Part 2

If his constantly-changing life can be said to have had a turning-point, it occurred in 1633, when his wife died suddenly. The death of the lovely Venetia was the signal for a great outburst of vile poetry on her beauty and merits. Ben Jonson, her loyal friend and Kenelm's, wrote several elegies, one of them the worst. Vandyck painted her several times; and so the memory of her loveliness is secure. As to her virtues, amiability seems to have been of their number. "Unmatcht for beauty, chaster than the ayre," wrote one poet. When they opened her head it was discovered she had little brain; and gossip attributed the fact to her having drunk viper-wine--by her husband's advice--for her complexion. This sounds absurd only to those who have not perused the _Receipts in Physick and Chirurgery_. Little brain or not, her husband praised her wits. Ben Jonson wrote with devotion of her "who was my muse, and life of all I did."

Digby imitated his father-in-law who, in similar circumstances, gave himself up to solitude and recollection. His place of retirement was Gresham College. Do its present students remember it once housed a hermit who "wore a long mourning cloake, a high crowned hat, his beard unshorne ... as signes of sorrowe for his beloved wife"? There "he diverted himself with chymistry and the professor's good conversation." He had "a fair and large laboratory ... erected under the lodgings of the Divinity Reader." Hans Hunneades the Hungarian was his operator.

But another influence was at work. For the first time his mind turned seriously to religion. Romanist friends were persuading him to his father's faith. His old tutor Laud and other Protestants were doing their best to settle him on their side. Out of the struggle of choice he came, in 1636, a fervent and convinced Catholic. He was to prove his devotion over and over again; but I fear that Catholics of to-day would view with suspicion his views on ecclesiastical authority. In his dedication of his _Treatise on the Soul_ to his son Kenelm, there is a spirited defence of the right, of the intelligent to private judgment in matters of doctrine. Nevertheless, his Catholicism, though rationalist, was sincere, and he spent much energy in propaganda among his friends--witness his rather dull little brochure, the _Conference with a Lady about Choice of Religion_ (1638), and his correspondence with his kinsman, Lord Digby, who did, indeed, later, come over to the older faith. Ere long he earned the reputation of being "not only an open but a busy Papist," though "an eager enemy to the Jesuits."

From this time dates his close friendship with the Queen, Henrietta Maria, and her Catholic friends, Sir Tobie Matthew, Endymion Porter, and Walter Montague. He and Montague were specially chosen by the Queen to appeal to the English Catholics for aid towards Charles's campaign in Scotland. Digby was certainly a hot inciter of the King to foolish activity; but in the light of his after history, it would seem always with a view to the complete freedom of the Catholic religion. A prominent King's man, nay, a Queen's man, which was held to be something extremer, he played, however, an individual part in the struggle. He was well fitted for the Cavalier rôle by the magnificence of his person, by his splendid hospitality, his contempt for sects, his aristocratic instincts, and his manner of the Great World. But if he liked good cheer and a great way of living, he is never to be imagined as clinking cans with a "Hey for Cavaliers! Ho for Cavaliers!" He never fought for the King's cause--though he fought a duel in Paris with a French lord who took Charles's name in vain, and killed his man too. His rôle was always the intellectual one. He conspired for the cause--chiefly, I think, out of personal friendship, and because he held it to be the cause of his Church. He was not a virulent politician; and on the question of divine right the orthodox Cavaliers must have felt him to be very unsound indeed.

The era of Parliaments had now come, and Digby was to feel it. He was summoned to the bar of the House as a Popish recusant. Charles was ordered to banish him and Montague from his councils and his presence; and their examination continued at intervals till the middle of 1642. The Queen interceded for Digby with much warmth, but she was a dangerous friend; and in the same year Montague and he were sent to prison. I have heard a tradition that Crosby Hall was for a time his comfortable jail, but can find no corroboration of this. The serjeant-at-arms confined him for a brief space at The Three Tuns, near Charing Cross, "where his conversation made the prison a place of delight" to his fellows. Later, at Winchester House, Southwark, where he remained in honourable confinement for two years, he was busy with writing and experimenting--to preserve him from "a languishing and rusting leisure." Two pamphlets, both of them hasty improvisations, one a philosophic commentary on a certain stanza of the _Faërie Queen_, the other, his well-known _Observations on the 'Religio Medici'_, are but mere bubbles of this seething activity, given over mostly to the preparation of his _Two Treatises_, "Of the Body," and "Of the Soul," published later in Paris, and to experiments on glass-making.

Many efforts were made for his release, the most efficacious by the Queen of France. It should have been the Dowager Marie de Médicis, in memory of her hot flame for him when he was a youth; but though she may have initiated the appeal, she died before his release, which he seems to have owed to Anne of Austria's good services. Freedom meant banishment, but this sentence he did not take very seriously. In these years he was continually going and coming between France and England, now warned by Parliament, now tolerated, now banished, again daring return, and escaping from the net. "I can compare him to nothing but to a great fish that we catch and let go again; but still he will come to the bait," said Selden of him in his _Table-Talk_.

Exile in Paris provided fresh opportunity for scientific study, though his connection with the English Catholic malcontents, and his services to the Queen Henrietta Maria, who now made him her Chancellor, absorbed much of his time. When the Cause needed him, the Cavalier broke away from philosophy; and in 1645 he set out for Rome, at the bidding of the Queen, to beg money for her schemes. With all his address, diplomacy was not among the chief of his talents. With high personages he took a high tone. Innocent X gave 10,000 crowns to the Cause; but they quarrelled; and the Pope went so far as to accuse Digby of misappropriation of the money. Digby, a man of clean hands, seems to have taken up the Queen's quarrel. She would have nothing to do with Rinuccini's Irish expedition, which his Holiness was supporting; and her Chancellor naturally insisted on disbursing the funds at her commands rather than at the Pope's. Moreover, he was now renewing his friendship with Thomas White, a heretic Catholic priest, of several _aliases_, some of whose work had been placed on the Index. White was a philosophic thinker of considerable power and subtlety, and he and Digby acted and reacted on each other strongly--though Digby's debt is perhaps the greater. Their respective parts in the _Two Treatises_ and in the _Institutionum Peripateticorum libri quinque_, published under White's name, but for which Sir Kenelm is given the main credit, can hardly now be sifted. White, at all events, was not a prudent friend for an envoy to the Holy See. Digby "grew high and hectored with his holinesse, and gave him the lye. The pope said he was mad." Thus Aubrey. Henrietta Maria sent him once more on the same errand; but the Roman Curia continued to look on him as a "useless and restless man, with scanty wisdom." Before returning, however, he paid a round of visits to Italian courts, making everywhere a profound impression by his handsome person and his liveliness. He had to hasten back to England on his own business. His fortunes were desperate; and he desired to compound for his estates.

A week or so after the King's death he is proved by his correspondence to be in France, having fled after one more pronouncement of him as a dangerous man. He went into exile this time with a sad heart; and it was not only the loyalist in him that cried out. The life of an English country gentleman would never have satisfied him; yet he longed for it now it had become impossible. He writes from Calais to a friend: "Those innocent recreations you mention of tabors and pipes, and dancing ladies, and convenient country houses, shady walks and close arbours, make one sigh to be again a spectator of them, and to be again in little England, where time slides more gently away than in any part of the world. _Quando sia mai ch'a rividerti io torno_?"

He went this time knowing better than his fellow royalists the meaning of events. He was still a rank, but at least an intelligent, conspirator. English correspondents at Rouen and Caen report him in the company of one Watson, an Independent; and that he is proposing "to join the interests of all the English papists with the bloody party that murdered the king." Dr. Winsted, an English doctor in Rouen, asked him with indignation how he could meditate going back to England, "considering the abomination of that country." Digby replied that he was forced to it. "If he went not now he must starve." He plainly saw who was the real and only force in England; and he was going to make a bargain with the strong man for himself and his co-religionists. As a matter of fact there is no trace of his return at this moment. Not merely was his property in danger, but his head as well. Yet he never repented of his policy, and he carried it out, so far as might be, in his dealings with Cromwell a few years later. And Henrietta Maria bore him no grudge on this score.

Exile in Paris meant friendly intercourse with, and consolation of the Queen, but also scientific research. In 1651 Evelyn was visiting him there, and being stirred by his enthusiasm into attending Fébur's chemistry lectures along with him. Before that must have taken place his pilgrimage to Descartes, who died in 1650. Apparently Sir Kenelm had gone to Egmont as an unknown stranger; and it throws light on his wide reputation as a man of ideas and a conversationalist, that into his torrent of questions and speculation Descartes broke with, "You can be none other than Digby." The English scientist's practical mind--for he had always a practical end in view, however fantastic his methods--showed itself in his counsel to the author of the _Discours sur la Méthode_. Why all this labour for mere abstract speculation? Why not apply his genius to the one great subject, the prolongation of human life? Descartes, it appears, did not need the advice. He said the subject was engaging his mind; and though he "dared not look forward to man being rendered immortal, he was quite certain his length of life could be made equal to the patriarch's." In fact, he was composing at the time an _Abrégé de Médecine_, and popular report said he believed men could live four or five hundred years. He died prematurely of too much faith in his own medical theories.

In 1653 permission was given to Digby to return, on condition he would not meddle with Royalist plots. He had been in communication with Cromwell, and had done some diplomatic business for him in Paris. On his return in 1654, and for the next few years, he was in the closest relations with the Protector, thereby carrying out the principle he had probably adopted from White, of a "universal passive obedience to any species of government that had obtained an establishment." His Royalist friends made an outcry, and so did the Puritans; but Digby was confident of obtaining from Cromwell great advantages for the English Catholics, and the Protector, it seems, fully trusted the intentions and the abilities of this strange and fascinating personality who came to him out of the enemy's camp. Delicate business was given into his hands, that of preventing an alliance between France and Spain. Prynne, in his _True and Perfect Narrative_, bitterly denounced Cromwell in "that Sir Kenelme Digby was his particular favourite, and lodged at Whitehall; that Maurice Conry, Provincial of the Franciscans in England, and other priests, had his protections under hand and seal." Of Digby's feelings towards Cromwell there is clear evidence. It seems his loyalty had been questioned in his absence; and he writes from Paris, in March, 1656, to Secretary Thurloe: "Whatsoever may be disliked by my Lord Protector and the Council of State must be detested by me. My obligations to his Highness are so great, etc." And again, "How passionate I am for his service and for his honour and interest, even to exposing my life for him." The intimacy, begun on both sides in mere policy, had evidently grown to friendship and mutual admiration.

The illness of which he died had already attacked him, and it was for his health he went to Montpelier in 1658. His stay in that seat of learning was made memorable by his reading to a company of eminent persons his _Discourse on the Powder of Sympathy_, which has brought him more fame and more ridicule than anything else. I have already referred to the secret confided to him as a youth in Florence by the Carmelite Friar from the East. When he came back to England he spoke of the great discovery, and had occasion to use it. Howell--of the _Familiar Letters_--was, according to Sir Kenelm's account, wounded while trying to part two friends who were fighting a duel. His wounds were hastily tied up with his garter, and Digby was sent for. Digby asked for the garter-bandage, and steeped it in a basin in which he had dissolved his secret powder (of vitriol). Immediately Howell felt a "pleasing kind of freshnesse, as it were a wet cold napkin did spread over my hand." "Take off all the plasters and wrappings," said Digby. "Keep the wound clean, and neither too hot nor too cold." Afterwards he took the bandage from the water, and hung it before a great fire to dry; whereupon Howell's servant came running to say his master was much worse, and in a burning fever. The bandage plunged once more in the dissolved powder, soothed the patient at a distance; and in a few days the wound was healed. Digby declared that James and Buckingham were interested witnesses of the cure; and the king "drolled with him about it (which he could do with a very good grace)." He said he divulged the secret to the Duke of Mayenne. After the Duke's death his surgeon sold it so that "now there is scarce any country barber but knows it." Why did not Digby try it on his wounded men at Scanderoon? His _Discourse_ to the learned assembly is a curious medley of subtle observation and old wives' tales, set out in sober, orderly, one might almost say scientific, fashion. Roughly, the substance of it may be summed up as "Like to like." The secret powder is a medium whereby the atoms in the bandage are drawn back to their proper place in the body! After Digby's death you could buy the powder at Hartman's shop for sixpence.

At the Restoration he returned to England. He was still Henrietta Maria's Chancellor. His relations with Cromwell had never broken their friendship; and probably he still made possets for her at Somerset House as he had done in the old days. But by Charles II there was no special favour shown him, beyond repayment for his ransom of English slaves during the Scanderoon voyage; and in 1664 he was forbidden the Court. The reason is not definitely known. Charles may have only gradually, but at last grimly, resented, the more he learnt of it, Digby's recognition of the usurper.

He found happiness in science, in books, in conversation, in medicine, stilling and cookery. In 1661 he had lectured at Gresham College on _The Vegetation of Plants_. When the Royal Society was inaugurated, in 1663, he was one of the Council. His house became a kind of academy, where wits, experimentalists, occultists, philosophers, and men of letters worked and talked. This was the house in Covent Garden. An earlier one is also noted by Aubrey. "The faire howses in Holbourne between King's Street and Southampton Street (which brake-off the continuance of them) were, about 1633, built by Sir Kenelme; where he lived before the civill warres. Since the restauration of Charles II he lived in the last faire house westward in the north portico of Covent Garden, where my lord Denzill Hollis lived since. He had a laboratory there." This latter house, which can be seen in its eighteenth-century guise in Hogarth's print of "Morning," in _The Four Hours of the Day_ set, is now the quarters of the National Sporting Club. There he worked and talked and entertained, made his metheglin and _aqua vitæ_ and other messes, till his last illness in 1665. Paris as ever attracted him; and in France were good doctors for his disease, the stone. He had himself borne on a litter to the coast; but feeling death's hand on him, he turned his face homeward again, and died in Covent Garden, June 11, 1665. In his will he desired to be buried by his beautiful Venetia in Christ Church, Newgate, and that no mention should be made of him on the tomb, where he had engraved four Latin inscriptions to her memory. But Ferrar wrote an epitaph for him:--

"Under this tomb the matchless Digby lies, Digby the great, the valiant, and the wise," etc.

The Great Fire destroyed the tomb, and scattered their ashes.

He had died poor; and his surviving son John, with whom he had been on bad terms, declared that all the property that came to him was his father's sumptuously compiled history of the Digby family. Apparently John regained some part of the estates later, which perhaps had only been left away from him to pay off debts. A great library of Sir Kenelm's was still in Paris; and after his death it was claimed by the French king, and sold for 10,000 crowns. His kinsman, the second Earl of Bristol, bought it, and joined it to his own; and the catalogue of the combined collection, sold in London in 1683, is an interesting and too little tapped source for Digby's mental history. Of his five children, three were already dead. Kenelm, his eldest son, had fallen at St. Neot's, in 1648, fighting for the King. It was his remaining son John who sanctioned the publication of his father's receipts.

* * * * *

Sir Kenelm Digby has been recognised as the type of the great amateur, but always with a shaking of the head. Why this scorn of accomplished amateurs? Rather may their tribe increase, let us pray. Our world languisheth now for lack of them. He was fitted by nature to play the rôle superbly, to force his circumstances, never over pliant, to serve not his material interests, but his fame, his craving for universal knowledge and attainments. Says Wood: "His person was handsome and gigantick, and nothing was wanting to make him a compleat Cavalier. He had so graceful elocution and noble address that had he been dropped out of the clouds into any part of the world, he would have made himself respected; but the Jesuits who cared not for him, spoke spitefully, and said it was true, but then he must not stay there above six weeks. He had a great faculty, which proceeded from abundance of wit and invention, of proposing and reporting matters to the Virtuosi."

Women adored him; and he took great pains to please them--though in spite of the importunities of Marie de Médicis, the long friendship with Henrietta Maria, his early flirtation with the lovely Spaniard, his earnest and impolitic championship of the notorious Lady Purbeck--Romish convert and adventuress--Venetia, it seems, remained his only love. He was never the mere gallant. He treated women as his intellectual equals, but as equals who had to be splendidly entertained and amused. His conversation was "ingeniose and innocent." Lloyd speaks of "the grace wherewith he could relate _magnarum rerum minutias_, the little circumstances of great matters." But men were at his feet as well; and on his tour among Italian courts, one of the grandees said that, "having no children, he was very willing his wife should bring him a Prince by Sir Kenelme, whom he imagined the just measure of perfection."

A first-rate swordsman, yet was he "not apt in the least to give offence." His strength was that of a giant. Bristol related that one day at Sherborne he took up "a midling man," chair and all, with one arm. But there was nothing of the swashbuckler about him, and his endless vitality was matched by his courtesy. True, he hustled a Pope; but he addressed the Short Parliament in such reverential terms as no Roundhead could have found. One who had been courtier, exile, naval commander, student, prisoner, and diplomatist, who had associated with all sorts of persons, from kings to alchemists and cooks, had learnt resourcefulness. But he was never too hard put to it perhaps, seeing that "if he had not fourpence, wherever he came he would find respect and credit." "No man knew better how to abound, and to be abased, and either was indifferent to him."

He had his detractors. One who plays so many parts incites envy and ridicule; and he laid himself particularly open to both. Fantasy was in the Digby blood; and that agility of mind and nerve that turns now here, now there, to satisfy an unquenchable curiosity, that exuberance of mental spirits that forces to rapid and continuous expression, has ever been suspect of the English mind. He was "highly caressed in France." To Evelyn Sir Kenelm was a "teller of strange things," and again the Diarist called him "an errant mountebank"--though Evelyn sought his society, and was grateful for its stimulus. Lady Fanshawe, who met him at Calais, at the Governor's table, says he "enlarged somewhat more in extraordinary stories than might be averred.... That was his infirmity, though otherwise a person of most excellent parts, and a very fine bred gentleman." "A certain eccentricity and unsteadiness perhaps inseparable from a mind of such vanity," is Lodge's criticism. "The Pliny of our age for lying," quoth Stubbes. But Digby's extraordinary stories were by no means all false. He may have talked sometimes to _épater le bourgeois;_ but his serious statements were often judged as were the wonders of evolution by country audiences in the seventies.