THE MONKS
FATHER MICHAEL, a pleasant, fresh-faced, smiling man, perhaps of
thirty-five, took me to the pantry, and gave me a glass of liqueur
to stay me until dinner. We had some talk, or rather I should say
he listened to my prattle indulgently enough, but with an
abstracted air, like a spirit with a thing of clay. And truly,
when I remember that I descanted principally on my appetite, and
that it must have been by that time more than eighteen hours since
Father Michael had so much as broken bread, I can well understand
that he would find an earthly savour in my conversation. But his
manner, though superior, was exquisitely gracious; and I find I
have a lurking curiosity as to Father Michael's past.
The whet administered, I was left alone for a little in the
monastery garden. This is no more than the main court, laid out in
sandy paths and beds of parti-coloured dahlias, and with a fountain
and a black statue of the Virgin in the centre. The buildings
stand around it four-square, bleak, as yet unseasoned by the years
and weather, and with no other features than a belfry and a pair of
slated gables. Brothers in white, brothers in brown, passed
silently along the sanded alleys; and when I first came out, three
hooded monks were kneeling on the terrace at their prayers. A
naked hill commands the monastery upon one side, and the wood
commands it on the other. It lies exposed to wind; the snow falls
off and on from October to May, and sometimes lies six weeks on
end; but if they stood in Eden, with a climate like heaven's, the
buildings themselves would offer the same wintry and cheerless
aspect; and for my part, on this wild September day, before I was
called to dinner, I felt chilly in and out.
When I had eaten well and heartily, Brother Ambrose, a hearty
conversible Frenchman (for all those who wait on strangers have the
liberty to speak), led me to a little room in that part of the
building which is set apart for MM. LES RETRAITANTS. It was clean
and whitewashed, and furnished with strict necessaries, a crucifix,
a bust of the late Pope, the IMITATION in French, a book of
religious meditations, and the LIFE OF ELIZABETH SETON, evangelist,
it would appear, of North America and of New England in particular.
As far as my experience goes, there is a fair field for some more
evangelisation in these quarters; but think of Cotton Mather! I
should like to give him a reading of this little work in heaven,
where I hope he dwells; but perhaps he knows all that already, and
much more; and perhaps he and Mrs. Seton are the dearest friends,
and gladly unite their voices in the everlasting psalm. Over the
table, to conclude the inventory of the room, hung a set of
regulations for MM. LES RETRAITANTS: what services they should
attend, when they were to tell their beads or meditate, and when
they were to rise and go to rest. At the foot was a notable N.B.:
'LE TEMPS LIBRE EST EMPLOYE A L'EXAMEN DE CONSCIENCE, A LA
CONFESSION, A FAIRE DE BONNES RESOLUTIONS, ETC.' To make good
resolutions, indeed! You might talk as fruitfully of making the
hair grow on your head.
I had scarce explored my niche when Brother Ambrose returned. An
English boarder, it appeared, would like to speak with me. I
professed my willingness, and the friar ushered in a fresh, young,
little Irishman of fifty, a deacon of the Church, arrayed in strict
canonicals, and wearing on his head what, in default of knowledge,
I can only call the ecclesiastical shako. He had lived seven years
in retreat at a convent of nuns in Belgium, and now five at Our
Lady of the Snows; he never saw an English newspaper; he spoke
French imperfectly, and had he spoken it like a native, there was
not much chance of conversation where he dwelt. With this, he was
a man eminently sociable, greedy of news, and simple-minded like a
child. If I was pleased to have a guide about the monastery, he
was no less delighted to see an English face and hear an English
tongue.
He showed me his own room, where he passed his time among
breviaries, Hebrew Bibles, and the Waverley Novels. Thence he led
me to the cloisters, into the chapter-house, through the vestry,
where the brothers' gowns and broad straw hats were hanging up,
each with his religious name upon a board - names full of legendary
suavity and interest, such as Basil, Hilarion, Raphael, or
Pacifique; into the library, where were all the works of Veuillot
and Chateaubriand, and the ODES ET BALLADES, if you please, and
even Moliere, to say nothing of innumerable fathers and a great
variety of local and general historians. Thence my good Irishman
took me round the workshops, where brothers bake bread, and make
cartwheels, and take photographs; where one superintends a
collection of curiosities, and another a gallery of rabbits. For
in a Trappist monastery each monk has an occupation of his own
choice, apart from his religious duties and the general labours of
the house. Each must sing in the choir, if he has a voice and ear,
and join in the haymaking if he has a hand to stir; but in his
private hours, although he must be occupied, he may be occupied on
what he likes. Thus I was told that one brother was engaged with
literature; while Father Apollinaris busies himself in making
roads, and the Abbot employs himself in binding books. It is not
so long since this Abbot was consecrated, by the way; and on that
occasion, by a special grace, his mother was permitted to enter the
chapel and witness the ceremony of consecration. A proud day for
her to have a son a mitred abbot; it makes you glad to think they
let her in.
In all these journeyings to and fro, many silent fathers and
brethren fell in our way. Usually they paid no more regard to our
passage than if we had been a cloud; but sometimes the good deacon
had a permission to ask of them, and it was granted by a peculiar
movement of the hands, almost like that of a dog's paws in
swimming, or refused by the usual negative signs, and in either
case with lowered eyelids and a certain air of contrition, as of a
man who was steering very close to evil.
The monks, by special grace of their Abbot, were still taking two
meals a day; but it was already time for their grand fast, which
begins somewhere in September and lasts till Easter, and during
which they eat but once in the twenty-four hours, and that at two
in the afternoon, twelve hours after they have begun the toil and
vigil of the day. Their meals are scanty, but even of these they
eat sparingly; and though each is allowed a small carafe of wine,
many refrain from this indulgence. Without doubt, the most of
mankind grossly overeat themselves; our meals serve not only for
support, but as a hearty and natural diversion from the labour of
life. Yet, though excess may be hurtful, I should have thought
this Trappist regimen defective. And I am astonished, as I look
back, at the freshness of face and cheerfulness of manner of all
whom I beheld. A happier nor a healthier company I should scarce
suppose that I have ever seen. As a matter of fact, on this bleak
upland, and with the incessant occupation of the monks, life is of
an uncertain tenure, and death no infrequent visitor, at Our Lady
of the Snows. This, at least, was what was told me. But if they
die easily, they must live healthily in the meantime, for they
seemed all firm of flesh and high in colour; and the only morbid
sign that I could observe, an unusual brilliancy of eye, was one
that served rather to increase the general impression of vivacity
and strength.
Those with whom I spoke were singularly sweet-tempered, with what I
can only call a holy cheerfulness in air and conversation. There
is a note, in the direction to visitors, telling them not to be
offended at the curt speech of those who wait upon them, since it
is proper to monks to speak little. The note might have been
spared; to a man the hospitallers were all brimming with innocent
talk, and, in my experience of the monastery, it was easier to
begin than to break off a conversation. With the exception of
Father Michael, who was a man of the world, they showed themselves
full of kind and healthy interest in all sorts of subjects - in
politics, in voyages, in my sleeping-sack - and not without a
certain pleasure in the sound of their own voices.
As for those who are restricted to silence, I can only wonder how
they bear their solemn and cheerless isolation. And yet, apart
from any view of mortification, I can see a certain policy, not
only in the exclusion of women, but in this vow of silence. I have
had some experience of lay phalansteries, of an artistic, not to
say a bacchanalian character; and seen more than one association
easily formed and yet more easily dispersed. With a Cistercian
rule, perhaps they might have lasted longer. In the neighbourhood
of women it is but a touch-and-go association that can be formed
among defenceless men; the stronger electricity is sure to triumph;
the dreams of boyhood, the schemes of youth, are abandoned after an
interview of ten minutes, and the arts and sciences, and
professional male jollity, deserted at once for two sweet eyes and
a caressing accent. And next after this, the tongue is the great
divider.
I am almost ashamed to pursue this worldly criticism of a religious
rule; but there is yet another point in which the Trappist order
appeals to me as a model of wisdom. By two in the morning the
clapper goes upon the bell, and so on, hour by hour, and sometimes
quarter by quarter, till eight, the hour of rest; so
infinitesimally is the day divided among different occupations.
The man who keeps rabbits, for example, hurries from his hutches to
the chapel, the chapter-room, or the refectory, all day long:
every hour he has an office to sing, a duty to perform; from two,
when he rises in the dark, till eight, when he returns to receive
the comfortable gift of sleep, he is upon his feet and occupied
with manifold and changing business. I know many persons, worth
several thousands in the year, who are not so fortunate in the
disposal of their lives. Into how many houses would not the note
of the monastery bell, dividing the day into manageable portions,
bring peace of mind and healthful activity of body! We speak of
hardships, but the true hardship is to be a dull fool, and
permitted to mismanage life in our own dull and foolish manner.
From this point of view, we may perhaps better understand the
monk's existence. A long novitiate and every proof of constancy of
mind and strength of body is required before admission to the
order; but I could not find that many were discouraged. In the
photographer's studio, which figures so strangely among the
outbuildings, my eye was attracted by the portrait of a young
fellow in the uniform of a private of foot. This was one of the
novices, who came of the age for service, and marched and drilled
and mounted guard for the proper time among the garrison of
Algiers. Here was a man who had surely seen both sides of life
before deciding; yet as soon as he was set free from service he
returned to finish his novitiate.
This austere rule entitles a man to heaven as by right. When the
Trappist sickens, he quits not his habit; he lies in the bed of
death as he has prayed and laboured in his frugal and silent
existence; and when the Liberator comes, at the very moment, even
before they have carried him in his robe to lie his little last in
the chapel among continual chantings, joy-bells break forth, as if
for a marriage, from the slated belfry, and proclaim throughout the
neighbourhood that another soul has gone to God.
At night, under the conduct of my kind Irishman, I took my place in
the gallery to hear compline and SALVE REGINA, with which the
Cistercians bring every day to a conclusion. There were none of
those circumstances which strike the Protestant as childish or as
tawdry in the public offices of Rome. A stern simplicity,
heightened by the romance of the surroundings, spoke directly to
the heart. I recall the whitewashed chapel, the hooded figures in
the choir, the lights alternately occluded and revealed, the strong
manly singing, the silence that ensued, the sight of cowled heads
bowed in prayer, and then the clear trenchant beating of the bell,
breaking in to show that the last office was over and the hour of
sleep had come; and when I remember, I am not surprised that I made
my escape into the court with somewhat whirling fancies, and stood
like a man bewildered in the windy starry night.
But I was weary; and when I had quieted my spirits with Elizabeth
Seton's memoirs - a dull work - the cold and the raving of the wind
among the pines (for my room was on that side of the monastery
which adjoins the woods) disposed me readily to slumber. I was
wakened at black midnight, as it seemed, though it was really two
in the morning, by the first stroke upon the bell. All the
brothers were then hurrying to the chapel; the dead in life, at
this untimely hour, were already beginning the uncomforted labours
of their day. The dead in life - there was a chill reflection.
And the words of a French song came back into my memory, telling of
the best of our mixed existence:
'Que t'as de belles filles,
Girofle!
Girofla!
Que t'as de belles filles,
L'AMOUR LET COMPTERA!'
And I blessed God that I was free to wander, free to hope, and free
to love.
