A Few Events.
In 1858 we procured the place in Highgate, known now as St. Joseph's
Retreat. The Hyde was never satisfactory; it was suited neither to our
spirit nor its working. At last Providence guided us to a most
suitable position. Our rule prescribes that the houses of the Order
should be outside the town, and near enough to be of service to it.
Highgate is wonderfully adapted to all the requisitions of our rule
and constitutions. Situated on the brow of a hill, it is far enough
from the din and noise of London to be comparatively free from its
turmoil, and sufficiently near for citizens to come to our church. The
grounds are enclosed by trees; a hospital at one end and two roads
meeting at the other, promise a freedom from intrusion and a
continuance of the solitude we now enjoy. Father Ignatius concludes
the year 1858 in Highgate; it was his first visit to the new house.
Towards the end of the next year we find him once more in France with
our Provincial. They went on business interesting to the Order, and
were nearly three weeks away. Father Ignatius ends another year in
Highgate. It was then he translated the small "Life of Blessed Paul"
from the Italian, a work he accomplished in about one month with the
assistance of an _amanuensis_.
He gave a mission with three of the fathers in Westland Row, Dublin,
in the beginning of the year 1860, and started off immediately after
for his circuit of little missions. Our Provincial Chapter was held
this year, but all were re-elected; so Father Ignatius remained as he
was, second Consultor. It was this year he visited Althorp, after an
absence of eighteen years from the home of his childhood. This visit
{478} he looked back to with a great deal of satisfaction, and his joy
was increased when Lord and Lady Sarah Spencer returned his visit in
Highgate, when he happened to be there, the next year. The friendly
relations between him and his family seemed, if possible, to become
closer and more cordial towards the end of his life.
He told us one day in recreation, when some one asked what became of
the lady he was disposed to be married to, once in his life: "I passed
by her house a few days ago. I believe her husband is a very excellent
man, and that she is happy."
In 1862 he visited Althorp again. We saw him looking for a lock for
one of his bags before he left Highgate for this visit, and some one
asked him why he was so particular just then. "Oh," he said, "don't
you know the servant in the big house will open it, in order to put my
shaving tackle, brush, and so forth in their proper places, and I
should not like to have a general stare at my habit, beads, and
sandals." There was, however, a more general stare at them than he
expected. During the visit, the volunteer corps were entertained by
Lord Spencer. Father Ignatius was invited to the grand dinner; he sat
next the Earl, and nothing would do for the latter but that his uncle
should make a speech. Father Ignatius stood up in _his_ regimentals,
habit, sandals, &c., and made, it seems, a very patriotic one.
This visit to Althorp Father Ignatius loved to recall to mind. It was
a kind of thing that he could not enjoy at the time, so far did it go
beyond his expectations. He went merely for a friendly visit, and
found a great many old friends invited to increase his pleasure. When
the ladies and gentlemen went off to dress for dinner, it is said that
Father Ignatius told Lady Spencer that he supposed his full dress
would not be quite in place at the table; he was told it would, and
that all would be much delighted to see a specimen of the fashions he
had learnt since his days of whist and repartee in the same hall. At
the appointed time he presented himself in the dining-room in full
Passionist costume. Lord Spencer was quite proud of his uncle, and the
speech, and the cheer with which it was greeted at the {479}
Volunteers' dinner only enhanced the mutual joy of uncle and nephew.
As usual, this joy was tempered, and the alloy was administered by a
clergyman, who evidently intended to get himself a name by putting
himself into print in one of the local papers. This was a Mr. Watkins.
He wrote a letter to the _Northampton Herald_, containing a great deal
of shallow criticism and ignorant remarks on Father Ignatius, and a
sermon he preached at the opening of the cathedral. A smart paper
warfare was carried on for some time between the two, which earned the
Rev. Mr. Watkins the disapproval, if not the disgust, of his
Protestant clerical and lay neighbours. This was rather a surprise, as
all the old acquaintances of the _quondam_ Mr. Spencer had the highest
regard for him; but this writer seems to have been one who never had
the opportunity of forming a just opinion of his abilities or
character. Ignorance may excuse his blunders, but the longest stretch
of charity can scarcely overlook his manner of committing them.
After the visit to Althorp, Father Ignatius went to see Mr. De Lisle
at Grace Dieu, and was present at the blessing of the present Abbot of
Mount St. Bernard's. The secretary of the A. P. U. C. sent him another
letter after this visit, which met the fate of similar communications
on former occasions.
We find him in the beginning of the year 1863 in Liverpool, engaged in
a mission at St. Augustine's.
After this mission he came to Highgate, on his way to Rome for our
general chapter, and the few days he had on his hands before his
departure were spent in visiting Lord Palmerston, Mr. Gladstone, and
other notabilities, as well as receiving a visit from his nephew.
He arrived in Rome for the last time on the 22nd April, 1863. How
strangely do his different visits to this city combine to give an idea
of the stages of opinion through which his chequered life was fated to
pass. In 1821, he entered it, promising himself a feast of
absurdities, determined to sneer at what he did not understand, and
repel by his thick shield of prejudice whatever might force itself
{480} upon him as praiseworthy. He found something in his next visit
in the pagan remains to please his Protestant taste, and left it for
Germany with a kind of regret. In less than ten years he is there to
despise the glory of the Caesars, and thinks more of a chapel which
Peter's successor has endowed or adorned, than the platforms on which
the fangs of the leopard tore the flower of our martyrs. His other
visits were mostly official. He came glowing with the fervour of new
projects, and left with only their embers generating a new step in his
spiritual progress. Rome was always Rome, but he was not always the
same. Any one who takes the trouble to compare his different visits
with each other cannot fail to learn a lesson that will be more
telling on his mind, than what comments upon them by another's pen
could produce.
The General Chapter Father Ignatius was called to attend in 1863 had
to deal with subjects that deeply concerned the interests of our
Order. In this Chapter, our American province was canonically erected
in the United States. A colony of ten Passionists was sent to
California, and the Hospice of St. Nicholas, in Paris, established.
Father Ignatius had, as usual, some papers to submit to the Roman
Curia. The work to which his "little missions" were devoted had not
yet received the seal of the Fisherman, and, until it was so blessed,
its excellence could be a subject of doubt. He did receive the
pontifical benediction for this, and for the institution of a new
congregation of nuns, and began to enjoy the riches of this twofold
blessing before he took his departure from the Eternal City.
Father Ignatius, ever himself, did not lose sight of lesser claims on
his gratitude in the greater ones his zeal proposed to him. There was
a family whom he had received into the Church during the course of his
labours on the secular mission. The father, and four daughters, and a
son, were all baptized by him. They were his great joy. He first
received one girl, then the father, then another (who dreaded to speak
to him), a third, and a fourth yielded to his charity and meekness in
following the workings of grace. For them he always entertained a
special regard, he would stay with {481} them when missionary work
called him to a town in which they dwelled, and delighted to caress
their children, edify themselves, and make himself at home in their
dwellings during his stay. He obtained a rescript granting them a
"plenary indulgence," signed by the Holy Father himself, which is
still treasured up as a beautiful heirloom in their families. These
favoured objects of his predilection were Mrs. Macky, of Birmingham;
Mrs. Richardson and Mrs. Marshall, of Levenshulme, Manchester.
Before leaving Rome in 1863 he preached to nuns and schools, upon the
conversion of England, with the same zeal as he did in 1850, if not
with greater. That leading star lived with him; it is to be hoped it
has not died with him. If the nineteenth century were an age of faith,
and that the belief in God's miraculous interposition would move any
to make experiments of holy wonders, we should expect to find engraved
on his heart after death: "The Conversion of England!"
On June 21, after exactly two months' stay, he left the terrestrial
Rome, or city of God, for ever. He arrives in London on the 3rd
August, visits convents for his "crusade," now doubly dear to him;
communicates his glad tidings to the infant congregations of nuns of
Sutton, and holds himself in readiness for the approaching provincial
chapter. The nuns here mentioned are a society established, a few
years before, by our Father Gaudentius. Their primary object is the
care and instruction of factory girls, their subsidiary one, the plain
instruction of poor children.
Father Ignatius loved this institute. One of his common sayings was,
"I do not understand how a girl with a wooden leg, no means and great
docility, cannot make the evangelical vows," and he found himself at
home with a sisterhood where his problem would be solved in part at
least. He brought their rules to Rome, at this time, and received all
the Pontifical sanctions he could possibly expect under the
circumstances.
On August 21 of this year, our Provincial Chapter was held at
Broadway. Here Father Ignatius was elected Rector of St. Anne's
Retreat, Sutton. He entered on the {482} office with a great deal of
zeal and courage. In his first exhortation to the religious, he
remarked that "new brooms sweep clean," but as he was a broom a little
the worse for wear, which had been trimmed up for action after having
so long lain by, the aphorism could not apply so well to him. It was
nine years since he had filled the office of rector before, and the
interval taught him many things regarding religious discipline which
he now brought into action.
His rule might be called _maternal_ rather than paternal, for it was
characterized by the fondness of holy old age for youth. One change
remarked in him, since his former rectorship, was, his spicing his
gentle admonitions with a good deal of severity when occasion required
it. He spoke to the community, after the evening recreation, once upon
the conversion of England, and the bright look the horizon of
religious opinion wore now in comparison to the time he first began
his crusade. He hoped great things for England. At this part of his
lecture, some ludicrous occurrence, which he did not observe, made one
of the younger religious laugh. Father Ignatius turned upon him, and
spoke with such vehemence that all seemed as if struck by a
thunderbolt. They never heard him speak in that way before, and it was
thought by many that the meek father could not "foam with
indignation," even if he tried.
Towards the close of 1863 he professed several of the nuns of the Holy
Family, for whom he had procured the indulgences at Rome, and he
assisted at the deathbed of their first rev. mother early in 1864.
{483}