IN 1892 F. T. had gone to Pantasaph. He was quartered, at first, in
Bishop's House, at the monastery gates,[34] and the sandalled friars
looked after all his wants--from boots to dogma.
"Thompson is ever so much better," writes Fr. Marianus soon after the
poet's arrival. "He looks it too. He is less melancholy, in fact at
times quite lively." And they cared for him delicately:--
"There is only one little thing about which I have some
difficulty. I know Thompson must need now and again
some little things, but I don't like to ask him does he
need anything (though I have supplied him with paper,
ink, &c.), and I should feel grateful if you would
kindly write to Thompson and tell him to ask me for
anything he may want--that I am his procurator."
His own first letter from Wales:--
"_C'en est fait_, as regards the opium. . . . I am very
comfortable, thanks to your kindness and forethought.
Father Anselm seems to have taken a fancy to me--also
he is afraid of my being lonely--and comes to see me
every other day. He took me all over the Monastery
on Monday, and has just left me after a prolonged
discussion of the things which 'none of us know
anything about,' as Marianus says when he is getting
the worst of an argument."
Father Anselm, now Archbishop of Simla, was the one of the friars of
whom the poet spoke as his philosophical schoolmaster, and to whom he
was indebted for the awakening of new intellectual interests. Coventry
Patmore, too, as his correspondence testifies, knew how to appreciate
the hospitality and good talk of the friars. Both the poets contributed
to the _Annals_ of Father Anselm's editorship. Between the younger
poet and Father Anselm there sprang up a close friendship, which was
not without its influence upon Thompson's later work. During his
Guardianship at Crawley Father Anselm was responsible for the inception
of the Roger Bacon Society, whose meetings F. T. sometimes attended.
Father Alphonsus, whose death in 1911 deprived English Franciscans of
their Provincial, also had much intercourse with Francis Thompson. For
this priest, as he himself alleged, the odes of Coventry Patmore made a
new earth and a new Heaven.
It is not, perhaps, impertinent here and now to attribute to the
younger poet's association with the friars an allusion in one of the
most famous of his lines. "The bearded counsellors of God" has the
local colour if not of Paradise, at least of Pantasaph.[35]
"Poetry clung about the cowls of his Order," wrote Francis, in dealing
with the works of St. Francis and of Thomas of Celano. He had the
right companions, as far as any were admitted, for the new periods of
composition.
They, as he, had sacred commerce _cum Domina Paupertate_. These, his
companions, were once named by her "my Brothers and most dear Friends";
they, entertaining her on bread and water, had given her a couch upon
earth and the grass.
"When she asked for a pillow, they straightway brought
her a stone, and laid it under her Head. So, after she
had slept for a brief space in peace, she arose and
asked the Brothers to show her their Cloister. And
they, leading her to the Summit of a Hill, showed her
the wide World, saying: This is our Cloister, O Lady
Poverty. Thereupon she bade them all sit down together,
and opening her mouth she began to speak unto them
Words of Life."
Francis her poet heard, though at that time he was not come to the
hills about Pantasaph. He had himself found stones for pillows in
the market-place, and had written of one to whom he had half-likened
himself--
Anchorite, who didst dwell
With all the world for cell![36]
St. Francis himself had other words for the same thought:--"Meditate as
much while on this journey as if you were shut up in a hermitage or in
your cell, for wherever we are, wherever we go, we carry our cell with
us; Brother Body is our cell."
* * * * *
Of the grounds for a good understanding between the priests and the
poet there are hints in Richard de Bary's _Franciscan Days of Vigil_:--
"Francis Thompson was just then [1894] a favourite with
the Order, and there were keen discussions about his
mystical intuitions. In the spirit of the Franciscan
_Laudes Domini_, the Breviary Offices of the Seasons,
Thompson recalled them, and expounded the phases of
asceticism that ran with them in his poem, 'From the
Night of Forebeing.'
* * * * *
"The centre of interest in the household was the poet,
Francis Thompson, who spent the summer of that year
in a neighbouring cottage. Walks in the late evening
did not result in much conversation; but at evening
gatherings in my room the poet used often to join the
party, and argued with vigour and persuasiveness on
favourite topics. The Franciscans had learnt a kind of
art of drawing their mystical guest into conversation.
The way was to introduce a subtle contradiction to his
pet theories, which would in a moment produce a storm
of protesting eloquence."
They drew him also on one only occasion into more formal speech. Fr.
Anselm prevailed upon him to enter into the discussion that followed
a paper read by the Hon. W. Gibson, now Lord Ashbourne, at a meeting
of the Roger Bacon Society, held at the Monastery, Crawley, in January
1898.
In April, 1894, an observer writes to W. M.:--
"You will be glad to hear that Francis has written an
Ode which I hear is longer than anything he has done
yet. Also that the 'frenzy' being on him he has begun
another poem yesterday. No one sees him but Fr. Anselm,
to whom he comes every evening and whom he tells of his
work. He told him last night that since you had left he
seemed to have a return of all the old poetic power. Of
course he is flying over hill and dale and never to be
seen, but I am sure you will be as glad as I am at this
fresh development--especially as your and Alice's visit
has evidently called it forth."[37]
To the departed visitors the poet himself wrote:--
"BISHOP'S HOUSE, PANTASAPH.
"_Dearest Wilfrid and Alice_,--As you are together in
my thoughts, so let me join you together in this note.
I cannot express to you what deep happiness your visit
gave me; how dear it was to see your faces again. I
think 'the leaves fell from the day' indeed when your
train went out of the station; and I never heard the
birds with such sad voices.
"I send you herewith the poem I have been at work on.
It is very long, as you will see--as long, I think, as
Wordsworth's great ode. That would not matter--'so I
were equal with him in renown.' But as it is----!
"My fear is that thought in it has strangled poetic
impulse. However of all that you are better judges than
I.
"Does the dear Singer still refuse me her songs? My
health is better again, though unfortunately more
fluctuant than I could wish. Love to all the chicks.
With very best love to yourselves, dear ones,--Yours
ever,
FRANCIS THOMPSON."
In another letter F. T. tells of his recurring powers of composition.
"Am overflowing with a sudden access of literary
impulse. I think I could write a book in three months,
if thoughts came down in such an endless avalanche
as they are doing at present. But the collecting and
recasting of my later poems for Lane blocks the way for
the next month, so that I can only write an essay in an
odd hour or two when I lie awake in bed."
He heralds the coming of his sacred poetry in "From the Night of
Forebeing"--
. . . The wings
Hear I not in prævenient winnowings
Of coming songs, that lift my hair and stir it?
* * * * *
That--but low breathe it, lest the Nemesis
Unchild me, vaunting this--
Is bliss, the hid, hugged, swaddled bliss!
O youngling Joy caressed,
That on my now first-mothered breast
Pliest the strange wonder of thine infant lip.
From the highlands of his poetry, from the glory of height in which he
wrote "The Dread of Height" and other poems of "Sight and Insight," he
looked down upon his former poetry:--
Therefore I do repent
That with religion vain,
And misconceivèd pain,
I have my music bent
To waste on bootless things its skiey-gendered rain.
The writing done, he is again cast down:--
"I should be very glad if you will send me the
_Edinburgh_. It would do me good; I never since I knew
you felt so low-hearted and empty of all belief in
myself. I could find it in my heart to pitch my book
into the fire; and I shall be thoroughly glad to get it
off to you, for my heart sinks at the sight or thought
of it. The one remaining poem which had stuck in my
gizzard at the last I succeeded in polishing off last
night, sitting up all night to do it; and I must start
on the preface as soon as this letter is off."
A neighbour's reminiscence is that given by Fr. David Bearne, S. J., in
_The Irish Monthly_, November 1908, who
"recalls two occasions on which I had the privilege
of chatting with the poet--once _tête-à-tête_ in the
delightful seclusion of the gardens at St. Beuno's
College, within sight of Snowdon and of the sea; once
in the thick of the pious crowd that throng each year
to Pantasaph for the Portiuncula. Of each occasion
I retain the happiest memories, though I cannot
recall the exact words of any single sentence that
he uttered. He knew me only as a Jesuit student of
theology, and though I longed to tell him how much I
loved his work, I failed to do so, partly from a sort
of reverential shyness, and partly because, though
he was no chatterer, he led the conversation. On one
occasion I know he had just been making a pilgrimage
to St. Winefride's Well. He spoke of it at length and
with great enthusiasm. But my own mind was occupied
with the man, rather than with what he said. . . . As men
commonly understand the word there was no 'fascination'
about Thompson. There was something better. There was
the _sancta simplicitas_ of the true poet and the real
child."
In 1893 his father was at Rhyl, and Francis sought him there, but
without invitation. He writes:--
"I went over on Monday--only to find that he had left
the previous Wednesday, after having been there for a
month, which things are strange."
To Dr. Thompson the strangeness would be in Francis's unwontedly
active desire to see him. It is probable that each exaggerated the
other's feeling of estrangement. When, in April 1896, Francis heard
that his father was dying, he went to Ashton, but too late. After the
funeral he writes:--
[Illustration: Charles Thompson Mary Turner Thompson
Francis Thompson's Parents]
"I never saw my father again, I cannot speak about it
at present. ---- ---- made it very bitter for me. It
has been nothing but ill-health and sorrow lately, but
I must not trouble you with these things. I saw my
sister looking the merest girl still, and sweeter than
ever. She did not look a day older than ten years ago.
She said I looked very changed and worn."[38]
At Downing he had neighbours in the Feilding family, and it was to
the monastery church that Lady Denbigh came to "make her soul" at the
penitential seasons of the year. This church her husband began to build
when he was an Anglican; then, changing his religion, he had changed
the dedication of his bricks and mortar. From a letter of the Hon.
Everard Feilding to W. M. after F. T.'s death:--
"Your letter reached me at a time when my mind, like
that, I think, of many others, was full of Francis
Thompson; and during the preceding three nights I had
been reading and re-reading aloud to two or three
friends certain of his poems which had specially
touched me, including the _Nocturn_, infinitely
pathetic from my knowledge, however slight, of the man.
"Need I say that I am truly touched to hear that
Thompson should have thought my modest appreciation of
his work as anything more than the most natural thing
in the world? I only met him three times, each time
in the company of my friend Head,[39] who shared my
admiration. Our meeting came about in an absurd enough
wise. A ghost (possibly you have heard, or not
heard, of my taste for these creatures) was reported
active in the neighbourhood of Pantasaph, on my
brother's place in Wales. My own inclination supplied
the motive, and an idle week of Head's the occasion, of
a visit there, and we camped a few nights in a derelict
mansion, rejoicing in the appropriately ominous name of
Pickpocket Hall, in hopes of interviewing the spectre.
Needless to say, we failed. But we got the story of
the Irish monk; also the story of the practical nun,
who scented buried treasure which she hoped to unearth
to the profit of her community; and of the oldest
inhabitant; and, finally, of the Poet. The people at
the monastery had told us that Thompson had been a
witness, and we decided on a call; and at about five
one evening made our way to the tiny cottage where
he lodged, and asked for him. He was still in bed.
We returned at 6.30. He was _still_ in bed. So we
concocted a letter, suitable, as we imagined, to the
person who had written Thompson's poems, not quite
English, somewhat elided, and as inverted as we could
manage, ending with an invitation to breakfast at 9.30
that night and a conference with our hobgoblin. And
somewhat pleased with our effort, we retired to our
haunted mansion and awaited events. At 9.30 he came and
breakfasted while we supped. We said at once to one
another: 'This is not the man to whom we wrote that
letter.' For, instead of parables in polysyllables and
a riot of imagery, we found simplicity and modesty and
a manner which would have been almost commonplace if it
had not been so sincere. But the charm and interest of
his talk grew with the night, and it was already dawn
when, the ghost long since forgotten, we escorted him
back across the snow to his untimely lunch. He told us,
I remember, of his poetical development, and of how,
until recently, he had fancied that the end of poetry
was reached in the stringing together of ingenious
images, an art in which, he somewhat naïvely confessed,
he knew himself to excel; but that now he knew it
should reach further, and he hoped for an improvement
in his future work. _New Poems_ was subsequent to this
meeting. It was only in his account of the ghost,
which had 'charged his body like a battery so that he
felt thunderstorms in his hair,' that the imaginary
individual to whom we had addressed our letter revealed
himself.
"He dined with us twice afterwards, the second time
appearing an hour late, with his head tied up in an
appalling bandage, the result of having been knocked
down by a hansom, so that I took his arrival under the
circumstances as a compliment second only to your own
kind letter. For years I haven't seen him. A letter,
to ask him if he would renew acquaintance, has several
times trembled on the tip of my pen; but I was told he
had become inaccessible, and it never went, and now I
am very sorry."
Something of the Pantasaph ghost got into verse, which I take from a
note-book:--
More creatures lackey man
Than he has note of: through the ways of air
Angels go here and there
About his businesses: we tread the floor
Of a whole sea of spirits: evermore
Oozy with spirits ebbs the air and flows
Round us, and no man knows.
Spirits drift upon the populous breeze
And throng the twinkling leaves that twirl on summer trees.
In notes headed "Varia on Magic" he quotes the _Anatomy of
Melancholy_:--
"The air is not so full of flies in summer, as it is at
all times of invisible devils: this Paracelsus stiffly
maintains."
F. T. wrote to A. M. after the meeting:--
"Is it true that you are going to collect your
contributions to the papers during the last few years?
I sincerely hope so. . . . There was a Dr. Head, a member
of the Savile Club, over here last autumn with Everard
Feilding, who spoke with great enthusiasm of your
"Autolycus." He quoted a bit relating, I think, to
Angelica Kaufmann,[40] who spent a large number of
years in 'taking the plainness off paper.' The phrase
delighted him, as it did me who had not seen it. . . .
I passed a pleasant night with the two. We were
sleeping in a haunted house to interview the ghost;
but as he was a racing-man, he probably found our
conversation too literary to put off his incognito."
The friars helped him to another companion, Coventry Patmore, who as
a member of the Third Order, went in 1894 to stay at Pantasaph. There
Father Anselm, a bachelor of St. Francis, with the Lady Poverty first
among his feminine acquaintance, could meet the greatest of English
love-poets upon equal terms. It was to Fr. Anselm that Francis had lent
Patmore's _Religio Poetæ_ before trusting himself to review it, and
it was by the same friar that he was helped to appreciate Patmore's
trustworthiness as a witness to divine truths. By none save by a priest
of the Church would the poet of the Church have been satisfied that
he might lawfully accept, or attempt to accept, teaching that had
once seemed to him inimical to orthodoxy. _Religio Poetæ_, at first a
stumbling-block, was to become the corner-stone of his later poetry.
Two years before (in August 1892) he had said there were two points
in C.P.'s teaching--as to the nature of the union between God and man
in this world and the next, and the definition of the constitution of
Heaven--that he refused absolutely to accept. He went specially to
Crawley in 1892 to consult Fr. Cuthbert on these points. And he had at
first only unwillingly admitted Patmore's power over him. To a passage
of St. John (chap. xxi.) he adds a note that reveals his mood:--
"Amen, Amen, I say to thee; when thou wert younger, thou didst gird
thyself, and didst walk where thou wouldst. But when thou shalt be old,
thou shalt stretch forth thy hands and another shall gird thee, and
lead thee where thou wouldst not."
To this he adds: "Apply to spiritual maturity."
* * * * *
The barriers down, they quickly recognised cause for intimacy. It was
during Patmore's first visit that Francis made the discovery. He seems
at first hardly to have known it. Writing of it to A. M.:--
"Dear Lady, I thank you for your kind letter, though
it observed an impenitent silence on the subject of
your songs unsent. (That last phrase has a ring of the
only Lewis.)[41] I have had a charming visit from Mr.
Patmore. He bore himself towards me with a dignity and
magnanimity which are not of this age's stature. By
the way, he repeated to me two or three short poems
addressed to yourself. I hope there may be a series
of such songs. You would then have a triple tiara
indeed--crowned by yourself, by me, and highest crowned
by him."
But afterwards in the more vivid light of memory, he said:--
"Though never a word on either side directly touched or
explained the exceptional nature of the proposal, it
was well understood between us--by me no less than by
him--that it was no common or conventional friendship
he asked of me. Not therefore has he sought out my
Welsh hermitage; and scalpelled the fibres of me."
As a rule Francis found as much solitude among the Welsh mountains as
in the desolation of the Harrow Road, but now Patmore walked with him.
F. T. notes their common pleasure in the landscape, "particularly
beautiful--something to do with the light, Patmore thinks." To be in
common light is even better preparation for the communion of poets than
to be on common ground. Friar and seer between them enclosed him at
evening in the monastic parlour. Patmore writes:--
"Francis Thompson and all the Fathers spent two
hours last night in my room, and we had excellent
talk. Father Anselm, the Superior, and a profound
contemplative, said he had never read anything so fine
as the 'Precursor.' He and I had a long talk about
nuptial love, and he went all lengths with me in honour
of the marriage embrace. The Fathers help me to get
through my cigarettes, of which I should like to have
another consignment as soon as possible."
And again:--
"I spend part of my day with Francis Thompson, who is a
delightful companion, full of the best talk."
With the reading of _Religio Poetæ_ and the little book of St. Bernard
translations, Francis discovers their author to be "deeply perceptive
of the Scriptures' symbolic meanings, scouted by moderns; and his
instant intuitional use of the symbolic imagery gives his work the
quality of substantial poetry. In proportion to the height of their
sanctity the Saints are inevitable poets. Sanctity is essential song."
These essays moved Francis to the rare point of letter-writing:--
"THE MONASTERY, PANTASAPH, _June 15, '93_.
"DEAR SIR,--The esoteric essays--which I naturally
turned to first--could only have come from the
writer of _The Unknown Eros_. One alone I have
gracelessness--not to dispute--but to wish to extend.
It is that on the 'Precursor,' where I quite admit
the interpretation, but am inclined to stickle for an
interpretation which would cover and include your own.
Against one reprehensible habit of yours, however,
revealed in this book, I feel forced to utter a
protest. In a fragment of a projected article, which
has remained a fragment, I had written of 'poets born
with an instinctive sense of veritable correspondences
hidden from the multitude.' Then I went on thus: 'In
this, too, lies real distinction and fancy. Leigh
Hunt, interpreting Coleridge as shallowly as Charmian
interpreted the Soothsayer, said that fancy detected
outward analogies, but imagination inward ones. The
truth is that inward resemblance may be as superficial
as outward resemblance; and it is then the product
of fancy, or fantasy. When the resemblance is more
than a resemblance, when it is rooted in the hidden
nature of things, its discernment is the product of
imagination. This is the real distinction: fancy
detects resemblances, imagination identities.' Now if
you will return to your own _Religio Poetæ,_ you will
see of what I accuse you. Masters have privileges,
I admit, but I draw the line at looking over their
pupils' shoulders various odd leagues away.
"To be serious; your little book stands by a stream
of current literature like Cleopatra's Needle by the
dirt-eating Thames.
"I fear, alas! it will not receive the mysterious
hieroglyph of the British Artisan. I remain, yours
sincerely,
FRANCIS THOMPSON."
And a little later, of his own "Orient Ode":--
"DEAR MR. PATMORE,--I shall either send you with this,
or later, a small poem of my own; not for its literary
merit, but because, without such a disclaimer, I fear
you would think I had been the first to find your book
'd----d good to steal from.' As a matter of fact,
it was written soon after Easter, and was suggested
by passages in the liturgies of Holy Saturday, some
of which--at rather appalling length--I have quoted
at the head of its two parts. That was done for the
sake of those who might cavil at its doctrines.
Indeed--with superfluous caution--I intended much of
it to be sealed; but your book has mainly broken the
seals I had put upon it. There is quite enough in it
of yours, without the additional presumption that I
had hastened to make immediate use of your last book.
As far as others are concerned, it must rest under
that imputation to which the frequent coincidence
in the selection of symbolism--as an example, the
basing of a whole passage on the symbolic meaning
of the _West_--very naturally leads. To yourself
such coincidence is explicable, it will not be to
'outsiders.'--Yours always,
FRANCIS THOMPSON."
And later:--
"What I put forth as a bud he blew out and it
blossomed. The contact of our ideas was dynamic; he
reverberated my idea with such and so many echoes that
it returned to me greater than I gave it forth. He
opened it as you would open an oyster, or placed it
under a microscope, and showed me what it contained."
"CRECCAS COTTAGE, PANTASAPH, _Tuesday_.
"DEAR MR. PATMORE,--The poem, even if I am to take
your high and valued praises quite literally, has a
defect of which you must be conscious, though you have
courteously refrained from noticing it. It echoes your
own manner largely, in the metre, and even in some of
the diction--the latter a thing of which, I think, I
have seldom before rendered myself guilty.
"Now it is possible in rare cases--_e.g._ Keats'
'Hyperion'--for an echo to take on body enough to
survive as literature. But even should my poem so
survive it must rest under the drawback of being
no more distinctive Thompson than 'Hyperion' is
distinctive Keats.
"With regard to the other poem, I want to allude
particularly to your invaluable correction of my
misuse of the Western symbolism. On re-examination,
the whole passage discloses a confusion of thought
naturally causing a confusing of symbolism. My
attention was called to the point about Egyptian
worship by a footnote in Dr. Robert Clarke's 'Story
of a Conversion,' in _Merry England_[42]. I at once
perceived its symbolic significance, and asked myself
how it came that we reckoned our points of the compass
facing to the North. The only explanation I could
surmise was that it was a relic of Set-worship among
our Saxon ancestors. Do you mean that _historically_
men have prayed in three distinct periods to W., E.,
and N.?
* * * * *
Always yours,
FRANCIS THOMPSON."
C. P. to F. T.:--
"LYMINGTON, HANTS, _September 10, '95._
"MY DEAR THOMPSON,--I hope I have not kept your Poem
too long. I have read it several times, and found
it quite intelligible enough for song which is also
prophecy. We are upon very much the same lines, but
you, I think, are more advanced than I am. 'Dieu et ma
Dame' is the legend of both of us, but at present Ma
Dame is too much for the balance, peace, and purity of
my religion. There is too much of heart-ache in it.
"I have ventured to affix a few notes of interrogation
to unusual modes of expression.
"I hear, from Mrs. Meynell, that Mr. Meynell is with
you. Please remember me very kindly to him.--Yours ever
truly,
COVENTRY PATMORE.
"_P.S._--The world has worshipped turning to the West,
to the East, and to the North. The 'New Eve' is the
South, and, when we turn thither, all things will be
renewed, and God will 'turn our captivity as Rivers in
the South,' and we shall know Him in the flesh 'from
sea to sea.'"
He later explains that the "South" is the symbol of Divine Womanhood.
The next letter from Patmore, dated a month later, is also of
symbolism:--
"I wish I could see and talk to you on the subject
of the symbolism you speak of. The Bible and all the
theologies are full of it, but it is too deep and
significant to get itself uttered in writing. The
Psalms especially are full of it. On the matter of
the 'North' note that verse: 'Promotion cometh not
from the South, nor the East, nor the West.' That is,
it cometh from the North. The North seems always to
signify the original Godhead, the 'Father'--or the
Devil. For the same symbol is used in the Bible and in
the mythologies for either extreme.[43] 'Water,' for
example, is constantly used for the sensible nature in
its extreme purity, as in the Blessed Virgin, or in its
extreme corruption. This honouring of the 'North' may
very likely have been at the bottom of the seeking of
the points of the compass from that quarter.
"I hope, some day, to see and have speech with you
on this and other matters. Meantime I will only hint
that the North represents the simple Divine virility,
the South the Divine womanhood,[44] the East their
synthesis in the Holy Spirit, and the West the pure
_natural_ womanhood 'full of grace.' I could give
you no end of proofs, but it would take me months to
collect them, from all I have read and forgotten."
This spacious correspondence, on things that will not "get themselves
uttered in writing," was, nevertheless, continued. F. T. writes:--
"You rather overlook the purport of my inquiry in
regard to the symbolic question. I wanted to know if
there had been any actual progressive development among
the nations with regard to the quarters in which they
worshipped--as an historic fact, apart from symbolic
meaning. But this is such a minor matter, and the
concluding hint of your letter contains so much of
value to me, that I am not sorry you misapprehended me.
Of course I am quite aware that it is impossible to
answer openly--indeed impossible to ask openly--deeper
matters in a letter. But that is not requisite in my
case. It is enough that my gaze should be set in the
necessary direction; the rest may be safely left to the
practised fixity of my looking. Indicative longings
such as you employed in your letter, you may safely
trust me to understand. With regard to what you say
about the symbolism of the North, I had substantially
discerned for myself. Indeed it formed part of a little
essay already written. It will be none the worse for
the corroboration of your remarks; there is always
something in your way of stating even what is already
to me a _res visa_, which adds sight to my seeing.
The quotation from the Psalms is new and grateful to
me. But I was aware of the thing to which it points.
Shakespeare speaks of 'The lordly monarch of the North'
(I was confusing it with a passage in _Comus_), and
Butler remarks--
Cardan believed great states depend
Upon the tip o' the Bear's tail's end.
"Set was given by the Egyptians the lordship of
temporal powers; and of course I am aware of the
esoteric meaning of this and of Cardan's saying--indeed
this was what I intended by my observation that
I surmised our Northern aspect in reckoning the
compass to be a relic of Set-worship among our Teuton
ancestors; though of course I was aware that Set, by
that name, was an Egyptian deity.
"Also I am familiar with the principle and significance
in this and mythological imagery generally. Indeed,
without the knowledge of this principle both
Scripture and the mythologies are full of baffling
contradictions. When I began seriously to consider
mythologies comparatively, I cut myself with the
broken reed on which all the 'scientific' students
fall back--this significance belongs to an earlier,
that to a later, development. But having eyes which
'scientific' students have not, I soon saw that fact
gave me the lie in all directions. And when I came to
make a comprehensive study of the Hebrew prophets, with
the Eastern mythologies in mind, I speedily discovered
the systematic use of the dual significance, and the
difficulty vanished."
From Coventry Patmore:--
"Thank you for your very interesting letter, which
shows me how extraordinarily alike are our methods of
and experience in contemplation. . . .
"God bless and help you to bear your crown of thorns,
and to prosper in the great, though possibly obscure,
career He seems to have marked out for you! My work,
such as it is, is done, and I am now only waiting,
somewhat impatiently, for death, and the fulfilment
of the promises of God, which include all that we
have ever desired here, in perfection beyond all
hope.--Yours,
C. P."
FOOTNOTES:
[34] Afterwards he lodged at the post-office, and finally in a cottage
on the hill behind the monastery.
[35] The Capuchins (Franciscans), are peculiar in aspect among
Religious Orders as bearded friars.
[36] This was written long before Mr. Montgomery Carmichael's
translation of _The Lady Poverty_ brought the thirteenth-century
writer's claim to the world as the Franciscan cloister to Thompson's
notice.
[37] "After Her Going" was written in these days.
[38] The mortuary card, preserved in F. T.'s prayer-book, runs:--
"Of your charity pray for the soul of Charles Thompson, M.R.C.S.,
L.S.A., who departed this life April 9th, 1896, aged 72, fortified by
the rites of Holy Church"--with the motto "The silent and wise man
shall be honoured."
[39] Dr. Henry Head, F.R.S.
[40] It was not Angelica, but Mrs. Delany.
[41] An allusion to Lewis Morris's _Songs Unsung_.
[42] On this subject, and the derivation of portions of Ecclesiastes,
he corresponded with Fr. Clarke. The contents of commonplace-books of
a somewhat early period suggest a taste for many kindred themes. In
one he has entered random "Varia on Magic," accounts of and comments
on many heresies, suspicions of the Masons, and fears of a Divine
Visitation upon the general wickedness in the shape of general war;
with these are important notes on Creation Myths, the Chaldean Genesis,
the Egyptian Crocodile, the Kabbalist Doctrine of the Pre-existence
of Souls; some symbols connected with the Incarnation, the Lotus, the
ritual of the funeral sacrifice, with transcriptions from the _Book
of Respirations_, the _Prayer to Ammon Ra, &c._; and _The meaning of
Easter_, a cutting scored with his own excursions into the etymology of
the word--from Ishtar, the Chaldæan goddess--"And Ishtar I take to be
Ashak Tar (or Tur) the Lady of the Light of the Way." But at the turn
of a few pages he is found enlarging and correcting. Still nearer his
real concern are the notes on varieties of the Cross symbol.
[43] In a poem "The Schoolmaster for God," which Francis thought
just not good enough to put into a volume, he represents Satan as
scaling the walls of God's garth, stealing the seed, and giving it
a clandestine growth, which grew to fruit that made men who ate it
an-hungered for God. And in this poem Satan is named "that Robber from
the North." Again, in one of the "Ecclesiastical Ballads," the Veteran
of Heaven declares, "The Prince I drave forth held the Mount of the
North."
[44] See F. T.'s poem "The Newer Eve," or "After Woman," with whom the
world should rise instead of fall.