He knew it all
On
the assumption that my views of the Ferguson grand jury or the resignation of
the Secretary of Defense would command about as much enthusiasm among my
readership as those of the anointed punditocracy have stimulated in me, I shall
take up the compelling subject of the Admirable Crichton. If you have heard of the Admirable
Crichton at all, which may be unlikely, it is probably in connection with J. M.
Barrie’s once-famous play of that name (1903). The Admirable Crichton
is an imaginative satire on the theme of the British class system, sort of a
combination of Downton Abbey and Lord of the Flies. It is rather brilliant, but now
probably hopelessly “dated”.
Barrie’s
“Crichton” is an imaginary butler in the stately home of a limousine liberal
peer, the Earl of Loam; but his name alludes to an actual if shadowy historical
figure of the sixteenth century, the Scotch polymath James Crichton (ca. 1560-
ca. 1583). Youthful genius too
soon cut down is one of cultural history’s recurrent tragic themes. Think of John Keats, “one whose Name
was writ in Water,” dead of consumption at twenty-five. Closer in spirit to the original Admirable
Crichton, and indeed a probable biographical model, was the great Renaissance
occultist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), although he made it all
the way to thirty. Pico knew
everything there was to know, and so did the Admirable Crichton. The laudatory adjective must be
understood in the sense of the Latin admirabilis—that
which inspires wonder, something marvelous.
Young
James came of good stock. His
mother was a Stuart of the Stuarts,
and his father was for a time under the reign of Queen Mary the Lord Advocate
of Scotland. The youngster studied
the trivium at Perth before going on
to take a precocious baccalaureate degree at Saint Andrew’s. At the age of eight Crichton’s
eloquence in his native vernacular was compared with that of Demosthenes and
Cicero. By fifteen he knew “perfectly”
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic (presumably classical), and Syriac; and commanded
native conversational fluency in Spanish, French, Italian, “Dutch”, (i.e.,
German, Deutsch), Flemish, and, oh,
“Sclavonian”.
That
was the mere beginning of Crichton’s admirableness. He was also a champion athlete, a horseman, a fencer, a
dancer, a singer of rare voice, and the master of most known wind and string
instruments. His St. Andrews
professor, Rutherford, a noted Aristotelian commentator, judged him to be one
of the leading philosophers of the era.
The
cultural ties between Scotland and France were particularly strong, and it was
quite natural that the adolescent Crichton, having sucked Scottish erudition
dry, should move on to the College of Navarre at the University of Paris. Here the young Scotsman cut a broad
swath, though according to his jealous fellows his arenas of greatest activity
were the taberna and the lupanar, rather than the lecture hall. Young Crichton did like the ladies, who in turn found him most--admirable.
Unfortunately
our sole source for the more dramatic episodes in Crichton’s short life is Sir
Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie, the mad philologist and English translator of
Rabelais. This worthy is given to
exaggeration and even, perhaps, fabrication; but I reckon we can credit at least sixty percent of his testimony. I am now
in a stage of life when I know less and less about more and more. How attractive to me seems the age of
the Renaissance, when aspiration to universal and encyclopedic knowledge was at
least plausible. Crichton decided
to emulate a famous feat of Pico della Mirandola’s. He had posters printed up declaring that on a day six
weeks hence, at nine in the morning, in the main hall of the College of
Navarre, he intended to present himself to dispute with all comers all
questions put to him regarding any subject. He had these put up on all the
appropriate notice boards and church doors, before disappearing into the red
light district to prepare himself for the contest. His adversaries had to quit laughing when on the appointed
day Crichton appeared as advertised and bested the greatest local experts in
grammar, mathematics, geometry, music, astronomy, logic, and theology.
The
Crichton Show, having conquered Paris, moved next to the Italian
peninsula. The young Scot
performed memorable feats of academic disputation first in Rome and then in
Venice. There he became fast friends
with the famous scholar-printer Aldus Munitius, who is a credible witness to
some of his more amazing intellectual performances. One of his specialties was the off-the-cuff invention of
Latin hexameter verse suitable for any emergent occasion—Virgiian Stand-Up, so
to speak.
Rigoletto: not so funny
It
is perhaps ironic that the Admirable Crichton met his death at the hands of his
own tutorial pupil Vincenzo da Gonzaga, the son of the Duke of Mantua, a
spoiled wastrel who was nearly his own age and perhaps also his unsuccessful
rival in love. One night during
Carnival Crichton was set upon in the streets of Mantua by four masked
youths. Very Italian this, and
very Renaissance: you may remember the street brawl in Romeo and Juliet. Or
you have seen Rigoletto? With superb sword play Crichton disarmed
them all and forced them to show their faces. One of them, their leader indeed, turned out to be Vincenzo! Thinking then that it was all a jest,
Crichton surrendered his own sword to him in semi-mock obeisance. Vincenzo, drunk and humiliated in front
of his friends, took it and ran him through. I suppose there are less noble ways of passing from this
vale of tears than being killed by a jealous lover; but this brute Vincenzo was
as Awful as Crichton was Admirable.
There is textual uncertainty whether the Admirable Crichton was
twenty-two or thirty-two when a rapier blade went through his liver. Either way, it seems an awful shame,
and a great waste of admirabilitas.
