This
is the third post on Robert Hugh Benson’s novel, Lord of the World.
You can find Part 1 here.
Part 2 here.
Book
2 Chapter 3
Percy settles into Rome and describes the formation of the city and its suburbs, arranged as a place of refuge from the progressive world, democratic world. He comes across a papal procession where he realizes that the outside world and the world of Rome comprise the two cities of God envisioned by Augustine. Having just sat down, Percy’s door is flung open by the Cardinal who announces that Felsenburgh has appointed President of Europe. Percy settles into his room to ponder why has God allowed all this to happen. The Cardinal came in. In conversation, he passes along that the Pope has decided Percy will eventually replace him. He also passes a newly minted coin with Felsenburgh’s imprint on it as President of Europe. On this news, the Pope makes an announcement to the world that the church stands in stark opposition and has created a new religious order, the Order of Christ Crucified, to preach to the world despite the expected persecution.
Book
2 Chapter 4
A Mr. Francis, ex-Catholic priest, once friend to Percy, and now Freemason meets with Oliver pertaining to the expected new law allowing Divine Worship to return. Mr. Francis represents a Catholic group of ex-priests who now want to offer their services in this Divine Worship which will consist of some sort of weekly ceremony. In conversation we learn that Cardinal Martin has died and Percy has replaced him as cardinal. Mabel, seated in the gallery of Parliament, ponders the new law worship while waiting for Felsenburgh to either reject it or approve it. She ponders how man is in need of some ritual. She ponders sme of the clauses in the legislation, such as how this worship will be made compulsory and how those that refuse, especially Catholics will be penalized. Felsenburgh steps forward and approves it. On the next day, Mr. Francis returns to Oliver’s house to review the draft Order of Worship. Mabel listens. The worship will be based on Masonic principles but strangely corresponding to Catholic rituals. It will be a “homage to Life” but without faith and based on a vision of “Facts.”
###
My
Response to Susan who asked why a new religious order needed
to be created:
It's what the church seems to do. Back in the 12th century the Albigensian heresy had run wild in southern France and I think even northern Italy. (You can Google it) The Dominican Order was created to combat it. Back in the sixteenth century when the Protestant heresy had begun, the Jesuit Order was created to combat it.
The
joke among Dominicans is no one today claims to be an Albigensian. No one today
claims to be a Protestant...wait, no you can't say that. ;)
So I think Benson is referring to a historic way the church has handled combating heresies in the past.
###
Book
2 Chapter V
Percy
as new Cardinal-Protector sits to read about the new national worship
requirements and recognizes his former priest associate, Mr. Francis, created
the ritual and will be lecturing across England. He wonders how long peace can remain. From Rome Percy reads a report from Fr.
Blackmore that Mr. Phillips wishes to serve the Catholic side. Percy sends a request back to send Phillips
down to Rome. The Order of Christ
Crucified has been formed and is active.
Percy receives information of persecutions and martyrdom across
Europe. Rome too has had an influx of
exiles who wished to remain faithful. At
Christmas, the Pope made it clear that he was at stark opposition to the
Masonic religion that had taken up Europe.
On the day before the worship laws go into effect, Percy receives an
image of the secular maternity image that was to be worshiped, a nude woman in
expectation. Suddenly Phillips barges in
with news that Catholics in England are plotting to blow up the Abbey.
Book
2 Chapter VI
Percy heads to England by flight in the volor to try to stop the plot. From the elevated height he looks onto the city Rome before he departs and contemplates the peaceful beauty of the holy city. Percy is departing with a German Cardinal. A similar plot is expected in Germany. Percy will head to England while the other to Germany. They discuss the situation the dire circumstances. The volor makes its way first over Italy and then over the Alps. Over the Alps something disturbed the flight of the volor and a precipitous drop occurred. Everything on board smashed and rolled. But the volor was able to catch itself and stabilize. The disturbance had been caused by 200 valors heading the other direction, toward Rome to destroy the Catholic center.
###
The bombing of the Abbey by the Catholics recalls the gun powder plot under King James I in 1605. The situation is parallel here in that Catholics were being persecuted under an antagonistic government. The gun powder plot did not go well in 1605 and apparently it does not go well in the novel. You can read about the gun powder plot here.
Also
I don't think there is any question that Benson wants the allusion to the early
English Protestant reformation times. In chapter V, section II, Benson says:
"Meanwhile, the German prisons were thronged with the first batches of
recusants."
###
My
Response to Kerstin on how close to the ground Volors fly
I
doubt he actually ever flew in one. It's possible he never even met a person
who had. It had to be pure speculation on his part.
We take the nature of flying for granted. It must have been hard to imagine for someone of his time.
###
In the afternoon on New Year’s Eve, Mabel went to the church beneath her dwelling. She contemplated the ideal principles on which her worldview was based, the goodness and brotherhood of men based on secular values. She heard a ruckus outside and went to investigate to find an oncoming mob parading the slaughtered victims of the Catholic rebels. This put her into a sort of shock, and her shocked deepened as she realized that a host of volors were traveling to Italy to destroy Rome once and for all. When her husband returned home, he soothed her and rationalized the slaughter and the destruction of Rome as necessary evils for a better world. He reasoned that ideals can only come about from non-perfect human beings. On the storke of midnight with the New Year, Oliver announced that Rome was destroyed.
Book
2 Chapter VIII
On the next day, the public gathered to the Abbey for a service in the unrepentant realization that Rome had been destroyed and that a new day for humanity was awaiting. For the first time since Christianity landed on English soil, not a single church was in operation in England. The public shouted in joy in the exquisite victory of a major war. Mabel did not share in this joy but she at least had assimilated the victory into her moral being so that the despair she had felt the night before had dissipated. The gathering was anticipating Felsenburgh, now truly Lord of the world, to stop by for a sermon. The crowd pulsed with blood energy of a satisfied beast who now wanted the confirmation of a bloody kill. Mr. Francis made some opening remarks and then let the stage for Felsenburgh. Speaking as deity, Felsenburgh explained the nature of man as to what he was and what he could now be. He revealed the naked image of the mother goddess and the crowd hailed him as Lord.
###
I
thought chapter VII of Book 2 was another superbly written chapter, especially
part 1. Benson starts with calm scene
with Mabel contemplating in the chapel.
She had grown to love the
quiet place, and came in often like this to steady her thoughts and concentrate
them on the significance that lay beneath the surface of life the huge
principles upon which all lived, and which so plainly were the true realities.
Indeed, such devotion was becoming almost recognised among certain classes of
people. Addresses were delivered now and then; little books were being
published as guides to the interior life, curiously resembling the old Catholic
books on mental prayer.
She went to-day to her
usual seat, sat down, folded her hands, looked for a minute or two upon the old
stone sanctuary, the white image and the darkening window. Then she closed her
eyes and began to think, according to the method she followed.
First she concentrated
her attention on herself, detaching it from all that was merely external and
transitory, withdrawing it inwards ... inwards, until she found that secret
spark which, beneath all frailties and activities, made her a substantial
member of the divine race of humankind.
It brings a smile to my face that the secularist “religion” has to emulate Catholicism. Mabel’s attempt to detach from the external into the internal sounds almost like St. Teresa of Avila’s prayer for recollection for the soul to collect its faculties and enter into itself. [For those that remember, we read St. Teresa’s The Interior Castle four years ago – I can’t believe it’s been that long.] One wonders what exactly Mabel is accomplishing if there isn’t any real spirituality to it. It reminds me that every so often an atheist will propose some sort of Sunday service for atheists along the lines of what Felsenburgh has set up here. Of course these proposals go nowhere because who wants to get up on a Sunday morning to pray nothing to a nothing that doesn’t exist? No one. But interestingly Benson is way ahead of his time.
This
slowing down of the narrative allows Benson to recapitulate the Felsenburgh
spirituality through Mabel’s thoughts.
In a similar fashion that St. Teresa takes steps into one’s interior,
Mabel takes three steps into herself and comes to this insight.
Then by a third and vivid
act she realised the unity of all, the central fire of which each spark was but
a radiation that vast passionless divine being, realising Himself up through
these centuries, one yet many, Him whom men had called God, now no longer
unknown, but recognised as the transcendent total of themselves Him who now,
with the coming of the new Saviour, had stirred and awakened and shown Himself
as One.
And
I think this is the theological key. In
the Judeo-Christian theology, God is a transcendent Being outside of
oneself. Yes, He resides—indwells—within
us, but He is not us. God for this Felsenburgh
view is a “transcendent total of themselves.”
He is a summation of their interiors.
He is them.
Then, on a sudden, from
the hidden lamps beneath the eaves, light leaped into being that strong, sweet,
familiar light, generated by the great engines underground that, in the passion
of that catastrophic day, all men had forgotten; and in a moment all changed
from a mob of phantoms and shapes into a pitiless reality of life and death.
Before her moved a great
rood, with a figure upon it, of which one arm hung from the nailed hand,
swinging as it went; an embroidery streamed behind with the swiftness of the
motion.
And next after it came
the naked body of a child, impaled, white and ruddy, the head fallen upon the
breast, and the arms, too, dangling and turning.
And next the figure of a
man, hanging by the neck, dressed, it seemed, in a kind of black gown and cape,
with its black-capped head twisting from the twisting rope.
I
hope some Catholic filmmaker has the audacity to make this novel into a movie. That would make such an intense scene. That scene has a medieval echo to it, but I
think it echoes back even further, to an uncivilized primitivism. The contrast between the contemplative in the
early part of the chapter with this violence is more than just aesthetic. It has philosophic suggestions. Mabel goes inward to find herself, and here
the self has run amuck. One might argue,
Christians have been known to go on these wilding modes too. It is no different, they might say. Yes, but in Christianity God stands outside
of this as a judge and repudiator. It is
clearly immoral. In the Felsenburgh
religion, the center of morality is inside man, and one finds all sorts of
rationalized morality inside of man.
Notice, that in part 2 of this chapter, Oliver comes to Mabel to
rationalize the actions, and in time Mabel accepts the rationalization.
###
Book
3, Chapter I
It is several months since the destruction of Rome, and the new Pope sits in some mud floor dwelling reading a biography of Felsenburgh. The biography reveals the political savvy of the man and his erudition, but it also reveals the man’s egotism from which he has developed a messiah identity. We learn the new pope is Percy, one of three Cardinals to have survived the bombing. Rome had been reduced to rubble, and annihilated within the destruction was the entire College of Cardinals. He has taken the papal name of Silvester III and has secretly moved the administration of the Church to Nazareth. One of the surviving Cardinals was the German, who had been on the volor with Percy, and upon his return to Germany was hanged by a mob. Pope Silvester, not having lost an ounce of faith, has structured what remains of the Church to be an apostolate as Peter’s and that of the original apostles.
Book
3, Chapter II
One late night, Pope Silvester sits waiting for a messenger to come with correspondence from Cardinal Corkran in Tiberias, contemplating what this Armageddon means and if it means the coming apocalypse. Surely the gates of hell could not prevail against the Church. In the wee hours of that morning, the Pope wakes his attending chaplain to send out a message to Cardinal Corkran, from which it will be dispersed around the world to all the Archbishops. All are to celebrate a Mass after which the Pope will discern the path forward for a response to the world. After a particularly inspired Mass, Pope Silvester returns to the telegraph to send out a message for a secret call to all the heads of the religious to meet for a counsel at Nazareth on the eve of Pentecost.
###
Before I get to the final section of the novel, I do want to point out what in my opinion are two aesthetic flaws of the novel.
First, the lesser important of the two, and this may be more my impression, but the characters seem a bit two dimensional. Except for perhaps Mabel, all the characters are of a mindset which (a) doesn’t waver, (b) lacks a complex depth, and (c) doesn’t alter or grow during the course of the novel. We never get knowledge of a formation to any of the characters; they just are and continue to be. Mabel is perhaps the exception, but I haven’t reached the end to know. Her trajectory doesn’t seem to project growth. Nonetheless she does waiver in her opinions several times, even if she returns to her starting position.
Is the flatness of these characters a problem? Not necessarily. This is a didactic novel where the ideas and thesis are more important than the artistry. Didactic novels actually require less than full dimensionality to get their ideas across. Still it would have been a richer novel if the characters had more depth. When I compare this to Orwell’s 1984, which is of a similar genre, I can’t help think that Winston, its central character, is a much richer character than Percy Franklyn. However. Lord of the World may have paved the way for the dystopian novels of the twentieth century.
Second, the more serious criticism for me is the sudden and total unexpected magnitude of the destruction of Rome. I found that as coming out of the blue. Yes, the opposing sides were set early but where did Benson signal that such an event could happen? Did I miss it? Normally a writer either plants the possibility of a cataclysmic event that changes the course of a novel or narrates a progression leading to such an event. Certainly there was no progression, but did I miss Benson planting this possibility? It was all rather sudden too. From what starts as a local plot of terrorism and without any character’s hesitation or contemplation leads to the destruction of the city and mass slaughter of the inhabitants of Rome. Perhaps Benson wishes to make a point with the magnitude and suddenness of the response, but one has to lead the reader, not jar him.
If
this is true and Benson shocked the reader without preparation, is this a
problem? Perhaps it’s a matter of
preference but it does violate a number of classical principles to art. Balance, continuity, systematic
progression. What Benson did was
analogous to suddenly shifting from one key to another in the middle of a
concert piece.
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