_A Visit to Mount Mellaray_
Many persons whom I met in Ireland told me that I ought to go to Mount
Mellaray "for my sins." Mount Mellaray (to those who don't know) is a
Trappist monastery, set among hills that would be at once the
temptation and despair of a colorist in landscape.
To it go the brain and heart weary from all countries, and the good
monks (there's no doubt that they are good) welcome them whether they
have money or not.
They tell of a man who went to Mount Mellaray and accepted the
hospitality of the inmates and on his going away he did no more than
bid them good by. Not a penny did he leave behind him, although he
had sat at table with the other guests several days.
Next year he came again for his soul's rest, and the monks received
him as an old friend. Those who were not under vows of silence spoke
to him, the others nodded to him, and once more he rested on the side
of the purple hills and partook of their hospitality.
When it came time for him to go away he left behind him--a pleasant
impression, but not a cent did he give to the cause of charity.
Another year passed by, and he came again. Hundreds had come in the
meantime, and none so poor but had left something in return for the
restfulness and peace that are to be had there.
Quite as an old friend he was now received and was made to feel
welcome. No one knew who he was--perhaps he was nobody--but on his
going away for the third time he showed that he had been but _acting_
the part of an ingrate, for he gave the father who acts as keeper of
the gate a hundred pounds.
This story I told to the jarvey who took me up the hilly road to the
monastery, and he listened with interest, and when I had finished he
said, "It's quite true."
As I did not expect to visit it again I made up my mind to do my
giving on leaving the place, but my hundred pound notes are all in the
future, and therefore no one can ever tell a similar tale of me.
I must confess that, being a Protestant, I felt a little compunction
about going to the place, but I had been assured that my sect would
make no difference, that the fathers were glad to receive all who
came, and that I would be as well treated as though I were a saint.
On my way up my jarvey told me of the amount of good that the monks
do, not only in a spiritual, but in a material way, by providing work
for the able-bodied men of the vicinity.
We passed a neat stone cottage with ivy growing on it, and a vigorous
fuchsia tree blooming in the garden, and he told me that it was a
government cottage and rented for the absurd sum of a shilling a week.
"And how much can a man earn in the fields?" said I.
"A matter of ten shillings a week," was his reply.
Query: If a man gets ten dollars a week in New York and lives in a
crowded Harlem flat for which he pays at least five dollars a week, is
he as well off as this Irishman, in his native land, with all the
fresh air in the world, fowls and fresh eggs, and butter of his wife's
making, and one of the loveliest views imaginable before him?
But you'll find the man in the neat little government cottage anxious
to fly to the land of dollars--and when he's there he'll hand out more
dollars to his landlord for inadequate accommodations than he could
earn at home in a month of Sundays.
Human nature is human nature, and the daisies in the field over the
pond are always more beautiful than the ones that lie at your feet.
I was received at the monastery by a monk, who on learning that I
wished to become a guest, took me over to the guest house, and there a
white-robed father took my surname, and I began to feel that I had
renounced the world, and that perhaps I was trying something that I
would regret, and wouldn't mamma come and get me.
But the bearded man before me was kindly, and when I told him (not
wishing to sail under false colors) that I was a Protestant, he told
me that it was a fast day, and had I dined.
Fortunately I had eaten heartily at noon. "If ye have not dined we can
give you something substantial," said he, but I decided that it would
be better to be treated as the other guests were to be treated, and so
I told him, and he said that at six o'clock there would be tea, and
that at eight I would retire to my room, and at ten all lights must be
out.
It was raining dismally, but he said that I could go for a walk in the
garden, or stay in my room, or go to the "smoke shed," to smoke a pipe
or a cigar.
I chose the smoke shed as I understood there were other human beings
there, and although I had only been in the monastery five minutes, I
felt the need of companionship.
After a brother had taken my traps to my room, I went out to the smoke
shed, and found there some ten or twelve guests, five or six of them
priests, and all Catholics but myself.
They were very quiet as I came up, and I feared to speak above a
whisper myself, but a jolly-looking priest, seeing a newspaper
sticking out of my raincoat pocket, said: "Is that to-day's paper?"
and on my saying it was, he asked me if he might borrow it, and then
he stood up in front of them all and said:
"The news of the day.... 'Irish Ireland. A Leaguer's Point of View.'
'The French Trunk Horror.' 'The Bachelor Tax,' discussed by Mr.
Dooley."
"Rade that, father," said a young chap with a twinkling eye.
"Sure it's in dialect," said the priest with a smile, and his own
brogue.
"Never mind. Go ahead. 'Tis a dreary day."
The paper was the Dublin Independent, and in a moment more I was
listening to the familiar humor of the funniest man in America, and
that in a monastery, of all places.
"'This here pa-aper says,' said Mr. Hennessy, 'that they're goin' to
put a tax on bachelors. That's r-right. Why shudden't there be a tax
on bachelors? There's one on dogs.'"
Loud was the laughter in the smoke shed at this sally, and none
laughed louder than those professional bachelors, the priests.
[Illustration: STREET IN YOUGHAL]
"'I suppose,' said Mr. Dooley, 'that next year ye expect to see me
throttin' around with a leather collar an' a brass tag on me neck. If
me tax isn't paid th' bachelor wagon'll come around, an' th' bachelor
catcher'll lasso me an' take me to the pound, an' I'll be kept there
three days, an' thin, if still unclaimed, I'll be dhrowned, onless th'
pound keeper takes a fancy to me.'" (Loud laughter by priests and
laymen.)
The ice thus broken by my friend Dunne, I was soon in conversation
with the group, and discovered two compatriots from Indiana, one a
native of Ireland returning to visit it once more before he departed,
the other his son.
Vesper bells broke up the talk, and I went with the rest to chapel.
After vespers came "tea," which I had supposed would be literally
nothing else, but there was the most delicious graham bread I have had
since I came to Ireland, and unlimited milk. There was no butter, as
it was a fast day. This I regretted keenly.
Talk went on among us all until a bearded monk in white came in and
began to read passages from Thomas à Kempis. His enunciation was
peculiarly pure, and I doubt not that he was a gentleman born. It was
a pleasure to hear such English. While he read we were all silent.
After supper we went out to the garden, and in a sheltered place
(although we did not need a shelter, as the fickle rain had stopped)
those who wished played a spirited game that consisted of tossing
stones into a little pocket of earth. One of the priests was an adept,
and he carried all before him.
In such simple pleasures, or in walking, the evening was spent until
it came time to go to chapel again.
One of my companions (and they were there from all parts of Ireland,
and you might hear the Scotch accent of the north, the pure Dublin and
Wicklow Elizabethan English, the slightly thickened Waterford
variety, and the hurried talk of the Corkonian, as well as other
styles I could not place--probably west coast dialects, mournful and
slow) asked me what I thought of Ireland, and I told him my
impressions had been tremendously favorable so far. He said that a man
who had returned not long since told him that Ireland was hopelessly
behind the times, and I told him, for his comfort, that to take one
instance in which Ireland was up to date, the tram service in Dublin
was far ahead of that of New York, both in the elegance of its rolling
stock, its cheapness, and the civility of its employes. He was much
amused at the idea of horse cars in New York. (Electric cars play an
important part in all the large Irish cities, and a ride on the top of
one to Howth, a lovely suburb of Dublin, is worth every bit of the
eight cents it costs).
They have yet to introduce the transfer system, but in other
particulars, like Mr. O'Reilly, "they're doin' dam' well." All this I
told him.
At eight I sought my room, where there was reading matter suitable to
the place, but the candle was not conducive to extended reading unless
I held it close to the book, and then it dazzled me, and at nine
o'clock I was in my bed, and until two in the morning the house was
quiet, save for a snore here and there. But at two the bells began to
ring, and kept it up at intervals all through the night. I was told
this, but "tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep," came to my
aid, and I dreamed it was a feast day and that all the monks were
sitting at the breakfast table, singing at each other joyfully.
Next day was a feast day (to my relief). I was up at six, but it was
some time after that that I heard steps in the hall. I had looked out
of the window from time to time, hoping to see some one in the garden.
The table of the duties of the day hung in my room, and I noticed
that breakfast was at nine. Luckily I had some chocolate, or I might
have felt I was likely to faint by the wayside.
I did not go to early devotion, and when I heard the footsteps in the
hall I opened my door and found that it was Father David, the keeper
of the gate, going around to see if any were still in bed. When he saw
me, he said to the brother who accompanied him, "Oh, it doesn't make
any difference with him." Then to me, "Would you like to walk in the
garden?" I said that I would, and walked round and round its lonely
paths for over an hour, now and then eating a square of chocolate to
keep off death.
But before eight the good father came and asked me if I'd like to see
the interior of the monastery, and he showed me the bakeshop with its
most up to date ovens, and oh, how hungry the smell of baking made me,
and the steam-saw, and the creamery, and the library with its old
newspaper telling to Irishmen that Cromwell had departed to his rest
the day before. Not very sorrowful news, that, I imagine, to the
Irishman of that day.
And Father David showed me and the other Americans an incubator, and
explained the process, with an innocent circumstantiality that we
respected. Why tell him that the woods were full of incubators in
America? The things that appealed most to him, however, was the big
circular saw that would saw up a log of wood in a "minyit."
With his permission I took a photograph of a beautiful Irish cross in
the graveyard, but when I suggested my taking him, he averted his
palms at me. Such vanities were not for him.
At breakfast there were eggs and milk and tea, and delicious butter in
abundance, and the reading of some holy book by Father David, which
did not stop all conversation. Being a feast day, there was one priest
who felt his tongue could be loosened, and he kept up an undercurrent
of conversation, to Father David's annoyance, but it was a human touch
that was not out of place.
The monks are themselves vegetarians, but a school is run in
connection with the monastery, and the students are allowed meats.
At nine my jarvey called for me and took me to the boat for Youghal,
and I made my offering and shook hands with Father David, and felt
that I had been benefited by my stay in the retreat. I even felt that
had I more time at my disposal, I would stay on for several days,
talking with the guests, pitching stones into the hole, and looking at
the rolling landscape and the awe-inspiring hills behind the chapel
spire.
One thing in America had interested Father David--the Thaw trial--and
he wanted to know if Thaw would be hanged.
One day the only American news in the 'Derry papers was to the effect
that Evelyn Thaw thought of going on the stage.
Not our art, or our literature, or our suppression of the boss, but
the Thaw trial, is the thing that has made a deep impress on Great
Britain and Ireland, and everywhere I am asked to give an opinion.
The Thaw trial was a matter of moment to the good old man, with his
incubators and his steam saw and his absence of personal vanity.
As half way down the mountain I turned and looked back at the spire
against the somber hills (for it had begun to rain) I wished that my
camera would take them for me, but I knew that snapshots of hills are
like literary snapshots--inadequate.