The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened | Page 5

the "Eagle" and the "George and Elizabeth." It was six months before the decisive fight took place; but on the way he had captured some French and Spanish ships near Gibraltar; and what with skirmishes and sickness, his voyage did not want for risk and episode at any time. Digby the landsman maintained discipline, reconciled quarrels, doctored his men, ducked them for disorderliness, and directed the naval and military operations like any old veteran. At Scanderoon [now Alexandretta in the Levant] the French and Venetians, annoyed by his presence, fired on his ships. He answered with such pluck and decision that, after a three hours' fight, the enemy was completely at his mercy, and the Venetians "quitted to him the signiority of the roade." In his Journal of the Voyage you may read a sober account, considering who was the teller of the tale, of a brilliant exploit. He does not disguise the fact that he was acting in defiance of his own countrymen in the Levant. The Vice-Consul at Scanderoon kept telling him that "our nation" at Aleppo "fared much the worse for his abode there." He was setting the merchants in the Levant by the ears, and when he turned his face homewards, the English were the most relieved of all. His exploit "in that drowsy and inactive time ... was looked upon with general estimation," says Clarendon. The King gave him a good welcome, but could not follow it up with any special favour; for there were many complaints over the business, and Scanderoon had to be repudiated.
But Digby could not be merely privateer, and in the Scanderoon expedition we are privileged to look on the Pirate as a Man of Taste. His stay in Florence had given him an interest in the fine arts; and at Milo and Delphos he contrived to make some healthy exercise for his men serve the avidity of the collector. Modern excavators will read with horror of his methods. "I went with most of my shippes to Delphos, a desert island, where staying till the rest were readie, because idlenesse should not fixe their mindes upon any untoward fansies (as is usuall among seamen), and together to avayle myselfe of the convenience of carrying away some antiquities there, I busied them in rolling of stones doune to the see side, which they did with such eagernesse as though it had been the earnestest business that they had come out for, and they mastered prodigious massie weightes; but one stone, the greatest and fairest of all, containing four statues, they gave over after they had been, 300 men, a whole day about it.... But the next day I contrived a way with mastes of shippes and another shippe to ride over against it, that brought it doune with much ease and speede"! What became of this treasure so heroically acquired?
So much for art. Literature was to have its turn with the versatile pirate ere he reached his native shores. During a time of forced inaction at Milo, he began to write his Memoirs. A great commander was expected during a truce, it appears, to pay lavish attentions to the native ladies. Neglect of this gallantry was construed almost as a national insult. Sir Kenelm, faithful to his Venetia, excused himself on the plea of much business. But he had little or no business; and he used his retirement to pen the amazing account of his early life and his love story, where he appears as Theagenes and his wife as Stelliana, as strange a mixture of rhodomontade and real romance as exists among the autobiographies of the world. Of course it does not represent Digby at his maturity. Among his MSS. the Memoirs were found with the title of Loose Fantasies, and they were not printed till 1827.
It was quite a minor post in the Navy he received in recognition of Scanderoon, and one wonders why he took it. Perhaps to gain experience, of which he was always greedy. Or Scanderoon may have emptied his treasuries. After the Restoration he had a hard struggle to get repaid for his ransom of slaves on the Algerian coast. At any rate, as Naval Commissioner he earned the reputation of a hard-working public servant.
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