1

The Traherne Association

Newsletter No.32 – February 2006

Page

Life is All Richard Birt 2

Traherne Festival Trinity Sunday 2005 – Sermon John Inge 6

A True Friend of Traherne : James Bentley Richard Birt 9

The rediscovery of Thomas Traherne – Hilton Kelliher 10

Traherne in danger of breaking out Esther de Waal 12

Current studies in Traherne Denise Inge 13

Roman Forgeries- reflections of another rambler Roy Davies 13

High Hill Norman Hidden 15

Happiness Plays at Home : Credenhill 2004 Priscilla Davies 15

From the DNB entry on Traherne Julia Smith 16

Quotations and Poems 17

The Traherne Newsletter is edited by The Revd Richard Birt, M.A. (Oxon)

18 Ingestre Street, Hereford, HR4 ODU Tel. No. (01432) 265904

Letters & contributions are always welcome for consideration.

This is an abridged version of the newsletter, prepared for the website where it is archived for reference purposes. Because we have to remain within the allocated size limit of the website, handwritten sections, musical notation and photographic content have been deleted from the original hard copy as they soak up too much memory. Otherwise, the articles and other material included are exactly as they appear in the original printed leaflets edited by The Revd. Richard Birt.

2

Life is All – The Revd. Richard Birt

The title of this year's Festival comes from a less familiar poem of Traherne - one of only seven in his 'Christian Ethics'. In Chapter 27 of Traherne's last book, published within months of his death in 1674, he discusses contentment. It is a virtue: 'Having food and raiment, saith the Apostle, 'let us therewith be content; for godliness

with contentment is a great gain; where he fitly notch that godliness with contentment

is the original of true contentment... The truth is, it is impossible to be happy or

grateful without it.' He then explores the troublesome nature of a discontented mind. It is the source of 'suspicion, unbelief, enmity against God, barrenness in good and praiseworthy employments followed by debaucheries and all sorts of vile and wicked

diversions.'

But then he shocks : he compares true contentment with what he calls 'negative contentment' : (Faith Press 1962, p.. 235) "True contentment is the full satisfaction of a knowing mind. It is not a vain and empty contentment, which is falsely so called, springing from some one particular little

satisfaction that, however momentary it be, does for the present delight our humour;

but a long habit of solid repose, after much study and serious consideration. It is not

the slavish and forced contentment which the philosophers among the heathen did

force upon themselves; but a free and easy mind, attended with pleasure, and

naturally arising from one's present condition. It is not a morose and sullen contempt

of all that is good. That negative contentment, which passed of old for so great a

virtue, is not at all conducive to felicity, but is a real vice .... to seek all ones bliss in

one's self alone is to scorn all other objects, even God himself and all creation ... It

shuts up the soul in a grave, and makes it to lead a living death., and robs it of all its

objects. It mingles nature and vice in a confusion, and makes man fight against

appetite and reason. Certainly that philosopher has a hard task, that must fight

against reason and trample under foot the essence of his soul, to establish his

felicity".

And this leads him to a striking poem, which featured in Harry William's magisterial book "The Joy of God" (Mitchell Beazley '79). In describing 'Man the Creator', Harry writes: One of the paradoxes of life is that all the best gifts, although freely given, have to be worked for. A man, for instance, may be born a genius, but he has to work devastatingly hard in order to actualise what is in him. A lazy genius is a contradiction in terms. Or the deep love of two people for each other is a gift absolutely, but a lot of work has to go into it if it is to prosper & mature. We have, in St Paul's words, to work out our own salvation even if' is God who is at work in us. As Traherne reminds us:

Contentment is a sleepy thing

If it in death alone must die,

A quiet Mind is worse than Poverty,

Unless it from enjoyment spring

That's Blessedness alone that makes a king!

Wherein the Joyes and Treasures are so great

They all the powers of the Soul employ,

And fill it with a Work compleat,

3

While it doth all enjoy.

Life ! Life is all: in its most full extent

Stretcht out to all things, & with all Content!

It is this sense that we will all need to be poets or makers. And if, in this paradoxical way, we all have to be the makers of ourselves, we cannot accomplish that work without creating something of public value, that is, value for others, because (as we have seen) it is only by going out to the other that we find ourselves - the mystery which in the Godhead is pointed to by the doctrine of the Trinity – "The belief that "Life is all is close to the heart of Traherne, and possibly one of the reasons why some Christians have not taken to Traherne. They think that he is too 'this - worldly.' Yet he clearly believes that our lives here are already caught up in eternity. This year, in which we will be faced with Julia, Smith's biography of Traherne, everyone will need to think again about everything they have thought about Traherne. In 2001 Rowan Williams gave 2 lectures in Australia on 'Christian Imagination in Poetry and Polity, Some Anglican Voices from Temple to Herbert' They were published by SLG Press, Fairacres in 2004. His view of Traherne begins with these words:

Traherne, who was a fairlv obscure country parson, published nothing in his lifetime,

and one not very interesting work [Christian Ethicks] appeared immediately after his death in 1674 to keep his reputation alive. But it is poetry and prose manuscripts that

have been discovered in the twentieth century which most vividly express what

mattered above all to Traherne.

'By this let Nurses, and those Parents that desire Holy Children learn to make

them Possessors of Heaven and Earth betimes to remove silly Objects from

before them, to magnify nothing but what is Great indeed, and to talk of God to

them and of his works and ways before they can either Speak or go. For No

thing is so Easy as to teach the Truth because the nature of the Thing,&

confirms the Doctrine. As when we say The Sun is Glorious, A Man is a

beautiful Creature, Soveraign over beasts and Fowls and Fishes.. The Stars

Minister unto us, The World was made far you, etc. But to say This Hous is

yours, and these Lands are another Mans and this Bauble is a Jewel and this

Gugaw a fine thing, This Rattle makes Musick etc. is a deadly Barbarous and

uncouth to a little Child; and makes him suspect all you say, becaus the Nature

of the Things contradicts your Words. Yet doth that Blot out all Noble and

Divine Ideas-"

A depiction of the world as something to be possessed, owned, blots out noble

and divine ideas, and what we seek are words which express the nature of the

thing. As when we say, 'the sun is glorious, the stars minister unto us'.

And yet in his preface to 'Love's Redeeming Work' (759 invaluable pages of Anglican writers - see p47) Rowan Williams writes that the editors hope that it will be 'a handbook for faithful living'. Those fine words are a description of Traherne's aims in leaving Christian Ethicks to posterity, with the subtitle 'The Way to Blessedness'. For Traherne's view of blessedness is not what some would expect of this 'mild thinker':

4

Were all the World a Paradice of Ease Twere easier then to live in peace ......

But we such Principles must now attain, (If we true Blessedness would gain) As those are, which will help to make us reign Over Disorders, Injuries, Ingratitudes, Calamities, Affronts, Oppressions, Slanders, Wrongs,

Lies, Angers, bitter tongues, The reach of Malice must surmount and quell The very rage and Power of Hell.

Margaret Bottrall, to whom we owe so much in giving us the first reprinting of Christian Ethicks for 288 years, (The Faith Press, 1962) nevertheless, in her introduction, has left us the strangest verdict on Traherne. It is not even true to 'Christian Ethicks' itself, let alone to 'The Centuries': 'As a moralist, Traherne has some obvious deficiencies. An imperfect apprehension of the power of evil characterizes all his writings. He underestimates the human propensity to make wrong decisions and minimizes the sheer weight of pain in the world' Elizabeth Jennings had a contrary view, published only the year before. She wrote a key essay on Traherne in her book "Every Changing Shape", 1961. This study of 'the mystical experience and the making of poems' includes Augustine, Julian of Norwich, Chaxles Peguy, Simone Weil, and T.S.Eliot. Her chapter on Traherne is a study of the Centuries in particular. And on the subject of evil she chooses a striking passage: "Traherne never ignores sin, guilt or evil in the world; rather he accepts them and explains them: "Your soul being naturally very dark, and deformed & empty when extended through

intinfinite but empty space, the world serves you in beautifying it and filling it with

amiable ideas; for the perfecting of its stature in the eye of God. For the thorough

understanding of which you must know, that God is a being whose power from all

eternity was prevented with Act [Aquinas defined God as "the act of pure being"] .... He knows all which he is able to know, all objects in the world being seen in his

understanding .... His essence also is the Sight of all Things. For he is all eye and all

ear. Being therefore perfect, and the mirror of all perfection, He hath commanded us

to be perfect as life is perfect."

Traherne's 'Christian Ethicks' is a shocking identification of the causes of the world's miseries, all the more so because he defines at the beginning the truest way of coming face to face with vice: a way that is the precise opposite of oblique: "I do not speak much of vice, which is far the more easy theme, because I am entirely

taken up with the abundance of worth and beauty in virtue Besides, since a straight

line is the measure both of itself and of a crooked one, I conclude that the very glory

of virtue, well understood, will make all vice appear like dirt before a jewel, when

they are compared together. Nay, Vice as soon as it is named in the presence of these

5

Virtues will look like poison or a contagion, or, if you will, as black as Malice &

ingratitude."

However in Chapter 28, on Magnanimity, he does become particularly mordant in his view of what undermines true life : 'He that knoweth the honour which cometh from above will despise the honour which

men can apply……………He sees that men are generally evil, deformed and blind,

erroneous, perverse and foolish, poor and miserable; and that all the honour which

they generally give is irrational and feigned. A little colour in the face, a gay coat, a

fine horse, a palace

and a coach, an exchequer full of gold, or some such light and superficial causes, are

all the grounds of the respect that they pay us.

And if the glory and esteem I have

Be nothing else but what my silver gave,

If for no other ground

I am with love or praises crownd,

Tis such a shame, such vile, such base repute,

Tis better starve, than eat such empty fruit.

The Commentaries of Heaven, in the entry on 'Spiritual Absence', contain one of the .most harrowing descriptions of the ways in which a person can be 'undone'. It comes in an un-noticed poem, within the entry rather than at the end, describing the ultimate personal hell:

"That Man Is Poor and Desolate whose Lov

None Seeks, no man sollicits none doth mov

Whose Brightest Splendors In the dark do lie

And all his great Affections am thrown by

Rust covers his Resplendent fancy, Dust

Soyls all his Powers, & his Lov doth rust.

His Wit's unseen his Wisdom none Admires

His Souls unsought his favour none desires

None values his esteem, his Sacred Tears

No eye doth pitty, fury no man fears.

His passions are hung o're with cobwebs and and

His greatest Virtues Idle In Him stand.

His courage no where is employed, his Zeal

No beauty doth to any Ey reveal.

His Excellencies in a Silent Cave

Are hid, his very Body Is his Grave.

His faculties are Empty, All his Powers

Are Solitary Withered Blasted Bowers,

His Wide & Great Capacity is laid

Aside his Precept is by none Obeyd.

His very Worth's Neglected & Despised

His very riches are themselves not prized

He Is the poor forlorn & needy man,

That see, do, prize , Enjoy, Admire at Nothing can.

6

Whose Goodness cant it self Communicat,

Nor Avarice Enjoy anothers State.

Whose violent & endless Lov's displeasd

Whose Great Ambition is by no man Eased

Who no Dominion hath, whom no maan's Ey

Doth prize, Exalt, Rejoice in, Magnifie.

Who reigns not always in anothers Soul,

Whose Highness nothing can at all controul

Who cannot pleas far more than Worlds,

And be a Bliss to others like the Deitie.

To satisfy these powers & Inclinations, being all from GOD, is to feed upon delusions. Yet he is desolat, that cannot satisfy them. Inferior, fickle unworthy Objects, are Dust & Ashes always, often Dreams & som times Thorns. To shun the miserie of being Desolat, among them, is to be like a King Divested of his ceremonies, jesting with beggars. But in GOD's presence all our power & inclinations are satisfied. He sees us, seeks us, Low us infinitely, Tenders us as His Ey, Esteemeth our persons, prizeth our Lov, Advanceth us to His Throne, Delighte in our Wisdom, Crowneth our Courage, giveth us Objects of Admiration & pleasure in our Affection, & in so stupendous a maner Magnifies us, that he does all Things for us, & delights in all the felicities of his kingdom for our sakes. Can anyone endure to be Absent fom Him."

Traherne – Commentaries of Heaven

Traherne Festival Trinity Sunday 2005 - Hereford Cathedral – Bishop John

Inge's sermon.

On the floor of the nave of a glorious little Northumbrian Church in the village of Alnham lies a tombstone which has a quite legible, if rather rough, inscription on it, as does the tomb itself, dating from the Seventeenth Century. The inscription goes halfway down the tomb, describing whom it is that is commemorated and how she dies. Surprisingly, this inscription comes to an abrupt end that in the middle of a line. The concluding sentence, to which one's eye is drawn, reads 'Glory be to to the Father and to the rest'. Name one person of the Trinity and you have named them all, perhaps the inscriber thought – or more likely just got bored with the task. The Trinity has not always engendered the excitement it deserves. Gone are the days when it was considered such a hot potato that St Augustine's great tome on the subject, De Trinitate, was stolen just before its publication by someone wanting to make a quick buck. Many have found the doctrine incomprehensible and have lost interest for that reason Traheme was excited by the Trinity and wanted to explore its wonder and its mystery. In the recently published "The Kingdom of God", he tells us that 'for our sakes (God) builded heaven and earth, filled eternity with joys, and even gave the whole Trinity

7

unto us....', I know that his essence is his blessedness, but it is a voluntary and eternal act begetting, begotten and a love proceeding. Which though they are one in essence subsist nevertheless in three several manners so that in all love the Trinity is clear.' 'Begetting, begotten and proceeding'. For me there is another resonance operating here, and that is with the much neglected work by Dorothy Sayers entitled The Mind of the Maker, which she published in 1941 having given up writing detective fiction, and in which, dare to suggest Traheme would be more than interested – as Sayers herself was in Traheme's work. In it she proposes that every human act of creation is threefold an earthly Trinity to match the heavenly. First there is the creative idea, passionless, timeless, beholding the whole work at once, the end in the beginning. This is the image of the Father. Second there is the creative energy (or activity) begotten of the idea, working in the time from the beginning to the end, with zeal and passion, being incarnate in the bonds of matter and this is the image of the World. Third, there is the creative power, the meaning of the work and its response in the lively soul, and this is the image of the indwelling Spirit. And these three are one each equally in itself in the whole work, none can exist without the other. This is the image of the Trinity. C. S. Lewis reviewed Dorothy Sayers' work sympathetically, though he feared that it might give human writers a view of themselves. 'They had better read it fasting' he wrote. Since almost all of Traherne's work was published posthumously we do not have to worry about the analogy going to his head…. Traheme's work is a good example of Sayers sustained and detailed exploration of an analogy between God and the human creative work. Traherne's mind and soul beheld the creative idea of his work which was brought forth in the creative energy onto the page, his beautiful minute handwriting being the bonds of matter in which his creative idea was made incarnate. Then there is the meaning of the work, which has been responded to in many a lively soul. One of them, my wife Denise, writes that when she met his work 'what I found in Traheme was grace. Unimaginable divine generosity woven into the very fabric of the universe. And that vision of a gracious God and his bountiful creation has whispered hopefully to me ever since.' Not only is Traherne's work a good example of this analogy, his writing speaks eloquently of the abundance of the glory of God's love in the Trinity.'I know that his essence is all blessedness but it is a voluntary and Etemal act begetting, begotten and proceeding to all eternitie.' There is in his writing a threefold process of love. The first, the love of God for humanity, is the love of a superior for an inferior, the second, love between equals, is apparent in Traherne's ecstatic descriptions of his fellow human beings as 'glittering and sparkling angels' and 'moving jewels, the third, the love of an inferior for a superior, is evident in his many exhortations to his readers to praise God in filial gratitude for giving them the whole creation. Traheme would go further than Dorothy Sayers by suggesting that by lifting all things up to God in praise the mind is able to translate them, as it were, back into their native tongue, which is the language of pure giving and receiving..

8

The world within you is an offering returned which is infinitely more acceptable to

God Almighty, since it came from him, that it might return to him. Wherein the

mystery is great. For God hath made you able to create worlds in your own mind

which are more precious to him than those which He created; and to give and offer

the world unto hin., which is very delightful in flowing from him, but much more in

returning to Him.

Much of Traherne's writing on the Trinity, like Sayers', is in the Western tradition of a 'psychological' conception of the Trinity, after Augustine who, determined to defend the unity of the Trinity, looks for an analogy of the Trinity in the mental acts of remembering, understanding and willing. Augustine sees the perfection of the cardinal mental or personal acts of knowing and loving, directed to their one all satisfying object, God, and to everything and everyone else through him and with reference to him. Though Traherne is at home in this tradition, yet there are echoes in his writing of the social image of God beloved of the Greek Fathers which concentrates on the persons of Trinity and which has found new favours in the West in recent years. A few sentences before he refers to the essence of God being his blessedness and of the voluntary and eternal act of begetting begotten and proceeding. In The Kingdom of God, he speaks of the Father and the Son almost competing in how much they love us: 'It seemeth that the Father loved us better than his Son. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten so that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life. If seemeth that the Son of God loved us better than his Father, for when enmity and variance fell out between us, he forsook his Father and did cleave to us like a bridegroom that forsaketh his father and mother to cleave to his wife'. Traherne tells us in The Kingdom of God that 'Since therefore bountie is the stream, where love is the fountain, and blessedness the ocean into which it proceedeth, we have not only an emblem of the ever blessed and most glorious Trinity in the union of these, which is so extremely amiable, but a clear demonstration also of the perfection of his Kingdom.' Traheme begs us to learn that we cannot perceive reality in all its fullness unless we learn to see it in the light of the divine generosity that exist within the very heart of God and that pours that same love out to us. As Mark Macintosh puts it: 'Creation only exists fully and completely as the flowing mutual gift of the Trinitarian persons, the delight of the mutual giving and receiving of heaven'. Traheme stresses the unity of love which, like the Trinity, whether begetting, begotten or proceeding, participates in the divine essence : "Lov in the fountain and lov in the stream are both the same, and therefore are they both equal in time and glory'. He sees the great love of the persons of the Trinity in all creation and yearns for us to see it too, so that we might join in the Trinitarian life of love. I pray that our lives, yours and mine, might reflect that love in all that we perceive, in all that we do and all that we are for, in the words of St Isaac the Syrian: 'When we have reached love, we have reached God, and our journey is complete. We have crossed over to the island which lies beyond the world, where are the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit'; to whom be all praise and glory for ever. Amen

9

A True Friend of Traherne : James Bentley

James was an anthologist, historian & travel writer, who wrote the acclaimed biography of Hitler's opponent Pastor Martin Niemoller. His travel books about Europe won him the Thomas Cook Travel Award in 1988, and lie was described by The Times as 'an authoritative guide whose pleasure in the table and command of history gives his work 'full-bodied value'. He was in no way taken in by the superficial views of Taherne which dominated the last century. Among his last anthologies, Bentley's 'The Tongues of Men & Angels' (1996, Little, Brown and Company) was a harvest of' some of the finest writings and paintings of the 16th & 1 7th centuries. Two acknowledged masters of English prose are Thomas Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer of 1549 and the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible, published in 1611. The book includes Shakespeare, Milton, John Bunyan, John Donne, Jeremy Taylor, Lancelot Andrewes & Georgc Herbert. It has four parts : The Heritage of the Bible, Virtues, Vices, This World & the Next. Where might Traheme 'fit in' ? Many would go for the Heritage of the Bible or Virtues. After all he gave us the Centuries as a prolonged commentary on the Bible. And virtues are never far away in any of his writings. Surely this essentially positive and 'mild' writer spends most of his time giving us 'directions' about how to live in this wonderful world doesn't he ? He's a prescriptive writer: he simply tells us what to do. But no. The book is shocking. Traherne turns up in Vices. Not a sign of mild hopes & some kind of improvement Creed, but 'Greed' : the works of darkness all around us, accompanied by the painting 'Soldiers fighting over Booty'. And in This World & the Next we come face to face with Traherne's 'Fallen World' : how it has fallen, and how Christians are called to love it. The painting accompanying his passage is 'The Physician' by Lorenzo Lotto. Good Christians are physicians of the world's soul. A most moving tribute to James appeared in a Hereford magazine (reference as yet unknown) which started with an exhibition in the Hereford Photography Festival: A young boy is cradling a white rabbit inside a crater of rubble which may once have been his home is a moving image of tenderness and fragility and emptiness. No-one who saw the vivid photographs war at the Hereford Photography Festival can be in any doubt about the violence and horror of our world. Some say that Traherne, in his persistent innocence, falls to recognise the evil that men are capable of, and they say that he has a pussycat view of creation, and ignores the tiger. Not so. 'The works darkness are Repining, Envy, Malice, Covetousness, Fraud, Oppression, Discontent and Violence. All of which proceed from the corruption of Men……….. they have let in broils and dissatisfactions into the world, and are ready to eat and devour one another (an image worthy of Goya). Or this : 'On every side we are environed with enemies, surrounded with reproaches, encompassed with wrongs, beseiged with offences, receiving evil for good, being disturbed by fools, and invaded with malice. etc etc.' Yes, he knew.

10

Both of these extracts from Centuries of Meditation are included in an anthology of writings from the Renaissance to the Restoration, edited by James Bentley, and eloquently reviewed in the September 1998 edition of this Newsletter (No.13). The writer ended with the observation that 'James Bentley has done Traherne, and us, a great service.' James Bentley was a longstanding friend of great warmth, wide-ranging knowledge and profound sympathies. He introduced me (a little late to be sure) to the poetry of Housman, and spent time explaining to me, with lots of diagrams, Quantum Theory. He was the last person to interview Martin Niemoller for his excellent biography of the Pastor. James told me that he thought this his best book. Dr. Bentley was also a renowned travel writer, and whilst in Saumur, doing some research for a r book on the Loire Valley, was involved in a road accident in which he was killed. I feel the loss of a kind friend, and we all should mourn a sharp , intelligent and compassionate human being.

The rediscovery of Thomas Traherne – Hilton Kelliher

(A fascinating glimpse of the strange wanderings of of Traherne's manuscripts. RB)

On May 18 this year (as reported in the TLS, June 8) the British Library purchased through Christies of New York, at the hammer-price of $110,000 (or £78,014), the bulky autograph manuscript of Thomas Traherne's recently discovered –"Commentaries of Heaven". This manuscript had been rescued from the flames of a South Lancashire rubbish tip about 1967 and taken to Canada when the finder emigrated. Fifteen years later, it was identified as Traherne's (in the TLS, March 19, 1982) by Elliot Rose of the University of Toronto, where it was subsequently placed on loan in the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library. The circumstances of the recovery and identification of the manuscript, the third from Traherne's pen to have turned up during the last fifteen years, form merely the latest chapter in a story that has long been seen as one of the most romantic in the annals of the survival of English literary works. That story, as it has hitherto been told, began with the discovery in 1896 by William T. Brooke, on a London street-barrow, of the two manuscripts of Traherne's Poems and Centuries of Meditations that are now in the Bodleian Library. Thus arrested on their progress from obscurity to possible destruction they were sold to that tireless editor of English Renaissance writers, Alexander Grosart, who confirmed Brooke's suggestion that they were the work of Henry Vaughan. Two years later, on Grosart's death, they were bought by the bookseller Bertram Dobell, who soon won a place in literary history by attributing them to their long-forgotten author. Now, however, some hitherto unnoticed details regarding their provenance will show just how . narrowly Traherne's eccentric genius failed of its due recognition at an even earlier date. Benjamin Heywood Bright, whom Esdaile dubbed "an omnivorous bibliophile", assembled during the first half of the nineteenth century an important collection of literary and

11

historical manuscripts which after his death was offered for sale at Sotheby's on June 18, 1844. From this sale the publisher William Pickering secured not only the "Commentaries" (lot 61) but the Dobell manuscript of Poems also (lot 129), the latter being catalogued according to some lettering on its binding, as the "Ledbury Manuscript". This title seems to have come about because Ledbury is the only place-name mentioned in the volume, though on an inserted slip of accounts dated 1746. It may have been the catalogue-description of the "Ledbury Manuscript "as including "Religious Poems in imitation of Herbert's Temple" that aroused the interest of Pickering, himself an editor of George Herbert. Nevertheless his new acquisitions remained unattributed and unpublished at his death ten years later, when they were again sold through Sotheby's, on December 12, 1854, this time to a certain Nisbet. The "Commentaries" (lot 41) now fetched two shillings and the Poems (lot 105) six, representing a drop of ten and fourteen shillings respectively on their prices in 1844. More than a decade and a half later, on February 23, 1870, Grosart happened to remark in a letter (now BL Additional MS 38901 f 48) to the bibliographer W. C. Hazlitt that he had "got lately" some manuscripts of the seventeenth-century divine Herbert Palmer along with 'two volumes of 'Meditations' of a remarkable kind, containing unpublished, poems that I should much like to know the author or authors of". The two Palmer manuscripts, now Cambridge University Library Add MSS 3860 and 3861, carry notes by Grosart stating that he had bought them from, bookseller in Canterbury. Three tentative inferences may be drawn from these facts: first, that these "Meditations" were Traherne's work; secondly, that they had been purchased with the Palmer manuscripts or at least in the Canterbury area at about the same time; and thirdly, that they came from the collection of the ' Revd. John Marjoribanks Nisbet, successively Rector of Deal and Vicar of Margate between 1856 and 1867. Nisbet, who had been Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth at the time of the Pickering sale, seems most likely to have been the purchaser of the Traherne, along with three other seventeenth -century manuscripts, on that occasion. He died in September 1892, a date perhaps close enough to Brooke's discovery of 1896 to be significant, though the portion of his library that was offered by Puttick and Simpson on January 16, 1893, included no manuscripts. What makes it seem probable that Grosart's two volumes of "Meditations" were the work of Traherne is the purport of certain passages in his later letters t o Brooke that are now pre- served in Bodleian MS Dobell c 56. Writing from Wales on August 27, 1897, Grosart, who had just acquired the Poems for five pounds, recalled having had "both books & MSS. dated Ledbury. It's long ago & I can't for the life of me bethink me of it." Three days later, while still absent from home, he wrote that it 'was "singular that I had & I think still have a thin folio MS. lettered on the back identically as [the Ledbury MS] is. So that there must have been a Ledbury collector." Subsequent enquiries led him to state that a collector of books " and manuscripts, named Skipp, from a family long resident in Ledbury, had disposed of his library through the London salerooms about May 1888. In this-connection he pointed to an auctioneer's label, now lost, on the binding of the Poems, that bore ' the, number

12

"1112". The result was that this has remained the accepted provenance, since Grosart's time, of the major Traherne manuscripts. We can only wonder that the Ledbury MS – for such the "thin folio MS." most probably was – had escaped from Grosart's hands at some time between 1870 and 1896, apparently without his recollecting its disposal. Certainly, it seems rather odd that he could not by the latter date call to mind more clearly his former ownership of the poems that had so intrigued him in 1870, and 'that the attribution to Vaughan which Brooke suggested had not occurred to him while he was working on his own edition (1871) of Vaughan's works. What is perhaps even stranger is that he should have failed to notice that a further autograph manuscript of Traherne's was on his own shelves at the time of Brooke's discovery. The so-called "Church's Year Book" was recognized and acquired by Dobell at the Grosart sale of December 11, 1899. Since Dobell's time it has often been repeated that the Poems and Centuries were discovered on the same barrow in the Farringdon Road. Yet in a seemingly unpublished account written about October 1910 and now part of Bodleian MS Dobell c 56, Brooke revealed that these two manuscripts had in fact been picked up in different places and at different times during the winter of 1896-7. One of them though it is not certain which - came from Whitechapel and the other from the Farringdon Road, both being laid aside "for investigation at a more convenient season". It was only an urgent appeal from Grosart, when hugely ,excited by his purchase of the Poems, that led Brooke to notice, "to my intense surprise", that one of the poems in that manuscript also appeared in the second one comprising the Centuries of Meditations. The miraculous recovery, at various times stretching over seventy years; of literary works by an important seventeenth-century writer is rendered all the more remarkable by the dicovery that on three or four occasions during their history they had passed through responsible hands. Fortunately for posterity the opportunities missed by successive owners were redeemed by a series of lucky accidents that ensured their continued preservation and eventual identification. Who shall say whether the final instalment of the story can yet be written?

Traherne in danger of breaking out .....

Esther de Waal reports from Washington USA: 'The big bookstore here has a volume which lists the best 25 Greal Books of Spiritual Writing in the World. It opens with the Bhagavad Gita and the penultimate name (before Simone Weil) is Thomas Traherne This would have been totally unthinkable 10 years ago.' What a strange coincidence with my life. When I was at Oxford in the early 1960's nearly 20 years before 1 encountered Traherne, Simone Weil had a great influence or me (and still does). R. B)

13

Current studies in Traherne

Our thanks go to Denise Inge for her report of some news of current studies in Traherne : Jacob Blevins at McNeese University in Louisiana, who has done a book-length annotated bibliography of Traheme criticism from 1900-2003, is editing a collection of new critical essays due to be published end of 2006. The collection includes contributions from mostly American scholars alongside one from the UK and one from Canada. At least one of the nine essays looks at Lambeth MS 1360. Among the contributors is Cynthia Saenz whom many readers may remember from previous Traheme Festivals. One senses in the essays a gentle movement away from 'primarily poetry' studies evidenced in the inclusion of the Lambeth MS, Christian Ethicks and Commentaries of Heaven. Topics range widely from Traherne's notions of able-bodiedness and disability, to property law, Traherne and his contemporaries, his use of language, and the nature of consciousness in his work. Look out for: Re-reading Traherne:, Collection of New Critical Essays, MRTS (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies), Arizona State. Bob White, Prof of English at University of Western Australia, is supervising a new thesis by Alison Kershaw: "The Poetic of the Cosmic Christ in Thomas Traherne's The Kingdom of God'. This is one of the first theses to consider the Kingdom of God. John Cottingham, University of Reading, a philosopher and Traherne fan has include~ Traheme in his recent book On The Meaning of Life (Routledge). Carol Ann Johnston, Dickinson College, Pennsylvania has written "Heavenly Perspectives, Mirrors of Etemity: Thomas Traherne's Yearning Subjec", Criticism, vol. 43. Issues 4, 200 1. p 3 77 ff. Charles Wallace Jr., "The Prayer Closet a 'Room of Ones's Own': Two Anglican Women Devotional Writers at the Tum of the 18th Century." The Journal of Women's History, vol 9 Issue2 1997 p. 108 may be of particular interest to those concerned with Susannah Hopton. Mark McIntosh is working on a new book for Blackwell , an upper level introduction to Christian Theology that will include Traherne re. the theology of creation. Denise Inge is working on a Traherne Reader to be published in the Canterbury Studies in Spiritual Theology series by Canterbury Press. Due to the publishers November 2006 for publication Spring 2007. Its title will be 'Holiness & Happiness : A Traherne Reader'. Roman Forgeries- reflections of another rambler * Roman Forgeries was the only book to be published in Traherne's lifetime: in 1673, just one year before his untimely death in October 1674. Margaret Bottrall, in her otherwise delightful and informative "Celebrating Traherne" (published to mark the first Herefordshire Traherne Festival in June 1991) refers to it (perhaps a little disdainfully?) as "an arid work dealing with forged insertions in the canons and decretals of the Roman Catholic Church". "Presumably she continues, "this was what gained him the degree of Bachelor of Divinity, awarded in 1669". Not an unfair presumption, since it had been quite plainly published as his B.D, thesis! Elsewhere Roman Forgeries has been described as infelicitous. These adjectives "arid" and "infelicitous" are bound to sound particularly discordant, inappropriate and even provocative to all those who have become familiar with the Traherne, whom Margaret Bottrall describes, in her concluding sentence, as "this Herefordshire poet who advocated the pursuit of happiness and charted a way to blessedness". I must confess

14

that I, for one, have certainly been provoked into reflecting on the merits of Roman Forgeries and on the injustice of adverse criticism of it. Successive Traherne Festivals, through both talks and tours, have vividly brought to our attention the fascinating ways in which philosophy and politics, civil and religious war, spirituality and ecclesiology were all intertwined in the 17th Century; and, for all those fascinated by coincidences, the year 1637 is certainly particularly noteworthy in this respect. In July of that year , an unwanted Prayer Book was being foisted on an unwilling Scottish Church. During the course of divine service, "a brave scottish woman" Jenny Geddes threw her creepie stool at the Dean of Edinburgh as he began to read the collects. This encounter, commemorated on the floor of St Giles Cathedral, sparked off an immediate uprising and led ultimately to the religious wars and revolutions in all three kingdoms of Charles I. 1637 was also the year in which Descartes published his Discourse on Method, advocating doubt and questioning as the method of philosophy; and 1637 was almost certainly the year of Thomas Traherne's birth. I would never claim that the hours spent reading his Roman Forgeries, at our excellent Cathedral Library in Hereford, were the most exhilarating in my life; but 1 believe the subject of the book to be of immense importance, interest and relevance. We all know, only too well, that fraudulent claims, lying politicians and deceiving document litter the historical records of humankind. Traherne and other investigative writers, who examined and exposed the Donation of Constantine and other false decretals were alerting us to the ever-present dangers to the church (any church at any time) of becoming ambitious, powerful and cruel. An ambitious church had fabricated these false documents to justify the extension of its power and what was begun by ambition came to be defended by cruelty. When Christianity emerged from Aramaic-speaking Galilee into the Graeco-Roman world, the Greeks with their genius for philosophy and Romans with their genius for law became obsessed with constructing logical formulas and doctrinal systems. When these became reinforced by the legal system of Rome, the Inquisition came into being and the doctrinal system became imposed by force. Adherence to an orthodox form of belief came to be crucial for the church. There was no choice: to choose was to be a "heretic" that's literally what the word means – "one who chooses"; and heretics were not infrequently burned at the stake! It's worth recalling that it was just four years before the birth of Traherne that Galileo was forced to recant. It was just over two centuries later, in 1870, when the dogma of papal infallibility was promulgated, that Lord Acton, the famous Liberal and Catholic historian, later to become Regius Professor of History at Cambridge, made his most famous pronouncement: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Like Traherne, Acton spent a large part of his life in this Diocese of Hereford, at Aldenham Hall, near Bridgnorth, where, 1877, he gave two lectures. "The History of Freedom in Antiquity" and "The History of Freedom in Christianity".The preservation of freedom and its further pursuit are of the greatest contemporary relevance and importance. There are those, both in the church and in the world, who are seriously undermining our precious God-given, yet hard-won liberty by their partisan scheming.

15

*The Rambler was edited by Lord Acton from 1859 to 1864. He stopped publication when the Pope decreed that opinions of Catholic writers were subject to the authority of the Roman congregations.

Roy Davies.

Hereford's town-haunts : in memory of Norman Hidden.

Some years ago Norman wrote: "My connections with the West Midlands began in the most formative years of my life when I was a pupil at Hereford Cathedral School (1921~26). My experiences at the school are recorded in the semi-autobiographical Dr. Kink, a literary experiment presenting a complex picture of' a boy's love~hate relationship with father and with school. I have revisited Hereford many times and the present school is totally different from the horror of Dr Kink's days. Another influence at that time came from the town's connections with the 17th century mystic Thomas Traherne. A few snatched paragraphs from his Centuries which I came across in the town library drove me to roam the streets & buildings at the end of the old town-haunts which inspired me with something like an echo of what the boy Traherne had felt. When my parents came to live at Wyeside under the shadow of Dinedor, I used to go on long walks and cycle rides in the school holidays. One such lonely excursion was to Traherne's old parish of Credenhill : the experience is recorded in my poem High Hill. For its warm and exciting memories the town and county of Hereford remain dear to me."

High Hill High hill ripples the quiet flow Of land ; thrusts up a challenge Whose boast ensnares the lonely man This height he must master, straddle Godlike above, proclaiming 'This is my earth, I have surpassed it

Legs are urged forward, and the slope Yields to a corkscrew path That penetrates while it scars : rocks And shrubs surrender, the track Loses itself in bramble and fern. Sudden scamper of the scareaway rabbit

Trees have fallen behind like dead Soldiers : birds no longer swoop. The adder rustles in the heather Without trace ' then only silence, and A bare height that gives its own shape. Dizzily below, earth ranges circular

Like some huge trap. Above, A vast sky mocks at man's pretensions. The climber finds himself the hub Of universal space: to be godlike Involves an imagined solitude, Harries him down the hill to home.

Norman Hidden

Happiness Plays at Home : Credenhill 2004

Glorlous warnith and sunshine was enjoyed in Credenhill at the 14th Traherne Festival on Trinity weekend, June 4th-7th. Traherne lived in Credenhill from 1657 to 1674, and it was there he wrote more about happiness than any other writer in the world. The theme "The Face of' Happiness" abounded throughout the weekend, from the spontaneous talks on the theme 'happy and sad' on Friday evening to the climax on Monday with the blessing in Battlefield Church Shrewsbury by Bishop John Oliver, our President since the first Festival in 1991. Speakers from as far away as the U.S.A. were our guests, and enjoyed the splendid lunches teas and suppers served by the

16

church members of' St Mary's Church Credenhill. Walking the hill to the Iron Age Fort which had been the home of stone age man was unforgettable, with a meditation on the way by the poet Kim Taplin. I was given absolute Joy as I saw a white pimpernel in that secluded spot. The Saturday Concert by Credenhill school children and by the Church Choir was full of pleasure : the children were in perfect harmony with their leaders. On Sunday morning I was amazed to see two cyclists coming along the road to Credenhill, and one rider was a nun in her habit : something I have never seen in my life before. And she turned out to be the person who had helped me climb the hill, and later gave a stirring meditation on 'Present Happiness'. The Credenhill sermon by the Bishop of Truro ended with some wonderful words by the poet Elizabeth Jennings, whose part I had taken at the Saturday Tea, carrying numerous plastic bags. In Oxford she was known as the 'Bag Lady'. The Bishop read her words : "Traherne, you've lighted up my blackest night". The Hereford Cathedral Evensong on Trinity Sunday was one of the most beautiful we have had. And in the evening D-Day Remembrance Concert we were enfolded by the silence and calm of Belmont Abbey as John Sanders 'Lament' was played by a young Cathedral School cellist, and poignant readings from Anne Frank's diary came to us out of the ether, in the voice of a Whitecross School girl On the Monday we came face to face with the splendour and colour in the wonderful St Mary's Church Shrewsbury. What windows, what glory. They depicted all that Thomas Traherne stood for : moments in time never to be forgotten.

Priscilla Davies 17th June 2004

From the DNB entry on Traherne by Julia Smith

It seems to have been during this period of uncertainty for the church shortly after the Restoration that Traherne composed his Select Meditations (first published in -1997). a series of short reflections on his own vocation 'to teach Immortal Souls the way to Heaven' (3.83), his devotional life, and its relationship to the political and ecclesiastical turmoils of the nation. It juxtaposes a fervent commitment to 'the Beautifull union of my Nationall church' and its 'External Flourishing' (1.85. 3.23) with an intense perception of spiritual realities. including an experience of the infinity of the human soul so powerful 'that for a fortnight after I could Scarsly Think or speak or write of any other Thing' (4.3). Traherne was to remain rector of Credenhill until he died in 1674; apart from some temporary absences he was. as his churchwarden reported in 1673, 'continualy resident amongst us' until early in the year of his death (Hereford County RO, registrar's files. .1673/488). His parish, 5 miles north-west of Hereford. was a very small one of about two dozen households. about half of them living close to the poverty line, and had neither school nor mid-wife. Traherne himself, with a living worth £50 a year was relatively affluent. and there was only one house in the parish larger than his four-hearth rectory; he 'called his Hous the Hous of Paradice' (Centuries, 4.22). Ecclesiastical records show him engaged in the usual round of a parish minister, reporting that he 'does duly visit the sick. Instruct the youth' (Hereford County RO, registrar's files. 1673/488). although Traherne did not always find such visiting easy: 'And when I enter into Houses. let me remember the Glory 1 saw in the feilds' (Select Meditations. 2.100)..

Julia Smith

17

Centuries 3.11

By this let Nurses, and those Parents that desire Holy Children learn to make them Possessors of Heaven and Earth betimes, to remove silly Objects from before them, to Magnify nothing but what is Great indeed, and to talk of God to them and of His Works and Ways before they can either Speak or go. For Nothing is so Easy as to teach the Truth becaus the Nature of the Thing confirms the Doctrine. As when we say The Sun is Glorious, A Man is a Beautifull Creature, Soveraign over Beasts and Fowls and Fishes, The Stars Minister unto us, The World was made for you, &c. But to say This Hous is yours, and these Lands are another Mans and this Bauble is a jewel and this Gugaw a fine Thing, this Rattle makes Musick &c. is deadly Barbarous and uncouth to a little Child; and makes him suspect all you say, becaus the Nature of the Thing contradicts your Words. Yet doth that Blot out all Noble and Divine Ideas, Dissettle his foundation, render him uncertain in all Things, and Divide him from GOD.

Select Meditations 4.52

It is no small matter to Dwell in community or in a congregation, and to convers there without complaint, and to Persevere Faithfully in it untill Death. Blessed is he that hath there Lived well, And Ended Happily. They are as so many Gods if we respect the Grandure and Power of their Soul: and wheather Innocent or miserable it is a weighty thing to be conversant among them and not to Erre. Innocent no man is in this world. much Less a Congregation. If there were we ought to be Spotless, and that is weighty, to revere their censure, to be Amiable in their Eys, to enjoy their Persons, to hold them Sacred, to be the Sons of God, to enjoy their Glory: Promote His, Establish our own. To walk as Gods would be then our Duty, which would be no Small Inferior Thing. But if they were miserable as the most are, to be filled with great compassion, to retain the Sence of the Eternal Diety. to Lov them as the Saviour of the world doth, not to follow their Opinion, not to be Provoked by their censure, not to approve ones selfe to them, not to give them occation of evill Speech, not to be swayed by their example, are Difficult Things, and He that passeth Thorrow all thes Bryers well, and is in e[v]ry moment prudent shall be more beautifull then if he had never sinned nor been a mong them.

Reading Thomas Traherne

Can I then lose myself, and losing find one word that, in the face of what you were, needs to be said or heard? --Or speak of what has come to your sad race that to your clear rejoicing we turn with such a face? With such a face, Traherne,

18

as might make dumb any but you, the man who knew how simply truth may come: who saw the depth of darkness shake, part and move, and from death' s centre the light' s ladde r go up from love to Love.

From “A Human Pattern” by Judith Wright .