THE RECTOR OF DRUMBARROW AND HIS WIFE.
Herbert Fitzgerald, in speaking of the Rev. Æneas Townsend to Lady
Clara Desmond, had said that in his opinion the reverend gentleman
was a good man, but a bad clergyman. But there were not a few in the
county Cork who would have said just the reverse, and declared him
to be a bad man, but a good clergyman. There were others, indeed,
who knew him well, who would have declared him to be perfect in both
respects, and others again who thought him in both respects to be
very bad. Amidst these great diversities of opinion I will venture on
none of my own, but will attempt to describe him.
In Ireland stanch Protestantism consists too much in a hatred of
Papistry--in that rather than in a hatred of those errors against
which we Protestants are supposed to protest. Hence the cross--which
should, I presume, be the emblem of salvation to us all--creates a
feeling of dismay and often of disgust instead of love and reverence;
and the very name of a saint savours in Irish Protestant ears of
idolatry, although Irish Protestants on every Sunday profess to
believe in a communion of such. These are the feelings rather than
the opinions of the most Protestant of Irish Protestants, and it
is intelligible that they should have been produced by the close
vicinity of Roman Catholic worship in the minds of men who are
energetic and excitable, but not always discreet or argumentative.
One of such was Mr. Townsend, and few men carried their Protestant
fervour further than he did. A cross was to him what a red cloth is
supposed to be to a bull; and so averse was he to the intercession
of saints, that he always regarded as a wolf in sheep's clothing a
certain English clergyman who had written to him a letter dated from
the feast of St. Michael and All Angels. On this account Herbert
Fitzgerald took upon himself to say that he regarded him as a bad
clergyman: whereas, most of his Protestant neighbours looked upon
this enthusiasm as his chief excellence.
And this admiration for him induced his friends to overlook what they
must have acknowledged to be defects in his character. Though he
had a good living--at least, what the laity in speaking of clerical
incomes is generally inclined to call a good living, we will say
amounting in value to four hundred pounds a year--he was always in
debt. This was the more inexcusable as he had no children, and had
some small private means.
And nobody knew why he was in debt--in which word nobody he himself
must certainly be included. He had no personal expenses of his own;
his wife, though she was a very queer woman, as Lady Clara had said,
could hardly be called an extravagant woman; there was nothing large
or splendid about the way of living at the glebe; anybody who came
there, both he and she were willing to feed as long as they chose
to stay, and a good many in this way they did feed; but they never
invited guests; and as for giving regular fixed dinner-parties, as
parish rectors do in England, no such idea ever crossed the brain of
either Mr. or Mrs. Townsend.
That they were both charitable all the world admitted; and their
admirers professed that hence arose all their difficulties. But their
charities were of a most indiscreet kind. Money they rarely had to
give, and therefore they would give promises to pay. While their
credit with the butcher and baker was good they would give meat and
bread; and both these functionaries had by this time learned that,
though Mr. Townsend might not be able to pay such bills himself, his
friends would do so, sooner or later, if duly pressed. And therefore
the larder at Drumbarrow Glebe--that was the name of the parish--was
never long empty, and then again it was never long full.
But neither Mr. nor Mrs. Townsend were content to bestow their
charities without some other object than that of relieving material
wants by their alms. Many infidels, Mr. Townsend argued, had been
made believers by the miracle of the loaves and fishes; and therefore
it was permissible for him to make use of the same means for drawing
over proselytes to the true church. If he could find hungry Papists
and convert them into well-fed Protestants by one and the same
process, he must be doing a double good, he argued;--could by no
possibility be doing an evil.
Such being the character of Mr. Townsend, it will not be thought
surprising that he should have his warm admirers and his hot
detractors. And they who were inclined to be among the latter were
not slow to add up certain little disagreeable eccentricities among
the list of his faults,--as young Fitzgerald had done in the matter
of the dirty surplices.
Mr. Townsend's most uncompromising foe for many years had been the
Rev. Bernard M'Carthy, the parish priest for the same parish of
Drumbarrow. Father Bernard, as he was called by his own flock, or
Father Barney, as the Protestants in derision were delighted to name
him, was much more a man of the world than his Protestant colleague.
He did not do half so many absurd things as did Mr. Townsend, and
professed to laugh at what he called the Protestant madness of the
rector. But he also had been an eager, I may also say, a malicious
antagonist. What he called the "souping" system of the Protestant
clergyman stank in his nostrils--that system by which, as he stated,
the most ignorant of men were to be induced to leave their faith by
the hope of soup, or other food. He was as firmly convinced of the
inward, heart-destroying iniquity of the parson as the parson was of
that of the priest. And so these two men had learned to hate each
other. And yet neither of them were bad men.
I do not wish it to be understood that this sort of feeling always
prevailed in Irish parishes between the priest and the parson even
before the days of the famine. I myself have met a priest at a
parson's table, and have known more than one parish in which the
Protestant and Roman Catholic clergymen lived together on amicable
terms. But such a feeling as that above represented was common,
and was by no means held as proof that the parties themselves
were quarrelsome or malicious. It was a part of their religious
convictions, and who dares to interfere with the religious
convictions of a clergyman?
On the day but one after that on which the Castle Richmond ladies
had been thrown from their car on the frosty road, Mr. Townsend and
Father Bernard were brought together in an amicable way, or in a way
that was intended to be amicable, for the first time in their lives.
The relief committee for the district in which they both lived was
one and the same, and it was of course well that both should act on
it. When the matter was first arranged, Father Bernard took the bull
by the horns and went there; but Mr. Townsend, hearing this, did not
do so. But now that it had become evident that much work, and for a
long time, would have to be performed at these committees, it was
clear that Mr. Townsend, as a Protestant clergyman, could not remain
away without neglecting his duty. And so, after many mental struggles
and questions of conscience, the parson agreed to meet the priest.
The point had been very deeply discussed between the rector and his
wife. She had given it as her opinion that priest M'Carthy was pitch,
pitch itself in its blackest turpitude, and as such could not be
touched without defilement. Had not all the Protestant clergymen
of Ireland in a body, or, at any rate, all those who were worth
anything, who could with truth be called Protestant clergymen, had
they not all refused to enter the doors of the National schools
because they could not do so without sharing their ministration
there with papist priests; with priests of the altar of Baal, as Mrs.
Townsend called them? And should they now yield, when, after all, the
assistance needed was only for the body--not for the soul?
It may be seen from this that the lady's mind was not in its nature
logical; but the extreme absurdity of her arguments, though they did
not ultimately have the desired effect, by no means came home to
the understanding of her husband. He thought that there was a great
deal in what she said, and almost felt that he was yielding to
instigations from the evil one; but public opinion was too strong for
him; public opinion and the innate kindness of his own heart. He felt
that at this very moment he ought to labour specially for the bodies
of these poor people, as at other times he would labour specially for
their souls; and so he yielded.
"Well," said his wife to him as he got off his car at his own door
after the meeting, "what have you done?" One might have imagined from
her tone of voice and her manner that she expected, or at least hoped
to hear that the priest had been absolutely exterminated and made
away with in the good fight.
Mr. Townsend made no immediate answer, but proceeded to divest
himself of his rusty outside coat, and to rub up his stiff, grizzled,
bristly, uncombed hair with both his hands, as was his wont when he
was not quite satisfied with the state of things.
"I suppose he was there?" said Mrs. Townsend.
"Oh, yes, he was there. He is never away, I take it, when there
is any talking to be done." Now Mr. Townsend dearly loved to hear
himself talk, but no man was louder against the sins of other
orators. And then he began to ask how many minutes it wanted to
dinner-time.
Mrs. Townsend knew his ways. She would not have a ghost of a chance
of getting from him a true and substantial account of what had really
passed if she persevered in direct questions to the effect. So
she pretended to drop the matter, and went and fetched her lord's
slippers, the putting on of which constituted his evening toilet; and
then, after some little hurrying inquiry in the kitchen, promised him
his dinner in fifteen minutes.
"Was Herbert Fitzgerald there?"
"Oh yes; he is always there. He's a nice young fellow; a very fine
young fellow; but--"
"But what?"
"He thinks he understands the Irish Roman Catholics, but he
understands them no more than--than--than this slipper," he said,
having in vain cudgelled his brain for a better comparison.
"You know what Aunt Letty says about him. She doubts he isn't quite
right, you know."
Mrs. Townsend by this did not mean to insinuate that Herbert was at
all afflicted in that way which we attempt to designate, when we
say that one of our friends is not all right, and at the same time
touch our heads with our forefinger. She had intended to convey an
impression that the young man's religious ideas were not exactly of
that stanch, true-blue description which she admired.
"Well, he has just come from Oxford, you know," said Mr. Townsend:
"and at the present moment Oxford is the most dangerous place to
which a young man can be sent."
"And Sir Thomas would send him there, though I remember telling his
aunt over and over again how it would be." And Mrs. Townsend as she
spoke, shook her head sorrowfully.
"I don't mean to say, you know, that he's absolutely bitten."
"Oh, I know--I understand. When they come to crosses and
candlesticks, the next step to the glory of Mary is a very easy one.
I would sooner send a young man to Rome than to Oxford. At the one he
might be shocked and disgusted; but at the other he is cajoled, and
cheated, and ruined." And then Mrs. Townsend threw herself back in
her chair, and threw her eyes up towards the ceiling.
But there was no hypocrisy or pretence in this expression of her
feelings. She did in her heart of hearts believe that there was some
college or club of papists at Oxford, emissaries of the Pope or of
the Jesuits. In her moments of sterner thought the latter were the
enemies she most feared; whereas, when she was simply pervaded by
her usual chronic hatred of the Irish Roman Catholic hierarchy, she
was wont to inveigh most against the Pope. And this college, she
maintained, was fearfully successful in drawing away the souls of
young English students. Indeed, at Oxford a man had no chance against
the devil. Things were better at Cambridge; though even there there
was great danger. Look at A---- and Z----; and she would name two
perverts to the Church of Rome, of whom she had learned that they
were Cambridge men. But, thank God, Trinity College still stood firm.
Her idea was, that if there were left any real Protestant truth in
the Church of England, that Church should look to feed her lambs
by the hands of shepherds chosen from that seminary, and from that
seminary only.
"But isn't dinner nearly ready?" said Mr. Townsend, whose ideas were
not so exclusively Protestant as were those of his wife. "I haven't
had a morsel since breakfast." And then his wife, who was peculiarly
anxious to keep him in a good humour that all might come out about
Father Barney, made another little visit to the kitchen.
At last the dinner was served. The weather was very cold, and the
rector and his wife considered it more cosy to use only the parlour,
and not to migrate into the cold air of a second room. Indeed, during
the winter months the drawing-room of Drumbarrow Glebe was only used
for visitors, and for visitors who were not intimate enough in the
house to be placed upon the worn chairs and threadbare carpet of the
dining-parlour. And very cold was that drawing-room found to be by
each visitor.
But the parlour was warm enough; warm and cosy, though perhaps at
times a little close; and of evenings there would pervade it a smell
of whisky punch, not altogether acceptable to unaccustomed nostrils.
Not that the rector of Drumbarrow was by any means an intemperate
man. His single tumbler of whisky toddy, repeated only on Sundays
and some other rare occasions, would by no means equal, in point of
drinking, the ordinary port of an ordinary English clergyman. But
whisky punch does leave behind a savour of its intrinsic virtues,
delightful no doubt to those who have imbibed its grosser elements,
but not equally acceptable to others who may have been less
fortunate.
During dinner there was no conversation about Herbert Fitzgerald,
or the committee, or Father Barney. The old gardener, who waited at
table with all his garden clothes on him, and whom the neighbours,
with respectful deference, called Mr. Townsend's butler, was a Roman
Catholic; as, indeed, were all the servants at the glebe, and as are,
necessarily, all the native servants in that part of the country. And
though Mr. and Mrs. Townsend put great trust in their servant Jerry
as to the ordinary duties of gardening, driving, and butlering,
they would not knowingly trust him with a word of their habitual
conversation about the things around them. Their idea was, that every
word so heard was carried to the priest, and that the priest kept a
book in which every word so uttered was written down. If this were so
through the parish, the priest must in truth have had something to
do, both for himself and his private secretary; for, in spite of all
precautions that were taken, Jerry and Jerry's brethren no doubt did
hear much of what was said. The repetitions to the priest, however, I
must take leave to doubt.
But after dinner, when the hot water and whisky were on the table,
when the two old arm-chairs were drawn cozily up on the rug, each
with an old footstool before it; when the faithful wife had mixed
that glass of punch--or jug rather, for, after the old fashion, it
was brewed in such a receptacle; and when, to inspire increased
confidence, she had put into it a small extra modicum of the eloquent
spirit, then the mouth of the rector was opened, and Mrs. Townsend
was made happy.
"And so Father Barney and I have met at last," said he, rather
cheerily, as the hot fumes of the toddy regaled his nostrils.
"And how did he behave now?"
"Well, he was decent enough--that is, as far as absolute behaviour
went. You can't have a silk purse from off a sow's ear, you know."
"No, indeed; and goodness knows there's plenty of the sow's ear about
him. But now, Æneas, dear, do tell me how it all was, just from the
beginning."
"He was there before me," said the husband.
"Catch a weasel asleep!" said the wife.
"I didn't catch him asleep at any rate," continued he. "He was there
before me; but when I went into the little room where they hold the
meeting--"
"It's at Berryhill, isn't it?"
"Yes, at the Widow Casey's. To see that woman bowing and scraping
and curtsying to Father Barney, and she his own mother's brother's
daughter, was the best thing in the world."
"That was just to do him honour before the quality, you know."
"Exactly. When I went in, there was nobody there but his reverence
and Master Herbert."
"As thick as possible, I suppose. Dear, dear; isn't it dreadful!--Did
I put sugar enough in it, Æneas?"
"Well, I don't know; perhaps you may give me another small lump. At
any rate, you didn't forget the whisky."
"I'm sure it isn't a taste too strong--and after such work as you've
had to-day.--And so young Fitzgerald and Father Barney--"
"Yes, there they were with their heads together. It was something
about a mill they were saying."
"Oh, it's perfectly dreadful!"
"But Herbert stopped, and introduced me at once to Father Barney."
"What! a regular introduction? I like that, indeed."
"He didn't do it altogether badly. He said something about being glad
to see two gentlemen together--"
"A gentleman, indeed!"
"--who were both so anxious to do the best they could in the parish,
and whose influence was so great--or something to that effect. And
then we shook hands."
"You did shake hands?"
"Oh, yes; if I went there at all, it was necessary that I should do
that."
"I am very glad it was not me, that's all. I don't think I could
shake hands with Father Barney."
"There's no knowing what you can do, my dear, till you try."
"H--m," said Mrs. Townsend, meaning to signify thereby that she was
still strong in the strength of her own impossibilities.
"And then there was a little general conversation about the potato,
for no one came in for a quarter of an hour or so. The priest said
that they were as badly off in Limerick and Clare as we are here.
Now, I don't believe that; and when I asked him how he knew, he
quoted the 'Freeman.'"
"The 'Freeman,' indeed! Just like him. I wonder it wasn't the
'Nation.'" In Mrs. Townsend's estimation, the parish priest was much
to blame because he did not draw his public information from some
newspaper specially addicted to the support of the Protestant cause.
"And then Somers came in, and he took the chair. I was very much
afraid at one time that Father Barney was going to seat himself
there."
"You couldn't possibly have stood that?"
"I had made up my mind what to do. I should have walked about the
room, and looked on the whole affair as altogether irregular,--as
though there was no chairman. But Somers was of course the proper
man."
"And who else came?"
"There was O'Leary, from Boherbue."
"He was another Papist?"
"Oh, yes; there was a majority of them. There was Greilly, the man
who has got that large take of land over beyond Banteer; and then
Father Barney's coadjutor came in."
"What! that wretched-looking man from Gortnaclough?"
"Yes; he's the curate of the parish, you know."
"And did you shake hands with him too?"
"Indeed I did; and you never saw a fellow look so ashamed of himself
in your life."
"Well, there isn't much shame about them generally."
"And there wasn't much about him by-and-by. You never heard a man
talk such trash in your life, till Somers put him down."
"Oh, he was put down? I'm glad of that."
"And to do Father Barney justice, he did tell him to hold his tongue.
The fool began to make a regular set speech."
"Father Barney, I suppose, didn't choose that anybody should do that
but himself."
"He did enough for the two, certainly. I never heard a man so fond of
his own voice. What he wants is to rule it all just his own way."
"Of course he does; and that's just what you won't let him do. What
other reason can there be for your going there?"
And so the matter was discussed. What absolute steps were taken
by the committee; how they agreed to buy so much meal of such a
merchant, at such a price, and with such funds; how it was to be
resold, and never given away on any pretext; how Mr. Somers had
explained that giving away their means was killing the goose that
laid the golden eggs, when the young priest, in an attitude for
oratory, declared that the poor had no money with which to make the
purchase; and how in a few weeks' time they would be able to grind
their own flour at Herbert Fitzgerald's mill;--all this was also
told. But the telling did not give so much gratification to Mrs.
Townsend as the sly hits against the two priests.
And then, while they were still in the middle of all this; when the
punch-jug had given way to the teapot, and the rector was beginning
to bethink himself that a nap in his arm-chair would be very
refreshing, Jerry came into the room to announce that Richard had
come over from Castle Richmond with a note for "his riverence." And
so Richard was shown in.
Now Richard might very well have sent in his note by Jerry, which
after all contained only some information with reference to a list
of old women which Herbert Fitzgerald had promised to send over to
the glebe. But Richard knew that the minister would wish to chat
with him, and Richard himself had no indisposition for a little
conversation.
"I hope yer riverences is quite well then," said Richard, as he
tendered his note, making a double bow, so as to include them both.
"Pretty well, thank you," said Mrs. Townsend. "And how's all the
family?"
"Well, then, they're all rightly, considhering. The Masther's no just
what he war, you know, ma'am."
"I'm afraid not--I'm afraid not," said the rector. "You'll not take a
glass of spirits, Richard?"
"Yer riverence knows I never does that," said Richard, with somewhat
of a conscious look of high morality, for he was a rigid teetotaller.
"And do you mean to say that you stick to that always?" said Mrs.
Townsend, who firmly believed that no good could come out of
Nazareth, and that even abstinence from whisky must be bad if
accompanied by anything in the shape of a Roman Catholic ceremony.
"I do mean to say, ma'am, that I never touched a dhrop of anything
sthronger than wather, barring tay, since the time I got the pledge
from the blessed apostle." And Richard boldly crossed himself in the
presence of them both. They knew well whom he meant by the blessed
apostle: it was Father Mathew.
"Temperance is a very good thing, however we may come by it," said
Mr. Townsend, who meant to imply by this that Richard's temperance
had been come by in the worst way possible.
"That's thrue for you, sir," said Richard; "but I never knew any
pledge kept, only the blessed apostle's." By which he meant to imply
that no sanctity inherent in Mr. Townsend's sacerdotal proceedings
could be of any such efficacy.
And then Mr. Townsend read the note. "Ah, yes," said he; "tell Mr.
Herbert that I'm very much obliged to him. There will be no other
answer necessary."
"Very well, yer riverence, I'll be sure to give Mr. Herbert the
message." And Richard made a sign as though he were going.
"But tell me, Richard," said Mrs. Townsend, "is Sir Thomas any
better? for we have been really very uneasy about him."
"Indeed and he is, ma'am; a dail betther this morning, the Lord be
praised."
"It was a kind of a fit, wasn't it, Richard?" asked the parson.
"A sort of a fit of illness of some kind, I'm thinking," said
Richard, who had no mind to speak of his family's secrets out of
doors. Whatever he might be called upon to tell the priest, at any
rate he was not called on to tell anything to the parson.
"But it was very sudden this time, wasn't it, Richard?" asked the
lady; "immediately after that strange man was shown into his
room--eh?"
"I'm sure, ma'am, I can't say; but I don't think he was a ha'porth
worse than ordinar, till after the gentleman went away. I did hear
that he did his business with the gentleman, just as usual like."
"And then he fell into a fit, didn't he, Richard?"
"Not that I heard of, ma'am. He did a dail of talking about some law
business, I did hear our Mrs. Jones say; and then afther he warn't
just the betther of it."
"Was that all?"
"And I don't think he's none the worse for it neither, ma'am; for the
masther do seem to have more life in him this day than I'se seen this
many a month. Why, he's been out and about with her ladyship in the
pony-carriage all the morning."
"Has he now? Well, I'm delighted to hear that. It is some trouble
about the English estates, I believe, that vexes him?"
"Faix, then, ma'am, I don't just know what it is that ails him,
unless it be just that he has too much money for to know what to do
wid it. That'd be the sore vexation to me, I know."
"Well; ah, yes; I suppose I shall see Mrs. Jones to-morrow, or at
latest the day after," said Mrs. Townsend, resolving to pique the man
by making him understand that she could easily learn all that she
wished to learn from the woman: "a great comfort Mrs. Jones must be
to her ladyship."
"Oh yes, ma'am; 'deed an' she is," said Richard; "'specially in the
matter of puddins and pies, and such like."
He was not going to admit Mrs. Jones's superiority, seeing that he
had lived in the family long before his present mistress's marriage.
"And in a great many other things too, Richard. She's quite a
confidential servant. That's because she's a Protestant, you know."
Now of all men, women, and creatures living, Richard the coachman of
Castle Richmond was the most good tempered. No amount of anger or
scolding, no professional misfortune--such as the falling down of
his horse upon the ice, no hardship--such as three hours' perpetual
rain when he was upon the box--would make him cross. To him it was a
matter of perfect indifference if he were sent off with his car just
before breakfast, or called away to some stable work as the dinner
was about to smoke in the servants' hall. He was a great eater, but
what he didn't eat one day he could eat the next. Such things never
ruffled him, nor was he ever known to say that such a job wasn't his
work. He was always willing to nurse a baby, or dig potatoes, or cook
a dinner, to the best of his ability, when asked to do so; but he
could not endure to be made less of than a Protestant; and of all
Protestants he could not endure to be made less of than Mrs. Jones.
"'Cause she's a Protestant, is it, ma'am?"
"Of course, Richard; you can't but see that Protestants are more
trusted, more respected, more thought about than Romanists, can you?"
"'Deed then I don't know, ma'am."
"But look at Mrs. Jones."
"Oh, I looks at her often enough; and she's well enough too for a
woman. But we all know her weakness."
"What's that, Richard?" asked Mrs. Townsend, with some interest
expressed in her tone; for she was not above listening to a little
scandal, even about the servants of her great neighbours.
"Why, she do often talk about things she don't understand. But she's
a great hand at puddins and pies, and that's what one mostly looks
for in a woman."
This was enough for Mrs. Townsend for the present, and so Richard was
allowed to take his departure, in full self-confidence that he had
been one too many for the parson's wife.
"Jerry," said Richard, as they walked out into the yard together
to get the Castle Richmond pony, "does they often thry to make a
Prothestant of you now?"
"Prothestants be d----," said Jerry, who by no means shared in
Richard's good gifts as to temper.
"Well, I wouldn't say that; at laist, not of all of 'em."
"The likes of them's used to it," said Jerry.
And then Richard, not waiting to do further battle on behalf of his
Protestant friends, trotted out of the yard.