The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler (11 page)

She saw me and opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

‘Moom won’t move out of the skins now,’ said Mick.

THE SERMONS OF DR HODNET

I first became acquainted with my friend Professor Price in connection with a short article which I was preparing for the
Cambridge Review
on the windows of some of our college chapels. He at once showed himself sympathetic by sharing with me a distaste for the gaudier products of the last century, and proved to be a fount of information on the windows in the chapel of his own college, St James’s. They had been designed in the 1630s by the brothers Abraham and Bernard Van Linge who are perhaps better known to the general reader for their work at Oxford during the same period. In 1650, not long after they had been installed, the Provost, a Dr Young, had shown great foresight and no little courage by having the windows taken out of the chapel and hidden in his own lodgings to save them from Puritan depredation. When King Charles was restored, so were the windows. Though mainly armorial, the glass is in the Van Linges’ best manner and is worthy of more attention than it has yet received.

While showing me the documents connected with these matters in his College Library, Professor Price also drew my attention to a number of papers concerning a slightly later period in the history of the College. The Professor said that, knowing my ‘interest in such matters’, he would value my opinions on certain MSS and printed materials relating to the Provostship, of Dr Young’s successor, the Reverend Dr Elias Hodnet, in the years 1678 and 1679.

Dr Hodnet, according to that invaluable volume
Parnassus Cantabrigiensis
(1685), was ‘a most learned and ingeniose divine’ and ‘an ornament to the Church’. He was a fellow of St James’s and a celebrated preacher whose sermons regularly attracted much appreciative attention. The taste for pulpit oratory, and perhaps its practice, has been in decline since the beginning of the last century, so it would be hard for me to pass judgement on the quality of his effusions, even if sufficient examples remained for me to do so. Unfortunately, apart from some fragments which I shall come to later, no sample of his style has survived. Suffice it to say that contemporaries compared him with the great Jeremy Taylor who had died just over a decade before the events which concern us. Indeed the
Parnassus
informs us that ‘by some he was dubbed
Taylor Redivivus
’.

The first documents which should help us to piece together our narrative are a series of letters written by Dr Hodnet to a friend of his, the Reverend Mr Beard, the Rector of Grantchester. The first is dated the 5th of October 1678. I have, for the convenience of the reader, corrected some of the vagaries of seventeenth-century spelling in the foregoing MSS.

News may already have reach’d you of the demise of our worthy Provost, Dr Young. It was an ague, they say, that carried him off, but, truth to tell, he had been like to die these many months, being infirm both in body and mind. He hath seen his three-score-and-ten years, so we may not weep over an untimely death. He was buried with much pomp and at the service in the chapel I pronounced the oration which many declared to be a very fine thing. Knowing me well, you must understand that I speak not out of vanity, but from a desire to acquaint you with all particulars.
Non nobis Gloria!

Now there is much ado about the election of a new Provost. Two names are mentioned, my own being one of them. The other, being that of the Revd Mr Sammons, I find hard to account for. He is reckoned a fair scholar and a loyal fellow of the college, yet beyond that I have heard little that would lend weight to his cause. Some of the younger fellows find him convivial for he gives them good Canary Wine in his rooms. I have no doubt he is a very pleasant fellow, for all say he is, but what of that? Mr Catton, an undergraduate, tells me that he hath Popish Leanings. I would ask of you whether you have heard the same.

The next letter to Mr Beard must have been sent over a month later, though Dr Hodnet has not dated it. The University Annals record that Dr Hodnet was elected Provost ‘by his fellows and by the Grace of Our Sovereign Lord the King, on the 7th day of November, 1678’. Hodnet writes:

I am preferred, and have already taken my place in the Provost’s Lodgings which I find in a sorry state and much in need of repair. The circumstances which have attended my elevation were surrounded by such idle and malicious talk that I beseech you, in the name of our friendship, and of Christ’s Mercy, to quell any disposition that you find among your acquaintance to talk of such things. It is all mere whim-wham.

I did tell you in my last letter that Mr Sammons was thought Popish in his leanings. This I had of Mr Catton, and from others of whom I made enquiries. You well know that there is much agitation among the common people against papists since the late Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was found murder’d. [I would remind the reader that we are in the time of the Popish Plot, and the brief heyday of Titus Oates.] It was said even—with what truth I know not—that Mr Sammons was in league with the Jesuits. These rumours reached the ears of the townsfolk, certain of whom, inflamed by wine and zeal, waylaid Mr Sammons and threw him from Queens’ Bridge into the Cam, whereupon, being in himself distempered by over much eating and drinking, the putrid humours of his body and the weight of his belly did cause him to sink and perish in the waters by drowning. Now this unfortunate accident was about the time of the election and there are certain giddy-heads who say in consequence that it was I who incited the town against Mr Sammons so as to secure my preferment. That this is a most pernicious calumny, I would have you at all times and in all places declare. Certain of my acquaintance such as Mr Catton who now bids fair for a fellowship at this college also stand accused of aiding my cause by spreading news abroad against Mr Sammons and provoking the rabble to violence. It is most injurious to the dignity of my office which I hold dearer than myself. Besides who knows but that these tales of Mr Sammons were not true? This Sunday I did preach a sermon to condemn those murmurings against me, taking as my text the words of Zecheriah: ‘This is the curse that shall go forth upon the face of the earth for falsehood, false swearing and perjury; and this curse shall enter into the house of the false man and into the house of the perjur’d man, and it shall remain in the midst of his house and consume him.’

The next letter, like its predecessor, is undated, but I should guess it to come from the early part of December 1678.

If I seemed distracted at my last visit to you, which I greatly fear I was, then I must own to you that I have been much vexed in spirit. You have heard from me how my Provost’s Lodging stood much in need of repair. Indeed, at the time, I only knew the half of it. The whole house is most prodigiously infected with damps, unwholesome airs, noisome stenches, cold blasts coming from under doors and through ill-made casements; moreover with every form of vermin and pestilent insect such as spiders, beetles, bats, mice and rats who are forever skittering and scuttering behind the panels and wainscots and most especially at night when the very walls of my bedchamber seem alive with their gnawings and scrapings. It is, in truth, a
Pandaemonium
and I sleep but fitfully. I have had poisons set down and have put cats and terriers to the hunting of my tormentors, but to no avail. Last night I was in my bed and having sunk into a fitful doze, I felt something fall upon my bed. Putting out my hand I touched a
thing
, I know not what, it must surely have been a rat, but heavier and more monstrous than any I have known [the word ‘thing’ was heavily underlined by Hodnet]. Its hairs were sparse and more like the bristles of an old hogg to touch. I leaped up and the thing made off. The curtains of my bed being drawn, and it being dark, I saw nothing of it and I thank my Saviour that I did not. Truly, it may have been a dream, and I pray it was, but yet it was like no dream that I ever had or hope to have.

You may well suppose that much of my life has fallen into disarray as a consequence, but, by God’s Grace, I have held my mind together to do the business of the college with the zeal and dispatch for which I was elected Provost. I show no outward signs of dismay, except to such as you who are my intimates, and I thank God daily for this fortitude of Spirit.

One matter, I must confess to you, vexes my soul more even than my nightly torment. You would know that the small skills and reputation I possess have put me much in request as a preacher and that this is a Holy Work I love to do. Last week, being called upon to deliver the University Sermon at Great St Mary’s you can conceive with what diligence I composed it. Indeed, being more than ever reluctant to go to my bed, I spent the best part of the two nights preceding my delivery of it in the writing. To tell truth, I felt myself much soothed and satisfied by my efforts. It was a Divine Consolation to me that, in the midst of tribulation, I could yet abundantly fulfill a duty so pleasing to my Lord and Saviour.

Imagine then my consternation when, upon mounting the pulpit to deliver what I had set down, I found my writing in parts so badly crabbed that I was at pains to read it out. My natural fluency was stemmed, though I thank my God that I made good without undue stumblings, until I came upon this passage which should have read as follows:

‘It was with great courtesy and most sweet humility that our Saviour did act as intercessor for us and did establish that Mystic Union between God and His Church which endureth for Ever More.’

Yet this was not what I had written down, and what I had written is what I here set down:

‘It was with great courtesy and most sweet humility that our Saviour did act as intercessor for us and did establish that
Mistaken
Union between God and His Church which endureth for
Never
More.’

How I could have brought forth such a grave and blasphemous error I know not, for I had read and read again these words to my complete satisfaction but a few hours before. And yet, there it was, writ down in my own hand. I confess it made me halt and for some moments in that pulpit I was robbed of all composure. At length I gathered together my distracted wits and did continue, but without that winning fervour and fluidity as I had formerly evinced. My congregation fell to coughing and did not enjoy that grace of the Spirit through me as I would have wished to have granted them.

The next letter to Mr Beard comes from the early part of 1679.

My griefs come upon me thick and fast. I did tell you that my friend Mr Catton was like to be elected to a fellowship and indeed all fell out as I desired. But on the night of his preferment and much against my admonishments he went a carousing with certain of his fellows in a low ale house not far from the river. A short while after midnight he was seen by his companions to start up from the table and to address words unto the empty air. They, thinking that this was some idle jape brought on by strong ale, bade him sit down again. But he paid them no heed and continued to discourse with vacancy, his eyes fixed upon the open ale-house door. Presently he leaves his companions and goes out into the night. They did not follow him and, being craven-hearts and empty-skulled fellows, gave as their reason that they were suddenly struck with much fear. What befell Mr Catton then, God, He knows, but I do not. Yet, when I was walking early on the morrow in the Fellow’s Garden—my nights being restless, I did often walk abroad early in the cool of the morning to soothe my spirits—I spied what I first thought to be a great mass of clothes and clouts all wet upon the grass. First wondering if this were some knavery of the serving men or the students I approached and beheld that it was the figure of a man but so swelled and distended in the face and belly that it scarce resembled a human creature. Summoning Courage to my aid I did approach still closer to see the face and there—I shudder even now to recall it—I saw the features of my poor friend Mr Catton all pumpled and bloated as if by the plague, and his skin as gray as an old shroud. Yet, by some foul circumstance, he still lived, and was taking in great gasps of breath like a trout landed upon the river bank by an angler. Then of a sudden, in one great convulsion, his whole body seemed to burste open and great gouts and floods of water did pour out from him as though he were a leaking flagon or a torn wine skin, and all the water was noisome and stinking and full of corruption. There was such a vast outpouring that it seemed that all the jakes and privies of the city were disbouched from my poor friend’s body. And at the end he lay there a dead corpse, emptied of those foul waters which now lapped about my feet like the very waters of Acheron and Styx. Aye, and would it had been Lethe! Long may I live, but however long, Time will never take from me the fearful horror of that hour. See how the strokes of my pen are all of a tremble as I write!

I have sought consolation in prayer and holy meditation, yet nothing will assuage my amaz’d despair. I seek to do the Lord’s work in preaching the word, yet even in this my endeavours turn to ashes. I find that when I turn to the writing of them my thoughts are confounded and corrupted and know nothing of their former fecundity. By a great endeavour of body and soul I fashion my discourse, yet when I rise to deliver it in the House of God, I see nothing but confusion on the page before me. And lo! like the apostle Paul, what I would that I did not, and what I would not that I have done. I see things that I cannot have written and yet I have. In my homily and exhortation against the fear of death which I was to deliver in the college chapel I read: ‘Remember, o man, that thou must die. Ere summer thou shalt be no more.’ Whence comes this? And here I see: ‘I await thee. Water shall cover us both.’ What manner of thing is this that I write not what I would? Do my enemies go about to bewitch me? Am I plagued by the spirit of one I have wronged? Yet, before God, I have wronged none and none should be mine enemy.