EARLY LIFE OF FATHER MASTAI
Birth in 1792—A Happy Family—His Youth—Epilepsy—The Church at
the Time of Napoleon—Abduction of Pius to Avignon—Napoleon’s
Downfall—Return of the Pope to Rome—His Reception—Prophecies
Regarding Pius IX—His Journey to Chile—Ocean Trip—Across the
Andes—Failure of Mission—Rounding Cape Horn—English Settlement on
the Cape—“Love-of-the-Soil”—The Falkland Islands.
Nearly a hundred years have passed since the day when the young priest
who was to be the best loved and the worst hated man in Europe said
his first Mass, and Time’s heavy wings have already blurred his memory
in their flight, to a fading outline for the present generation. Very
few now know anything about his early years, and in the story of them
the finger of God is so clear that it seems to be worth while to make a
brief record of the steps by which he was prepared for the burdens and
honours of his Pontificate. In reading about his childhood one seems
to be carried back not one, but many centuries, so sharply does it
contrast with the ideals placed before children in these latter days.
It seems to be a road on which there is no returning, but there can be
no harm in glancing back at it for a moment.
It was on the 13th of May, 1792, that Pius IX was born, in the
Umbrian seaport of Sinigaglia, in the Papal States. His father, Count
Mastai-Ferretti, was the descendant of a long line of noblemen who had
come thither from Crema in Lombardy towards the end of the Fourteenth
Century. Home-loving but public-spirited men they had been, and for
a long time their fellow-citizens had confided to them the chief
interests of the town, one of the family always filling the office
of Mayor, which had thereby become practically hereditary, to the
advantage and convenience of all concerned. So Count Mastai was Mayor
of his native city at the time that his youngest son came to make the
eighth in the house already filled with the laughter and play of three
sons and four daughters. The mother of this large family was Caterina
Solazzo, one of those noble ladies of whom there were yet so many in
Italy when I was a child—a woman of high education and devout soul,
who saw in her maternal duties the highest honour to which woman could
aspire, and fulfilled them with whole-hearted joy and ardour. That
meant work such as the modern woman, who thinks she is an example to
toilers for the benefit of the race, would shrink from; the Countess
had to rise very early so that she should be the first to approach her
children’s bedsides when the rising sun woke the nursery to the frolic
and laughter of a new day, and from that moment till all were tucked
up and asleep at night she never let them out of her sight. The first
words they had ever spoken were the Holy Names, the first conscious
movement of each baby hand had been trained to make the sign of the
Cross.
They were all good and happy children, and the mother-heart prayed and
watched and taught, doubtless forming noble plans for all, but as the
youngest grew older his sweetness and goodness filled her with the hope
that he might be called to the special service of God. Even as a tiny
child his charity was of the alert, all-embracing kind that generally
spells saintship in the end; toys, sweets, money—the little boy always
found poor children to bestow them upon and would beg for his protégés
when his own stores were exhausted. Naturally of a particularly
cheerful and sociable disposition—as indeed he remained all his
life—yet he pondered much on the stories he heard and took things to
heart in a way very unusual for a child of his age. All devout and
loyal subjects of the Papacy were grieving at that time over the trials
inflicted by Napoleon on Pius VII, kept a prisoner far from his own
dominions and subjected to many insults and privations. The Countess
one evening told her son that he must pray for the Holy Father, thus
suffering at the hands of wicked men. The child was deeply impressed,
he obeyed, and prayed with tears for the Pope, and then, in his young
logic, proposed to pray for the prompt punishment of his persecutors.
Great was the surprise of the ardent little champion when his mother
pointed out that that would be wrong—he must pray for their conversion
instead!
Giovanni Maria was about ten years old when, romping about the grounds
of his father’s country house, he fell into a pond and was nearly
drowned. At first the accident seemed to have had only slight effects,
but the malady which showed itself a little later and from which he
suffered so long was, probably with reason, ascribed to that cause. It
was a great sorrow to his father, who was bent upon his son’s entering
the army, a desire which the boy was ready to satisfy through filial
sentiment, but which went contrary to all his own wishes and to those
of his mother. He was sent to an ecclesiastical school, of course—no
other could be thought of then for a gentleman’s son—and in spite
of bad health worked hard and attained much distinction. As he grew
up—tall, handsome, and brilliantly intelligent—his father repeatedly
applied for a commission in the Noble Guards for him, but Prince
Barberini, then the chief authority in the Papal army, sternly refused
to grant it, saying that an officer subject to epileptic attacks would
be a danger to himself and others.[4]
By the time he was seventeen, it was fairly clear to all that he
could never be a soldier, a relief to him and to his mother, though
a terrible disappointment to the old Count. They had already brought
him to Rome, and under the care of his Uncle Paulinus, a Canon of
St. Peter’s, he worked assiduously at his theological studies, always
hoping and praying that the strange malady which had kept him out of
the army would not, in the end, keep him out of the Church. Those early
years in Rome were illuminated with the crowning joy of seeing Pius
VII return in triumph to the Throne of St. Peter, an event which threw
the Romans, gentle and simple, into a state of delirious joy. Pius VI
had died in captivity at Valence, on the 29th of August, 1799; his,
successor, Cardinal Chiaramonti, was elected at Venice (Rome being
in the hands of the French) on the 16th of March, 1800, and on the
3d of July of the same year the French, having been expelled from the
Papal States by the Neapolitans and Austrians, the new Pope, who had
taken the name of Pius VII, came back to his own. Everybody believed
that once more “the Church would have peace”; Napoleon, whose genius
realised that there was no governing a nation of atheists, had restored
Religion to her public place, and was preparing, by the Concordat,
to harmonise Church and State as far as the times would allow. But
the Napoleon whose unerring eye showed him the necessity of Religion
for mankind had counted without the other Napoleon, whose towering
ambition demanded the sacrifice of all other claims to itself. With
his coronation as Emperor all barriers seemed to break down; the Pope
was to become his submissive vassal or cease to reign. His demands
became more imperious and unreasonable every day and reached the limit
of arrogance when he decided that the centre of Christendom was to
be transferred to Avignon; France was to enjoy that glory instead of
Italy, and the Pope, no longer an independent sovereign, was to rule
the Church for the advantage and according to the caprices of the
Emperor.
This proposition was first made soon after the election in Venice, when
Napoleon had brought the Pope to Paris to crown him in Notre Dame. Pius
VII replied, in an outburst of righteous indignation, that rather than
so degrade his office he would resign it, and cause another election
to be carried through; Napoleon could then do as he pleased with the
obscure Benedictine monk who would be left on his hands!
Surprised at his firmness, the Emperor yielded for the moment and
permitted him to return to Rome, but, amidst all the rejoicings with
which he was greeted, the good Pope’s heart was heavy. He knew the
character of his adversary too well. On the day of his coronation,
at the foot of the altar, Napoleon had solemnly sworn to uphold and
protect the Church. Immediately afterwards had come the insulting
proposal to transfer the seat of her government to his own dominions.
Who could say what he would do next?
That question did not long wait for its answer. The notion of having
the Papacy established at Avignon was too alluring to be renounced.
Again and again was it put forward, each time accompanied by some
outrageous demand. The Pope was informed that he was to close all
the Roman ports to British vessels; that he was to declare war (!)
on Great Britain; that he was to annul the marriage of Jerome, the
Emperor’s brother, with a Protestant lady in America; and so on. And
always Pius VII replied by his quiet “non possumus”—“we cannot.” Then
the great break came. The Emperor permitted himself an outburst of
temper in which all considerations of policy and decency were thrown to
the winds. On the 13th of May, 1809, the trembling world was informed
that the States of the Church had become part of the French Empire. On
the 10th of June all the Pope’s insignia in Rome were torn down and
replaced by the heraldic _réchauffé_, which now represented the arms
of France; Rome was elevated to the dignity of being proclaimed “a free
French city”!
The outraged Pontiff responded by laying the usurper and his supporters
under the major excommunication, and then came the crowning atrocity,
the one which Napoleon, a contrite prisoner in St. Helena, called the
beginning of his own downfall.
In the darkness of a soft summer night the Vatican was surrounded by
French troops, and General Radet, sickly frightened at the task laid
upon him, made his way with a detachment of soldiers to the Pope’s
bedroom. The horrified attendants in the corridors and anterooms were
forcibly silenced, and Pius VII was roused from his sleep by the sudden
entrance of this sinister company. He was a brave man, and, although
it seemed only too probable that they had come to murder him, he lost
neither his nerve nor his dignity. He asked them what the errand was
which caused them thus to transgress on the rules of respect. At first
the General and his aides stood dumb, trembling with fear before the
helpless old man. At last Radet found his tongue and delivered his
master’s orders. The Pope was to rise at once and come downstairs,
where a coach was waiting to take him into France. The instructions
were that he was to be taken by force if he resisted, but so great was
the awe inspired by his sacred person that, even in pronouncing the
arrest, Radet could not bring himself to touch his victim.
There was no question of physical resistance. Gathering courage from
the Pontiff’s calm demeanour, Radet gave him a few minutes to put
on his clothes, and then hurried him downstairs surrounded by the
soldiers. Only two attendants were allowed to follow him, he was
hustled into the coach; mounted guards closed in on every side, and the
party galloped at full speed out of the Porta del Popolo, heading for
the north. By this time the people had learnt what was happening, and
they came out in crowds and ran beside the coach, entreating with tears
and sobs that their Father might not be taken away from them. The Pope
blessed them from the carriage window as he was whirled along; soon all
the mourning crowd was left behind, but at each town that he passed
through in his dominions the same heart-rending scenes were renewed.
His captors dared not pause—some attempt at a rescue might yet snatch
him from their grasp—and it was only when they reached Grenoble that
they stayed their flight. From there he was transferred to Savona,
where he passed three melancholy years of captivity; when Napoleon
was preparing to start on the Russian Campaign, he brought the Pope to
Fontainebleau for safer keeping, and there Pius VII remained for nearly
two years more.
The first care of the Allies after the taking of Paris on the 31st
of March, 1814, was to officially reinstate the Pope in his temporal
sovereignty, and secure it from future molestation, but Pius VII was
even then approaching his own frontier. After Leipsic and the train
of disasters which marked the close of 1813, Napoleon had informed his
prisoner that he was free to go whither he chose. But it was not until
the 25th of January following that the preparations for his journey
were sufficiently completed for the Pope to leave Fontainebleau, and
then, worn out with suffering of mind and body, he had to travel by
stages of only a few miles at a time and to rest for long periods on
the way. He finally reached Rome in May of that year, a few weeks after
Napoleon had signed his abdication at Fontainebleau. Then for Napoleon
came Elba,—the hundred days,—the short triumph, the irrevocable
eclipse, and the five years at St. Helena. “Qui mange du Pape en
meurt.”
I used to have among my possessions a number of old coloured drawings,
the original designs for the decorations put up in Rome for the
return of Pius VII. It was a triumph not decreed by politicians,
but a spontaneous outburst of overwhelming joy. For five years the
entire government of the Church had been suspended; not once had the
Pontiff been allowed to make his voice heard in her affairs. There is
something strangely sinister in that silence, during which no Bishops
were appointed, and not a single line was added to the ecclesiastical
archives. The fear and depression that weighed down Catholic hearts
was indescribable, and the relief when the cloud lifted almost too
overwhelming to be borne. The Papal States had suffered much during
those years, and the Pope’s own city worst of all. Business was at a
standstill, more than a third of the population had migrated elsewhere,
preferring exile to the tyranny of the French rule. Those who remained
were frightfully impoverished by heavy taxation and by the general
paralysis of commerce which Napoleon’s wars and blockades had brought
not only on Italy but on the whole of Europe.
The populations turned out _en masse_ to meet their sovereign as he
travelled home, and as he neared Rome many nobles who had retired to
their estates came to accompany him on the last stages of his journey.
Among these were Count Mastai-Ferretti and his son, Giovanni Maria,
now eighteen years of age. The event made a profound impression on
the young man. As a child he had wept and prayed for the Holy Father
in his captivity; through the first years of his youth the thought of
Pius VII, a helpless prisoner, had ever been present to his mind and
many a fervent prayer had gone up for his sovereign’s and his country’s
deliverance. Now it had come, and to him, not yet illuminated with
knowledge of the future, as well as to all those around him, it seemed
as if all trouble were passed away and the sun that shone so gloriously
on that 24th of May, when the people took the horses from the Pope’s
carriage and themselves dragged it through the rejoicing streets,
were but an earnest of unbroken peace and happiness to come. Rome had
seen many festivals, but none so spontaneously, madly joyful as this.
From every window floated crimson and blue silk draperies rich with
gold; the thousands of balconies were wreathed in flowers, and the
vast procession moved along in a rain of roses and lilies and violets
showered from above; music was everywhere, but it was drowned in the
shouts and hosannas of the multitude that had gone out to meet the
traveller with palms in their hands and now thronged the way before,
beside, behind him. The women were weeping for joy and audibly thanking
God for this great day; a hundred thousand persons knelt to receive
his blessing, and many, many of them must have remembered how they
knelt to receive it last, as the coach was whirled along the highway
in the summer’s dawn and the weeping supplicants just caught a glimpse
of the pale face and the blessing hand as it flashed by. Every town
in the dominions had raised its triumphal arches, gathered all its
flowers for his progress, but Rome surpassed them and all the records
of herself that day. The “Te Deum” was sung in all the Churches as it
had never been sung before, Rome’s thousand bells rang as if they would
never cease; and when darkness fell, St. Peter’s gathered the stars to
itself, and the magic dome, a hive of breathing gold, glowed through
the night, a beacon of joy to the dwellers in a hundred mountain towns
of Sabina and Latium and all the country round.
Thirty-two years were to elapse before the youth kneeling beside his
father to receive the Pope’s blessing on that day would himself ascend
the Papal Throne, but, strange to say, Pius VII himself had already
foreseen the event. Pius IX had been reigning for some years when,
through the merest accident, the written prophecy was discovered.
Pius VII, while a prisoner at Fontainebleau, one day handed to his
bodyservant a sealed packet, saying that it was not to be opened until
1846. The man religiously regarded the prohibition and put the packet
away carefully. Before his own death he gave it to his son, repeating
the Pope’s instructions. Eighteen forty-six was still far off, and the
son laid the thing aside and had forgotten all about it when the year
in question came round. Having occasion, however, to look through a
number of old papers, he came across this, and broke the seal. Inside,
in Pius VII’s handwriting, were these words: “The prelate who fills the
office of Bishop of Imola in 1846 will be elected Pope and will take
the name of Pius IX.”
Another prophecy, that of the venerable servant of God, Anna Maria
Taigi, uttered in 1823, is very full and clear. After describing
minutely the revolution of 1848 and all the sufferings that Rome
and its ruler would undergo at that time, she added, “The Pope whose
destiny this is, is now a simple priest and far beyond the sea.” After
minutely describing the personal appearance of Pius IX, she continued:
“He will be elected in a very unusual way and contrary to his own and
general expectation. He will inaugurate many wise reforms, which,
if gratefully and wisely accepted by the people, will bring great
blessings upon them. His name will be honoured throughout the world.”
She spoke much of the great trials that he was to undergo in defence
of the Church, and of the special assistance Heaven would give him to
sustain them, and also of the gift of miracles which would be bestowed
on him during the latter years of his life. All that came to pass
precisely as the Saint foretold, and the present generation seems to
be seeing the beginning of the fulfilment of her closing prophecy: “At
last, after many and varied trials and humiliations, the Church shall
achieve, before the eyes of the world, such a glorious triumph that men
will be struck silent with awe and admiration.”
The famous prophecy of St. Malachy, the Archbishop of Armagh, who
died at Clairvaux in the arms of his friend, St. Bernard, in 1148,
designated the title of Pius IX as “Crux de Cruce”—“Cross of a
Cross”—and certainly that prediction, supposed to refer to the Cross of
Savoy, was fulfilled!
Anna Maria Taigi’s mention of a “simple priest then beyond the sea”
refers to the mission to Chile, undertaken by Pius IX when he was as
yet only Father Mastai, the director of Tata Giovanni’s orphanage.
It is an episode of his history so generally forgotten that it seems
worth while to recall it briefly to the minds of Catholic readers. The
Republic of Chile was just five years old—it concluded its victorious
struggle with Spain for independence in 1818—when the government sent
a respected prelate, Canon Cienfuegos, to Rome to ask Pius VII to
reorganise ecclesiastical matters in Chile, where everything had been
left in a very unsatisfactory condition after the separation from the
Mother Country.
Pius VII gladly complied with the request. The mission would require
delicate handling and he singled out a diplomatist prelate, Monsignor
Muzi, then Auditor of the Nunciatura at Vienna, for its accomplishment.
In order that his rank should be consonant with its dignity, Monsignor
Muzi was made Archbishop of Philippi, and then appointed Vicar
Apostolic of Chile. He asked that Father Mastai might accompany him as
Auditor, a post corresponding to that of “Conseiller d’Ambassade” in a
secular embassy; and another well-known ecclesiastic, Father Sallusti,
was named as the secretary.
Long years afterwards, one of the “boys” described the last evening of
Father Mastai at the Asilo. He had as yet said nothing to them of his
approaching departure, but at supper they noticed that he seemed very
sad. When the meal was over and they were about to leave the table,
he motioned to them to sit down again, as he had something to say
to them. Then he told them that the next day he must leave them, to
travel far away on the business of the Church. There were a hundred and
twenty boys, big and little, in the hall, and there broke from them one
simultaneous cry of grief. Sobbing and wailing, they threw themselves
upon him, the little ones climbing up into his arms and clinging to his
knees, others catching at his garments as if to hold him back by force,
and those who could not reach him through the press lifting up their
voices in supplication that the “Caro Padre” would not leave them. The
Father wept, too, as he caressed and embraced the “piccolini,” and,
when at last he tore himself away and shut himself up in his room, a
number of the older boys broke in and insisted on staying with him all
night. The dear patient man did not resent thus being robbed of his
rest; he let them have their way, and talked to them long and earnestly
of their present duties and their future lives. He would return some
day, and how eagerly he would enquire for every one by name, how
rejoiced he would be at a good report, how immeasurably grieved at a
bad one.
With the dawn he had to leave them, and, as the narrator said, “We were
orphans more than ever before.”
Great as was the grief of “Tata Giovanni’s” boys on losing their
beloved Director, it did not equal the despair and indignation of
Countess Mastai when she learnt that her son had been picked out for a
journey which was full of perils and hardships so late as twenty years
ago, and in those early days was veritably appalling.
To the ardent young priest, this fact had only added to the readiness
he felt in carrying out the Pope’s wishes; he asked nothing better than
to suffer in such a cause, but his mother, without saying anything to
him, flew to Cardinal Consalvi, then Secretary of State, and implored
that the appointment might be cancelled. Pius VII, however, refused to
yield to her entreaties, and, when Father Mastai came to receive his
final blessing before departing, he told him of the Countess’s request
and added, “I assured her that you would return safe and sound.”
The embassy was to embark at Genoa, and it was there, while waiting
for the final preparations to be made, that its members received the
sad news of the death of Pius VII. This caused delay, and it was only
after the election of Leo XII and his confirmation of Archbishop
Muzi’s powers that the mission finally sailed from Genoa, on the
5th of October, 1823. Ninety years ago! The world has shrunk since
then; the voyage that I made in 1885 in three weeks took Monsignor
Muzi and his companions three months to accomplish. The “good barque
_Eloïse_,” manned by “thirty experienced seamen,” had been chartered
for the expedition, but one’s heart aches to think of what those three
good ecclesiastics must have suffered in one way and another on board
of her. Very few Italians of their class are good sailors and all
the horrors of seasickness were certainly theirs, combined with the
unsavoury and unwholesome food that was all people had to depend upon
during sea-journeys before the discovery of steam and cold storage.
Storm after storm broke over the little vessel; she was nearly wrecked
off Teneriffe; one dreadful night, the 5th of November, she was waylaid
by pirates, who overhauled her from stem to stern seeking for plunder,
and only abandoned her—in furious disgust—when Father Mastai had shown
them that there was not a single article of value on board. Then came
a sad encounter with a Brazilian slave trader, packed with unfortunate
negroes, a sight most grievous and terrible to the kind-hearted
priests; and then, after two long months’ sailing, a fearful storm
which lasted eight days, during which the _Eloïse_ was so beaten about
that no one hoped to escape alive. It was all a searching dispensation
for quiet, stay-at-home Italian gentlemen who had followed their pious
way hitherto along the most familiar lines!
They reached Monte-Video on New Year’s Day, 1824, stopped a few
days for repairs, and made Buenos Ayres soon after, their joy at
finding themselves on _terra firma_ much tempered by the extremely
rude reception accorded to them by the civil authorities. But Buenos
Ayres was merely the starting-point for the most difficult part
of the journey, the crossing of the Andes. Had the good Countess
Mastai-Ferretti had the slightest idea of what her cherished son was to
encounter there, I believe she would have died of anxiety before his
return! I only met one or two Europeans, when I was in Chile, who had
accomplished the feat, and they told me that nothing would induce them
to attempt it again. I have described some of the terrors of the passes
in former works,[5] and will not enlarge upon them here. Suffice it to
say that for two whole months Monsignor Muzi and Fathers Sallusti and
Mastai rode through those appalling solitudes, over the bridle-paths
cut in the face of the rock that towers thousands of feet above and
sinks sheer down thousands of feet below, paths where one false step
means death, and so narrow in some places that, if two parties meet,
it is usual for them—if they are not the fighting sort—to decide on
the spin of a coin which shall dismount, pitch its mules over the
precipice, and crawl past the winners as best they can—to continue the
journey on foot!
The resting-places are even now the haunts of outlaws and robbers.
The members of the Roman Embassy of 1824 only escaped being murdered
_en masse_, because, through some unforeseen occurrence, they changed
the time of their departure from a hamlet called Desmochadas. Had they
waited till the hour first fixed upon, they would have shared the fate
of a party of merchants who, on that day, were massacred, to a man,
by a band of robbers. It was Father Mastai who discovered—and stayed
behind to take care of—a sick English officer, named Miller, forsaken
in a wayside inn; and it was Father Mastai, the others said, who had
during the whole journey sustained their courage by his unfailing fun
and good-humour. It seems to me that this is not the least glorious
note in all his wonderful record, and because few, even of those who
most loved and venerated him in his later years, have ever heard of it
I have written it here. The whole thing, somehow, is so absolutely Pius
IX!
Very sore and weary, the travellers reached Santiago on the 17th of
March, only to encounter every kind of obstacle and annoyance in the
attempt to carry out the object of their mission. The government
had changed, and the party in power had no desire to come to an
understanding with the Holy See. The people, indeed, received the
envoys most enthusiastically, but Chile in 1824 was apparently
much what I found it in 1885—a country of ardent believers ruled by
atheists. Let some expert explain the problem, I cannot! For seven
months Monsignor Muzi remained in Santiago, perseveringly trying to
clear matters up and reach some _modus vivendi_ between Church and
State. But his efforts were nullified by the hostility of the President
and his supporters, and at last he had to acknowledge his defeat and
withdraw from the conflict.
The _Eloïse_ meanwhile had successfully rounded Cape Horn and reached
Valparaiso, and on the 19th of October the Archbishop and his party
embarked once more on the gallant little vessel and started for home.
Of course no sailing vessel can pass through the twisting narrows and
rocks of the Straits of Magellan, so for three weeks—surely the most
miserable of their lives—those poor priests, children of Italy and
the sun, shivered in the awful cold of those frozen regions, where the
sea is the colour of cold steel, and the sailors, as they have often
told me, come down from the deck at night with their garments frozen
stiff, and have to work their way into them, still frozen stiff as
boards, in the morning. My own travelling in that part of the world
did not include the rounding of Cape Horn, but even the passage of the
Straits, in a big liner, with the water smooth as glass, was such a
freezingly wretched experience that, having made it once, the prospect
of its repetition took something away from my eagerness to go home. But
outside the Horn, with the Antarctic Ocean, unbroken from the South
Pole, flinging its icy rollers against a little sailing vessel that
took three weeks to beat up on the other side—_that_, the skippers have
told me, furnishes merchant seamen with their best nightmares to their
dying day! Most of the coal supply for the West Coast is carried by
this route, and by the time it has reached the Horn the coal, loaded
under the damp English skies, has ignited and the remainder of the trip
is made with hatches battened down and the pleasing knowledge that a
puff of air finding its way into the hold will send the whole mass into
a blaze!
Yet, there is a little English colony that lives and flourishes in
these cold seas some two hundred and fifty miles to the east of the
Horn, and we, in England, wear its wool and eat its mutton quite
habitually. I never could learn my geography properly until I began to
travel round the world. From that time maps became a special recreation
of mine, and I had, when travelling through the Straits of Magellan,
thought with both curiosity and pity of the handful of islands so much
more exposed than even we were in those comfortless days. I was told
the place was a purgatory—that it was just possible to carry on life,
and that no one stayed there who could help it. Some time afterwards,
when we were established in Santiago, a card was brought up and I gazed
at it for a moment in some bewilderment—“The Governor of the Falkland
Islands!” Then it was true! Our indomitable fellow-countrymen had
really added another mesh to the net of Empire which Great Britain has
cast over the world. My reflections were interrupted by the entrance
of a big, handsome man, who looked as if he had just come out of
Yorkshire. His clear blue eyes, ruddy cheeks, and joyful bearing belied
the sad tales I had heard, and when, in the course of conversation, I
asked some timid questions about his frozen place of exile, he laughed
in a way that was good to hear. Frozen? Exile? Why, he would not
live anywhere else for the world! A grand climate, pleasant society,
and better pasturage for sheep than could be found anywhere else!
“Pasturage!” I exclaimed. “Do you mean to say that anything will _grow_
in that latitude?” “Grow? I should think so!” he replied. “We get the
back wash of the Gulf Stream down there, and our sheep can graze all
winter in the open. Why, I have three trees, _real trees_, on Stanley
Island! I wish you and Mr. Fraser would come and pay me a visit there.
My wife and daughters would be so delighted to see you.” Then, turning
to my husband, he continued: “Our flocks are getting too big for their
feeding grounds, so I have come to ask the Chilean Government to rent
us five hundred thousand acres in Patagonia for a supplementary run.
The pasturage is not as good as that in the Falklands, but it will be
better than nothing.”
Of course we instantly invited our visitor to dine. An English face
was always a joy to look at where one saw so few, and this man brought
the very atmosphere of the North Country with him. He told us many
interesting details about his little domain, the management of which
he took very seriously and evidently accomplished with much success.
“Of course I could do more,” he said regretfully, “if it were not for
the blind hostility of the Opposition.” “Does it reach so far?” I asked
politely. “I should have thought there was quite enough to keep it busy
at home.”
“Oh, I don’t mean the little crowd at Westminster,” he replied
indignantly. “Please understand, Mrs. Fraser, that I have an opposition
_of my own_!”
“I do congratulate you,” I said; “that is certainly a triumph! What
Britisher could ask more?”
There is a little plant of which every Englishman carries the seeds
about with him. It is called Love-of-the-soil. Give him a bit of land
anywhere—the best or the worst, a vast fertile tract or a few miles of
desert island; tell him it is his very own to do as he likes with, and,
before you can turn round, every grain of its dust is sprouting with
Love-of-the-soil. He sees, knows, loves only that spot. He will fight
for it, work for it, cheat for it if need be, perhaps even slay; for
to him it has taken on the sacred character of the mother country, it
is _his_ piece of England and woe to any one who tries to take it away
from him! That is why English colonies succeed. And it is the lack of
this passion for the land which makes bad colonists of men of other
nationalities. The Americans are simply brutal about their possessions.
Out here in the Northwest one is horrified at the general callousness.
I have watched people making what _we_ should call a home, breaking
new land, building a charming house, working hard to make everything
within and without as perfect as they know how. A cloud of dust shows
up on the road, a motor-car full of “land grabbers” kicks and coughs
and stinks at the gate; the next minute the hard-eyed hucksters are
being shown into all the sacred arena of airy rooms, and flowering
garden, are fingering, valuing, depreciating; there follows an hour or
two of hard bargaining, and then your neighbour’s wife flies across
lots to tell you, with shining eyes, “We’ve sold the place!” “Sold
the place?” I cry. “Why, I thought it was to be your home!” “What does
that matter?” she retorts, huffed, “I got my price! We can easily build
another house that we shall like just as much.”
I suppose it is a form of the disease now diagnosed as Americanitis,
the feverish restlessness that would rather “trek” anywhere than stay
put for more than a year or two. But is a terrible disqualification for
building a State. Since I have seen it at close quarters, I have often
thought of the contrast presented by that handful of North Country
shepherds and their descendants, in the Falklands,[6] so proud of doing
their best with the best they could get, pleased with their drizzly
climate (it rains two hundred and fifty days in the year), because
it is so English, proud of their thriving little country, sending out
their pelts and mutton by the once-a-month steamer, actually growing
their pelargoniums and fuchsias in the open air, and so furiously
interested in their miniature politics that the Government and the
Opposition are ready to knock each other forty ways from Sunday
every time they meet! Good luck and long life to you, my incorrigible
brothers! The secret of success is certainly yours, and it all comes
from the little plant called Love-of-the-soil.