USHAW
"Really there is nothing quite so holy as a College
friendship. Two lads, absolutely innocent of everything in
the world or in life, living in ideals of duty and dreams of
future miracles, and telling each other all their troubles,
and bracing each other up. I had such a friend once. We were
both about fifteen when separated. Our friendship began with
a fight, of which I got the worst; then my friend became for
me a sort of ideal which still lives. I should be almost
afraid to ask where he is now (men grow away from each other
so): but your letter brought his voice and face back--just as
if his ghost had come in to lay a hand on my shoulder."
St. Cuthbert's College, Ushaw, is situated on a slope of the Yorkshire
Hills, near Durham. In the estimation of English Roman Catholics, it
stands next to Stonyhurst as an educational establishment. Since Patrick
Lafcadio Hearn's days it has counted amongst its pupils Francis Thomson,
the poet, and Cardinal Wiseman, the archbishop, both of whom ever
retained an affectionate and respectful memory of their Alma Mater.
Lafcadio Hearn was sent there from Redhill in Surrey, arriving on
September 9th, 1863, at the age of thirteen. Mrs. Brenane is not likely
to have been a determining influence in sending him to college. For all
her narrow-minded piety, the old lady was warm-hearted and intensely
attached to Lafcadio, and must have known how unfitted he was for
collegiate life in consequence of constitutional delicacy and defective
eyesight.
We have seen, also, that she had little to do with his religious
education. In a letter written from Japan to his half-sister, Mrs.
Atkinson, Lafcadio declares that he was sent to a school "kept by a
hateful, venomous-hearted old maid," but his idea must either have been
prompted by a sort of crazy fear of the far-reaching power of the
Jesuits, or by the inaccuracy of his memory with regard to many early
impressions.
That he was sent to Ushaw with a view to entering the priesthood is
incorrect. The education at Ushaw is by no means exclusively devoted to
preparing boys for the priesthood. In a letter to his brother, he says:
"You are misinformed as to Grand-Aunt educating your brother for the
priesthood. He had the misfortune to spend some years in Catholic
Colleges, where the educational system chiefly consists of keeping the
pupils as ignorant as possible. I was not even a Catholic."
Monsignor Corbishly, the late ecclesiastical head of Ushaw College and a
school-fellow of Lafcadio's, stated that if there were any ideas on the
part of Hearn's relatives that he should enter the priesthood, the
authorities of Ushaw College, as soon as they had become aware of the
"mental and moral tendencies" of the boy, would have decided that he was
quite unfit to become a member of the Roman Catholic priesthood. This
disposes of one of the many Hearn myths.
That non-success should have attended the endeavours of the authorities
of Ushaw and that most of his contemporaries, now shining lights in the
Church of Rome, should refer to Lafcadio Hearn as a "painful subject"
was a foregone conclusion. The same fanciful, vagrant, original spirit
that had characterised his childhood, characterised him apparently in
his college career. Besides an emphatic antagonism to laws and
conventions, a distinguishing characteristic of his was a horror of
forms and ceremonies; one of the manifestations that fascinated him in
Shintoism and Buddhism later was their worship of nature and entire
absence of ceremonial or doctrinal teaching.
All the aims and thoughts of his boyish heart were directed against
prescribed studies and ordinary grooves of thought. A rebellion against
restraint, a something explosive and incalculable, places Hearn amongst
those whom the French term _desequilibres_, one of those ill-poised and
erratic spirits, whose freaks and eccentricities are so nearly allied to
madness.
Besides his rebellion against restraint, his dislike to ecclesiasticism
was artistic and aesthetic.
Before he came to college his mind, as we have seen, was kindled and
informed with enthusiasm for natural beauty and the grace of the ancient
Hellenic idea. And from nature and Hellenic ideas, Christianity, as
exemplified by the Roman Catholic church, has always stood aloof.
"I remember," he relates in one of his essays, "when a boy, lying on my
back in the grass, gazing into the summer blue above me, and wishing I
could melt into it, become a part of it. For these fancies I believe
that a religious tutor was innocently responsible; he had tried to
explain to me, because of certain dreamy questions, what he termed 'the
folly and the wickedness of Pantheism,' with the result that I
immediately became a Pantheist, at the tender age of fifteen. And my
imaginings presently led me not only to want the sky for a playground,
but also to become the sky!"
That there were faults and misunderstandings and mistaken ideas of
discipline on the part of his preceptors is perhaps possible. Those were
the days of "stripes innumerable," and what was a right-minded
ecclesiastic to do with a boy, but thrash him, when, in the very
stronghold of Catholicism, he declared himself a Pantheist?
If Monsignor Corbishly with his tactful and unprejudiced mind had been
at that time head of Ushaw, as he ultimately became, instead of a
contemporary of Hearn's, it is open to conjecture that the life of the
little genius might have taken an entirely different course. Like his
prototype, Flaubert, there was a _fond d'ecclesiastique_ in Hearn's
nature, as was proved by his later life. Had his earnestness, industry,
and ascetic self-denial been appealed to, with his warm heart and
pliable nature, might he not have been tamed and brought into line?
It is the old story where genius is concerned. Because an exceptional
youth happens to place himself in revolt against the system of a
university, the authorities cannot remake their laws to fit into his
eccentricity. Hearn, as he himself confesses, voluntarily handicapped
himself all his life, and lost the race, run with stronger,
better-conditioned competitors. But that he should have come away from
Ushaw College, as he declares, knowing as little as when he entered, is
plainly one of his customary exaggerations. The Reverend H. F. Berry,
French master during his residence there, was certainly not competent to
instil a finished French style into the future translator of "Sylvestre
Bonnard." But it is impossible that he could have left college entirely
ignorant of English literature of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries,
remaining, as he did, at the head of his class in English composition
for three years of his residence at Ushaw.
He himself gives a valid explanation for the reasons of his ignorance on
many subjects. His memories, he says, "of early Roman history were
cloudy, because the Republic did not interest him; but his conceptions
of the Augustan era remained extremely vivid; and great was his delight
in those writers who related how Hadrian almost realised that impossible
dream of modern aesthetics, the 'Resurrection of Greek Art.'
"Of modern Germany and Scandinavia he knew nothing; but the Eddas, and
the Sagas, and the Chronicles of the Heimskringla, and the age of the
Vikings and Berserks, he had at his finger ends, because they were
mighty and awesomely grand."
Ornamental education, he declared, when writing to Mr. Watkin from Kobe,
in 1896, was a wicked, farcical waste of time. "It left me incapacitated
to do anything; and still I feel the sorrow and the sin of having
dissipated ten years in Latin and Greek stuff, when a knowledge of some
one practical thing, and of a modern language or two, would have been of
so much service. As it is, I am only self taught; for everything I
learned at school I have since had to unlearn. You helped me with some
of the unlearning, dear old Dad!..."
In answer to a letter of inquiry, Canon D----, one of those in his class
at the time, writes: "Poor Paddy Hearn! I cannot tell you much about
him, but what little I can, I will now give you. I remember him as a boy
about 14 or 15 very well. I can see his face now, beaming with delight
at some of his many mischievous plots with which he disturbed the
College and usually was flogged for. He was some two or three classes,
or more, below my own, hence never on familiar terms. But he was always
considered 'wild as a March hare,' full of escapades, and the terror of
his masters, but always most kind and good-natured, and I fancy very
popular with his school-mates. He never did harm to anybody, but he
loved to torment the authorities. He had one eye either gone or of
glass. There was a wildish boy called 'St. Ronite,'[4] who was one of
his companions in mischief. He laughed at his many whippings, wrote
poetry about them and the birch, etc., and was, in fact, quite
irresponsible."
[4] I give this name as it is written in Canon D----'s letter.
Monsignor Corbishly (during the latter years of his life head of Ushaw
College) gives the following information about Lafcadio:--
"He came here from Redhill, Surrey, a few months after I did; no one
could be in the College without knowing him. He was always very much in
evidence, very popular among his school-fellows. He played many pranks
of a very peculiar and imaginative kind. He was full of fun, wrote very
respectable verses for a boy, was an omnivorous reader, worshipped
muscle, had his note-book full of brawny arms, etc.
"As a student he shone only in English writing; he was first in his
class the first time he composed in English, and kept first, or nearly
first, all the time he was here, and there were several in his class who
were considered very good English writers--for boys. In other subjects,
he was either quite middling or quite poor. I do not suppose he exerted
himself except in English.
"I should say he was very happy here altogether, had any amount to say
and was very original. He was not altogether a desirable boy, from the
Superior's point of view, yet his playfulness of manner and brightness,
disarmed any feeling of anger for his many escapades.... He was so very
curious a boy, so wild in the tumult of his thoughts, that you felt he
might do anything in different surroundings."
Most of the accounts given by his school-fellows at the time repeat the
same as to his wildness and his facility in writing English. In this
subject he seems to have excelled all his school-fellows, invariably
getting the prize for English composition. Later, at Cincinnati,
Lafcadio told his friend Mr. Tunison that he remembered, as a boy, being
given a prize for English literature and feeling such a very little
fellow, when he got up before the whole school to receive it.
His appearance seems to have been somewhat ungainly, and he was
exceedingly shortsighted. When reading he had to bring the book very
close to his eyes. He had a great taste for the strange and weird, and
had a certain humour of a grim character. There was always something
mysterious about him, a mystery which he delighted in increasing rather
than dissipating. The confession which he is supposed to have made to
Father William Wrennal that he hoped the devil would come to him in the
form of a beautiful woman, as he had come to the anchorites in the
desert, was worthy of his fellow-countryman Sheridan, in its Celtic
mischief and humour.
Mr. Achilles Daunt, of Kilcascan Castle, County Cork, seems to have been
Lafcadio's principal chum at Ushaw. Mr. Daunt has considerable literary
talents himself, and has written one or two delightful books of travel.
His reminiscences of Lafcadio Hearn at Ushaw are far the most detailed
and interesting. He says that Lafcadio's descriptive talent was already
noticeable in those days. The wild and ghostly in literature was what
chiefly attracted him. "Naturally of a sceptical turn of mind, he once
rather shocked some of us by demanding evidence of beliefs, which we had
never dreamt of questioning. He loved nature in her exterior aspects,
and his conversation, for a lad of his age, was highly picturesque.
Knightly feats of arms, combats with gigantic foes in deep forests, low
red moons throwing their dim light across desolate spaces, and glinting
on the armour of great champions, storms howling over wastes and ghosts
shrieking in the gale--these were favourite topics of conversation, and
in describing these fancies his language was unusually rich.
"I believe he was regarded as slightly off his mental balance. He and I
were at one time in the same class; but he was kept for two years in, I
think, the class or 'school,' as we called it, of 'High Figures.'[5]
This separated us a little, as the lads in the High Figures were not
permitted to use the same library as we used in the 'Grammar Class.' A
note was handed to me one evening from him as I sat reading in this
library, inviting me to take a stroll. The style of this epistle was
eminently characteristic of his tastes and style, and although it is now
more than forty years ago, I think the following is very nearly a
correct copy of it:--
[5] "High Figures" is the name of a class or "School" (as we call
"classes" at Ushaw), _e.g._ Low Figures, High Figures, Grammar, Syntax,
Poetry, Rhetoric, etc. If a boy is kept in the same school or class for
two years, _e.g._ High Figures, it is owing to his not being fit to be
moved up into the next class, Grammar. Each class has its own library,
so that a boy in the class of High Figures would not be allowed to
intrude into the Library of the school or class above him, Grammar.
"'Meet me at twelve at the Gothic door,
Massive and quaint, of the days of yore;
When the spectral forms of the mighty dead
Glide by in the moonlight with silent tread;
When the owl from the branch of the blasted oak
Shrieks forth his note so wild,
And the toad from the marsh echoes with croak
In the moonlight soft and mild,
When the dead in the lonely vaults below
Rise up in grim array
And glide past with footsteps hushed and slow,
Weird forms, unknown in day;
When the dismal death-bells clang so near,
Sounding o'er world and lea,
And the wail of the spirits strikes the ear
Like the moan of the sobbing sea.'
"He was always at school called Paddy. He would never tell what the
initial 'L' stood for; probably fearing that his companions would make
sport of a name which to them would seem outlandish, or at least odd.
His face usually bore an expression of sadness, although he now and then
romped as gaily as any of his comrades. But the sadness returned when
the passing excitement was over. He cared little, or not at all, for
school games, cricket, football, etc., and this not merely because of
his want of sight, but because they failed to interest him. I and he
were in the habit of walking round the shrubberies in the front of the
College, indulging our tastes in fanciful conversation until the bell
summoned us again to study.
"A companion one day alluded to the length of his home address. Lafcadio
said his address was longer--'P. L. Hearn, Esq., Ushaw College, near
Durham, England, Europe, Eastern Hemisphere, The Earth, Universe, Space,
God.' His companion allowed that his address was more modest.
"You ask if Hearn ever spent his holidays with relatives in Ireland or
Wales. As far as I can remember, he latterly never left Ushaw during the
vacations. He was reticent regarding his family, and although I believe
I was his most intimate friend I cannot recall his ever having told me
anything of his relations with his family, or of his childhood."
It is presumably to Mr. Achilles Daunt that Hearn alludes in a letter
written thirty years after he had left Ushaw, which has been placed as a
heading to this chapter.
At this time occurred an incident that influenced the whole of Hearn's
subsequent life. While playing a game known as the "Giant's Stride" one
of his companions allowed the knotted end of the rope to slip from his
hand. It struck Lafcadio, and in consequence of the inflammation
supervening he lost the sight of an eye. "I am horribly disfigured by
the loss of my left eye," he tells Mrs. Atkinson, "punched out at
school. They are gentle in English Schools, particularly in Jesuitical
schools!" He elsewhere mentions an operation undergone in Dublin in the
hope of saving the eye. Of this statement we have no confirmation.
Lafcadio seems to have been born with prominent near-sighted eyes. They
must have been a Hearn inheritance, for Mrs. Atkinson's son, Carleton,
has prominent myopic eyes, and Lafcadio's eldest son has been
disqualified, by his near-sight, from entering the Japanese army.
There is something intensely pathetic in Hearn's perception of the idea
of beauty, and of the reality manifested in his own person. Something of
the ghostliness in his present shell must have belonged, he imagined, to
the vanished world of beauty, must have mingled freely with the best of
youth and grace and force, must have known the worth of long, lithe
limbs on the course of glory, and of the pride of a winner in contests,
and the praise of maidens, stately as the young sapling of a palm which
Odysseus beheld springing by the altar in Delos.
Little of beauty, or grace, or lithe limbs belonged to Paddy Hearn. He
never was more than five feet three inches in height and was much
disfigured by his injured eye. The idea that he was repulsive in
appearance, especially to women, always pursued him.
Adversity sows the seed. With his extraordinary recuperative power,
Lafcadio all his life made ill-luck an effective germinating power.
Twenty years later, in one of his editorials in the _Times Democrat_, he
alludes to the artistic value of myopia for an impressionist artist,
declaring that the inability to see detail in a landscape makes it more
mystical and impressive. Certainly, in imaginative work his defective
sight seems, if one can say so, a help, rather than a drawback in the
conjuring up of ghostly scenes and wraiths and imaginings, glimpses, as
it were, enlarging and extending the world around him and insight into
others far removed from ordinary comprehension or practical insight. The
quality of double perception became at last a cultivated habit of mind.
"I have the double sensation of being myself a ghost, and of being
haunted--haunted by the prodigious, luminous spectre of the world," he
says, in his essay on "Dust."
The fact remains, however, that no pursuits requiring quickness and
accuracy of sight were henceforth possible for him; the cultivation of
his quite remarkable talent for drawing was out of the question. No
doubt his sight had been defective from birth, but the entire loss of
the sight of one eye intensified it to a considerable extent, and kept
him in continual terror of complete loss of visual power.
It has been stated that Lafcadio Hearn was expelled from Ushaw.
Ecclesiastics are not prone to state their reasons for any line of
action they may choose to take. No inquiries were made and no reasons
were given. His departure is easily accounted for without any question
of expulsion. In fact, it was a matter of necessity, for in consequence
of the loss of the money, invested in the Molyneux business, his
grand-aunt was no longer able to pay his school fees.
Towards the end of his residence at college he generally spent his
holidays (or a portion of them) at Ushaw, going home less and less as
time went on.
Mrs. Brenane's mind, weakened by age and misfortune, was incapable any
longer of forming a sound opinion. Those surrounding her persuaded her
that the boy whom she had hitherto loved as her own son, and declared
her heir, was a "scapegrace and infidel, no fit inmate for a Christian
household." Besides which, the lamentable fact remained that she, who
only a few years before had lived in affluence, no longer owned a home
of her own, and Lafcadio was hardly likely to care to avail himself of
Molyneux's hospitality.
At the time of Henry Molyneux's marriage to Miss Agnes Keogh, a marriage
which took place a year before his failure in 1866, Mrs. Brenane
bestowed the whole of the landed property her husband, Justin Brenane,
had left her, in the form of a marriage settlement on the young lady.
The rest of her life, therefore, was spent as a dependent in the
Molyneux's house, Sweetbriars, Tramore.
Thus did Lafcadio Hearn lose his inheritance, but if he had inherited it
would he ever have been the artist he ultimately became? He was wont to
say that hard knocks and intellectual starvation were, with him, a
necessary stimulus to creative work, and pain of exceeding value
betimes. "Everybody who does me a wrong, indirectly does me a right. I
am forced to detach myself from things of the world, and devote myself
to things of the imagination and spirit."
Amidst luxurious surroundings, with a liberal competency to live upon,
might he not perhaps have spent his life in reading or formulating vague
philosophical theories, seeking the "unknown reality," instead of being
driven by the pressing reality of having to support a wife and children?