Sir Kenelm Digby, of whose acquaintance all his contemporaries seem to have been ambitious.
—Dr. Johnson, Life of Cowley.
PROHIBITION, I dare say, is going to make fashionable the private compilation of just such delightful works as The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Opened; London, at the Star in Little Britain, 1669. Sir Kenelm, “the friend of kings and the special friend of queens,” crony of such diverse spirits as Bacon, Ben Jonson, and Oliver Cromwell, kept this notebook of his jocund experiments in home brewing and cookery. Just as nowadays a man will jot down the formula of some friend’s shining success in the matter of domestic chianti, so did the admirable Kenelm record “Sir Thomas Gower’s Metheglin for Health,” or “My Lord Hollis’ Hydromel,” or “Sir John Colladon’s Oat-Meal Pap,” or “My Lady Diana Porter’s Scotch Collops;” and adding, of course, his own particular triumphs—e. g., “Hydromel as I Made it Weak for the Queen Mother,” “A Good Quaking Bag-Pudding,” and “To Fatten Young Chickens in a Wonderful Degree.” Sir Kenelm’s official duty at the court of Charles the First was Gentleman of the Bed-chamber; but if I had been Charles, I should have transferred him to the Pantry.
The Closet Opened (which was not published until after Sir Kenelm’s death; he was born 1603, died 1665) is the kind of book delightfully apt for the sad, sagacious, and solitary, for one cannot spend an hour in it without deriving a lively sense of the opulence and soundness of life. The affectionate attention Sir Kenelm pays the raisin makes him seem almost a Volsteadian figure: in his pages that excellent and powerful fruity capsule plays, perhaps for the first time in history, a heroic and leading rôle. Consider this:
When small Ale hath wrought sufficiently, draw into bottles; but first put into every bottle twelve good raisins of the Sun split and stoned. Then stop up the bottle close and set it in sand (gravel) or a cold dry Cellar. After a while this will drink exceedingly quick and pleasant. Likewise take six Wheat-corns, and bruise them, and put into a bottle of Ale; it will make it exceeding quick and stronger.
Kenelm was not only a good eater; he was a devilish good writer. The fine lusty root of English prose was in him. If this is not true literature, we know it not:
Milk your Cows in the evening about the ordinary hour, and fill with it a little Kettle about three quarters full, so that there may be happily two or three Gallons of Milk. Let this stand thus five or six hours. About twelve a Clock at night kindle a good fire of Charcoal, and set a large Trivet over it. When the fire is very clear and quick, and free from all smoak, set your Kettle of Milk over it upon the Trivet, and have in a pot by a quart of good Cream ready to put in at the due time; which must be, when you see the Milk begin to boil simpringly. Then pour in the Cream in a little stream and low, upon a place, where you see the milk simper....
To simper—a word of sheer genius! There are many such in his recipes.
We find the raisin again at work in his directions:
To every quart of Honey, take four quarts of water. Put your water in a clean Kettle over the fire, and with a stick take the just measure, how high the water cometh, making a notch, where the superficies toucheth the stick. As soon as the water is warm, put in your Honey, and let it boil, skiming it always, till it be very clean; Then put to every Gallon of water, one pound of the best Blew-raisins of the Sun, first clean picked from the stalks, and clean washed. Let them remain in the boiling Liquor, till they be throughly swollen and soft; Then take them out, and put them into a Hair-bag, and strain all the juice and pulp and substance from them in an Apothecaries Press; which put back into your liquor, and let it boil, till it be consumed just to the notch you took at first, for the measure of your water alone. Then let your Liquor run through a Hair-strainer into an empty Woodden-fat, which must stand endwise, with the head of the upper-end out; and there let it remain till the next day, that the liquor be quite cold. Then Tun it up into a good Barrel, not filled quite full, and let the bung remain open for six weeks. Then stop it up close, and drink not of it till after nine months.
This Meathe is singularly good for a Consumption, Stone, Gravel, Weak-sight, and many more things. A Chief Burgomaster of Antwerpe, used for many years to drink no other drink but this; at Meals and all times, even for pledging of healths. And though He were an old man he was of an extraordinary vigor every way, and had every year a Child, had always a great appetite and good digestion; and yet was not fat.
One of good Sir Kenelm’s most famous instructions, which has become fairly well-known, does honour not only to his delicate taste but also to his religious devotion. It is his advice on the brewing of tea—“The water is to remain upon it no longer than whiles you can say the Miserere Psalm very leisurely.” This advice occurs in the recipe
The Jesuite that came from China, Ann. 1664, told Mr. Waller, That there they use sometimes in this manner. To near a pint of the infusion, take two yolks of new laid-eggs, and beat them very well with as much fine Sugar as is sufficient for this quantity of Liquor; when they are very well incorporated, pour your Tea upon the Eggs and Sugar, and stir them well together. So drink it hot. This is when you come home from attending business abroad, and are very hungry, and yet have not conveniency to eat presently a competent meal. This presently discusseth and satisfieth all rawness and indigence of the stomack, flyeth suddainly over the whole body and into the veins, and strengthenth exceedingly and preserves one a good while from necessity of eating. Mr. Waller findeth all those effects of it thus with Eggs. In these parts, He saith, we let the hot water remain too long soaking upon the Tea, which makes it extract into itself the earthy parts of the herb. The water is to remain upon it no longer than whiles you can say the Miserere Psalm very leisurely. Thus you have only the spiritual parts of the Tea, which is much more active, penetrative, and friendly to nature.
Sometimes, it is true, one suspects Sir Kenelm of a tendency to gild the lily. In the matter of perfuming his tobacco, this was his procedure:—
Take Balm of Peru half an ounce, seven or eight Drops of Oyl of Cinamon, Oyl of Cloves five drops, Oyl of Nutmegs, of Thyme, of Lavender, of Fennel, of Aniseeds (all drawn by distillation) of each a like quantity, or more or less as you like the Odour, and would have it strongest; incorporate with these half a dram of Ambergrease; make all these into a Paste; which keep in a Box; when you have fill’d your Pipe of Tobacco, put upon it about the bigness of a Pin’s Head of this Composition.
It will make the Smoak most pleasantly odoriferous, both to the Takers, and to them that come into the Room; and ones Breath will be sweet all the day after. It also comforts the Head and Brains.
It is a great temptation to go on quoting these seductive formulæ. I feel sure that my tenderer readers would relish instructions for the Beautifying Water or Precious Cosmetick,—for the secret of which ladies of high degree pursued Sir Kenelm all over Europe. (He does not include in the Closet any details of the Viper Wine for the Complection which was said to have caused the death of Lady Digby—a rather painful scandal at the time.) But I fear to trespass on your patience. Let me only add that the ambition of the Three Hours for Lunch Club has long been to hold a DIGBY DINNER, at which all the dishes will be prepared as nearly as possible according to Sir Kenelm’s prescriptions. The project offers various perplexities, and might even have to be consummated at sea, beyond the hundred-fathom curve. But if it ever comes to pass, the following menu, carefully chosen from Sir Kenelm’s delicacies, seems to me promising:—
Portugal Broth, As It Was Made for the Queen
Sack with Clove Gillyflowers
Sucket of Mallow Stalks
A Herring Pye
A Smoothening Quiddany of Quinces
My Lady Diana Porter’s Scotch Collops
Mead, from the Muscovian Ambassador’s Steward
The Queen Mother’s Hotchpot of Mutton
Pease of the Seedy Buds of Tulips
Boiled Rice in a Pipkin
Marmulate of Pippins
Dr. Bacon’s Julep of Conserve of Red Roses
Excellent Spinage Pasties
Pleasant Cordial Tablets, Which Strengthen Nature
Small Ale for the Stone
A Nourishing Hachy
Plague Water
Marrow Sops with Wine
My Lord of Denbigh’s Almond Marchpane
Sallet of Cold Capon Rosted
My Lady of Portland’s Minced Pyes
The Liquor of Life
A Quaking Bag-Pudding
Metheglin for the Colic
But I must not mislead you into thinking that Sir Kenelm was merely a convivial trencherman. His biography as related in the Encyclopædia Britannica is as diverting as a novel—more so than many. Infant prodigy, irresistible wooer, privateer, scientist, religious controversialist, astrologer, and a glorious talker, he made a profound impression on the life of his time. But, as so often happens, his name has been carried down to posterity not by the strange laborious treatise he regarded as his opus maximum, but by his chance association with one of the great books of all time. When Digby was under honorable confinement (as a “Popish recusant”) at Winchester House, Southwark, in 1642, he was busy there with chemical experiment and the MS. of his Of Bodies and Mans Soul (of which more in a moment). Apparently they treated political prisoners with more indulgence in those days. One evening he received a letter from his friend the Earl of Dorset, urging him to read a book that was making a stir among the intellectuals. One may think it was perhaps a trifle niggardly of Dorset merely to have recommended the book. To a friend in jail, surely he might (and it was just before Christmas) have sent a copy as a present. But the liberality of the Earl is not to be called in question: he had made Sir Kenelm at least one startlingly gracious gift—viz. Lady Digby herself, previously Dorset’s mistress. This oddly amusing story, or gossip, may be pursued in Aubrey’s Brief Lives, a fascinating book (published by the Oxford Press)—a sort of Social Register of seventeenth century England.
“Late as it was” when Sir Kenelm received the letter from his benefactor and colleague, he sent out at once (mark the high spirit of the true inquirer; also the sagacity of seventeenth century booksellers, who kept open at night)—
To let you see how the little needle of my Soul is throughly touched at the great Loadstone of yours, and followeth suddenly and strongly, which way soever you becken it.... I sent presently (as late as it was) to Pauls Church-yard, for this Favourite of yours, Religio Medici: which found me in a condition fit to receive a Blessing; for I was newly gotten into my Bed. This good natur’d creature I could easily perswade to be my Bed-fellow, and to wake with me, as long as I had any edge to entertain my self with the delights I sucked from so noble a conversation.
Rarely have the pleasures of reading in bed had such durable result. The following day he spent in pouring out a long, spirited and powerful letter to Dorset (75 printed pages) which has become famous as Observations upon Religio Medici, and a few years later was included as a supplement to that book—where it still remains in most editions. In this tumbling out of his honourable meditations and excitements, Sir Kenelm took issue pretty smartly with Dr. Browne on a number of points, particularly in regard to his own special hobby of Immortality. He, just as much as the Norwich physician, loved to lose himself in an Altitudo; but in some cloudlands of airy doctrine Browne seemed to him too precise. “The dint of Wit,” Digby remarked felicitously of some theological impasse, “is not forcible enough to dissect such tough matter.”
These Observations are of more than casual importance. Dorset, apparently, took steps (unknown to Digby) to have them published; and report of this coming blast roused Browne to protest courteously against “animadversions” based upon the unauthorized and imperfect version of his book—his own “true and intended Originall” being by this time in the printer’s hands. Digby had written his observations without knowing who the author of Religio was. The letters that now passed between him and Browne are an exhilarating model of controversy goldenly conducted between gentlemen of the grand manner. “You shall sufficiently honour me in the vouchsafe of your refute,” writes Browne, “and I obliege the whole world in the occasion of your Pen.” To which Digby, avowing that his comments were written without thought of print and merely as a “private exercitation,” charmingly disclaims any ambition to enter public argument with so superior a scholar. “To encounter such a sinewy opposite, or make Animadversions upon so smart a piece as yours is, requireth such a solid stock and exercise in school learning. My superficial besprinkling will serve only for a private letter, or a familiar discourse with Lady auditors. With longing I expect the comming abroad of the true copy of the Book, whose false and stoln one hath already given me so much delight.” The delightful remark about lady auditors causes one to suspect that even in that day the germ of the lecture passion was moving in circles of high-spirited females.
Digby and Browne were evidently kinsprits. They were nearly of an age; Browne was a physician, and Digby—though many considered him a mountebank and charlatan—had a genuine scientific zeal for medical dabblings. His Powder of Sympathy, a nostrum for healing wounds at a distance, has been a cause of merriment among later generations; but Sir Kenelm was no fool and I am not at all sure that there wasn’t much excellent sense in his procedure. The injury itself was washed and kept under a clean bandage. The Powder of Sympathy was to be prepared from a paste of vitriol, and the instructions included necessity for mixing and exposing it in sunshine. Sir Kenelm was quite aware of the public appetite for hocus-pocus, and surely there was a touch of anticipatory Christian Science and Coué in his idea of keeping the patient’s mind off the trouble and giving him this harmless amusement in the open air. For the sympathetic powder, please note, was never to be applied to the wound itself, but only to something carrying the blood of the injured person—a stained bandage, a garment, or even the weapon with which the damage was done. The injury was left to the curative progress of Nature. This theory of treating not the wound but the weapon might well be meditated by literary critics. For instance, when some toxicated energumen publishes an atrocious book, the best course to pursue is not to attack the author but to praise Walter de la Mare or Stella Benson. This may be termed the allopathic principle in criticism; but few of us are steadfast enough to adhere to it.
Digby’s Memoirs—not published until 1827—exhibit him as the swashbuckler, and amorist by no means faint. They are amusing enough but give only a carnal silhouette. Perhaps he did not write the book himself: there is a vein of burlesque in the narrative that makes me suspicious. It purports to be an account of Sir Kenelm’s fidelity to his wife, the lovely Venetia; and we are told that the account was written under Antonian pressure. Importuned by ladies of much personal generosity and recklessness, Sir Kenelm austerely retires to a cave and pens this confession of uxorious loyalty. When you consider that the relations of Sir Kenelm and Lady Venetia were one of the fashionable uproars of the day, you begin to guess that the Memoir (in which all the characters are concealed by romantic pseudonyms) was an elaborate skit intended for private circulation, probably the work of some satirical friend. Exactly so, when any great scandal nowadays is riding on the front pages of the newspapers, do City Room reporters compose humorous burlesques of the printed “stories,” and these have delightful currency round the office.
So you will still find legends in print suggesting that Sir Kenelm was a blend of Casanova and Dr. Munyon. He has been attributed what historians used to call “Froude’s disease”—an insufficient curiosity as to the total of 2 and 2 when added together. But a man whose memory still makes a page and a half of the Encyclopædia Britannica such lively reading, must have had more than mere animal spirits in his make-up. It is easy to find testimony to his potent social and military accomplishments. But the man himself, his earnest scientific passions, his valiant speculation on human destinies, does not emerge from the entries in encyclopædias. For that you must look into his great book Two Treatises: The Nature of Bodies, and The Nature of Mans Soul (1658). By the kindness of Mr. Wilbur Macey Stone, generous and astonishingly Elizabethan explorer of old books, I have an original, tawny and most aromatic copy of this queer treasure. The title page of the Second Treatise is endorsed, with a charming use of the aspirates—
SAMUEL MELLOR’S BOOK, December 22th 1792.
Samuel Mellor his my Name
and Cheshire is my Nation
and Burton is my Dwellings
Place and Christ is my
Salvation
this Book geven
has A Gift to Samuel Mellor
Sir Kenelm dedicates the volume to his son, in a touching and honourable letter dated “Paris the last of August 1644.” “The calamity of this time” (he says) “hath bereft me of the ordinary means of expressing my affection to you; I have been casting about, to find some other way of doing that in such sort, as you may receive most profit by it. Therein I soon pitched upon these Considerations; that Parents owe unto their children, not only material subsistence for their Body, but much more, spiritual contributions to their better part, their Mind.” Accordingly, with perfect gravity and that sombre and Latinized eloquence which was the peculiar gift of his century, he proceeds to expound in nearly 600 dense pages his observations on what we would call nowadays physics and psychology. It would be agreeable enough, if I did not fear to weary you, to copy down some of Sir Kenelm’s delightful shrewd comments. A few of his section headings will serve to give an idea of his matter. For instance:—
The experience of burning glasses, and of soultry gloomy weather, prove light to be fire.
Philosophers ought not to judge of things by the rules of vulgar people.
The reason why the motion of light is not discerned coming towards us, and that there is some real tardity in it.
The true sense of the Maxim, that Nature abhorreth from vacuity.
The loadstone sendeth forth its emanations spherically. Which are of two kinds: and each kind is strongest in that hemisphere, through whose polary parts they issue out.
The reason why sometimes the same object appears through the prism in two places: and in one place more lively, in the other place more dim.
How the vital spirits sent from the brain, do run to the intended part of the body without mistake.
Of the rainbow, and how by the colour of any body, we may know the composition of the body it self.
How things renewed in the fantasie, return with the same circumstances that they had at first.
Why divers men hate some certain meats, and particularly cheese.
Here, you will agree, was a man who even when he seems naïf, examined phenomena with his own eyes and with notable sharpness. Delving into the “crooked narrow cranies & restrayned flexuous rivolets of corporeal things” was, he insisted, a “difficult & spiny affaire;” he was eager to avoid “meer Chymeras and wild paradoxes,” hoped that “by strong abstraction, and by deep retirement into the closet of judgment” he might win “a favourable doom” from his readers. There is no naïveté so dangerous as that of underestimating the power of another man’s mind. Behind some of his fanciful suggestions there is an astonishing agility of conjecture. On the subject of physiology he is delicious. Hear him (pared down to stark brevity) on the brain:—
We may take notice that it containeth, towards the middle of its substance, four concavities, as some do count them: but in truth, these four, are but one great concavity, in which four, as it were, divers roomes, may be distinguished.... Now, two rooms of this great concavity, are divided by a little body, somewhat like a skin, (though more fryable) which of itself is clear; but there it is somewhat dimmed, by reason that hanging a little slack, it somewhat shriveleth together: and this, Anatomists do call Septum lucidum, or speculum....
This part seemeth to me, to be that and onely that, in which the fansie or common sense resideth ... it is seated in the very hollow of the brain; which of necessity must be the place and receptacle where the species and similitudes of things doe reside, and where they are moved and tumbled up and down, when we think of many things. And lastly, the situation we put our head in, when we think earnestly of any thing, favoureth this opinion: for then we hang our head forwards, as it were forcing the specieses to settle towards our forehead, that from thence they may rebound, and work upon this diaphanous substance.
But it is in the Second Treatise (“Declaring the Nature and Operations of Mans Soul; out of which, The Immortality of Reasonable Souls, is Convinced”) that the darling man rises to really dazzling heights. In this mystical, ecstatic and penitential essay he (in Burton’s phrase) rectifies his perturbations. He is no longer channeled in the “crooked narrow cranies of corporeal things;” he works from withinward and spirals in happy ether:—
To thee then my soul, I now address my speech. For since by long debate, and toilsom rowing against the impetuous tides of ignorance, and false apprehensions, which overthrow thy banks, and hurry thee headlong down the stream, whiles thou art imprisoned in thy clayie mansion; we have with much ado arrived to aim at some little attome of thy vast greatness; and with the hard and tough blows of strict and wary reasoning, we have strucken out some few sparks of that glorious light, which invironeth and swelleth thee: it is high time, I should retire my self out of the turbulent and slippery field of eager strife and litigious disputation, to make my accounts with thee; where no outward noise may distract us, nor any way intermeddle between us, excepting onely that eternal verity, which by thee shineth upon my faint and gloomy eyes.... Existence is that which comprehendeth all things: and if God be not comprehended in it, thereby it is, that he is incomprehensible of us: and he is not comprehended in it, because himself is it.... Which way soever I look, I lose my sight, in seeing an infinity round about me: Length without points: Breadth without Lines: Depth without any surface. All content, all pleasure, all restless rest, all an unquietness and transport of delight, all an extasie of fruition.
So don’t let any one tell you that Sir Kenelm was only a seventeenth century epicure and bootlegger.
