A RETROSPECT
Long ago, when I used to read an occasional novel, if the author dared
to say: "But I am anticipating; we must go back here twenty years to
understand the thread of this history," I invariably flung down the book
in disgust. The idea of taking you back to ancient history when you were
dying to know what was to become of the yellow-haired Blumine, or the
grand chivalrous Roland. Well, I am just going to commit the very same
sin; and, dear reader, be patient just a little while.
It is many years since I was appointed to the parish of Kilronan. It
happened in this wise. The Bishop, the old man, sent for me; and said,
with what I would call a tone of pity or contempt, but he was incapable
of either, for he was the essence of charity and sincerity:--
"Father Dan, you are a bit of a litterateur, I understand. Kilronan is
vacant. You'll have plenty of time for poetizing and dreaming there.
What do you say to it?"
I put on a little dignity, and, though my heart was beating with
delight, I quietly thanked his Lordship. But, when I had passed beyond
the reach of episcopal vision, which is far stretching enough, I spun
my hat in the air, and shouted like a schoolboy: "Hurrah!"
You wonder at my ecstasies! Listen. I was a dreamer, and the dream of my
life, when shut up in musty towns, where the atmosphere was redolent of
drink, and you heard nothing but scandal, and saw nothing but sin,--the
dream of my life was a home by the sea, with its purity and freedom, and
its infinite expanse, telling me of God. For, from the time when as a
child the roar of the surges set my pulse beating, and the scents of the
weed and the brine would make me turn pale with pleasure, I used to pray
that some day, when my life's work would be nearly done, and I had put
in my years of honest labor in the dusty streets, I might spend my
declining years in the peace of a seaside village, and go down to my
grave, washed free from the contaminations of life in the daily watching
and loving of those
"Moving waters at their priestlike task
Of cold ablution round earth's human shores."
My wish was realized, and I was jubilant.
Returning home by train, when my emotion had calmed down, my mind could
not help recurring to the expression used by the Bishop; and it
suggested the following reflections: How has it come to pass in Ireland
that "poet" and "saint" are terms which denote some weakness or
irregularity in their possessors? At one time in our history we know
that the bard was second only to the King in power and influence; and
are we not vaguely proud of that title the world gives us,--Island of
Saints? Yet, nowadays, through some fatal degeneracy, a poet is looked
upon as an idealist, an unpractical builder of airy castles, to whom no
one would go for advice in an important matter, or intrust with the
investment of a five-pound note. And to speak of a man or woman as a
"saint" is to hint at some secret imbecility, which it would be
charitable to pass over in silence. I was quite well aware, therefore,
on that day, when I had the secret pleasure and the sublime misfortune
of seeing my name in print over some wretched verses, that I was ruining
my prospects in life. The fact of being a litterateur, although in the
most modest and hidden manner, stamped me as a volatile, flighty
creature, who was no more to be depended upon than a feather in the
wind; or, as the Italians say, _qu' al piume al vento_. It is a curious
prejudice, and a purely insular one. And sometimes I think, or rather I
used to think, that there was something infinitely grotesque in these
narrow ideas, that shut us out from sympathy with the quick moving,
subtle world as completely as if we were fakirs by the banks of the
sacred Ganges. For what does modern literature deal with? Exactly those
questions of philosophy, ethics, and morality which form the staple
material of theological studies and discussions in our own colleges and
academies. Novels, poetry, essays, lectures, treatises on the natural
sciences,--all deal with the great central questions of man's being, his
origin, and his conduct. And surely it is folly to ignore these
discussions in the market places of the world, because they are
literature, and not couched in scholastic syllogisms. Dear me! I am
philosophizing,--I, old Daddy Dan, with the children plucking at my
coat-tails and the brown snuff staining my waistcoat, and, ah, yes! the
place already marked in my little chapel, where I shall sleep at last. I
must have been angry, or gloomy, that day, thirty years ago, when I
stepped on the platform at M----, after my interview with the Bishop,
and met my friends, who had already become aware that I was elevated out
of the junior ranks, and had become an independent officer of the Church
Militant.
"You don't mean to say that you have accepted that awful place?" said
one.
"You'll have nothing but fish to eat," said another. "The butcher's van
goes there but once a week."
"And no society but fishermen," said a third. "And they speak nothing
but Irish, and you know you cannot bless yourself in Irish."
"Well," I replied, "my Job's comforters, I have accepted Kilronan, and
am going there. If all things go well, and you are good boys, I may ask
for some of you as curate--"
"You'll be glad to get a curacy yourself in six months," they shouted in
chorus.
And so I came to Kilronan, and here have I been since. The years have
rolled by swiftly. Life is a coach, whose wheels move slowly and
painfully at the start; but, once set moving, particularly when going
down the deep decline of life, the years move so swiftly you cannot see
the spokes in the wheels, which are the days we number so sadly. What
glorious resolutions I made the first months of my residence here! How I
would read and write and burn the midnight oil, and astonish the world,
and grow from dignity to dignity into an honored old age! Alas!
circumstances are too much for us all, and here I am, in my seventieth
year, poor old Daddy Dan, with no great earthly trouble, indeed, and
some few consolations,--my breviary and the grand psalms of hope,--my
daily Mass and its hidden and unutterable sweetness,--the love of little
children and their daily smiles,--the prayers of my old women, and, I
think, the reverence of the men. But there comes a little sting
sometimes, when I see young priests, who served my Masses long ago,
standing in cathedral stalls in all the glory of purple and ermine, and
when I see great parishes passing into the hands of mere boys, and poor
old Daddy Dan passed over in silence. I know, if I were really good and
resigned, I would bless God for it all, and I do. But human nature will
revolt sometimes, and people will say, "What a shame, Father Dan; why
haven't you the red buttons as well as so and so," or, "What ails the
Bishop, passing over one of the most learned men in the diocese for a
parcel of gossoons!" I suppose it was my own fault. I remember what
magnificent ideas I had. I would build factories, I would ferr the
streets, I would establish a fishing station and make Kilronan the
favorite bathing resort on the western coast; I would write books and
be, all round, a model of push, energy, and enterprise. And I did try. I
might as well have tried to remove yonder mountain with a pitchfork, or
stop the roll of the Atlantic with a rope of sand. Nothing on earth can
cure the inertia of Ireland. It weighs down like the weeping clouds on
the damp heavy earth, and there's no lifting it, nor disburthening of
the souls of men of this intolerable weight. I was met on every side
with a stare of curiosity, as if I were propounding something immoral or
heretical. People looked at me, put their hands in their pockets,
whistled dubiously, and went slowly away. Oh, it was weary, weary work!
The blood was stagnant in the veins of the people and their feet were
shod with lead. They walked slowly, spoke with difficulty, stared all
day at leaden clouds or pale sunlight, stood at the corners of the
village for hours looking into vacuity, and the dear little children
became old the moment they left school, and lost the smiles and the
sunlight of childhood. It was a land of the lotos. The people were
narcotized. Was it the sea air? I think I read somewhere in an old
philosopher, called Berkeley, that the damp salt air of the sea has a
curious phlegmatic effect on the blood, and will coagulate it and
produce gout and sundry disorders. However that be, there was a weary
weight on everything around Kilronan. The cattle slept in the fields,
the fishermen slept in their coracles. It was a land of sleep and
dreams.
I approached the agent about a foreshore for the pier, for you cannot,
in Ireland, take the most preliminary and initial step in anything
without going, cap in hand, to the agent. I explained my intentions. He
smiled, but was polite.
"Lord L----, you know, is either in Monte Carlo or yachting in the
Levant. He must be consulted. I can do nothing."
"And when will his Lordship return?"
"Probably in two years."
"You have no power to grant a lease of the foreshore, or even give
temporary permission to erect a pier?"
"None whatever."
I went to the Presentment Sessions about a grant for paving or flagging
the wretched street. I woke a nest of hornets.
"What! More taxation! Aren't the people crushed enough already? Where
can we get money to meet rates and taxes? Flagging Kilronan! Oh, of
course! Wouldn't your reverence go in for gas or the electric light?
Begor, ye'll be wanting a water supply next," etc., etc.
I applied to a factory a few miles distant to establish a local industry
by cottage labor, which is cheap and remunerative.
"They would be delighted, but--" And so all my castles came tumbling
down from the clouds, and left them black and lowering and leaden as
before. Once or twice, later on, I made a few spasmodic efforts to
galvanize the place into life; they, too, failed, and I accepted the
inevitable. When Father Laverty came he helped me to bear the situation
with philosophical calmness. He had seen the world, and had been rubbed
badly in contact with it. He had adopted as his motto and watchword the
fatal _Cui bono?_ And he had printed in large Gothic letters over his
mantelpiece the legend:
'TWILL BE ALL THE SAME IN A HUNDRED YEARS.
And so I drifted, drifted down from high empyreans of great ideals and
lofty speculations into a humdrum life, that was only saved from
sordidness by the sacred duties of my office. After all, I find that we
are not independent of our circumstances. We are fashioned and moulded
by them as plaster of Paris is fashioned and moulded into angels or
gargoyles by the deft hand of the sculptor. "Thou shalt lower to his
level," true of the wife in Locksley Hall, is true of all who are
thrown by fate or fortune into unhappy environments. In my leisure
moments, when I took up my pen to write, some evil spirit whispered,
_Cui bono?_ and I laid down my pen and hid my manuscript. Once or twice
I took up some old Greek poets and essayed to translate them. I have
kept the paper still, frayed and yellow with age; but the fatal _Cui
bono?_ disheartened me, and I flung it aside. Even my love for the sea
had vanished, and I had begun to hate it. During the first few years of
my ministry I spent hours by the cliffs and shores, or out on the
heaving waters. Then the loneliness of the desert and barren wastes
repelled me, and I had begun to loathe it. Altogether I was soured and
discontented, and I had a dread consciousness that my life was a
failure. All its possibilities had passed without being seized and
utilized. I was the barren fig tree, fit only to be cut down. May I
escape the fire! Such were my surroundings and disposition when Father
Letheby came.