There is that about the material fabric, the actual stone and mortar, of
Trinity College, Dublin, which makes a vivid appeal to the imagination
of the common man. The cultured sentimentalist will not indeed be
able to lave his soul in tepid emotion while he walks through these
quadrangles, as he may among the cloisters and chapels of the Oxford
colleges. The amateur of the past cannot here stand at gaze before any
single building as he does before the weather-beaten front of Oriel,
tracing in imagination the footsteps of Newman or Arnold. Yet to the
average man, and far more to the newly emancipated schoolboy, Trinity
College, Dublin, makes an appeal which can hardly be ignored. In Oxford
and Cambridge town and University are mixed together; shops jostle and
elbow colleges in the streets. In Dublin a man leaves the city behind
him when he enters the college, passes completely out of the atmosphere
of the University when he steps on to the pavement. The physical
contrast is striking enough, appealing to the ear and the eye. The
rattle of the traffic, the jangling of cart bells, the inarticulate
babel of voices, suddenly cease when the archway of the great
entrance-gate is passed.
An immense silence takes their place. There is no longer any need for
watchfulness, nor risk of being hustled by the hurrying crowds.
Instead of footway and street crossing there are broad walks, untrodden
stretches of smooth grass. The heavy campanile is in front, and heights
of gray building frown down on each side. It needs no education, not
even any imagination, to appreciate the change. It is not necessary to
know that great scholars inhabited the place, to recall any name or
any man’s career. The appeal is not to a recollected impression of the
Middle Ages, or indeed of any past, remote or near. It is the spirit of
scholarship itself, abstract, intangible, which creates this atmosphere.
Knowledge, a severe goddess, awes while she beckons.
Hyacinth Conneally had submitted himself to such emotions time after
time when, fresh from the wilds of Connemara, he made his way to the
examination-hall, an outside student in a borrowed cap and gown. Now,
when for the first time he entered into the actual life of the college,
could look up at windows of rooms that were his own, and reckon on his
privilege of fingering tomes from the shelves of the huge library, the
spirit of the place awed him anew. He neither analyzed nor attempted
an expression of what he felt, but his first night within the walls was
restless because of the inspiration which filled him.
Yet this college does not fail to make an appeal also to the thinking
mind, only it is a strange appeal, tending to sadness. The sudden
silence after the tumult of the streets has come for some minds to
be the symbol of a divorce between the knowledge within and the life
without. And this is not the separation which must always exist between
thought and action, the gulf fixed between the student and the merchant.
It is a real divorce between the nation and the University, between
the two kinds of life which ought, like man and woman, to complete each
other through their very diversity, but here have gone hopelessly apart.
Never once through all the centuries of Ireland’s struggle to express
herself has the University felt the throb of her life. It is true
that Ireland’s greatest patriots, from Swift to Davis, have been her
children; but she has never understood their spirit, never looked on
them as anything but strangers to her family. They have been to her
stray robber wasps, to be driven from the hive; while to the others they
have seemed cygnets among her duckling brood. It is very wonderful that
the University alone has been able to resist the glamour of Ireland’s
past, and has failed to admire the persistency of her nationality.
There has surely been enough in every century that has passed since the
college was founded to win it over from alien thought and the ideals of
the foreigner.
All this Hyacinth came to feel afterwards, and learnt in bitterness of
spirit to be angry at the University’s isolation from Irish life. At
first quite other thoughts crowded upon his mind. He felt a rebellion
against his father’s estimate of what he was to learn. It seemed to him
that he had come into vital touch with the greatest life of all. He was
to join the ranks of those who besieged the ears of God for knowledge,
and left behind them to successors yet unborn great traditions of the
enigmas they had guessed. In entering upon the study of theology he
seemed to become a soldier in the sacred band, the élite of the army
which won and guarded truth. Already he was convinced that there could
be no greater science than the Divine one, no more inspiring moment in
life than this one when he took his first step towards the knowledge of
God.
He crossed the quadrangle with his mind full of such thoughts,
and joined a group of students round the door of one of the
examination-halls. It did not shock his sense of fitness that some of
his fellow-students in the great science wore shabby clothes, or that
others scorned the use of a razor. Bred as he had been at home, he felt
no incongruity between dirty collars and the study of divinity. It
was not until he caught scraps of conversation that he experienced an
awakening from his dream. One eager group surrounded a foreseeing youth
who had written the dates of the first four General Councils of the
Church upon his shirt-cuff.
‘Read them out, like a good man,’ said one.
‘Hold on a minute,’ said another, ‘till I see if I have got them right.
I ground them up specially this morning. Nicæa, 318--no, hang it! that’s
the number of Bishops who were present; 325 was the date, wasn’t it?’
‘What was the row about at Chalcedon?’ asked a tall, pale youth. ‘Didn’t
some monk or other go for Cyril of Alexandria?’
‘You’ll be stuck anyhow, Tommy,’ said a neat, dapper little man with a
very ragged gown.
Hyacinth slipped past the group, and approached two better dressed
students who stood apart from the others.
‘Is this,’ he asked, ‘where the entrance examination to the divinity
school is to be held?’
For answer he received a curt ‘Yes’ and a stare. Apparently his suit of
brown Connemara homespun did not commend him to these aristocrats. They
turned their backs on him, and resumed their conversation.
‘She was walking up and down the pier listening to the band with two
of the rankest outsiders you ever set eyes on--medicals out of Paddy
Dunn’s. Of course I could do nothing else but break it off.’
‘Oh, you were engaged to her, then? I didn’t know.’
‘Well, I was and I wasn’t. Anyhow, I thought it better to have a clear
understanding. She came up to me outside the door of Patrick’s on Sunday
afternoon just as if nothing had happened. “Hullo, Bob,” says she;
“I haven’t seen you for ages.” “My name,” said I, “is Mr. Banks”--just
like that, as cool as you please. I could see she felt it. “I’ve called
you Bob,” says she, very red in the face, “and you’ve called me Maimie
ever since we went to Sunday-school together, and I’m not going to begin
calling you Mr. Banks now, my boy-o! so don’t you think it!”’
It was a relief to Hyacinth when he was tapped on the arm by a boy with
a very pimply face, who thrust a paper into his hand, and distracted
his attention from the final discomfiture of Maimie, which Mr. Banks was
recounting in a clear, high-pitched voice, as if he wished everyone in
the neighbourhood to hear it.
‘I hope you’ll come,’ said the boy.
‘Where?’
‘It’s all in the paper. The students’ prayer-meeting, held every
Wednesday morning at nine o’clock sharp. Special meeting to-morrow.’
Hyacinth was bewildered. There was something quite unfamiliar in this
prompt and business-like advertisement of prayer. The student with the
papers began to be doubtful of him.
‘You’re not High Church, are you?’ he asked. ‘We’re not. We don’t have
printed offices, with verses and responds, and that sort of thing. We
have extempore prayer by members of the union.’
‘No; I’m not High Church,’ said Hyacinth--‘at least, I think not. I
don’t really know much about these things. I’ll be very glad to go to
your meeting.’
‘That’s right,’ said the other. ‘All are welcome. There will be special
prayer to-morrow for the success of the British arms. I suppose you
heard that old Kruger has sent an ultimatum. There will be war at once.’
There was a sudden movement among the students; gowns were pulled
straight and caps adjusted.
‘Here he comes,’ said someone.
Dr. Henry, the divinity professor, crossed the square rapidly. He was a
middle-aged man, stout, almost ponderous, in figure; but he held himself
rigidly upright, and walked fast across the square. The extreme neatness
of his clothes contrasted with the prevailing shabbiness of the students
and the assistant lecturers who followed him. Yet he did not seem to be
a man who gave to externals more than their due share of consideration.
His broad forehead gave promise of great intellectual power, a promise
half belied by the narrow gray eyes beneath it. These were eyes which
might see keenly, and would certainly see things just as they are,
though they were not likely to catch any glimpse of that greater
world where objects cannot be focussed sharply. Yet in them, an odd
contradiction, there lurked a possibility of humorous twinkling. The
man was capable perhaps of the broad tolerance of the great humorist,
certainly of very acute perception of life’s minor incongruities. His
thin lips were habitually pressed together, giving a suggestion of
strength to the set of his mouth. A man with such a mouth can think and
act, but not feel either passionately or enduringly. He will direct men
because he knows his own mind, but is not likely to sway them because
he will always be master of himself, and will not become enslaved to
any great enthusiasm. The students trooped into the hall, and the
examination began. The assistant lecturers helped in the work. Each
student was called up in turn, asked a few questions, and given a
portion of the Greek Testament to translate. For the most part their
capacities were known beforehand. There were some who had won honours
in their University course before entering the divinity school. For
them the examiners were all smiles, and the business of the day was
understood to be perfunctory. Others were recognised as mere pass men,
whom it was necessary to spur to some exertion. A few, like Hyacinth,
were unknown. These were the poorer students who had not been able to
afford to reside at the University sooner than was absolutely necessary.
Their knowledge, generally scanty, was received by the examiners with
undisguised contempt. It fell to Hyacinth’s lot to present himself to
Dr. Henry. He did so tremulously.
The professor inquired his name, and looked him over coldly.
‘Read for me,’ he said, handing him a Greek Testament. The passage
marked was St. Paul’s great description of charity. It was very familiar
to Hyacinth, and he read it with a serious feeling for the words. Dr.
Henry, who at first had occupied himself with some figures on a sheet of
paper, looked up and listened attentively.
‘Where were you at school,’ he asked. ‘Who taught you Greek?’
‘My father taught me, sir.’
‘Ah! You have got a very peculiar pronunciation, and you’ve made an
extraordinary number of mistakes in accentuation and quantity, but
you’ve read as if St. Paul meant something. Now translate.’
‘You have given me,’ he said, when Hyacinth had finished, ‘the
Authorized Version word for word. Can you do no better than that?’
‘I can do it differently,’ said Hyacinth, ‘not better.’
‘Do you know any Greek outside of the New Testament?’
Hyacinth repeated a few lines from Homer.
‘That book of the “Odyssey” is not in the college course,’ said Dr.
Henry. ‘How did you come to read it?’
Hyacinth had no explanation to give. He had read the book, it seemed,
without being forced, and without hope of getting a prize. He recited it
as if he liked it. The remainder of the examination disclosed the fact
that he was lamentably deficient in the rudiments of Greek grammar, and
had the very vaguest ideas of the history of the Church.
Afterwards Professor Henry discussed the new class with his assistants
as they crossed the square together.
‘The usual lot,’ said Dr. Spenser--‘half a dozen scholars, perhaps one
man among them with real brains. The rest are either idlers or, what is
worse, duffers.’
‘I hit on one man with brains,’ said Dr. Henry.
‘Oh! Thompson, I suppose. I saw that you took him. He did well in his
degree exam.’
‘No,’ said Dr. Henry; ‘the man I mean has more brains than Thompson.
He’s a man I never heard of before. His name is Conneally. He looks
as if he came up from the wilds somewhere. He has hands like an
agricultural labourer, and a brogue that I fancy comes from Galway.
But he’s a man to keep an eye on. He may do something by-and-by if he
doesn’t go off the lines. We must try and lick him into shape a bit.’
Hyacinth Conneally knew extremely little about the politics, foreign or
domestic, of the English nation. His father neither read newspapers nor
cared to discuss such rumours of the doings of Governments as happened
to reach Carrowkeel. On the other hand, he knew a good deal about
the history of Ireland, and the English were still for him the ‘new
foreigners’ whom Keating describes. His intercourse with the fishermen
and peasants of the Galway seaboard had intensified his vague dislike
of the series of oscillations between bullying and bribery which make up
the story of England’s latest attempts to govern Ireland. Without in the
least understanding the reasons for the war in South Africa, he felt
a strong sympathy with the Boers. To him they seemed a small people
doomed, if they failed to defend themselves, to something like the
treatment which Ireland had received.
It was therefore with surprise, almost with horror, that he listened for
the first time to the superlative Imperialism of the Protestant Unionist
party when he attended the prayer-meeting to which he had been invited.
The room was well filled with students, who joined heartily in the
singing of ‘Onward, Christian soldiers,’ a hymn selected as appropriate
for the occasion. An address by the chairman, a Dublin clergyman,
followed. According to this gentleman the Boers were a psalm-singing
but hypocritical nation addicted to slave-driving. England, on the
other hand, was the pioneer of civilization, and the nursing-mother of
missionary enterprise. It was therefore clear that all good Christians
ought to pray for the success of the British arms. The speech bewildered
rather than irritated Hyacinth. The mind gasps for a time when immersed
suddenly in an entirely new view of things, and requires time to adjust
itself for pleasure or revolt, just as the body does when plunged into
cold water. It had never previously occurred to him that an Irishman
could regard England as anything but a pirate. Anger rapidly succeeded
his surprise while he listened to the prayers which followed. It was
apparently open to any student present to give utterance, as occasion
offered, to his desires, and a large number of young men availed
themselves of the opportunity. Some spoke briefly and haltingly, some
laboriously attempted to adapt the phraseology of the Prayer-Book to the
sentiment of the moment, a few had the gift of rapid and even eloquent
supplication. These last were the hardest to endure. They prefaced their
requests with fantastic eulogies of England’s righteousness, designed
apparently for the edification of the audience present in the flesh, for
they invariably began by assuring the Almighty that He was well aware
of the facts, and generally apologized to Him for recapitulating
them. Hyacinth’s anger increased as he heard the fervent groans which
expressed the unanimous conviction of the justice of the petitions. No
one seemed to think it possible that the right could be on the other
side.
When the meeting was over, the secretary, whose name, it appeared, was
Mackenzie, greeted Hyacinth warmly.
‘Glad to have you with us,’ he said. ‘I hope you’ll always come. I shall
be delighted to propose you as a member of the union. Subscription
one shilling, to defray necessary expenses. In any case, whether you
subscribe or not, we shall be glad to have you with us.’
‘I shall never come again,’ said Hyacinth.
Mackenzie drew back, astonished.
‘Why not? Didn’t you like the meeting? I thought it was capital--so
informal and hearty. Didn’t you think it was hearty? But perhaps you are
High Church. Are you?’
Hyacinth remembered that this identical question had been put to him the
day before by the pimply-faced boy who distributed leaflets. He wondered
vaguely at the importance which attached to the nickname.
‘I am not sure,’ he said, ‘that I quite know what you mean. You see, I
have only just entered the divinity school, and I hardly know anything
about theology. What is a High Churchman?’
‘Oh, it doesn’t require any theology to know that. It’s the simplest
thing in the world. A High Churchman is--well, of course, a High
Churchman sings Gregorian chants, you know, and puts flowers on
the altar. There’s more than that, of course. In fact, a High
Churchman------’ He paused and then added with an air of victorious
conviction: ‘But anyhow if you were High Church you would be sure to
know it.’
‘Ah, well,’ said Hyacinth, turning to leave the room, ‘I don’t know
anything about it, so I suppose I’m not High Church.’
Mackenzie, however, was not going to allow him to escape so easily.
‘Hold on a minute. If you’re not High Church why won’t you come to our
meetings?’
‘Because I can’t join in your prayers when I am not at all sure that
England ought to win.’
‘Good Lord!’ said Mackenzie. It is possible to startle even the
secretary of a prayer union into mild profanity. ‘You don’t mean to tell
me you are a Pro-Boer, and you a divinity student?’
It had not hitherto struck Hyacinth that it was impossible to combine a
sufficient orthodoxy with a doubt about the invariable righteousness of
England’s quarrels. Afterwards he came to understand the matter better.