A VISIT HOME
My Father had been begging me for years to come home and say good-bye
to him; so, in 1901, I made the journey.
I hadn't been in the old home long before the alley was filled with
neighbours, curious to have a look at "ould Jamie's son who was a
clargymaan." I went to the door and shook hands with everybody in the
hope that after a while they would go away and leave me with my own.
But nobody moved. They stood and stared for several hours. "'Deed I
mind ye fine when ye weren't th' height av a creepie!" said one woman,
who was astounded that I couldn't call her by name.
"Aye," said another, "'deed ye were i' fond o' th' Bible, an' no
wundther yer a clargymaan!"
A dozen old women "minded" as many different things of my childhood. I
finally dismissed them with this phrase, as I dropped easily enough
into the vernacular, "Shure, we'd invite ye all t' tay but there's
only three cups in the house!"
My sister Mary and her four children lived with my father. We shut
_and barred_ the door when the neighbours left and sat down to "tay,"
which consisted of potatoes and buttermilk. Mary had been trying to
improve on the old days but I interposed, and together, we went
through the old régime. Father took the pot of potatoes to the old tub
in which he used to steep the leather. There he drained them--then put
them on the fire for a minute to allow the steam to escape.
"I'm going to 'kep' them," I said, and they both laughed.
"Oh, heavens, don't," he said; "shure they don't 'kep' pirtas in
America!"
"I'm not in America now," I answered, as I circled as much of the
little bare table as I could with my arms to keep the potatoes from
rolling off. He dumped them in a heap in the centre; they rolled up
against my arms and breast and I pushed them back. Mary cleared a
space for a small pile of salt and the buttermilk bowls.
"We'll haave a blessin' by a rale ministher th' night," Mary said.
"Oh, yis, that's thrue enough," my father said, "but Alec minds th'
time whin it was blessin' enough to hev th' murphies--don't ye, boy?"
After "tay" I tacked a newspaper over the lower part of the window--my
father lit the candle and Mary put a few turfs on the fire and we sat
as we used to sit so many years ago. My father was so deaf that I had
to shout to make him hear and nearly everything I said could be heard
by the neighbours in the alley, many of whom sat around the door to
hear whatever they could of the story they supposed I would tell of
the magic land beyond the sea.
I unbarred the door in answer to a loud knock; it was a most polite
note from a Roman Catholic schoolmaster inviting me to occupy a spare
room in his house. Half an hour later we were again interrupted by
another visitor, an old friend who also invited me to occupy his spare
bed. It was evidently disturbing the town to know where I was to
sleep. I politely refused all invitations. Each invitation was
explained to my father.
"Shure that's what's cracking m' own skull," he said; "where th' divil
will ye sleep, anyway, at all, at all?"
Then they listened and I talked--talked of what the years had meant to
me.
The old man sighed often and occasionally there were tears in Mary's
eyes; and there were times when the past surged through my mind with
such vividness that I could only look vacantly into the white flame of
the peat fire. Once after a long silence my father spoke--his voice
trembled, "Oh," he said, "if she cud just have weathered through till
this day!"
"Aye," Mary said, "but how do ye know she isn't jist around here
somewhere, anyway?"
"Aye," the old man said as he nodded his head, "deed that's thrue for
you, Mary, she may!" He took his black cutty pipe out of his mouth and
gazed at me for a moment.
"What d'ye mind best about her?"
"I mind a saying she had that has gone through life with me."
"'Ivery day makes its own throuble?'"
"No, not that; something better. She used to say so often, 'It's nice
to be nice.'"
"Aye, I mind that," he said.
"Then," I continued, "on Sundays when she was dressed and her nice
tallied cap on her head, I thought she was the purtiest woman I ever
saw!"
"'Deed, maan, she was that!"
When bed time came I took a small lap-robe from my suit case, spread
it on the hard mud floor, rolled some other clothes as a pillow and
lay down to rest. Sleep came slowly but as I lay I was not alone, for
around me were the forms and faces of other days.
Next day I visited the scene of my boyhood's vision--I went through
the woods where I had my first full meal. I visited the old church;
but the good Rector was gathered to his fathers. It was all a
day-dream; it was like going back to a former incarnation. Along the
road on my way home I discovered the most intimate friend of my
boyhood--the boy with whom I had gathered faggots, played "shinney"
and gone bird-nesting. He was "nappin'" stones. He did not recognize
my voice but his curiosity was large enough to make him throw down his
hammer, take off the glasses that protected his eyes and stare at me.
"Maan, yer changed," he said, "aren't you?"
"And you?"
"Och, shure, I'm th' same ould sixpence!"
"Except that you're older!" There was a look of disappointment on his
face.
"Maan," he said, "ye talk like quality--d'ye live among thim?"
I explained something of my changed life; I told of my work and what I
had tried to do and I closed with an account of the vision in the
fields not far from where we sat.
"Aye," he would say occasionally, "aye, 'deed it's quare how things
turn out."
When I ended the story of the vision he said: "Ye haaven't forgot how
t' tell a feery story--ye wor i' good at that!"
"Bob" hadn't read a book, or a newspaper in all those years. He got
his news from the men who stopped at his stone pile to light their
pipes--what he didn't get there he got at the cobbler's while his
brogues were being patched or at the barber's when he went for his
weekly shave. We talked each other out in half an hour. A wide gulf
was between us: it was a gulf in the realm of mind.
As I moved away toward the town, I wondered why I was not breaking
stones on the roadside, and I muttered Bob's well-worn phrase: "How
quare!"
It became so difficult to talk to my father without gathering a crowd
at the door that I shortened my stay and took him to Belfast where we
could spend a few days together and alone. We had our meals at first
in a quiet little restaurant on a side street. He had never been in a
restaurant. As the waiter went around the table, the old man watched
him with curious eyes. I have explained that my father never swore. He
was mightily unfortunate in his selection of phrases and when
irritated by the attention of the waiter to the point of explosion he
said, in what he supposed was a whisper: "What th' hell is he dancin'
around us like an Indian fur?" I explained. Everybody in the place
heard the explanation; they also heard his reply: "Send him t'
blazes--he takes m' appetite away!"
We moved into the house of a friend after that.
One afternoon I took him for a walk in the suburbs of the city.
He rested on a rustic bench on the lawn of a beautiful villa while I
made a call.
"Twenty-five years ago," I said to the gentleman of the house, "I had
a great inspiration from the life of a young lady who lived in this
house, and I just called to say 'thank you.'"
"Her father is dead," he said. "I am her uncle."
Then he told me of the career of the city girl I had met on the farm
and whom I had watched entering the church on Sundays.
"About the time you missed her at church," he said, "she was married
to a rich young man. He spent his fortune in liquor and finally ended
his life. She began to drink, after his death, but was persuaded to
leave the country. She went to America. We haven't heard from her for
a long time."
The following Sunday I told my father we were going to church.
"Not me!" he said.
"Oh, yes," I coaxed; "just this once with me."
"What th' divil's the use whin I haave a praycher t' m'silf."
"I am to be the preacher at the church."
"Och, but that's a horse ov another colour, bedad. Shure thin I'll
go."
When my father saw me in a Geneva gown, his eyes were filled with
tears.
The old white-haired lady who found the place in the book for him was
the young lady's mother. Her uncle had ushered him into her pew, but
they had never met each other nor did the old lady know until after
church that he was my father.
He never heard a word of the sermon, but as we emerged from the church
into the street he put his arms around my neck and kissing me said,
"Och, boy, if God wud only take me now I'd be happy!"
He had been listening with his eyes and what he saw so filled him with
joy that he was more willing to leave life than to have the emotion
leave him.
Though he was very feeble, I took him to Scotland with me to visit my
brothers and sisters; and there I left him. As the hour of farewell
drew near he wanted to have me alone--all to himself.
"Ye couldn't stay at home awhile? Shure I'll be goin' in a month or
two."
"Ah, that's impossible, father." He hung his head.
"D'ye believe I'll know her whin I go? God wudn't shut me out from her
for th' things I've done--"
"Of course he won't."
"He wudn't be so d----d niggardly, wud He?"
"Never!"
He fondled my hands as if I were a child. The hour drew nigher. He had
so many questions to ask, but the inevitableness of the situation
struck him dumb. We were on the platform; the train was about to move
out. I made a motion; he gripped me tightly, whispering in my ear:
"Ask God onct in a while to let me be with yer mother--will ye, boy?"
I kissed him farewell and saw him no more.
I went on to France.
My objective point in France was the study of Millet and his work. I
wanted to interpret him to working people in New Haven.
So to Greville on La Hague I went with a camera.
Greville consists of a church and a dozen houses. Gruchy is half a
mile beyond, on the edge of the sea.
In Gruchy Millet was born; in Greville he first came into contact with
incentive--I photographed both places and spent a night and a day with
M. Polidor, the old inn-keeper who was the painter's friend.
Surely, never was so large a statue erected in so small a village. The
peasant artist sits there on a bank of mosses, looking over at the old
church that squats on the hillside. In Cherbourg I found more traces
of his art and some stories of his life there that would be out of
place here.
I found four portraits painted while he was paying court to his first
wife. I found them in a little shoe shop in a by-street, in possession
of a distant relative of his first wife.
From Cherbourg I went to Barbizon, where Millet spent the latter part
of his life. I was very graciously received and entertained by his son
François and his American wife.
To browse among the master's relics, to handle the old books of his
small library, to hold, as one would a babe of tender years, his
palette, were small things, judged by the values of the average life:
to me it was one of the most inspiring hours of my career.
Paris was to me an art centre--little more. I followed the footsteps
of Millet from one place to another. I sat before his paintings in the
Louvre--I met some of his old friends and gathered material for a
lecture on his work.
From Paris I went to London. The British capital was more than an art
centre to me. It was a centre, literary, sociological and religious. I
was the guest of Sir George Williams one afternoon at one of his
parties and met Lord Radstock whom I had heard preach on a street
corner in Whitechapel twenty years before.
Besides visiting and photographing the literary haunts of the great
masters, I made the acquaintance of the leaders of the Socialist
movement. I went to St. Albans to attend the first convention of the
Ruskin societies. The convention was composed of men who in literature
and life were translating into terms of life and labour the teachings
of John Ruskin.
From London I went to Oxford and spent a few weeks browsing around the
most fascinating city in the world, to me. My visit was in
anticipation of the British convention of the Young Men's Christian
Association to which I was a fraternal delegate from the Young Men's
Association of Yale University.
I was invited to a garden party at Blenheim Palace while at Oxford. I
arrived early and presented my card. Without waiting I went into the
grounds and proceeded to enjoy the beautiful walks. Before I had gone
far, I met a young man who seemed familiar with the place. I told him
that I had once taken the Duchess through part of the slum region of
New York, and expressed a hope that she was at home.
"No," he said, "she is conducting a fair in London for soldiers'
wives." My next remark was in the realm of ethics. I had heard that
the father of the present Duke was a good deal of a rake and asked the
young man whether that was true or not. He said he thought it was like
the obituary notice of Mark Twain--very much exaggerated.
"I have been a flunky to some of these high fliers," I said, "and I
know how hard it is to get at the facts and also how easy it is to
form a mistaken judgment."
"Yes," he said, "that's true, but men of that type, while they are
often worse than they are painted are more often much better than the
best the public think of them! I am the successor of the late Duke,
and speak with authority on at least one case."
He took me through the palace, not only the parts usually open to the
public but the private apartments also, and later in the afternoon he
took me over some of the property at Woodstock, stopping for a few
minutes at the house of Geoffrey Chaucer.
The Rector of Exeter College had invited a group of the leaders of the
convention to a luncheon in Exeter and, because I was the only
American, I was asked to be present and deliver a short address.
The grounds of Exeter show the good results of the four or five
hundred years' care bestowed upon them. In my brief sojourn in Oxford
as a student I had been chased out of the grounds of Exeter by the
caretaker, under the suspicion that I was a burglar, taking the
measure of the walks, windows, doors, etc.
I told this story to a man with whom I later exchanged cards; he was
an old man and his card, read "W. Creese, Y.M.C.A. secretary, June 6,
1844."
"You were in early, brother," I said. "Yes," he said modestly, "I was
in _first_." He helped George Williams to organize the first branch of
the Y.M.C.A. My story went the rounds of those invited to luncheon and
prepared the way for the address I delivered.
The first thing I did on my return from Europe was to visit the last
known address of the girl friend of my youth. It was in a Negro
quarter of the city.
"Does Mrs. G---- live here?" I asked the coloured woman who opened the
door.
"She did, mistah--but she done gone left, dis mawnin'."
"Do you know where she has gone?"
"Yes'r, she done squeezed in wif ol' Mammy Jackson," and she pointed
out the tenement.
As I passed down the steps I noticed a small pile of furniture on the
sidewalk. Something impelled me to ask about it.
"Yes'r," the negress said, "dem's her house traps; d' landlord done
gone frow'd dem out."
I found her sitting with an old negress by the stove in a second-floor
back tenement.
"I bring you a message of love from your mother," I said, without
making myself known. We talked for a few minutes. I saw nothing
whatever of the girl of long ago. There was a little of the voice--the
fine musical voice--but nothing of form, nothing of feature. Deep
lines of care and suffering marred her face and labour had calloused
her hands. She was poorly dressed--had been ill and out of work, and
behind in her rent. Too proud to beg, she was starving with her
neighbours, the black people. I excused myself, found the landlord,
and rearranged the home she had so heroically struggled to hold
intact.
"Do you remember the farm at Moylena?" I asked.
"Yes, of course."
"And a farm boy----"
"Yes, yes," she said, adding: "those few days on that farm were the
only happy days of my life!"
"I am that boy and I have come to thank you for the inspiration you
were to me so long ago." She looked at me intently, perhaps searching
for the boy as I had been searching for the girl.
"There was a wide gulf between us then," she said. "In these long
years you have crossed to where I was and I--I have crossed to where
you were, and the gulf remains."