope that his daughter Letitia would
recover and the final development of her malady which
rapidly ended in her death at the end of 1863, though he
did not finish it till after that woe. Its pages, he says,
in the preface,

1 Evenings on the Thames, vol. ii. p. 310.

218 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

" remind him of the wild, exuberant joy occasioned by
what he and others thought was an escape, though it
proved to be only, according to their views, a respite ;
they constituted his employment amidst the felicity
so short to him of a season which was to prove for her a
last summer. That is why they are now printed after
an overthrow of hopes, otherwise calculated to ensure
their suppression and his silence for ever."

The book is, accordingly, although with interludes of
deepest melancholy, of cheerful tone, on the whole,
much in the same vein as the Lovers' Seat. It extols
pleasures that are simple, natural and popular, the
benefits to be derived from a recklessly indolent holiday
when days are fine — all this embellished by delightful
quotations from authors of all ages who wrote in this
vein. Digby was still, and to the close of his life, in
the mood of protesting against excessive intellectualism
and too exalted or serious ideals of the expenditure of
time ; and, indeed, those who firmly believe in life eternal,
ought not to place too much value on transient time, and
thus true Christianity should have a sanction for, among
other things, that innocent dissipation upon which
Mr. Worldly Wiseman looks with a severe countenance,
thinking how the time thus wasted might be spent in
improving one's education, or advancing the " Progress "
of the race. There is a good deal to be said for mor-
tifying in oneself the passion for useful, incessant
activity, which is often disastrous to the spiritual being
and to peace of the soul. Digby 's books are a noble
medicine for those with whom energetic and conscientious
action has almost become a painful malady, and may
be undoubtingly recommended to such patients, who
are said by travellers to abound especially in the United

LATEST WRITINGS 219

States of America. Without always sitting in the sun
like Neapolitan lazzaroni, an occupation never likely
to become possible or popular in a northern climate,
a sacrifice may often, with much advantage, be made to
that bright deity of hours which would otherwise be
spent in making money, or harassing our fellow beings
with schemes for their improvement. There are not
nearly enough bank holidays in the English year, there
should be one at least once a month from April to
October ; and in this respect we are much worse off than
our mediaeval ancestors with their numerous feasts
of the Church, and shall probably run faster down the
hill into nervous decline and break-down. A kind of
superstitious adoration has grown up in England and
America of what poor Charles Lamb calls " that fiend
Occupation, that my spirit hath broken," and perhaps
the asceticism, or self-deprivation of innocent pleasure,
which once found its scope in the life more specifically
devoted to religion, has now gone into- business, including
the " sport " which before the Great War had become
so serious and business-like.

The Evenings on the Thames is delightful for the
meditative, full of mellow wisdom, and contains many
thoughts that are salutary and reconciling about
religion. This forgotten book can be recommended
to those who are so fortunate as to be able to pursue
wisdom with some degree of leisure.

After the Evenings on the {Thames, Digby published no
more prose, and employed the last fifteen years of his
life in writing verse, thus reversing the usual procedure

220 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

of youth and age. His first metrical volume was
published in 1865, under the title of Short Poems, and
an enlarged edition appeared in 1866. In these poems
there is much autobiography. In that called " The
Despondent Cured," he describes a certain morbid
state in which he himself had lived for some years (no
doubt since the flight of Marcella), and from which he
had lately emerged. The symptoms had been dark
melancholy, cherished anger and irritation, vexation
that others did not show more clearly love for him,
critical and suspicious thoughts, egotistic desires to
engross more of the time and company of the young,
gloomy forebodings of more disasters.

" Well, here again the cause of his displeasure
Was his own love of this life without measure.
The fault was not in things that touched his pride
But in the selfish love with which were dyed
His erring thoughts, so anxiously diffused ;
To reap at once what here has been refused
By Heaven's own goodness, wishing to impart
A bliss more worthy of the human heart
Than ever could be found in this poor vale,
Where tears must flow, and richest blessings fail.
The culprit here again stood self-confessed,
And thus once more his spirit found its rest.
Oh ! happy moment, truly wondrous cure,
That might through endless ages still endure ;
The fault acknowledged, felt to be his own ;
No blame on circumstance, or others thrown,
And the result a calm, contented soul,
Pleased with each part, and ravished with the whole." l

Another poem called " The Remedy for Human
Sadness " is on the same theme, and contains a fine
passage upon the mortality of books, once living and
admired, and the vanity of literary ambitions. In old

1 Short Poems, p. 101.

LATEST WHITINGS 221

age, too, he says, " historic lore " and " letters " begin
to weary. They have lost their freshness for minds
that have become " permanently tired." Nothing
endures to the end but religion. As Manzoni, the
Italian, said, when a friend reproached him for not
writing more novels, " We must all come to theology
at last."

Here, too, from the same volume, are reminiscences
-of the loveliest period of his family life :

" A fund of new, delightful themes,
To gild and charm a poet's dreams.
What strolls through Tunbridge rocks and slopes,
When every morning brought new hopes !
What boating in fair Pegwell Bay !
What songs, what tricks, each night and day !

And then to think of graver things

All fled as if with swallow wings !

The sense, the skill, the constant prayer,

For piety with grace was there.

The tutor learned, ever kind,

The chaplain with his holy mind.

The house so full, so well ordained,
Where all was peace, and none complained ;
The altar and observance bright,
That daily graced the morning light,
The friends, the mirth, the evening songs,
And what to sweetest home belongs.

Ah well ! — 'tis bootless now to sigh ;
For we, and all once ours, must die.
All must still change and pass away,
To grow up, fall, or else decay,
Rejoining things already past,
Followed by what no more will last."

I had meant to end my quotation here, but some
verses which follow are, to me, so affecting, that I must
ask the reader to let me quote them also. Digby's books

222 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

are not at all easy to obtain, and this is my excuse for
long quotations.

" Let fates of monarchies be known,
Their grandeur we, too, freely own ;
Let Memory's dim, mysterious hall
Present their rise, and growth, and fall ;
But let there be a chamber too
For what more moves both me and you.

In which is kept for tender hearts
That which a deathless peace imparts,
The thought of those no longer here,
Whose image fadeth year by year,
Once like a part of your own being,
And now each day still further fleeing ;

And leaving only for your stay

Just that which cannot pass away,

The shadows in your mental eye

Of those you know can never die,

Whose lives, though short, were rightly spent,

Who, leaving earth, to Heaven went.

There, in that vague and silent store
Where nought distinct is figured more,
Midst years and chances all rolled by,
Midst thoughts of mirth that yield a sigh,
You find a help, a hope, a power
To guard you in your final hour.

For what will seem this mortal span
So little consonant with man,
Its hopes, its evils, or its end,
When elsewhere Heaven may intend
To finish for you that which seems,
And grant realities for dreams ?

That life which nothing more can sever,
From those you love, to last for ever,
That guiltless state in heaven blest,
Where ransom yields the joyful rest,
Where the forgiven, happy, free,
Reap bliss and immortality."

After another smaller volume of verse in 1867, entitled
A Day on the Muses' Hill, Digby published in 1869 that

LATEST WRITINGS 223

called Little Low Bushes. This contains, among other
pieces, the poem on Sauston Hall, near Cambridge,
already mentioned, and a charming narrative of a little
tour in the Loire country, ending with a visit to his
friends the d'Esgrignys, in the Vendean land. Then he
wrote an alarmingly long poem of twenty cantos, and
550 pages, published by Longmans in 1872, entitled
Ouranogaia, or Heaven on Earth.

In this, as in all his later volumes, he assails those
who, as he thought, like the Port Royal school in France
or the English Puritans, divide too absolutely the sphere
of religion from that of the general life of the world.
He held that Heaven was present in all the good and
innocent joys of earth, which were raised to a higher
level by this divine influence. His design, he says in
the Preface, is to

" represent the happiness, comparable in some degree
to what reigns in Heaven, which results from taking a
cheerful, sympathetic, tolerant, and Catholic view of
human life, as being on the confines of our celestial
country, with constant means of access to it. ... The
object is also to suggest that human pleasures in this
world, even those which are deemed most strictly
confined to earth, and to our two-fold formation in the
present state of existence, are enhanced immeasurably
when associated in a general way with such higher
thoughts as may be said, without extravagance, to
culminate in Heaven, being tempered and coloured, as
it were, by an all-pervading tone of trust in that forgive-
ness which constitutes an article of the Christian Creed.

" The whole is so arranged as to show in detail that
some of the bliss of Heaven, as far as we can conceive
it, may be enjoyed by mankind in this life by means
of the spectacle of Creation, and in particular of Beauty,
as also Mirth, Admiration, Friendship, Love, Goodness,

224 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

Peace, Poetry, Learning, Philosophy, and Festivals of
the Church, as developing, even by the rites attend-
ing them, those internal dispositions which render man
what a theologian calls ' animal carissimum Deo,' and,
in fine, through sanctity, untroubled and unaffected by
human follies, while ignoring rather than trying to
extirpate the inevitable. There is an attempt to show
likewise with what effect Heaven may be said to descend
especially on youth and age, and on those who have
gone astray. . . . Poverty and a low social rank are
shown to present no obstacle to this vision of two worlds ;
and, lastly, Heaven is represented as brought down to
the sick and to the dying."

It was, in fact, a metrical essay upon the same theme
as inspired his Compitum. The line of division of
temperament which in the days of Greece and Rome
made some thinkers Stoics and others Epicureans, also
runs through the history of the Christian Religion. On
one side of the line are the Puritans, and men like the
author of the Imitation, and the weighty and sad
St. Cyran, Pascal, and others of the Port Royal school.
To these the thought of God, union with God and separa-
tion by sin from God, is so overwhelming, that they
incline to abstract that idea from all the joys and beauties
of this life, and to look upon these rather in the light of
temptations. Perhaps the most extreme exposition of
this view is given by old Isaac Watts in his naive verses :

" Nature has soft but powerful bands,
Our reason she controls,
And children with their little hands
Cling closest to our souls.

Thoughtless they play the old Serpent's part,
What tempting things they be !
They wind themselves about our heart,
And keep it far from Thee."

LATEST WRITINGS 225

On the other side of the line are men like Francisco di
Assisi and Fra^ois de Sales, who see God in all that is
innocent and beautiful in life and nature. The summum
bonum, the beata vita, lies for them, also, in love of, and
union with, God, but to them God shines through all
the Universe. They are not ascetics, although they
find the greatest joys in the simplest and least artificial
pleasures, and fly from wearisome pomps and corrupting
vanities. Digby was upon this side of the line ; he was,
if one may use the expression, a Christian Epicurean,
not a Christian Stoic. Nothing could have been more
remote from his way of thinking than those lines of
Isaac Watts. To him all pleasures were good, and of
divine nature and origin, when they were pure. Those
who broke away from the Catholic Church had done,
he thought, their utmost to divorce religion from the
natural joys of life, and had even, to some degree,
infected with this false view the Catholic Church itself.

After Ouranogaia, published in 1872, came another
book of verse called Last Year's Falling Leaves, published
in 1873, and including some poems out of a shorter book
called Hours with the First Falling Leaves, which was
printed in 1872. In the Preface he says :

" The general object of these Poems is to show in con-
junction the greatest and the smallest things of life,
the highest and the lowest, the greatest and the least
formally wise, the spiritual and the corporeal, reason
and affection, faith and nature. Perhaps the bare
mention of such a design, with many of the terms
employed to express it, may, for some minds, afford
sufficient proof that the author who entertains it, and
uses such words, is incapable of thought. Of course,
if they choose, they are free to conclude that whoever

226 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

thinks differently from them cannot think at all. But
be that as it may, such was his object."

One of these poems in Last Year's Leaves, called
" Luzencay," describes life in the Breton chateau of
his dear friends the d'Esgrignys :

" Oh ! manners of old noble times
As musical as distant chimes ;
Oh ! gift of Heaven's benignity,
When their last traces we can see.
I care not if my verse offends
In saying that these grace my friends,
D'Esgrigny's cheerful, happy pair,
Who wearied, wounded hearts repair,
Gentle and gracious, constant, true,
Who make fife wholesome thus for you."

In another poem he gives a most excellent account
of Inns in various lands and ages, with stories old and
new connected with them, not forgetting his humble
but dear " Sun " at Kingston, " Swan " at Thames
Ditton, " Bells of Ouseley," and the " Spaniards " of
Hampstead. In the prelude he expresses his hope for
a few kindred souls to read his poems, even one, not a
hurried, flurried, excitement-hunting reader, but

" one with leisure, thoughtful made,
Who can enjoy both sun and shade,
With that fine, exquisite, deep sense
Of things for which hard minds are dense,
Who has his fancies for retreat,
His favourite, accustomed seat,
Whom old familiar corners please,
As one who loves pure Nature's ease,
Thus I would have my audience free
From worshipping Publicity ;
One who can trust himself to judge,
Not always after others trudge ;
In heart who condescends to herd
With one of whom he never heard,

LATEST WRITINGS 227

Provided he is found to say
Things that will suit our common clay,
Our common heart, our common soul,
And never boast to know the whole."

Alas ! is not the scanty band of the serene still further
diminished since Digby wrote, and with good reason,
too ? No wonder that the circulation of his books was
small, if he wrote for a Public so limited in the busy
Victorian England.

One long poem in Last Year's Leaves is in praise of
London and its suburbs, its various pleasures, and the
good manners of those, especially the poor and simple,
who dwell therein. Kenelm Digby had come to love
London more and more. His joy in the country had
been connected with journeys on foot and horseback,
swimming, and climbing, pursuits unfit for a man now
past seventy. He had always disliked the rural sports
which take the form of depriving fellow creatures of
the joy of life. In this poem he says :

" I hate to hear the shot
Echoed by men who stray to hunt and kill,
Or shouts resounding still
Of those whose temper, stern, unyielding, hot,
Will burst to awe their dogs."

He might still row a little, or at any rate sit in a boat,
and there is certainly no river on earth for rowing like
the Thames. I will quote the last three stanzas of
another long poem in this volume, called " Faith with
Nature," because I love them and their theme, the
Litany of Our Lady.

" Loretto's song is sweet,
To utter love most meet ;

The words, though drawn from Scripture's deepest lore,
Seem but like children's play,

228 KENELM HENEY DIGBY

Gathering flowers in May,

Each fairer still than what was culled before ;

When cries of artless joy so bland

Denote that more is there than they can understand.

Than this no sweeter flower

E'er grew in earthly bower,

And, if the heart must rise to heaven above,

Its grace descends to greet

These offerings so meet,

The beams of pure although a human love ;

Lost in effulgence of that fire

Which Faith bestows on men all goodness to acquire.

'Tis music of the sky

When thus we sing and cry,

It is to bask in smiles all joy above,

To float through domes of air,

To leave the earth and dare

Enjoy the waves of deepest rest and love,

The breath of that eternal day,

Where Joy, and morning air, and Love for ever stay."

Another long piece in the unambitiously charming
volume of light and careless verse called Last Year's
Falling Leaves is a philosophic poem on " The Super-
natural," a sphere which Digby would never separate
from the Natural, through which it shines, he believed,
with real and heavenly rays.

In about his seventy-eighth year, in 1875, rather a feat
for that age, Digby published The Temple of Memory,
a poem in twelve cantos covering 426 pages. The
motto is drawn from St. Augustine's Confessions :
" Magna vis est Memoriae, nescio quid horrendum,
profunda, et infinita multiplicitas ; et hoc animus est,
et hoc ego ipse sum." " Great is the force of Memory,
a terrible, indescribable thing; profound and infinite
multiplicity ; and this is the mind, and this I myself
am " ; for what, indeed, is personality, identity, with-

LATEST WRITINGS 229

out the binding chain of memory ? Digby says in his
Preface :

" The object of this poem was to visit, with the aid
of St. Augustine, some of the wonders of Memory. There
are added, autobiographical sketches comprising various
remarkable characters, public events, artistic scenes,
and even personal incidents connected with them, in
which it was thought the general reader might take
an interest."

This poem, so useful to those who wish to know
Kenelm Digby as their friend, is, like the preceding
Ouranogaia and the rest, written in rhyming couplets,
mostly decasyllabic, but sometimes, for a change,
octosyllabic or other, in a careless and rapid and artless
way that recalls the later poems of George Crabbe ;
there are no high pretensions, but now and then, under
influence of emotion, it becomes for a space really good
poetry of the old fashion. Kenelm Digby would have
made the answer which Crabbe made to Wordsworth
when the latter wished him to spend more time in
elaborating and polishing and condensing his verse :
" It is not worth while." The easiest and most diffuse
verse must yet by its more difficult nature be less
diffuse than prose by the same author, and as he grew
old Kenelm Digby may have found verse useful for
this reason. He says that one can say in verse things
which one cannot say so well in prose, because verse
is the proper medium of the faculty of Imagination.

In the following year, 1876, Kenelm Digby, as inde-
fatigable a writer to the extreme limits of life as his
favourite Father, St. Augustine, or as Landor, published
the last of all his thirty-eight volumes, entitled Epilogue
to Previous Works in Prose and Verse. It was intended

230 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

to resume once more his Christian-Epicurean doctrine
" de beata vita." He devotes the sixth canto of the
Epilogue to the " use of authority in religion," as a
source of happiness, and real freedom of mind, a subject
to which he had given many admirable pages in the
Evenings on the Thames, and, indeed, in all his works.
If you accept Authority in religion, he says, you need not
waste your reasoning power in the pursuit of that kind of
knowledge which is not attainable by reasoning, nor will
you be befooled by other men's (or women's) reasoning,
but can attend serenely and with all your mind to the
common matters of life, which do fall within the scope
of reason and experience. The kind reader will, I am
sure, forgive me for quoting a little more from the
unambitious verse of an old man whose wisdom was,
at least, based upon an immense study of the wise of all
times, which, after all, leads one in the end to the
philosophy of life always embraced by the unreasoning
simple. These are the last citations I have to make,
from the last book. Accept Authority in these matters,
he says, and —

" To common matters you can then attend,
Of controversy you have found the end ;
But what can be more pleasant, or more wise
Than so to rest where no one wins who tries ?
For 'tis the will, not knowledge, that's required
When by this ancient Faith men are inspired.
Only in part we know of all that's there ;
And to know more now none of us need care ;
What's wanted is an humble, full submission,
And of the Faith that's prompted an admission ;
With which we can be free to leave the whole
For future knowledge that awaits the soul."

By means of such living and central Authority, he
adds, men can agree as one family having religion in

LATEST WRITINGS 231

common. Even if some results of the Authority are,
as he says, " rather queer," this gives ground for harmless
and loving amusement, just as peculiar characteristics
of a father or mother do in private families. He says
of the Faith as embodied in the Catholic and Roman
Church :

" Its unobtrusive force leaves you so free
That none besides seem blest with liberty.
Dear Heart ! it is not a Procrustean bed,
Whate'er by foes, or silly friends, is said ;
The very name denotes it is for all,
And not more for the great than for the small,
With adaptations infinite for each,
And more, perhaps, than 'twill expressly teach.
Although so varied in their tastes and views
Men find that it will serve them like the Muse,
Receiving with the mildest condescension
The homage e'en of thoughts they dare not mention ;
So like a wise and tender mother still
Regarding less the action than the will,
Which, when it is in harmony with truth,
For all Faith cares may have its freaks in sooth.
Of utterances it makes no parade,
It seeks to work its purpose in the shade ;
And one result of its great Presence there,
Of which, or soon or late, men are aware,
Is that it tends to happiness on earth,
And to serene and constant thoughts gives birth."

That true freedom comes from a reasoned and final
submission to true and real Authority was the theme
of Thomas Carlyle, although he never found the Autho-
rity. It was also one argument of a great cotemporary
who did find it, the Dominican Lacordaire. Those who
have been born and bred outside the Catholic Church
and, led by Reason, acting through both heart and mind,
submit to its authority, are aware of a singular and
new sense of intellectual and moral freedom and emanci-

232 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

pation — to their surprise — for usually it is exactly that
fear of loss of freedom which long holds back those whose
hearts and minds are already convinced. Why this
new sense of freedom ? It is because he who has made
the definite act of faith and surrender is saved from a
multitude of opinions, and from imprisonment in the
narrow bounds of his own mind and notions. Often,
also, because he is saved from the yoke of sensual and
other temptations which had held him in slavery. The
service of God through the Church is perfect freedom.
He stands, like Dante at the end of his journey through
Purgatory, " libero, dritto, e di sano arbitrio."

The French historian, Michelet, remarks, " What were
the Protestants, in substance ? The transition from
Christianity to the new birth of liberty, under a form
still Christian." And what comes next after the
realization in the last two centuries of this kind of
liberty ? Return, surely, to a higher order, securing
higher freedom, and not now received merely because
it exists, as by children, but accepted of deliberate
choice, as an act of will, on its merits, as by grown men»
The events of the sixteenth century were the manifesta-
tion of restless and vigorous adolescence. But without
order there is no tranquillity, and without tranquillity
there is no happiness. The great decisions of the
Catholic Church, given at long intervals, have all been
in the nature of judgments intended to determine long
and bitter controversies, on subjects which can never
be solved by controversy, and so to restore or extend
the realm of peace. As the old Roman orator said :
" Proprium est Romani hominis nemini servire."
Catholics, indeed, serve and obey, but they do not follow
and obey individual thinkers or prophets. A Catholic

LATEST WRITINGS 233

accepts the decisions of the Church, from those of the
Council of Nicea down to those, equally valid, of the
Council of Trent and the Vatican Council, retaining
freedom to discuss all undecided questions, and he is
safe from being enslaved in mind by any Luther or
Calvin, of some new species, perhaps feminine. Like
the Imperial Government in India, the Church, in its
own sphere, keeps the peace against intellectual and
moral marauders.

Woman, says Digby in this same poem, in her normal
state, agrees with the old Faith and is naturally Catholic,
and she is the more powerfully beautiful if she really
holds it, because she then has something, not elsewhere
to be found, added to and deepening her natural
charms ; and, he adds, " that which can win unspoiled
woman's heart, must be the true supreme good for
all." Is not this the noblest homage that man can pay
to woman ?

Men, he says, to be fair, ought not to confound with
the ways of her true sons and daughters the ways of
fools or bad and worldly-ambitious men who may chance
to belong nominally to the Catholic Church, nor ought
they to judge the whole character of the Church through
history by concentrating attention upon some particular
age in which that character may have been perverted or
relaxed in some degree, for a space.

After much else Kenelm Digby refers in this poem to
those who accept all that is said in praise of the Catholic
Church, but give to that name their own meaning, so
that it has been necessary in modern England, since the
Oxford Movement began, in writing about the Catholic
Church, to introduce a guard on one's words, for fear
of misinterpretation. He says, very gently, here :

234 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

" Methinks I hear the plaudits as we go
Of some consenting whom we love and know,
More natural e'en now they cannot be,
Nor good in common things that Faith can see.
But yet is there submission to display,
Like all religious grandeur passed away ?
Submission to the plans ordained on high
By Him who made and rules the earth and sky ?
To that great law, our highest thoughts beyond,
They'll find at length their minds will correspond."

So be it ! Till then, as Browning says :

" A little more, and how much it is,
A little less and what worlds away."

After the Epilogue Kenelm Digby published no more,
though he lived for four years, and saw the fine edition
in five volumes of the Broadstone of Honour which Mr.
Quaritch, by his own desire, brought out in 1877. He
must have turned over the pages of this work of his
enthusiastic Cambridge youth with the sad and far-away
feeling which he would have had in strolling once more,
old and weary, through the spacious courts of Trinity
and King's, or down those avenues of limes, and across
the ancient bridges, or in gardens where the nightingale
sings in May to fleeting generations. To read a book
which one wrote long ago is to feel that it was written
by some one like oneself, yet not oneself. " So sad, so
strange, the days that are no more."

CHAPTER XI
CLOSE OF LIFE

" AINSI toujours pousses vers de nouveaux rivages,
Dans la nuit eternelle emportes sans retour,
Ne pouvons nous jamais sur 1'ocean des ages
Jeter 1'ancre un seul jour ? "

LAMARTINE.

KENELM DIGBY'S " public " had never been large, even
in his earlier days, and no man who continues to write
in old age can expect much appreciation from younger
generations, bred in a new atmosphere of style and ideas.
The Mores Catholici was his great work. The Broadstone
of Honour was its prologue, the Compitum its epilogue.
His later works were mostly received with silence.
Reviewers deemed his poems to be beneath criticism,
and, perhaps, from a technical point of view, they were
not wrong. A pleasing volume might be condensed
from the best of them, but they do not pretend to be
works of art, and are mainly of interest from an auto-
biographical point of view. Besides, a man who writes
to express his own convictions and not to voice current
opinions must pay the price of independence. Digby
was one of that valuable class of authors who supply
the public with the kind of literature which it does not
want. He was a little melancholy, all the same, when
he looked back on his whole career as an author. In
some verses, ironically called " The Pleasures of Author-

235

236 KENELM HENKY DIGBY

ship," in the volume of 1866, he humorously but sadly
describes the experiences of an invariably unsuccessful
author, the accumulating mass of unsold copies of
previous works which must at last be destroyed to relieve
the warehouse, the irresistible or inveterate passion or
habit which makes him time after time rush into new
publication, the embarrassed and unsuccessful attempts
of friends to disguise or palliate the fact that they have
not yet looked at the presentation copies, or have been
fearfully bored by them, the heavy bills for bringing out
books which publishers would not dream of printing at
their own risk. Such are the troubles sometimes of
incapacity to write well, but sometimes also of incapacity
to adapt oneself to the taste and style and way of
thinking, political or religious ideas, and particular
sentimentality of the Age to which one nominally
belongs. As Voltaire said, using " age " in the simpler
sense, or, perhaps, in a double sense, in one of his own
old-age poems :

" Qui n'a pas 1'esprit de son age
De son age a tout le malheur."

It matters little, after all, and if a writer can deeply
touch, or influence, a few people in his own time and
after his death, he has done more than the author whose
popular writings amuse thousands for a season or two,
and are then straightway forgotten. Digby sometimes
had the real pleasure of knowing that he had moved a
heart. So, for instance, in August, 1875, when he was
not far from eighty, he received this letter from Father
T. E. Bridgett :

"DEAR SlR,

" I must apologise for the delay in thanking you
for your beautiful present. I was conducting the clergy

CLOSE OF LIFE 237

retreat of the diocese of Beverley at Ampleforth when
the books arrived, and afterwards spent a day or two
at Middleton Lodge in Yorkshire ; and though I was
told that a parcel had come I wished to have a glance
at least at the books before thanking you for them.

" In those two beautiful spots — Ampleforth and Ilkley
— which are probably familiar to you, I had most of
the conditions which you enumerate for the enjoyment
of ' serene hours ' : but for whatever I possess of the
interior qualifications I am in no small measure your
debtor. For brought up as I was in my boyhood in
a Puritan atmosphere, and amid the incessant janglings
of controversy, I have always looked on it as the most
happy day in my life when in a bookseller's shop in
Cambridge I took up the first volume of Compitum.
The few pages I there read caused such a strange joy
that I carried the book home, and soon made acquaint-
ance with your previous writings. From you, my dear
Sir, I learnt to know and love the Church ; and now
after five and twenty years of very intimate acquaint-
ance with the modern workings of that Church whose
ancient works you had taught me to admire, I feel that
joy as fresh as ever though far more deep. I remember .
well how in 1850 I walked down the Strand wet with
the water of my conditional baptism in the oratory of
King William St. Pushing my way through that
busy crowd I could have almost laughed in their faces
that I was now in communion with those great and brave
and holy men whom I had first learnt to love in the
pages of Compitum and the Broad Stone of Honour.

" When after some years' absence from England I made
acquaintance with your books of the second period (if
I may so call them) I found that I could sympathise
with your cheerful views about modern things no less
than with your admiration and regrets of the old days.

"I make these remarks because I have just been
reading your 'Pleasures of Authorship.' You tell of
many disappointments ; and though I have no doubt

238 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

that you have somewhat exaggerated the indifference of
the public to your more recent works, yet I think you
will be glad to know — what is better than a literary
triumph — that you have been the means of giving joy
and peace to one poor soul.

" In one of Byron's letters to Moore he writes, ' Heigho !
I believe all the mischief I have ever done or sung, has
been owing to that confounded book of yours ' (viz.
Little's poems) ; and I can say, my dear Mr. Digby,
that if I have done any good in my missionary life in
England and Ireland, though alas ! it is too little, it is
all owing to those delightful and holy books of yours.

" In the volume which you have sent me, The Chapel
of St. John, I find your own writing, by which I see that
you gave this copy 'on the 10th May 1861 to Mary Anne
Letitia Digby.' If this is the same Letitia whom I find
at p. 30 of the Short Poems mentioned among the dear
ones departed, then I suppose that it is the very copy
over whose pages a loving daughter must have shed
many a tear while recalling the graces of her mother.
But I think you must have sent me this copy by mistake ;
and if so, however much I should have prized it, I will
hasten to restore it. x

" Please let me know this ; and in the meantime
accept my grateful thanks and believe me,
" Yours most sincerely,

" T. E. BRIDGETT, C.N.R."

During the last fifteen years of his life, after his
youngest daughter, Mary, had married, ajid lived at
Shaftesbury House with her husband and children,
Kenelm Digby stayed almost entirely in London.
Almost every year, however, while the rest were away
on autumn holidays, he went for a few weeks to Paris,
and to stay with the Count d'Esgrigny at Pouliguen,
and the Marquis de Montaigu at La Bretesche, both in
West Brittany. La Bretesche is a grand old feudal

CLOSE OF LIFE 239

castle with moat, portcullised gate, towers and ramparts.
He did not care for the life of English country houses,
and rarely went to any, except, while his old friend
Ambrose Phillips de Lisle still lived, to his charming
homes at Garendon and Grace-Dieu in Leicestershire.
He thought that de Lisle was the best type of an English
country gentleman. A true Aristocracy, he says in
Evenings on the Thames, is the strength of a country,

" as can be witnessed now, to quote but one instance,
at Gracedieu and at Garendon. It may be, as there,
the education of the country's youth, the civilizing of
its manners, the diffusion of enjoyment by throwing
open green glades and inviting paths to its juvenile
population, a source of patriotic heroism of the right
stamp, by its own domestic examples ; it may be, even,
as there, the direction of all to the final end of man,
the propagation of the true faith, the extension of order,
comfort, and temporal happiness through the masses,
and, what is no doubt mysterious, though we might say
incontestable, their guidance and that of generations
yet unborn, to everlasting happiness. Such is the work
of a Christian Aristocracy, the natural and supernatural
results of a vast territorial property in the right
hands."

Digby often went to concerts on Saturdays, and some-
times to good plays. As to churches, he was much
attached to the Dominican Church on Haverstock Hill,
also to the little old French Chapel in King Street,
Portman Square, and often attended the Carmelite
Church in Kensington, on Campden Hill, and the then
small parish chapel of Kensington.

He passed all his days, while indoors, in writing,
reading, and painting. He rose very early, and was
engaged long hours in these occupations. A little

240 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

before dinner lie would come into the drawing-room
and have some music, if possible, and he liked also to
have music after dinner. He never was tired of hearing
music, and his daughter, Mrs. Dormer, would play to
him in the evening till she was too tired to play more.
He devoted to music a canto of his Ouranogaia, or
Heaven on Earth poem. The following few stanzas
show his thought concisely :

" The charm of music lies not in its sound,
As if in its reception by the ear ;
But deep within the human heart 'tis found
Revealed, when thus its melodies we hear.
Thence, not from strings or wind it draws those tones,
Which the moved soul so acted upon owns.

There is the wondrous magic of its power,

When, instantly descending thus below,

It draws from hearts, as from a mystic bower,

What causes thought, and joy, or tears to flow,

What would without it ever dormant lie

In these strange depths of our humanity.

But what is drawn thus, whether grave or gay,

Belongs unto the wings with which we soar,

Comes not from earth, though in our hearts it lay,

But tells of what we lost in days of yore,

Of what we may more fully here regain

Whether to dance or mourn should prompt the strain.

Yea, tells it too of what we have regained,
The moment that we catch the potent sound ;
For joy, however short, is there maintained,
Such bliss as re-unites this mortal ground
With that mysterious and transcendent whole
For which, we feel, was made and tuned the soul.

Superfluous does Music seem to be ;

All other gifts on earth will serve mankind ;

Yet this, of noble inutility,

Can the most deeply move the human mind,

For here, the more it seems without an end,

The more to boundless good it seems to tend."

CLOSE OF LIFE 241

Kensington Gardens and even Hyde Park were in
the 'sixties and 'seventies far more rural and less
densely populated than they are now, though even now,
at the right days and hours, they are a fair refuge from
thoughts and sights of town. Here Kenelm Digby often
sat, or lay on the grass, or paced the long avenues. He
liked also suburban commons like Barnes or Hampstead,
where he could see young lovers or playing children.
He sometimes gazed across Middlesex and Hertfordshire
from the " Spaniards " garden at Hampstead, or
watched the noble landscape from Richmond Hill, with
his beloved Thames gliding down towards him in the
midst. These scenes replaced for him the gardens of
Paris, or the wooded heights of St. Germain, or St.
Cloud above the Seine, so dear to his younger days.

Digby did not belong to any club and cared little to
dine out, but he liked to have friends to dine at his house.
His memory and knowledge made him a good talker
and narrator of stories. He disliked critical discussion
of the characters of living persons, or mere gossip.
" Why talk personalities, when there are such infinitely
better topics for conversation? " he used to say.

One of his chief friends in London was Mrs. George
Marlay, the lady whom he had known in his boyhood,
as a bright vision of a child, at the castle of Lord Charle-
ville in Ireland. Her house, St. Catherine's Lodge,
Regent's Park, was a social centre, and garden parties
there in the summer were renowned and select. Mrs.
Marlay, now a widow, was the hostess, as her son, Mr.
Charles Brinsley Marlay, never married. She was
a " grande dame " of the old school, and lived to a great
age. She was Digby's best adviser about his domestic
and other affairs.

242 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

Digby's own ideas were always rather those of the
" grand seigneur," although in his dress and regard for
small appearances he was a little careless, and his tastes
were simple. He liked to keep horses, and provided his
daughter, Mrs. Dormer, with a stately carriage and pair.
She wished to change this equipage for a brougham drawn
by a single good horse. Her father resisted for some
time this decline in standard, but at last yielded, saying,
" Now, my dear, you will look like a doctor's wife using
his professional brougham when he does not want it."

I owe the following recollections to Kenelm Digby's
eldest granddaughter, Miss G. Dormer, who was a
child of thirteen when he died.

" There are in my memory of childhood's days few
pictures so vivid as one or two that centre round my
grandfather Kenelm Digby. I see him at his easel
painting hard, early and late. When we children
cascaded downstairs in the morning and gathered
round to see what he was doing, he had as usual been
at work since soon after six, or half-past, and the large
dining-room, half his studio and sitting-room, had rows
of pictures either waiting to be finished, or ready to be
sent away to the churches and . convents for which
they had been painted. I believe most of the poor
Catholic churches and chapels in Great Britain had
gifts from him. He had in earlier days met with
encouragement for his painting. His landscapes and
the copies of religious pictures from many a gallery
hung, mostly unframed, close together, covering the
walls of Shaftesbury House.

" Still more clearly do I remember in the long evenings,
when he could no longer paint, or read, how sad and
lonely he seemed as he sat in his armchair near
the green reading-lamp. Sometimes he wrote, or
seemed to be correcting, pages that were very closely

CLOSE OF LIFE 243

written over ; they were his last Poems I think. The
pages were bound in a green book, but they fell down
like a map in folds from their bulging covers. I used
to wonder how he could ever fold them back again.
My mother would send me in to keep him company, if
she could not go herself in that children's hour when
we came down from our lessons after tea. He would
sometimes go into the drawing-room to hear her sing
to us. He loved her singing. But whether he was
writing or just sitting still, with that look of profound
melancholy; shading his eyes from the light with his
hand that had such long fingers, the impression he gave
was always one of activity and life. His was not a
passive old age. His step was light, and he was slender
and very tall, erect, his head with long, rather thin,
white hair, stooped very little. He never used a stick,
my father told me, till the last year or two of his life.
He would go for long walks nearly every day, often to
see old friends, such as Mr. Brinsley Marlay, and his
sister Lady John Manners.1 I remember Mr. Brinsley
Marlay, a picturesque figure in high stock and with
fobs on his chain, coming fairly often to Shaftesbury
House. Also old Mr. Herbert, who painted the frescoes
in the House of Lords, and Mr. Shadwell, in skull-cap,
bringing us children ' lollipops ' in a little black silk
bag. John Cashel-Hoey 2 and his literary wife he also
often went to see. Cardinal Manning I remember
several times at Shaftesbury House. My grandfather
retired to rest early, but he loved having little dinner-
parties, and was the life and soul of them. I have been
told he was full of good stories and humour. He was
always a very early riser, and at one time he used to
swim every morning in the Serpentine, breaking the
ice in winter to do so. He had dived in ofi the bridge.
I suppose this must have been when he first came to
live at Shaftesbury House in 1857. In those days there

1 Mother of the present Duke of Rutland.

2 Editor of the Dublin Review about 1846.

Q2

244 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

was still the toll-gate in Kensington and market-gardens
between there and Brompton.

;' The gardens at Shaftesbury House covered between
five and six acres. They ended in a meadow and an
orchard, where we children ran wild, and before our
day, my mother had driven her team of goats and small
coach round it, and my uncle Kenelm used to keep
himself in training. I just remember seeing him tramp
round the garden to get in so many miles exercise. This
uncle used to drive his four-in-hand down to Shaftes-
bury House sometimes before he and his family went
to live in the country. He was a great sportsman and
a good boxer ; which was lucky, as during an election in
Ireland when he would not stand for Home Rule, he
was attacked by the crowd. He challenged them all
to come on singly but they refused.

" An old master-builder and carpenter, Mr. Hussey,
still living, told me that when working at Shaftesbury
House he often saw Mr. Digby writing by the hour in
the garden. He had an ink-pot that fastened on to
his waistcoat somehow, and he would drag some old
log into the shade, to sit on, or an overturned flower-pot.
My grandmother he rarely saw, as her mother Mrs.
Dillon, ' a very witty and imperious old lady,' ordered
everything. But once when he was working outside a
room, Mrs. Digby called him in, and laughing, showed
him some empty shelves. She had discovered, said old
Mr. Hussey, that Mr. Digby had not a shirt left ! He
had just confessed that he had given them all away to
the poor on his way to mass in the mornings. Mr.
Hussey, when I questioned him about those days, kept
referring to the characteristic that struck him most about
Mr. Digby : his holiness. < He was a saint, and he was
so humble. I remember seeing him often kneel in the
porch all through mass sooner than disturb the con-
gregation if he came in a bit late. And he was the very
soul of honour. If it was for Mr. Digby you were
working, ... no need to look out ! Your interests were

CLOSE OF LIFE 245

quite safe with him. He was fine to look at too ! ' Canon
Fanning said the same, ' he was so holy.' Just two or
three years before my grandfather died, Canon Fanning
had come to the Pro-Cathedral as a young priest. He
had heard much of Kenelm Digby, and he remembered
how deeply impressed he was the first time he saw
him. It was on a Maundy Thursday at communion.
Canon Fanning told me that in a crowd you could
not help noticing Digby. ' He was so noble a figure,
he looked the very embodiment of one of his own
knights. If a poet, if Tennyson, had seen him, he would
have written an ode to him ! ' exclaimed the Canon.
' To read his books is like reading one of the Fathers
of the Desert. They are redolent of the piety and spirit
of the Middle Ages.'

:' These two eye-witnesses of Kenelm Digby 's last
years gave their tributes with glowing enthusiasm.
My grandfather would be teased sometimes by our
rampagious spirits. There were eight of us when he
died. He was particular about our English, and dis-
liked, I remember, for instance, the indiscriminate use
of the adjective ' big.' An ugly Americanism, he called
it. He was the gentlest and most unexacting of grand-
fathers.

" I only remember his being angry with us once, when
he had caught us in his precious library upstairs clamber-
ing up the over-crowded book-shelves to the ceiling.
We had let him in for a lively visit once from Mr. Walter
Severn, who told me about it in after years. He had
been pelted from behind the high wall of Shaftes-
bury House. Most indignantly he rang the bell and
insisted on seeing the owner of the house. Grandpapa
received him most courteously, and when he insisted
on having the servants in to find out who the culprit
was, beyond assuring him that none of the servants
would be guilty of such discourtesy, he said nothing
about us. Only when Mr. Severn got home and told
Buskin of his adventure, Ruskin laughed and said,

246 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

' Oh, that is my old friend Kenelm Digby,' and Mr.
Severn learnt about the other denizens of Shaftesbury
House ! It was on the strength of this old friendship
that I had the privilege of visiting Mr. Ruskin when
I was at Coniston, a year or two before he died. Mr.
Coventry Patmore, the Catholic poet, spoke to me of
his admiration for Kenelm Digby, and impressed on
me the duty of living up to being his grandchild. He
urged so earnestly that young Catholic women should
use their influence on afl around them for good, that
I have never forgotten that visit he paid me in the Isle
of Wight.

" Often, when visiting some monastery abroad, the
mention of Kenelm Digby's name would win the
friendliest of welcomes. At the Benedictine monastery
of Subiaco near Rome, the monks told me that he
stayed in the monastery some time to read in their
library. My mother has had letters from strangers who
wrote to express their gratitude and devotion to his
books. Amongst them, I remember one from a dis-
tinguished professor of literature who wished to write
about him ; and one from a clergyman, who wrote her
the story of a strange coincidence. When his father
read the Broadstone of Honour, in his enthusiasm he
had resolved that if ever he married and had a son,
that son should be called Kenelm. This resolve was
also made independently by his future wife ; and so
their son was christened after the author whom they
loved. He it was who wrote. Every summer my
grandfather went to his beloved France, to Le Pouliguen
to stay with his friends, when we all went to the sea.
I have a letter written to me about a year before he
died, from London. He writes : ' Here it does nothing
but rain and you want me to start for a holiday ! Not
if I know it ! So Sunday is your birthday. Well,
that fact proves that I have been in London as late as
this in August, for I was painting my pine-forest here
when you came into this world of ours. I feel it is

CLOSE OF LIFE 247

very dull just now, but I have begun a large Picture
for Belmont Abbey in Hertfordshire.' So his pictures
indeed companioned his old age. He was over eighty
years then. The day he was taken ill he was at his
easel painting for some poor church. I remember the
call for help, the haemorrhage that could not be stopped.
Then they put him to bed in the room downstairs, that
had been the chapel in my great-grandmother's life-time
when the chaplain, the Abbe Bontier, lived in the
house and had said daily mass there. The Blessed
Sacrament had been kept in that chapel room where
he died.1

" He appealed strongly to my childish sympathy that
instinctively had recognised the lonely aloofness of
this life among us, that looked back so far, and that
was passing on into the dimness . . . beyond. I used
to watch and try to distract him.

* When I read his books, I recognise him in them.
Children apprehend more than they can realise at the
time, and the after years unfold meanings and memories.
Mr. Holland has wondered that the subject of his
memoir has not been more mentioned amongst the
records of the men of letters of his day, many of whom
he certainly knew and prized, and was by them prized.
But is not holiness and piety, and ' other- worldliness,'
often accompanied by the gift of elusiveness, as if even
the admiration and enjoyment of the noblest men and
women were shielded off ? Then, as no light is to
remain hid under a bushel, does it not seem truly
provided for and deliberately brought about that a
kindred spirit should eventually make for it a beautiful
candlestick, and the light that seemed to burn so low
and uncared for, should suddenly rekindle when the
right torchbearer comes along. Thus now, may it be ! "

1 My father, who collected and pasted into a book the letters and many
Press notices about him, was much distressed when it was lost in the
upheaval of our moving, alas ! into another London house, — without a
garden.

248 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

The year 1879 was the last complete year of Kenelm
Digby's long life. He had for some months grown visibly
weaker, but he went in the autumn once more to his
beloved France, to the Breton chateau of the d'Esgrignys.

On the 13th March, 1880, Kenelm Digby was visiting
a lady, an old and constant friend, who lived in Seymour
Street, Portman Square. He seemed to her very
feeble and depressed, and said, " All my friends are
gone." She said, " Oh ! they will come back." " That,"
he replied, with a smile, " is hardly to be wished, as
they are all in Kensal Green, and the best thing I can
do is to follow them." She said that he ought to be
buried at Ramsgate, but he shook his head, and said
that it must be Kensal Green. He had always had a
liking for this cemetery, and had made it the subject
of one of his poems, called " All Souls' Day." About
the same tune he wrote a long letter to the Marquis de
Montaigu, sad in tone, but saying nothing as to his
health. It must have been about this time also that
he received that last tender and beautiful letter from
his long-lost Marcella, if indeed it came before his death.

A day or two later he fell ill, and died on the 22nd
March, 1880. He was buried, as he had desired, in the
cemetery of St. Mary, at Kensal Green, where so many
Catholics lie, some of them old friends of his own. A
lime-tree shadows his grave. The tomb is a very simple
one, and the inscription runs :

IN MEMORY OF KENELM HENRY DIGBY
WHO DIED 22ND MARCH 1880

R.I.P.
THIS CROSS is ERECTED BY

HIS LOVING DAUGHTER.

CLOSE OF LIFE 249

Cardinal Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, wrote
on the 24th March to Mrs. Dormer :

" What would you wish for your dear Father better
or more beyond this, to fall asleep without pain after
a life of preparation ? As your husband said, he who
has converted so many to God, and has led so many up
the hill of a holy life is surely with his Master. May
God bless and console you and all dear to you."

The Comte d'Esgrigny wrote from Paris on 25th
March, 1880, to Mr. Hubert Dormer, Digby's son-in-law :

" La douloureuse nouvelle que vous me donnez me
revient aujourd'hui de Pouliguen. Elle me frappe au
coeur. Le voila done disparu ce vieux compagnon de
toute ma vie ; mil n'a etc plus fidelement aime, et nul
ne m'a ete plus fidele. ' Moi qui ai tant aime mes
amis,' m'ecrivait il dans sa derniere lettre. J'eprouve
un amer chagrin de m'avoir pu serrer une fois encore
cette main toujours tendue, ainsi qu'il me temoignait
le desir depuis plusieurs mois. Quelle ame d' elite
etait la sienne, douce entre toutes, affectueuse, elevee,
devouee, Tune des plus simplement belles et nobles
que j'ai rencontrees ici-bas. Sa chere Mary doit savoir
combien je la plains, combien je m'unis a elle dans cette
cruelle epreuve. Pauvre Mary, quel dechirement pour
elle, et pour vous aussi mon cher Hubert, la perte est
bien grande. Digby vous aimait ; il vous appreciait ;
il ne parlait de vous qu'avec une veritable affection et
une parfaite estime ; toujours je Fai entendu se louer
de vos precedes a son egard ; cette pensee doit meler
quelque douceur a vos regrets. Quant a moi je vous
garderai un sentiment de gratitude pour toutes les
satisfactions que vous a dues mon vieil ami.

" Je vous remercie des details que vous m'avez donnes.
Digby avait ete si doux a la vie qu'il meritait bien que
la mort lui fut douce. C'etait d'ailleurs un Chretien
toujours pret, et je ne doute pas que Dieu ne 1'ait reyu

250 KENELM HENRY DIGBY

paternellement et comme un de ses enfants le plus
Mele.

" Jeanne a vivement ressenti le coup qui vous frappe.
Raoul en a ete tres affecte aussi. Comment ne pas
aimer Digby des qu'on le connaissait ? "

The Marquis de Montaigu wrote to Mr. Dormer :

" On ne pouvait connaitre Digby sans 1'estimer, et
1'aimer fidelement. Tout en lui inspirait une confiance
que d'autres n'acquerent qu'avec le temps. On se
sentait en presence d'une ame si simple, si noble, si
exempte des miserables petitesses de rhumanite, qu'on
etait attire sans resistance. II fallait se livrer a 1' affec-
tion qu'inspirent les saints ; on se sentait appuye,
protege, comme dans un port, sous 1'influence de cette
ame grande comme celles que Dieu forme et prepare
pour le gloire du ciel. A cela se joignait une candeur
d'enfant, un esprit des plus fins, une instruction profonde,
une haute intelligence, et 1'originalite de son caractere,
si bienveillant toujours, c'etait un charme de plus.
Mes regrets se melent a vos regrets, mes esperances a vos
esperances ; notre cher ami est heureux ; Dieu Pa
prepare par bien des epreuves et 1'appele a 1'heure ou
la recompense immediate pouvait lui etre accordee.
Son souvenir est pour moi chose sacree. Je prie avec
vous, car nous devons toujours prier, et 1'afEection que
je portais a votre beau-pere revient naturellement a vous
et a sa chere fille qu'il aimait."

Little public notice was taken of Kenelm Digby's
death. The Times devoted barely ten lines to his
obituary. The newspapers, at the moment, were
absorbed in the electoral campaign which ended in the
overthrow of Lord Beaconsfield, almost the exact
cotemporary of Digby, the man who in his early days
had played with the ideas which to Digby were sacred.
Liberalism, in all spheres, had almost obliterated with

CLOSE OF LIFE 251

its utilitarian spirit the chivalrous and romantic move-
ment, and, in its turn, declining rapidly after its culmina-
tion, is giving way to Social Democracy. But neither
will this, by itself, satisfy the deepest needs and aspira-
tions of men. Content and social peace, so far as they
can be found at all in this world by the " exiled sons
of Eve," will nowhere be found save in that Catholic
religion in its fullest inner spirit and outward form, to
whose defence Kenelm Digby devoted his life.

To the individual soul the Catholic Church is not in
itself the final end or place of repose, although it is an
immense guidance, protection and assistance. Fecisti
nos ad te, Domine, et inquietum est cor nostrum donee
requiescat in te. The Church is the true highway that
leads us to our country. Other paths to the far end may
be found by chosen souls, but this central road through
life and death is best for the ordinary wayfarer. This
is the argument and theme of all that Kenelm Digby
wrote, from the Broadstone of Honour of his youth to the
latest poem of his old age.

Requiescat in pace.

PRINTED IN ORKAT BRITAIN BY ROBERT MACLEBOSX AJTD CO. LTD
AT Tilt UNIVERSITY PRESS, GLASGOW.

PR Holland, Bernard Heniy

4599 Memoir of Kenelm Heniy

D4Z7 Digby

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