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Carlyle and Jocelin of Brakelond: A Chronicle Rechronicled

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Linda Georgianna
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Extract

“Salvation lies not in tight lacing,” Carlyle quips in the opening of Book II of Past and Present by way of defending the loose structure of his comparative study of English society in the early 1840s. Critics still disagree sharply in their estimates of Carlyle's political argument, but the loosely-laced structure of Past and Present has allowed Book II, with its portrait of twelfth-century monasticism and Abbot Samson, to remain fairly immune to controversy. In fact, most readers, whether they applaud or dismiss the rest of Past and Present, would agree with A. M. D. Hughes that “it is in virtue of this interlude … that the book belongs among the classics of our tongue.” Several editors have gone so far as to sever Carlyle's tenuous connection between past and present altogether, printing the section devoted to Abbot Samson separately under a new title.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 8 , Spring 1980 , pp. 103 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

NOTES

1. Past and Present, ed. Altick, Richard D. (New York: New York University Press, 1977), p. 45.Google Scholar All subsequent references are to this edition and will hereafter be noted in parentheses by page number only.

2. Past and Present (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1918), p. lxx.Google Scholar

3. Jocelin of Brakelond: From Past and Present by Thomas Carlyle, ed. Kearney, Patrick (New York: W. E. Rudge, 1923)Google Scholar, and Abbot Samson, Chapters from “Past and Present” by Thomas Carlyle, ed. Cavenagh, F. A. (London, 1926).Google Scholar

4. The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, ed. and trans. Butler, H. E. (London: Nelson, 1949).Google Scholar All references are to this edition and will hereafter be noted in parentheses by page number only. Numerous reviews and essays allude briefly to Carlyle's having rendered Jocelin's Chronicle rather freely. See, for example, the hostile remarks of Frederick Denison Maurice, Carlyle's contemporary, who complained that Carlyle “often imputes virtues to Churchmen and statesmen of the Middle Ages, which they did not possess, and conceals the evidence that they had the same class of vices as ourselves, even when that evidence is contained in the documents to which he appeals.” Maurice's letter, which appeared in the Christian Remembrancer, 10 1843Google Scholar, is reprinted in Thomas Carlyle: The Critical Heritage, ed. Seigel, Jules Paul (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971), p. 195.Google Scholar More typical of recent opinion, however, is the moderate statement of G. Robert Stange that Book II of Past and Present is “in form no more than a highly selective re-telling of Chronica Jocelini de Brakelonda.” See “Refractions of Past and Present,” in Carlyle Past and Present: A Collection of New Essays, ed. Fielding, K. J. and Tarr, Roger L. (London: Vision Press, 1976), p. 97.Google Scholar

5. Calder, , The Writing of Past and Present (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949), pp. 31–32.Google Scholar

6. Brock, , “The Portrait of Abbot Samson in ‘Past and Present’: Carlyle and Jocelin of Brakelond,” English Miscellany, 23 (1972), 151.Google Scholar

7. Gransden, , Historical Writing in England c. 550 to c. 1307 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974).Google Scholar

8. Historians in the Middle Ages (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974), p. 159.Google Scholar Exceptions include the insightful essay by Knowles, David in The Monastic Order in England: A History of its Development from the Times of St. Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), pp. 306–09Google Scholar, and the recent essay by Bennett, J. A. W., “Carlyle and the Medieval Past,” Reading Medieval Studies (University of Reading), 4 (1977), 3–18.Google Scholar So far as I know, these are the only medievalists who deal with or even refer to Carlyle's version of Jocelin's record.

9. Knowles, , p. 307.Google Scholar

10. Calder, , p. 32.Google Scholar

11. Chronica Jocelini de Brakelonda: de Rebus Gestis Samsonis Monasterii Sancti Edmundi (London: Camden Society, 1840).Google Scholar On the medieval revival, see Chandler, Alice, A Dream of Order: The Medieval Ideal in Nineteenth-Century English Literature (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1970).Google Scholar

12. Knowles, David (pp. 306–07)Google Scholar objects to Samson's being considered by Carlyle's readers as “the type of a whole age of religion.” Unlike Anselm, Bernard, and Ailred, all men of great spiritual power and influence, Samson, “at least as known to us from the pages of Jocelin, is no more than an able administrater, a firm and just governor” such as “have not been wanting in any profession or in any age.”

13. Jocelin's value systemis clearly articulated in his description of Abbot Hugh (p. 1): “Pious he was and kindly, a strict monk and good, but in the business of this world neither good nor wise. For he trusted those about him overmuch and gave them ready credence, relying always on the wisdom of others rather than his own. Discipline and religion and all things pertaining to the [Benedictine] Rule were zealously observed within the cloister; but outside all things were badly handled, and every man did, not what he ought, but what he would, since his lord was simple and growing old.”

14. Letters of Thomas Carlyle to John Stuart Mill, John Sterling and Robert Browning, ed. Carlyle, Alexander (1923; rpt. New York: Haskell House, 1970), p. 83.Google ScholarCalder, , p. 29Google Scholar, has brought this quotation to my attention.

15. Hughes, A. M. D., Past and Present, p. lxx.Google Scholar Nearly every critic who mentions Book II of Past and Present credits Carlyle with the convincing realism which brings Samson to life in his pages. See, for example, Neff, Emery, Carlyle (New York: Norton, 1932), pp. 203–04Google Scholar, and Cazamian, Louis, Carlyle (1932; rpt. New Haven: Archon, 1966), p. 199Google Scholar. I do not mean to suggest that Carlyle was not a gifted composer of portraits in his own right, but rather that in this instance readers unfamiliar with Jocelin's Chronicle often mistake Jocelin's details for Carlyle's. For studies of Carlyle's original portraits, see Smith, Logan Pearsall, “The Rembrandt of English Prose,” reprinted in Reperusals and Re-Collections (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1937), pp. 202–21Google Scholar, and Sanders, Charles Richard, “The Victorian Rembrandt: Carlyle's Portraits of his Contemporaries,” recently reprinted in Carlyle's Friendships and other Studies (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1977), pp. 3–35.Google Scholar

16. Calder, (pp. 76–79)Google Scholar suggests that Carlyle in his first draft wrote as much as possible from memory, turning to Jocelin's Chronicle only when “obliged by the difficulty of the subject.” However, alterations between the first draft and printer's copy demonstrate, in Calder's view, that in revising Carlyle turned to his source much more frequently.

17. On Carlyle's theory of the hero, which influences his portrait of Samson throughout, see Lehman, Benjamin H., Carlyle's Theory of the Hero (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1928).Google Scholar

18. Brock, , pp. 152–55.Google Scholar

19. References to this prophecy occur on at least five occasions in the Chronicle: pp. 19, 30, 37, 89, and 132.Google Scholar

20. Galbraith, V. H., “Good Kings and Bad Kings in Medieval English History,” History, NS 30 (09 1945), p. 119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A useful and recent discussion of chronicles as a literary genre appears in Partner, Nancy's Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 194–211.Google Scholar

21. See Butler, , The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, pp. xxiv–xxvGoogle Scholar, and Gransden, Antonia, The Customary of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St. Edmund's in Suffolk (1966; rpt. Chichester: Moore and Tillyer, Regnum Press, 1973), pp. xvi–xvii.Google Scholar For a discussion of the convent's lucrative taxation privileges in the town of Bury, see Lobel, M. D., The Borough of Bury St. Edmund's: A Study in the Government and Development of a Monastic Town (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), pp. 16–59.Google Scholar

22. The long Henry of Essex episode, which is inserted in Jocelin's Chronicle just after the gift-giving incident, is most likely the work of a different author, as Jocelin's first editor, John Gage Rokewode, suggested. Both the high style and the miraculous subject matter of this supernatural tale are atypical of Jocelin but not of Carlyle, who devotes an entire chapter to the episode. See Rokewode, , Chronica, p. viiiGoogle Scholar; Gransden, , Historical Writing, p. 382 n. 8Google Scholar; and Davis, R. H. C., The Kalendar of Abbot Samson (London: Royal Historical Society, 1954), p. liv.Google Scholar

23. While my interest is confined to the story as Jocelin tells it, various historians have attempted to trace Jocelin's disaffection with Abbot Samson to events outside the Chronicle, such as changes in Jocelin's own status within the monastery. For opposing theories concerning Jocelin's disillusionment, see Gransden, , Historical Writing, p. 383Google Scholar, and Davis, , pp. liv–lvii.Google Scholar

24. Samson argues that the fire was an example of God's vengeance upon the monks for complaining about their food. Jocelin considers this argument a ploy designed by the Abbot in order to shame or “discreetly induce” the monks to contribute generously toward the restoration of the shrine (pp. 109–10).

25. Various scholars have referred to some of the episodes which I discuss here, but because they neglect to place these incidents within the structure of Jocelin's narrative, these critics create the impression that such episodes are isolated examples of Jocelin's intermittent displeasure with Abbot Samson. See, for example, Clark, Ernest, trans., The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond: A Picture of Monastic Life in the Days of Abbot Samson (London: Alexander Moring, de la More Press, 1909), pp. xxi–xxiiGoogle Scholar; Hughes, , Past and Present, p. lxx n. 2Google Scholar; and Brock, , pp. 156–57 and throughout.Google Scholar The last study mentioned seems particularly oblivious to the structure of Jocelin's narrative.

26. William Henry Smith, in a highly unfavorable review of Past and Present which appeared in 1843, grudgingly praises Carlyle's portrait of Samson as impressive, considering that it was “gathered itself from scanty sources”; the review is reprinted in Thomas Carlyle: The Critical Heritage, p. 217.Google Scholar When G. Robert Stange, in a passage cited earlier, dismisses the form of Carlyle's second book as “no more than a highly selective re-telling of Chronica Jocelini,” he is implicitly accepting Carlyle's characterization of the formlessness of Jocelin's Chronicle.

27. For discussions of Carlyle's pose as Editor, particularly in connection with his opposition to chronological narrative, see Levine, George, The Boundaries of Fiction: Carlyle, Macaulay, Newman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), pp. 61–64Google Scholar; Edwards, Janet Ray, “Carlyle and the Fiction of Belief,” in Carlyle and his Contemporaries: Essays in Honor of Charles Richard Sanders, ed. Clubbe, John (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1976), pp. 91–111Google Scholar; and most recently the cogent analysis by Caserio, Robert L. in Plot, Story and the Novel: From Dickens and Poe to the Modern Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 31–41.Google Scholar Caserio's discussion of what he terms “narrative reason” was particularly useful to me in thinking about the differences between Carlyle and Jocelin.

28. Philological Quarterly, 1944; rpt. Confrontations: Studies in the Intellectual and Literary Relations between Germany and the U.S. during the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 106.Google Scholar