LE:
 
 The Life of 
 John William Walshe
 
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 The Life of 
 
 John William Walshe 
 
 F.S.A. 
 
 EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY 
 
 ] MONTGOMERY CARMICHAEL 
 
 AUTHOR OF "IN TUSCANY," ETC 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 
 
 1902
 
 TO 
 MY SISTER FRANCES 
 
 / DEDICATE 
 THIS STORY OF A HIDDEN LIFE 
 
 M. C.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 EXTRACT from the will of Philip /Egidius Walshe, 
 Esquire, dated 24th October 1900, who 
 died on the i6th April 1901. 
 
 " I bequeath to my friend Montgomery Car- 
 michael, Esquire, all my books, letters, papers, 
 memoranda and manuscripts, and I appoint the 
 said Montgomery Carmichael executor of this my 
 will as to the said books, letters, papers, memoranda 
 and manuscripts hereinbefore bequeathed to him." 
 
 The will of my friend Philip Walshe has put 
 me in possession of a large and extraordinary 
 collection of valuable MSS., and has at the same 
 time laid upon me a task of no little delicacy 
 and difficulty. These MSS. are the voluminous 
 works of his father, the late Mr. John William 
 Walshe, F.S.A., who died on the 2nd July 1900, 
 aged sixty-three, at Assisi, in Umbria, where 
 he had passed the latter half of his life. Mr. 
 Walshe was well known to scholars as perhaps 
 the greatest living authority on matters Fran-
 
 viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 ciscan : otherwise he had practically no fame. 
 The busy world, at all events, knew him not. 
 Mr. Walshe was possessed by the idea that a 
 book should have about it a note of finality, but 
 so constant, so great, so surprising were his 
 discoveries, that a humble fear of giving to the 
 world imperfect work seems to have withheld 
 him from publication. The MSS. which are 
 now in my possession have been added to 
 copiously, though happily without obscurity or 
 confusion, for Mr. Walshe was the soul of 
 method. And so it happens that, with the 
 exception of some essays and reviews, and 
 numerous contributions to "Search and Re- 
 search," Mr. Walshe published nothing. 
 
 The MSS. which have been bequeathed to 
 me consist of the following volumes, neatly 
 written on foolscap paper with a wide margin : 
 
 (1) Twenty-three volumes of notes, carefully 
 indexed, on St. Francis and Franciscan subjects. 
 This rare scholar was innocent of the arm-chair, 
 and always read la plume a la main. 
 
 (2) Eleven further volumes of notes, three on 
 Liturgical matters, five on Heraldry, one on 
 Logic, and two on Palaeography. Out of these 
 might be compiled an excellent practical guide
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 to the Roman Liturgy, a concise grammar of 
 Heraldry, a full primer of Logic, and a sufficient 
 manual of Palaeography. 
 
 (3) A Life of St. Francis of Assisi, severely 
 critical, and divided, after the manner of Papini, 
 into two volumes, the first containing those 
 facts relating to the Saint of which we have 
 certain knowledge, and the second containing 
 dubious or uncertain matter, or positive facts of 
 which we cannot yet determine the chronology. 
 There is also a third volume on the "Sources," 
 and a fourth of "Pieces Justificatives," the former 
 a marvel of erudition, the latter a model of careful 
 and lucid editing. I anticipate that the last two 
 volumes will attract more attention than the 
 "Life" itself. Mr. Walshe's "History of St. 
 Francis of Assisi" is the most elaborate of all 
 his works. I have turned over the MS. pages 
 with a reverent hand, for the loving care, the 
 tender solicitude, the scrupulous anxiety, and the 
 fine scholarship of its modest author are apparent 
 on every page. And yet I fear the book would 
 be but little read if published. It is too elaborate, 
 too monumental, too severely critical, but as a 
 source of information to others it is of quite 
 incalculable value.
 
 x INTRODUCTION 
 
 (4) A Life of St. Clare of Assisi. This is 
 indeed a most remarkable little book, not running, 
 upon a rough calculation, to. more than 40,000 
 words. In it Mr. Walshe seems another person 
 to quite a startling degree. No doubt the book 
 contains all we may know about Clare the Virgin, 
 but the writer's critical method is absent. He 
 comes before us here with a simple work of love, 
 breathing all the sweet peace, the angelic purity, 
 the seraphic ardour of the Cloister of St. 
 Damian's, and moreover, it is written with a 
 limpid simplicity and purity of style that belongs 
 to the subject itself, and recalls in its persuasive 
 fervour that gentlest of hagiographers, the Rev. 
 Alban Butler. But I ceased to wonder how Mr. 
 Walshe could possibly have written it after I had 
 read his son's Memoir of him. 
 
 (5) Six volumes of a Chronicle of the Order of 
 Friars Minor, which only reaches to the days of 
 Michael of Cesena, seventeenth Minister-General 
 of the Order (1316-1328). I think that it is 
 important and valuable, but dare not yet, of my 
 own knowledge, assess either the value or im- 
 portance. I shall certainly publish it last in order 
 of all the works. 
 
 (6) A wonderful " Bibliographia Seraphica."
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 This is arranged in a specially constructed box 
 containing twelve drawers. The entries are 
 written upon stoutish cards 4! by 6 inches an 
 elastic system which admits of any number of 
 additions while retaining perfect alphabetical 
 order. In most cases one card has sufficed for 
 each book, but no space is spared to describe 
 fully all the larger works. The twenty-six 
 volumes of Wadding and his continuators, for 
 instance, require twelve cards, and the five 
 volumes of De Gubernatis seven. Every word 
 on a title-page even down to the " Permissu 
 Superiorum " is copied out, and in the case of 
 rare books there is a note of the libraries in which 
 Mr. Walshe had seen them. In fact, the biblio- 
 graphy is enriched with copious annotations after 
 the manner of Fra Marcellino da Civezza, 1 but 
 there is much matter not to be found in the 
 " Bibliografia Sanfrancescana," in Gaetano di 
 Giovanni, 2 or in Chevalier's "Repertoire." 3 The 
 
 1 Saggio di Bibliografia, Geografica, Storica, Etnografica, 
 francescana, by Fr. Marcellino da Civezza, M.O. Prato, 1879, 
 pp. xiv.-698. 
 
 2 San Francesco d 'Assist, by Gaetano di Giovanni. Girgenti, 
 1 883. Appendice Seconda : Bibliografia Biografica Sanfrancescana, 
 pp. 81-121. 
 
 3 Repertoire des Sources Historiques du Moyen Age: Bio- 
 Bibliographie. Paris, 1877-1886. Complement Supplement, 1888. 
 For St. Francis, see cols. 765-767, and Supplement cols. 2588-2590.
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 note " Bib. Jo. Gul. W." in the left-hand corner 
 of a card indicates that that particular book is in 
 Mr. John William Walshe's own library, and it 
 is surprising in how many it occurs. I suppose 
 he must have had as complete a Franciscan 
 library as any in the world. 
 
 (7) A Bibliography of Franciscan Codexes. 
 Mr. Walshe had travelled in Belgium, France, 
 Spain and Portugal in special search of Fran- 
 ciscan rarities. Needless to say that each codex 
 and there are some three hundred of them is 
 fully described in the most approved fashion. 
 
 This, in rough outline, is the rich literary 
 legacy which I have inherited. Mr. Walshe had 
 appointed his son Philip as his literary executor, 
 but my poor friend survived his father less 
 than a year. He had, however, been busy on 
 the arrangement of the papers, and, better still, 
 had written a Memoir of his father to precede a 
 complete edition of his works. This Memoir has 
 also come into my possession. After careful con- 
 sideration, I have decided to publish it separately, 
 and before any of the other works, so that the 
 world may come to know something of one who 
 shunned its favours that he might leave it a rich 
 heritage of precious knowledge, and be the better
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 prepared for his works when they shall appear. 
 I think I shall in this way best serve the father's 
 fame and the son's wishes. 
 
 I ought also to add that Mr. Walshe left two 
 volumes of " Recollections," 1 and several volumes 
 of a Diary. My friend's instructions to me 
 in a separate letter are not to publish these for 
 twenty years after the ist January 1901, unless 
 for grave urgent reasons I should think it advis- 
 able. The "Recollections" consist mainly of a 
 minute history of his childish and boyish years. 
 The Diary was begun in 1861 after he had 
 settled in Italy, and is continued to the time of 
 his death. It contains much relating to the 
 history of the Church in Italy for a period of 
 nearly forty years ; but is full of intimate 
 thoughts upon religion, pious aspirations, and 
 praises of the goodness of God and the affability 
 of His Saints. 
 
 One word about Philip himself. He was 
 born near Lucca, where Mr. Walshe then re- 
 
 1 There is a note prefixed to them stating that he had writ thus 
 much about his unworthy self to show his two boys how lovingly 
 God will lead a soul through many tribulations to a knowledge of 
 Himself and His truth. An entry in the diary shows that they 
 were undertaken, like St. Theresa's autobiography, by command 
 of his spiritual director.
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 sided, in 1862. He was educated at Stony- 
 hurst and Feldkirch, and was destined for the 
 Church, for which, however, he had no sort 
 of vocation. He remained but a year in the 
 English College at Rome, and at twenty-four 
 years of age returned home to Assisi while 
 they should consider what profession he was to 
 adopt. He never adopted any, but subsided 
 quietly into helping his father. I first met him 
 at Assisi ten years ago, and we immediately 
 became intimate. He used to stay in England 
 with me after that, and when I came to settle 
 in Italy, I was often over at Assisi in prosecu- 
 tion of my own studies. I need really say no 
 more of him at present. The candour of his 
 soul, his intellectual qualities, his staunch affec- 
 tionate nature, are all transparent in the Memoir 
 in spite of himself. And of the Memoir itself 
 I say nothing. How could I speak with im- 
 partiality of the work of one I loved so well ? 
 It has its obvious imperfections, its palpable 
 limitations ; the writer often fails, perhaps of 
 set purpose, to give us that which we are 
 waiting for and most of all wish to know. 
 Then the book is unduly brief. That is partly 
 accounted for by the fact that he has put his
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 pen through many an intimate page that I 
 would fain have seen given to the world. 
 Further, he who knew every stone of Assisi, 
 and had for a lifetime mingled familiarly with 
 its people, might have told us so much of the 
 Seraphic city and its inhabitants ; but again, 
 he is concerned only with his father, and not 
 with Assisi and the Assisiati. Yet another 
 complaint : he has told us so much of the 
 earlier, so little of the later life of Mr. Walshe. 
 That, I think, will be quite intelligible to 
 the candid reader. I think that my friend has 
 realised, with unconscious art, that the judicious 
 and benevolent, with whom alone he is con- 
 cerned, will easily be able to fill up the blanks 
 which he has left. Truth to tell, the Memoir 
 is little better than a charcoal sketch, the mere 
 ground-work of an elaborate picture still await- 
 ing colour and all the benefits of the artist's 
 final conception. But when we have stepped 
 back to the right point of view and surely 
 that is everything this outline sketch seems 
 to me to have many of the merits of a 
 completed picture. Whether Philip Walshe 
 would ultimately have given it to the world in 
 
 its present form, I know not. Perhaps not. 
 
 b
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 But he is dead, and his brother is dead ; no 
 single member of the family survives ; and I 
 am resolved to publish it as I find it, just 
 as it came straight from a loyal, loving, filial 
 heart. For in this book I read not the mere 
 story of a life, but rather that which may 
 rarely be found the true inward history of a 
 soul, and I hope that the elect, by acclaiming 
 this hidden treasure, may declare that I have 
 done right and not wrong. 
 
 M. C. 
 
 LEGHORN, December 8, 1901.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. FAGB 
 
 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . vii 
 
 I. MY FATHER'S FATHER AND MOTHER . . i 
 
 II. MY FATHER'S CHILDHOOD . . . .10 
 
 III. MY FATHER'S BOYHOOD . . . .21 
 
 IV. MY FATHER GOES INTO BUSINESS . . 43 
 V. MY FATHER LEAVES BUSINESS . , >. . 59 
 
 VI. MY FATHER FALLS IN LOVE .... 78 
 
 VII. MY FATHER TURNS STUDENT AND is AP- 
 POINTED LIBRARIAN . ... . 93 
 
 VIII. MY FATHER BECOMES ACQUAINTED WITH 
 
 HERALDRY . . , . . .114 
 
 IX. MY FATHER TURNS CATHOLIC . . . 126 
 
 X. MY FATHER is INTRODUCED TO THE COUNT 
 
 JOSEPH DE MAISTRE . . . , . 134 
 
 XI. MY FATHER MARRIES . . . . . 147 
 
 XII. I AM BORN. LORD FREDERICK DIES. MY 
 
 FATHER MOVES TO ASSISI . . . .154 
 
 XIII. MY FATHER GOES TO SEE THE POPE . .167 
 
 XIV. MY FATHER SETTLES AT ASSISI OF THE 
 
 EVEN TENOR OF HIS LIFE THERE . . 176 
 
 xvii
 
 xviii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. rAGB 
 
 XV. MY FATHER'S VENIAL FAULT . . .195 
 
 XVI. MY FATHER'S SORROWS . , .-. .. . 210 
 
 XVII. MY FATHER'S STUDIES. OF SOME OF HIS 
 
 THEORIES . .',.'. . , . 229 
 
 XVIII. MY FATHER'S INNER LIFE . . . .239 
 
 XIX. MY FATHER'S DEATH AND BURIAL . 252 
 
 FRONTISPIECE 
 MR. WALSHE'S PICTURE OF ST. FRANCIS
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 MY FATHER'S FATHER AND MOTHER 
 
 MY father, Mr. John William Walshe, was born 
 at Hale, near Manchester, the son of John 
 Walshe, a well-to-do merchant in grey shirt- 
 ings and such like piece-goods, and of Maria 
 Bodley, his wife. Of my grandfather I know 
 little that is interesting, and scarce anything 
 that is pleasant. Old John Walshe I picture 
 to have been hard and resolute, very irascible 
 when thwarted, self-contained and self-sufficient, 
 keenly intent upon gain, and entirely absorbed 
 in business. He was a merchant honest and 
 honourable in his trade, but, frankly, nothing 
 more. 
 
 But he seems to have had some fame for 
 a good presence and fine manners, for on the 
 Manchester Exchange they nick-named him
 
 2 MY FATHER'S FATHER AND MOTHER 
 
 " The Duke," and, because none knew any- 
 thing about him (for he was most reserved), 
 the rumour got abroad that he was the ille- 
 gitimate son of a Lancashire lord. He was 
 fine in his attire, too, and very particular about 
 the boots which covered his unusually small 
 feet. I have his picture in water-colour, after 
 the manner of Richard Dighton of Chelten- 
 ham, a tall man with good hard features, neat 
 hands and feet, and thin lips ; clad in a black 
 frock-coat, black stock, white breeches strapped 
 under black patent leather boots, white kid 
 gloves, and a most wonderful high hat with 
 short silk ends at the back of it. He loved 
 heavy mahogany furniture and heavy ivory 
 ornaments about the house, and his small 
 library was all for show, chiefly illustrated 
 books bound in a stout calf and securely locked 
 away behind glass doors. In one matter alone 
 was he profuse and generous in the giving of 
 dinners. These dinner-parties of his, if heavy 
 and stolid as to the company, left a certain repu- 
 tation behind them as being unequalled among 
 the Manchester merchants of the eighteen- 
 thirties. Turtle dominated his idea of a dinner 
 turtle in soup and turtle in steaks and no
 
 MY GRANDMOTHER 3 
 
 dessert was properly ornamental in his estima- 
 tion without a pyramidal dish of shaddocks 
 and an abundance of fine guava jelly. He 
 traded largely with the West Indies and with 
 the Republics of Central America, and through 
 his business connections there, imported turtle 
 and shaddocks and guava jelly for his own use, 
 and tamarinds for his wife's still-room. 
 
 My grandmother, Maria, whom I remember 
 well, was a gentle timorous woman (or rather 
 "creature"), irresolute in all but house affairs, 
 and gushingly sentimental on principle. Yet 
 was she simple enough in character, and she 
 had no affectations save an occasional fainting 
 fit. She had all the correct accomplishments 
 of young ladies in the thirties : could speak 
 French and recite Corneille ; knew Italian, and 
 wept over " Le mie prigioni ; " embroidered with 
 exquisite skill (I have her sampler, a monu- 
 ment of devoted patience) ; could accompany her 
 sweet small voice on the harp, and sing Thomas 
 Haynes Baily without her notes ; and when 
 called upon she could write original sentimental 
 verse in her friends' albums. 
 
 Of her, too, I have a portrait in oils, this 
 one and she certainly was a "most lovely
 
 4 MY FATHER'S FATHER AND MOTHER 
 
 creature " in a conventional kind of way. She 
 is dressed all in white muslin and gossamer, 
 with a sky-blue sash and ribbons : the trans- 
 parent figured sleeves of her gown show a pair 
 of beautifully moulded arms : a noble sapphire 
 set in brilliants holds the gown about her 
 slender throat : a mass of untidy flaxen ring- 
 lets, done in the fashion of the period, fall 
 around a face that languishes in the most ap- 
 proved manner : the eyes are blue, the mouth 
 a rosebud : there is a dimple in the chin : and 
 in the delicate white hands, tenderly pressed 
 against her bosom, she holds a turtledove that 
 looks up into her face with eyes less soft than 
 her own. Altogether, a thing of gossamer and 
 thin air she seems, a phantasy, a delicate elfin 
 fragment of white cloud against a still summer 
 sky. But this sentimental young lady was 
 also a good practical housewife, could bake if 
 need be, would make her own preserves and 
 domestic remedies, carried her bunch of keys, 
 and was ruler of her pantry and mistress in 
 her still-room. Was she happy with my grand- 
 father? I do not know. She kept a diary in 
 which there is much sentimentality and some 
 high-flown religious sentiment, which never
 
 MY GRANDMOTHER'S PEDIGREE 5 
 
 reaches the danger point of practical inconve- 
 nience : but complaint of my grandfather, or 
 anybody, or anything, there is none. I doubt 
 if it ever occurred to her that a woman, once 
 married, had any right of complaint. 
 
 My grandmother's pedigree were easily made, 
 and would go back without embellishments to 
 the battle of Beauje. She was of the Bodleys 
 of Bodley Hall, in Salop, a county family whose 
 arms are : vert, within a bordure gobony argent 
 and gules, three stag-heads caboshed, two and 
 one, of the second. Where my grandfather first 
 met her, or how, I know not : neither do I 
 know ought of the courtship, the marriage pre- 
 liminaries, or the honeymoon. It surely speaks 
 wonders for my grandfather's manners and 
 bearing that the Squire of Bodley Hall should 
 have allowed a daughter of his, in those days, 
 to marry a non-armigerous trader in Manchester 
 stuffs. For the Bodleys were not poor gentry, 
 nor was John Walshe a merchant prince. There 
 is certainly something more behind it all, but 
 there is this also : that Maria Bodley, although 
 he was just forty at the time of their marriage 
 and she but a girl of twenty-two, was very 
 much in love with the merchant.
 
 6 MY FATHER'S FATHER AND MOTHER 
 
 The sentimental young ladies of the eighteen- 
 thirties are a curious study to us of the nine- 
 teen-hundreds. They seem to have languished 
 only upon given occasions, at stated times, and 
 at justly chosen intervals. The very faculty of 
 fainting upon events that warranted it seems 
 to have been under sufficient control. Senti- 
 mentality was at all times an ornamental luxury 
 subservient to practical matters, and if there 
 was great relish in a faint, it was only indulged 
 in if the house affairs admitted of it. The truth 
 is that they were dominated by a very salutary 
 domestic conscience, which kept them out of 
 much mischief. 
 
 My sentimental grandmother was certainly 
 the most practical and proud of housekeepers, 
 ever busied about many things and troubled 
 about none. I possess her wonderful book of 
 " Useful Family Receipts," written out in that 
 neat pointed sentimental hand of hers, in which 
 I have seen so many extracts from Mrs. Hemans, 
 and L.E.L., and Reginald Heber. 'Twas begun 
 in 1829, when she was educating herself, and 
 being educated, for the marriage state. Some 
 day, when the long task of publishing my 
 father's works is accomplished, I shall perhaps
 
 "USEFUL FAMILY RECEIPTS" 7 
 
 give these receipts to the world : they would 
 be valuable to the chronicler of domestic his- 
 tory. What quaint entries I find in the index : 
 " To make Allum Whey," " To make Ambrosia 
 for the Breath," " To Brew Ale or Beer in a tea- 
 kettle," " Parsnip Wine," "Sir Wiliam Quinton's 
 receipt for Cold Beef," " To make Dutch Blanc- 
 Mange," " Brewing without Malt," " To form 
 an Artificial Skin for people bed-rid, suffering 
 from rawness," and so forth. 
 
 Just one or two of the receipts in full to 
 show you how valuable they are. Do you 
 suffer from asthma ? Then take " two pounds 
 of carrots, slice them very fine and boil them 
 in two pints of water till the liquid is reduced 
 to one pint. Strain it and drink the liquor at 
 meals, or at any other times so as to consume 
 the pint in a day." 
 
 Or have you a " toe where the nail grows 
 in " ? Then know that the following is a cer- 
 tain, if rather heroic, remedy : " Take an equal 
 quantity of burnt allum and resin, well mixed 
 and powdered very fine, and when the place is 
 very sore and moist, take a little of the powder 
 and put it into the place with the end of a pen- 
 knife, or anything you can get it in with, and
 
 8 MY FATHER'S FATHER AND MOTHER 
 
 it will never after trouble you." (It is to be 
 hoped not.) 
 
 A "pain in the stomach" may be removed 
 by "one tablespoon of water to one of eau-de- 
 cologne." 
 
 Here is a dainty that may be new to you : 
 it is called " Tamarind Fish." " Fresh caught 
 fish, being cleaned, is cut into small pieces 
 and well mixed with tamarinds in a conserved 
 state. The mixture is then put into jars, and 
 in a short time the acid of the tamarind pene- 
 trates the fish completely, dissolving the bones 
 and imparting to it a delicate garnet colour and 
 delicious flavour. In India they fry pieces of 
 this with rice for breakfast." 
 
 'Tis a delicate subject to touch upon, but my 
 sentimental grandmother does not shrink from re- 
 cording a "Cure for Corns" : "One teaspoonful 
 of tar, one teaspoonful of brown sugar, one tea- 
 spoonful of saltpetre. The whole to be warmed 
 together and spread on kid leather the size of 
 the corn, and in two days they will be drawn." 
 
 And to show you that there was no squeam- 
 ishness about this young lady's languishing 
 sentimentality, I give you the benefit of a 
 "Sure Cure for Rheumatism," which she defines
 
 A FORGOTTEN WORLD 9 
 
 as the " Gipsey's Prescription " : " Fill a bottle 
 with the largest earth-worms you can get ; cork 
 it tight, and put the bottle into a hot dung-pit, 
 and they will dissolve to oil, with which rub 
 the part affected." 
 
 How dim and forgotten is the world which 
 all this recalls, yet how practical and worldly 
 a world it was. These old receipts serve better 
 than many long pages of description to con- 
 jure up the singular surroundings into which a 
 scholar and a saint was born, and from which 
 he emerged only through great tribulations and 
 anguish of soul.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 MY FATHER'S CHILDHOOD 
 
 MY father was born, as I have said, at Hale, 
 which you must know was very prettily situ- 
 ated at about seven miles from Manchester, 
 but which may be now, for aught I know, over- 
 studded with the modern high-art homes of 
 Manchester managers and clerks. My grand- 
 father lived in a big square brick house of two 
 storeys and many narrow windows, built in the 
 first year of Queen Anne. It was a house down 
 upon the street, with a noble wrought-iron 
 railing sweeping away upon either side of the 
 oaken front door. Qver the door itself was 
 inserted in the masonry a stone bearing the 
 date "A. D. 1702." Behind the house was an 
 old square English garden, with a jungle of 
 sweet-william and fine wall-fruit for the table, 
 and at the back of this again a sufficient orchard 
 for my grandmother's preserves. There was 
 nothing of the country gentleman about John
 
 A PATHETIC CHILDHOOD n 
 
 Walshe. He neither rode to hounds nor carried 
 a gun, and he was altogether averse to owning 
 land. He seems to have bought the house 
 at Hale to please Maria Bodley in the days 
 of his courtship. For himself, he would much 
 rather have gone on living over the counting- 
 house in Preston Square. He drove into his 
 business daily in a modest cabriolet, but it was 
 owing again to the influence of the beautiful 
 Maria Bodley that he kept a fine heavy yellow 
 coach, the envy and admiration of the neigh- 
 bourhood, in which he, with his stiff stock, high 
 hat, and tight-fitting frock-coat, and Maria in 
 her cloud of gossamer and blue ribbons, must 
 have made a very distinguished pair. 
 
 In this environment my father came into the 
 world, an only child, five years after his parents' 
 marriage. Of his childhood I dare not say 
 much : it was a childhood of acutest, pathetic 
 suffering. Of course, he was destined to the 
 counting-house from the day of his birth, and 
 for that he must early have shown a complete 
 unfitness. Probably John Walshe knew it in- 
 stinctively ; at all events he seems almost to 
 have hated the boy, to have been for ever re- 
 proving and chiding him, and to have beaten
 
 12 MY FATHER'S CHILDHOOD 
 
 him over-frequently. My grandmother, who 
 loved the boy, and spoilt the boy, without in 
 the least understanding him, interfered tremu- 
 lously, and hence there were domestic scenes 
 and copious floods of tears, dramatic fainting 
 fits, and a plentiful use of hartshorn. Love 
 went out of their married life, and John Walshe 
 set it down to the boy, and was more than 
 ever angered against him. 
 
 My father, as a child, early showed the fine 
 intelligence, the vivid imagination, the sensi- 
 tiveness and sensibility which afterwards dis- 
 tinguished him. But in these early days he 
 displayed a vivacity of temper, a hot, passionate 
 resentment of injustice, which it is difficult for 
 me to understand in one who, as I knew him, 
 had become subdued to a complete and very 
 perfect gentleness. Nothing was done for his 
 education until he was about six years of age, 
 when he was put under the care of a gover- 
 ness, a certain Miss Ellen Barlow, of whom he 
 ever spoke with respect and affection, and from 
 her he learnt to read and write with extra- 
 ordinary celerity. 
 
 He does not seem to have had any definite 
 religious education up to this time. In his
 
 EARLY READING 13 
 
 "Recollections" he records that he used to say 
 a brief prayer, but that he knew not who taught 
 it him. He had not even the habit of reciting 
 the Lord's Prayer ; he does not remember any 
 clergyman teaching him religion, nor that his 
 parents ever spoke together of religion. Of 
 course they went to church, and church was 
 the boy's great delight. Though the service 
 was dull and the sermon a mere droning, it all 
 appealed to his quick imagination, and the 
 beautiful sonorous English of the Bible and the 
 Prayer-Book made a lasting impression upon 
 him. Miss Ellen Barlow, by the time he was 
 seven, introduced him to " Line upon Line " 
 and " Peep of Day," and soon he took to read- 
 ing the Bible for himself, prophecies and all, 
 with the greatest avidity and relish. Miss 
 Mangnall and Mrs. Markham he also remem- 
 bers with great gratitude as having fed his 
 mind and imagination in these early days. 
 
 What a changed world it all became, to be 
 sure, when he was able to read ! In the orchard 
 there was an ancient apple-tree whose branches, 
 at the parting from the trunk, were twisted 
 into a most convenient resting-place. Hither 
 he would repair with " Line upon Line " or
 
 i 4 MY FATHER'S CHILDHOOD 
 
 the " Peep of Day," and shrouded in the leaves 
 and thick white blossom, sob his heart out over 
 the story of Joseph or the bitter sufferings of 
 our Saviour. Here, too, when he had had an 
 angry scene with my grandfather (for the boy 
 was vivacious and answered saucily enough), 
 and had been badly beaten, here he would fly 
 into hiding and sob his heart out over his own 
 bitter wrongs and sufferings. When he was 
 about eight years of age he began to go fur- 
 tively into that room which was by courtesy 
 called the " Library," and to turn over the calf- 
 bound standard works. His first discovery was 
 the " Pilgrim's Progress," and so fascinated was 
 he by that work of imagination, that it was a 
 month or more before he searched for any other 
 book. Here, too, he found " Gulliver," " Rob- 
 inson Crusoe," the " Memoirs of a Cavalier," 
 "Don Quixote," " The Vicar of Wakefield," 
 " Rasselas," some Fieldings, several Scotts, and 
 many of the poets. All these he had read 
 (and how many more ?) before he was ten years 
 of age. But the work which at this time most 
 of all coloured his imagination and opened up 
 to him the paths of knowledge was three volumes 
 of " English Translations from Ancient and
 
 STANDARD WORKS 15 
 
 Modern Poems by Various Authors " (London, 
 1810). Here he found Pope's "Iliad" and 
 "Odyssey," Dryden's " Virgil " and "Juvenal," 
 Philip Francis's " Horace," Rowe's " Lucan," 
 Grainger's " Tibullus," Garth's " Ovid," Cooke's 
 " Hesiod," Hoole's " Ariosto " and " Tasso," and 
 his favourite of all, Mickle's " Camoens." Dante 
 he never knew until he could read him in the 
 original, and then he read him rather as a 
 devotional exercise than as literature. Indeed, 
 his subsequent studies and vast erudition led 
 him altogether away from " standard " litera- 
 ture ; and it was well for him that, though of 
 tender years, he received this thorough ground- 
 ing. Standard works should be read early, in 
 the 'teens, especially the seventeens and eight- 
 eens. How soon the possibility of standard 
 reading slips away from us ! Either we get 
 more modern as we get older and lose the 
 taste for robust work, or business or pleasure 
 or religion absorbs us wholly ; but certain it is 
 that as time goes on time leaves us no leisure 
 or inclination for the monumental literature of 
 the past. " Make haste to be done with your 
 reading," my father would say, " ere you are 
 caught up by the fever of study." But even
 
 16 MY FATHER'S CHILDHOOD 
 
 about this time I find traces of those nice habits 
 of method which later on made him so con- 
 summate an antiquary. I possess, written out 
 in a child's round hand on a number of sheets 
 of copy-book paper, lists of famous men, ar- 
 ranged according to centuries, with their dates 
 of birth and death. 
 
 At eight years of age he parted with many 
 tears from prim Miss Ellen Barlow, his only 
 friend, and was handed over to a tutor, of whose 
 name I find no record. My grandfather, while 
 laying special stress upon "reckoning," grudg- 
 ingly allowed the rudiments of Latin, and this 
 language soon became the boy's passion. He 
 early felt its bracing intellectual qualities, and 
 his keen imagination seemed instinctively to 
 realise how deeply it must be radicated in the 
 world's history and affairs. 
 
 Slowly the deep religious feeling which was 
 afterwards to dominate his whole life began to 
 take rise in his young soul. He had learned 
 to add converse with God to his prayers. 
 Under the year 1864 I find a most singular 
 circumstance noted in his diary. When he 
 was about eight years of age he thought he 
 saw the Blessed Virgin in the clouds looking
 
 LAW'S "SERIOUS CALL" 17 
 
 down upon him in his apple-tree cradle. But 
 as he looked up towards her, she slowly 
 vanished with a most sweet and motherly 
 smile. Of his own accord he began to invoke 
 her and to pray to her. He knew nothing of 
 her but what he had read in Scripture ; he 
 had no knowledge that there were millions of 
 Christians who daily invoked her and prayed 
 to her. But he must very soon have ceased 
 the practice, and the circumstance faded entirely 
 from his memory until, in reading Newman's 
 "Apologia" when it appeared in 1864, he was 
 reminded of it by a distantly similar experience 
 of the great Tractarian. 1 
 
 It was when he was nine and a half years 
 of age that he discovered in the " Library " 
 Law's "Serious Call to a Devout and Holy 
 Life," and that remarkable book immediately 
 worked a complete revolution in his young soul. 
 He realised for the first time that he was a 
 Christian called to a supersensual life. His 
 manner to his stern father changed : he took his 
 
 1 See "Apologia pro Vita Sua," p. 3, edit. 1873. Newman 
 recounts how many years afterwards he discovered a Catholic 
 device drawn by himself in a copy-book when he was less than 
 ten years of age, and that he cannot understand how he came to 
 be attracted to the object which he drew, i.e. a Rosary. M. C. 
 
 B
 
 i8 MY FATHER'S CHILDHOOD 
 
 beatings patiently, bit his lip and tried to keep 
 back tears and angry words ; harder still, he 
 tried to think well of his chastiser and be 
 grateful for the chastisement. I fear that my 
 grandfather was but all the more exasperated 
 by such an unnatural demeanour. The fervent 
 little mystic eagerly adopted Law's idea of 
 prayer at the third hour and prayer at the 
 sixth hour, and of evening examination of con- 
 science and confession to God of his daily 
 faults. Nay, he went by divination beyond 
 his master, practising definite little austerities of 
 his own invention, like the denial of necessary 
 food and all sweets. It is even recorded in 
 the " Recollections," with a laugh at himself, 
 how he filled his shoes with peas, and used to 
 walk up and down the orchard raising his soul 
 to God in the ecstasies of prayer. Blind, but 
 surely very pathetic gropings of a pure soul, 
 instinct with self-sacrifice, seeking to find the 
 God of Love and to please Him. And re- 
 member that he was utterly alone in these 
 blind, anxious little strivings. His Rector (in 
 1846) would have tried to talk the nonsense 
 out of him, his father would have tried to beat 
 the nonsense ,out of him, his mother would
 
 MY FATHER'S PORTRAIT 19 
 
 have clasped him to her in a rapture, shed 
 showers of pearly tears, and have told him not 
 to be naughty and nonsensical, but to be a 
 good and sensible child and not vex his father. 
 Even kind Miss Barlow would have exclaimed, 
 " Poor child ! who put such nonsense into 
 your head ? " And with a kiss she would have 
 bidden him trust in the all-sufficient merits of 
 the Saviour. But the poor boy was not really 
 alone, for God was with him, and God blessed 
 him exceedingly, as this Memoir will show. 
 
 I love to look at the portrait of him painted 
 about this time. A small neat boy, neatly 
 dressed in a short blue jacket with brass buttons, 
 white trousers not reaching quite to the ankles, 
 black shoes with straps crossing the white stock- 
 ings after the manner of sandals, and a big white 
 collar with a cambric border. The thick chest- 
 nut hair is curled slightly forward on either side, 
 the front lock falling at a slight angle over the 
 forehead, and this arrangement gives him some- 
 thing of the look of a little philosopher ; the 
 complexion very pale, the chin most beautifully 
 moulded, the forehead high and clear, the sweet 
 hazel eyes with their long lashes big with wonder 
 and wistfulness, sad but not understanding sad-
 
 20 MY FATHER'S CHILDHOOD 
 
 ness, looking up already, at that tender age, but 
 not without hope, for an answer to the question- 
 ings which a vivid imagination had set surging 
 in his heart. And as I gaze upon this dear 
 picture I cease to repine that he was taken from 
 me. Great indeed must be his reward from the 
 Father who is in Heaven. 1 
 
 1 The portrait, which has the orchard for a background, is a fine 
 specimen of Sir William Boxall's work. M. C.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 MY FATHER'S BOYHOOD 
 
 THIS pathetic hidden life of the child-mystic 
 continued about six months, greatly sustained and 
 strengthened by the discovery of Jeremy Taylor. 
 Then came a rude awakening from the dream. 
 My grandfather was home early from business 
 upon some account or another, and was smoking 
 a cigar in the " Library," thinking out shipments, 
 no doubt, when my father, who had scrambled 
 down from the apple-tree to come in to tea, 
 entered the room to restore the "Holy Living" 
 to its place. John Walshe stared at his son in 
 mute amazement, anger, and disdain. Then 
 there was a violent explosion violent, angry 
 taunts from the man, a reckless confession from 
 the boy, jerked out in bitter hot retorts, and 
 alas ! there was a cruel beating. My father was 
 locked in his room for three days and put upon 
 bread and water, changed, at least at mid- 
 day, by my grandmother, to beef and unlimited
 
 22 MY FATHER'S BOYHOOD 
 
 goodies. William Law and his exhortations to 
 patience and humility were all forgotten ; the 
 poor little heart was torn with rage and despera- 
 tion, consumed by the angry thirst of revenge ; 
 prayer at the third hour and the sixth hour was 
 forgotten; God Himself and the Blessed Saviour 
 were forgotten. My poor dear father ! I would 
 gladly draw a thick veil over these turbulent 
 times, but that I am writing to thy honour and 
 
 The bookcases were locked up securely, and 
 poets and divines were destined to a long 
 slumber. John Walshe resolved to pack his 
 son off to school forthwith, so that there might 
 be no more of this " moping over books." He 
 chose the Searle House Grammar School in 
 Yorkshire, a rough-and-ready Edward VI. 
 Foundation, because some friend upon the Ex- 
 change had indicated it as an admirable nursing- 
 mother for the counting-house. Thither the 
 poor boy arrived in mid-term, with a heart sore 
 bruised and a mind dazed and bewildered. The 
 headmaster had been properly warned that there 
 was much "nonsense" to be knocked out of this 
 boy, much " licking into shape " to be done. He 
 had a zest in such matters, and was very faithful
 
 THE CLASSICAL MASTER 23 
 
 in the execution of stern parental wishes. Over 
 the sufferings nay, the horrors of those two 
 months at school, I gladly draw a close veil. I 
 could not convey them if I would, and would 
 not if I could. A gentler spirit has come over 
 England, and a livelier knowledge of the past 
 has brought with it a certain effort to imitate the 
 nobler virtues of the past. 
 
 Things mended somewhat in the second term. 
 My father found that there were opportunities 
 of learning, and if the heart remained numb, 
 the intellect quickly warmed to these oppor- 
 tunities. Blessed unto all time be but I may 
 not mention the name of the classical master. 
 He enjoys an honourable reputation as a scholar ; 
 he has written upon Greek roots, and his prose 
 translation of Catullus is greatly esteemed for 
 its philological notes. He had been a poor 
 sizar of Jesus College, Cambridge, and Searle 
 House was his first post. He came there in 
 my father's second term, and immediately had 
 him transferred from the second to the third 
 form. 
 
 Things mended somewhat in this second 
 term, as I have said. My father came off victor 
 in two fights and got himself respected. He
 
 24 MY FATHER'S BOYHOOD 
 
 found a certain zest in athletics, ran swiftly, 
 fielded and caught nimbly, and carried off a 
 pewter cup for high jump. And under Mr. 
 
 B 's tuition he progressed rapidly in Latin, 
 
 and tasted the first sweets of Greek. But his 
 school companions, few of them the sons of 
 gentlefolks, were, in the main, young rascals 
 when they were not young ruffians. Cursing 
 and swearing, blasphemy and obscene talk, per- 
 vaded the whole school. How the sensitive 
 lad I am writing about remained unpolluted in 
 the midst of it all is a marvel. Searle House 
 was a fruitful mother of the vices. In my 
 father's first term two boys were birched and 
 expelled the school for common thieving. That 
 was a trifle to other offences and other birch- 
 ings. In the annals of crime of the last fifty 
 years, two of the most notorious criminals have 
 been Searle House boys. 
 
 Of religious influence at this time there seems 
 to have been none. Of course there was Sun- 
 day church, and there were evening prayers ; 
 but these counted as nothing. Searle Church 
 was a great bare building, with high pews, and 
 a deep gallery running round three sides of it. 
 Below the organ loft was a large canvas of the
 
 THE VICAR 25 
 
 royal arms, with the Hanoverian shield in the 
 fourth quarter. The living was rich ; the Vicar, 
 gentlemanly and jovial, was the scion of a noble 
 house. He was a rare sportsman, and my 
 father can remember to have seen his red coat 
 and hunting boots beneath his surplice at the 
 Ash Wednesday service. He had a marvellous 
 power of rattling through the services ; his 
 sermons, delivered at a rapid rate, were always 
 brief; and for these reasons, and because he 
 had three pretty daughters, he was popular 
 with the boys. My father had ceased to read 
 the Bible or to care for it. He would have 
 ceased to go to church had he not been driven. 
 The Christian religion, which he loved so once, 
 had become to him, under the baneful and 
 blighting influence of this grammar school, no 
 other thing than a dreary and barren wilder- 
 ness. 
 
 After two years of school life came another 
 change. He had gone into the village with 
 leave one Sunday afternoon upon I know not 
 what account, and had stopped outside a certain 
 building attracted by the curious groans and 
 cries which came from within. 'Twas an old 
 brick building with a rounded window over the
 
 26 MY FATHER'S BOYHOOD 
 
 door, and it had served the Friends as a meet- 
 ing-house ere that sect died out at Searle ; now 
 it bore above the lintel the legend, PRIMITIVE 
 METHODIST CHAPEL. My father entered, drawn 
 by some magnetic influence. The place was 
 full of people of the poorest classes, kneeling 
 with closed eyes, groaning aloud and beating 
 their breasts. From the pulpit or platform a 
 young man with pale face and long hair he, 
 too, with eyes tight closed was wrestling in 
 prayer. There was a hum of excitement in 
 the place ; shouts and groans occasionally came 
 from the strange congregation. My father fell 
 upon his knees on the matting in the aisle. 
 All of a sudden a great wave of feeling de- 
 scended upon him ; he remembered William 
 Law, he remembered his solitary childish search- 
 ing after the hidden life, he remembered the 
 Jesus with whom he had communed in the 
 orchard, and he burst out into loud uncontrol- 
 lable sobbing and crying. There was a mo- 
 ment's astonished silence in the meeting-house, 
 and then his sobbing became contagious and 
 spread to all the kneeling congregation. Loud 
 shouts arose on all sides : " Hallelujah ! halle- 
 lujah ! Praised be Jesus ! We praise Thee,
 
 ZION CHAPEL 27 
 
 O God! Hallelujah! hallelujah!" A burly 
 miner's foreman lifted the boy up tenderly in 
 his arms and carried him to the minister as 
 one who had found salvation. He was prayed 
 over and wept over, and that day Zion Chapel, 
 Searle, witnessed such a revival as it had never 
 seen before and has certainly never seen since. 
 The minister talked to him afterwards, and ex- 
 horted him to be earnest in responding to the 
 call of the Lord. Though he knew he was of 
 the " school," yet he bade him shun the church 
 and come to chapel, suffering persecution and 
 contumely for righteousness' sake. 
 
 My father went back to the school in an 
 ecstasy. His companions seemed all dim and 
 blurred to him, creatures of some unreal world. 
 He had found salvation, the only reality ; his 
 eyes shone brightly, his cheeks were flushed, 
 his heart bubbled over with praise and prayer. 
 "What's up with you, young Walshe ?" asked 
 Bully Yardley, one of the monitors, collaring 
 him by the neck. But young Walshe was 
 nimble and fleet of foot. He twisted himself 
 free and ran like a hare, on, on, the whole 
 length of the playground ; on, and then over 
 the cricket-field and up the close-lying sand-
 
 28 MY FATHER'S BOYHOOD 
 
 hills. " All right, young 'un ; wait till I catch 
 you ! " shouted Bully Yardley after him. On 
 the top of the sandhills he forced his way 
 through a ring of gorse so as to reach a small 
 hidden sand-plot, and as he felt the pain of the 
 pricking, it rose up in his mind that pain and 
 suffering in his body would be acceptable to 
 his long-lost Lord, and indeed was due to him 
 as a penance for unpardonable forgetfulness ; 
 and though he had never read the life of a 
 saint nor knew what a saint was, he imitated 
 the saints by instinct and rolled himself cruelly 
 in the gorse bushes. Finding the bushes were 
 not high enough to hide him in a kneeling 
 posture, he scooped away the sand with his 
 hands to a greater depth. And thus secure in 
 his prickly " laura," he gave himself up to 
 prayer and praise, to examination of conscience 
 and bitter remorse, for two hours or more. 
 
 It was past eight o'clock on a summer's even- 
 ing when he got back to the playground. One 
 or two of the smaller boys looked at him curiously. 
 But Bully Yardley darted down on him and 
 seized him by the wrist. He let go again in 
 astonishment. "Hullo, young 'un ! " he cried, 
 "who's been scratching your face?" But the
 
 BULLY YARDLEY 29 
 
 young 'un bit his lip and held his tongue. 
 "Speak up or I'll lick you!" Not a word 
 crossed the young 'un's lips. Yardley seized 
 him by the wrist, twisted his arm, and gave 
 him a score of unpleasant blows above the 
 elbow. Then he started kicking, meaning the 
 young 'un, after the manner of young 'uns, to 
 take immediate flight. But the young 'un did 
 not budge. "Bunk, you little beast, bunk!" 
 shouted Yardley, redoubling his kicks. But the 
 little beast stood his ground. " Jesus ! Jesus ! " 
 he was saying in his heart ; " for Thy sake, 
 dear Jesus! for Thee, dear Jesus!" "Little 
 brute ! " growled Yardley when he was at last 
 obliged to desist and walk away. The little 
 brute was very sore, but he crept to bed with 
 a bubbling heart, and fell asleep dreaming of 
 Zion Chapel and the angels. 
 
 My father returned to his " laura " on the sand- 
 hills on Monday evening. A large party of boys 
 were playing "I spy!" there, but no one pene- 
 trated his dense inclosure. On the Tuesday and 
 the Wednesday and the Thursday he returned 
 again, but he began to be missed at "Chevy," in 
 which he enjoyed some fame on account of his 
 nimble feet. On Friday one of the captains of
 
 30 MY FATHER'S BOYHOOD 
 
 Chevy tried to stop him. He made a bolt for it, 
 and the captain raised a hue and cry. A pack of 
 twenty boys were after him. 'Twas every bit 
 as good as Chevy. Crawley major, this year's 
 winner of the half-mile, was close upon him at 
 the foot of the sandhills. The poor hare, now 
 short of breath, dashed up the steep incline. 
 " Round the other side and cut him off, you 
 chaps ! " shouted Crawley. " Curse ! " he cried, 
 as he more than once slipped in the loose sand 
 and fell. Once at the top, the hare, by feints 
 and starts and doubling, was able to dodge his 
 pursuers and reach the "laura" unobserved. He 
 heard the search-party confounding and damning 
 the "young brute," and blasting and cursing the 
 "little sneak" on all sides of him. "I believe 
 he's bolted out of bounds and gone round by the 
 'cut' bridge," said a voice. "Let's go back to 
 the playground and look for him," said another. 
 " I'll knock him silly when I catch him," said 
 Crawley major. The little father of the desert 
 was left in holy peace, and that evening was 
 visited and consoled by an excess of fervour and 
 spiritual contentment, so that it seemed to him 
 as if his heart must burst for love of the good 
 God whom he had so long forgotten.
 
 "OLD JACKO" 31 
 
 Saturday there was no chance of visiting the 
 sandhills till late. There was a holiday for the 
 match, second eleven versus first eleven with 
 broomsticks, in which he was obliged to play. 
 But his body seemed to have derived new 
 strength and elasticity from the soul's exalta- 
 tion ; he never played better. He took two 
 wickets with his tricky "lobs," caught three at 
 cover point (his usual place in the field), and got 
 Bully Yardley taken off by the way he knocked 
 his bowling about. The second eleven were in 
 high good-humour with him, but he managed to 
 " sneak " off at the end of the match for just one 
 half-hour's preparation in the "laura" for the 
 dread morrow. 
 
 On Sundays the boys assembled in the big class- 
 room half-an-hour before church-time and had 
 their names called over before being marched off. 
 When the Rev. John Joule, M. A., the headmaster 
 (better known as "Old Jacko," from his resem- 
 blance to an ape), droned out the name " Walshe!" 
 there came no answer. "Wa-a-lshe ! " he shouted 
 again above the din of voices: "Wa-a-lshe!" 
 And still no answer. "Where's Walshe?" he 
 asked testily. "Don't know, sir!" shouted a 
 chorus of voices. " Send him to me after church,
 
 32 MY FATHER'S BOYHOOD 
 
 Yardley." "Yes, sir!" replied Yardley readily. 
 Yardley was much astonished not to find 
 "Walshe" in church, and went down (for the 
 school had seats in the gallery) to acquaint the 
 headmaster in his pew. 
 
 The truant had a blessed morning in Zion 
 Chapel. His presence created a great stir. Re- 
 vival fervour ran high, and the Rev. Isaac Mitton 
 waxed mad and eloquent in a fever heat of unc- 
 tion. The boy was called upon to pray, and he 
 prayed, I expect, with an elevated mysticism, 
 with a glowing purity of sentiment, that must 
 have been new to his lowly hearers. 
 
 He came back just before the dinner-hour, his 
 eyes once more bright, his face flushed, his whole 
 soul braced for the coming struggle. Yardley 
 was on the look-out for him, and pounced. 
 " Headmaster wants you in his study, you young 
 sneak. Come along!" He collared the "young 
 sneak" roughly, though this was quite unneces- 
 sary : the lamb went to the slaughter with the 
 blithe and cheerful heart of an early Christian 
 martyr. 
 
 "Now, sir, where have you been?" asked the 
 headmaster in his harshest tones. Old Jacko 
 rarely caned on a Sunday, but now he was
 
 "HOLD OUT!" 33 
 
 ominously swinging a long cane in his right 
 hand. 
 
 My father was about to tell him simply. But 
 he looked up into that ape-like face with its 
 bearish eyes, and suddenly felt the hopeless 
 impossibility of being understood. And simul- 
 taneously with that thought he thought of the 
 eager, ugly, but not unkind face of the Rev. 
 Isaac Mitton, the only man who had ever put 
 an arm round him and spoken words of kind- 
 ness, and how by telling he might bring trouble 
 upon him, and this effectually sealed his lips. 
 
 "Speak up, can't you!" thundered old Jacko, 
 the wrinkles of his receding forehead gathering 
 in a dangerous fashion. Again there was a 
 deadly silence. 
 
 " Then hold out ! " The poor boy held out, six 
 times altogether, for six cuts given in hot anger. 
 
 "Now, sir, where have you been?" The 
 boy was breathing hard, but the sound of 
 breathing was the only sound that came across 
 his lips. 
 
 "Then hold out again!" 
 
 My unhappy father held out again, twelve 
 times this time ; twelve times for twelve cuts 
 given in ever hotter anger.
 
 34 MY FATHER'S BOYHOOD 
 
 " Now, perhaps, you'll say what nameless 
 wickedness you've been engaged in . . . ! Oh, 
 you won't, won't you . . . !" Old Jacko 
 griped the boy by the collar with his long, 
 chimpanzee fingers, and belaboured his tender 
 body blindly. My father fell on his knees, 
 faint and dizzy. " Jesus ! Jesus ! for Thy dear 
 sake ! for Thy sweet sake, sweet Jesus ! " he 
 was saying to himself all the time. The 
 name of Jesus gave him the power of heroic 
 endurance, and he would have welcomed a 
 thousand of the cruel stripes. The Rev. 
 John Joule then rang the bell and summoned 
 Yardley. By the time his favourite monitor 
 came, he had regained a seeming composure. 
 
 " Yardley," he said pompously, " take this 
 wicked boy and lock him up in the Hoole 
 Class-room. Let him have bread and water 
 for dinner, and bread and water for supper. 
 He is to sleep in the infirmary, and to hold 
 no communication with the other boys. To- 
 day is Sunday. To-morrow I shall have some- 
 thing to say to him. See that Jennings goes 
 up the tree in the morning and prepares me 
 a birch." 
 
 " Yes, sir ! " Yardley would have liked to
 
 THE HOOLE CLASS-ROOM 35 
 
 grin, but before the headmaster he discharged 
 his monitorial functions with great decorum. 
 
 " Well, you're in for it, young 'un," he said 
 as soon as they were outside the study ; " what 
 the hell have you been up to ! " 
 
 The "young 'un " made no answer, and 
 received a cuff or two and a kick or two 
 on the way to the Hoole Class-room. But 
 once there, he knelt down in the middle of 
 the bare floor, and extending his arms and 
 raising his eyes to heaven he cried aloud, 
 "O Jesus! Jesus! for Thee, O most dear 
 Jesus! For Thy sweet sake, sweet Jesus!" 
 and other the like ejaculations of fervent love for 
 his new-found Master. And thus he continued 
 until the night-time when they came to fetch 
 him away to the infirmary. The bare room 
 and its solitude had become as sweet to him 
 as the "laura" on the sandhills, and he forgot 
 the bruises of his body in the spiritual raptures 
 of his soul. My poor dear father ! 
 
 He maintained the same dogged silence on 
 Monday morning, and was held down and 
 birched until the red blood flowed. All in 
 vain ; not a word could he be made to utter.
 
 36 MY FATHER'S BOYHOOD 
 
 Little did they suspect the talisman in his 
 heart that gave him this strange power of 
 endurance. The imprisonment was still main- 
 tained, but he rejoiced in the solitude. There 
 was an old tattered Bible in the window-sill, 
 and with the instinct of the Saints he at 
 once began to feed upon the Psalms. He 
 remembered William Law's recommendation to 
 sanctify the third hour and the sixth hour by 
 prayer, and he read half the Psalter at each. 
 
 On the Tuesday morning he was recon- 
 ducted from the infirmary to the Hoole Class- 
 room, and was destined to receive a worse 
 assault than any which he had yet sustained. 
 Old Jacko came into his prison-house without 
 cane or birch, and announced that he was 
 about to write and request Mr. Walshe to 
 come and fetch his son, for he was expelled 
 the school. Then for the first time did 
 the poor martyr quail, and Heaven, that dear 
 Heaven which had so sweetly filled the Hoole 
 Class-room with its divine odours, seemed 
 suddenly to close and deny its succour. He 
 feared this incomprehensible and uncomprehend- 
 ing father more than stripes above measure 
 and imprisonments and tumults, and when old
 
 THE TRUTH LEAKS OUT 37 
 
 Jacko had gone he lay down upon the bare 
 floor as he had once lain in the apple-tree 
 cradle, and sobbed his heart out, until the 
 heavens once more opened and a ministering 
 angel brought consolation and fortitude for 
 the coming struggle. 
 
 But in the afternoon old Jacko learned the 
 truth. Miss Wright, who kept the inferior tuck- 
 shop, had lately joined the " Methodies," and on 
 Monday afternoon she recounted unto certain 
 small boys how she had seen Master Walshe in 
 the Chapel on Sunday, and what strange doings 
 there had been. The news reached up to 
 Yardley by Tuesday, and old Jacko was at 
 once informed. Oh, what a hullabaloo and a 
 to-do there was in the village, to be sure ! The 
 headmaster sent for the Hon. and Rev. Vicar, 
 who could do nothing but rave that first day. 
 Crawley major and a party of boys broke bounds 
 and stoned the circular window of Zion Chapel. 
 The two village constables turned out and con- 
 signed to the lock-up a burly Methody who was 
 doing rough execution among the boys. The 
 Hon. and Rev. Vicar came and interviewed the 
 "young scamp," and tried to rub into him a 
 sense of his "incorrigible wickedness." The
 
 38 MY FATHER'S BOYHOOD 
 
 "young scamp" remained imperturbably tran- 
 quil under the hail of questions and reproaches : 
 he thought of the silence of the Saviour under 
 persecution, and never opened his lips ; but when 
 alone in his prison-house he rejoiced aloud in the 
 Lord, and sang to himself in his sweet boy's 
 treble, " Jesu, lover of my soul, let me to Thy 
 bosom fly." 
 
 Old Jacko's threat was no idle one. John 
 Walshe arrived on the Thursday. He carried a 
 slender bamboo cane, and used it freely in the 
 Hoole Class-room before uttering a word. Then 
 he spoke in his cold, hard, fierce way, and his 
 words were more powerful than his blows. The 
 upshot of it all was that my father did not leave 
 the Searle House Grammar School. "Salva- 
 tion " was caned, birched, Bullied, twisted, and 
 starved out of his soul. The great wave of 
 feeling left him almost as suddenly as it came. 
 But it did not leave him the same boy. He 
 grew sullen and morose, and even fierce. Two 
 boys who had called him "young Methody" 
 were badly mauled, and the nickname died 
 before it was born. For his soul's peace he 
 even tried to fight Bully Yardley, and though he 
 got the worst of it, the bully did not like the
 
 HOLIDAY READING 39 
 
 experience, and left him alone ever afterwards. 
 Old Jacko treated him with a certain rough 
 respect, and gave him a good report at the end 
 of the term. In a private letter he assured John 
 Walshe that the "nonsense" had been quite 
 knocked out of his son, and laid all the blame on 
 the shoulders of the pernicious and meddlesome 
 Mr. Isaac Mitton. The Methodist episode was 
 soon dropped and forgotten in the school. 
 
 During the holidays my father found the 
 bookcases unlocked, and resumed somewhat the 
 thread of his general reading in the apple-tree. 
 He also went over again and again all that he 
 had done in Greek and Latin during the past 
 term, and learned by heart the whole of the 
 "Ars Poetica." I should have said that Mr. 
 
 B remained his friend, if never his defender. 
 
 He was an enthusiast, and there being no one 
 who cared an atom for his enthusiasms except 
 this small boy, my father derived an immense 
 benefit from his conversation, and likewise re- 
 ceived a considerable amount of indirect private 
 tuition. 
 
 But I must not dwell too long on his boy- 
 hood. Is it not all written in his " Recollec- 
 tions," which I shall assuredly publish if his
 
 40 MY FATHER'S BOYHOOD 
 
 works are appreciated as they deserve to be ? 
 To be briefer, then. My father remained at 
 Searle House until he was fifteen years and two 
 months old, when he was considered ripe for the 
 counting-house. Cruellest of all John Walshe' s 
 blows, he forbade Greek and Latin in the last 
 term, so that the boy might be thoroughly 
 grounded in arithmetic, in which, to tell the 
 truth, he was (and remained) deplorably defi- 
 cient. Old Jacko did not like this interference, 
 but then Mr. Walshe was influential and could 
 
 recommend boys. Mr. B did much to 
 
 neutralise the Draconian measure, and ; became 
 quite expansive and encouraging. Nay, at the 
 end of that last term (may his name live for 
 ever!) he even wrote John Walshe a noble letter, 
 telling him that his son was an exceptionally 
 brilliant classic ; that he was destined to be a 
 great scholar ; that he should be sent to the 
 University, where he was sure to have a brilliant 
 career. The well-intentioned letter served no 
 other purpose than to put my grandfather into 
 a towering passion, and secure for my father a 
 more than usually cold reception. 
 
 My father left school exceptionally far ahead in 
 Greek and Latin for his age, with such history and
 
 "CATHOLICS" 41 
 
 geography as was taught in a grammar school in 
 those days, with algebra down to simple equations, 
 the first book of Euclid, and a remarkably slen- 
 der stock of arithmetic. There was a " Froggie " 
 at the school, a poor bewildered shrinking 
 Alsatian, Monsieur or Herr Ebermann, accord- 
 ing as he taught French or German, and from 
 him my father acquired a working knowledge 
 of French, which, however, became consider- 
 ably obscured until the days when he really 
 settled down to study. 
 
 I ought perhaps to mention here, in view of 
 what happened hereafter, that it was at Searle 
 House that he first became aware that there 
 were such people as " Catholics." The Molli- 
 neux and the Binghams, who were the leading 
 gentry of the neighbourhood, came of a toughly 
 " Recusant " stock that had never changed the 
 Faith. There was a small Catholic chapel and 
 day-school in the village, and there were occa- 
 sional collisions between the Catholic boys and 
 the grammar-school boys. But, of course, he 
 had not the faintest idea what a Catholic was. 
 If he thought about them at all, it was as gloomy 
 and wicked: gloomy, because Mollineux Hall 
 was a sombre Palladian building, with a very
 
 42 MY FATHER'S BOYHOOD 
 
 long, straight, damp, ill-kept drive leading up 
 to it, with an abundance of molehills on either 
 side ; wicked, because they burnt Ridley and 
 Latimer, and tried to blow up the King and 
 Parliament.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 MY FATHER GOES INTO BUSINESS 
 
 AT nine o'clock in the morning of Monday, 
 the 3Oth August 1852, on a sultry, threatening 
 day, my father, with a nameless terror in his 
 heart, took his place in the cabriolet beside my 
 stern grandfather, and was driven off to the 
 counting-house. It was a great day for John 
 Walshe, begetter of a substantial business and 
 of a son to succeed to it, and there was even 
 some geniality in his sermons and admonitions 
 as they drove into the black town. By way 
 of encouragement, the boy was to have a salary 
 of ,15 a year, instead of the unpaid apprentice- 
 ship of three years, which would have been 
 more regular. John Walshe was no manufac- 
 turer or warehouseman, but a merchant who 
 bought from both. He had his customers in 
 China and the West Indies, and even bought 
 for London shippers at one and a half per cent. 
 The counting-house stood on the ground floor 
 
 43
 
 44 MY FATHER GOES INTO BUSINESS 
 
 of a smoke-blackened brick building in Preston 
 Square. It consisted of but four rooms. There 
 was the clerks' office, with a square desk and 
 four high stools, enclosed from the public by a 
 counter ; there was Mr. Briggs' room (he was 
 chief clerk and cashier) ; a sample room, and 
 Mr. Walshe's room, shut off by a green baize 
 door with a round window, through which he 
 could frown upon his clerks. The clerks were 
 three in number besides Mr. Briggs, and my 
 father upon the vacant stool made a fourth. Of 
 his companions, the eldest was one Christopher 
 Meade, a good hand at business and a great 
 favourite with Mr. Walshe, but of an "'umble," 
 sneaking, spiteful, and ambitious character, who 
 was biding his time to oust Mr. Briggs. The 
 other two, Walter Wills and Richard Good- 
 rich, were bright, pleasant enough, good-natured 
 fellows of twenty-one and eighteen, with no par- 
 ticular head, and, as regards Goodrich, scarce 
 an ounce of ballast. For Goodrich, who was 
 fond of dress, and dressed in very bad taste, 
 and who had a sense of humour of his own 
 and a real kind heart, my father speedily de- 
 veloped a great affection. Mr. Briggs and Mr. 
 Meade had been to dinner at Hale ; the other
 
 THE SAMPLE-BOOKS 45 
 
 two my father had never set eyes upon before. 
 " Mr. Goodrich ! " said my grandfather. Mr. 
 Goodrich started. There was that in my grand- 
 father's voice which made people start upon the 
 most insignificant occasions. " For the future 
 you will hand over the sample-books to my son, 
 show him how to keep them, and see that they 
 are properly kept." 
 
 "Yessir!" 
 
 The sample-books were a very ingenious form 
 of torture. They were kept on this wise, as I 
 understand it. A square inch of the drill, twill, 
 shirting, or whatever it might be, was cut out of 
 the original sample and pasted in a book. The 
 samples of every shipment were kept together, 
 and numbered with numbers corresponding to 
 numbers in an invoice or daybook. At the head 
 of the collection was written the name of the ship 
 by which the goods were sent, the name of the 
 buyers and the date of shipment. A sufficiently 
 dreary occupation, and what is more, no one 
 could remember that the sample-books had ever 
 once been wanted or used. 
 
 The arrival of the "Governor's" son in the 
 office put out the other clerks a good deal. They 
 had only been informed of his intended advent
 
 46 MY FATHER GOES INTO BUSINESS 
 
 the Saturday before, and had been deliberating 
 whether they ought to call such a boy " Mr." 
 Besides, they felt he would be a restraint, for 
 when Meade was out, Wills and Goodrich passed 
 most of their time in abusing "the Duke" or 
 "Old Poker," as they also called him. But 
 Goodrich decided at once that he liked the look 
 of the youngster, and when the Duke was out at 
 lunch and Meade on the Exchange, he gave him 
 an exhibition of vaulting over the counter, the 
 which he did with so comic and anxious a face, 
 that the timid new clerk was constrained to laugh 
 heartily. 
 
 It was a sultry, dark day, that first day in the 
 counting-house, and the gas had to be lit. My 
 father, who had been awake half the night think- 
 ing in agony of the dreaded morrow, fell sound 
 asleep on his sample-book. Meade did not like 
 to reprove the " Governor's " son on the first 
 day ; Wills and Goodrich merely said " Poor 
 little devil," and let him sleep. Mr. Walshe 
 had been coming to his round window very often 
 that day to revel in the sight of his son upon a 
 counting-house stool. As ill-luck would have it, 
 he looked out during this peaceful sleep. He 
 opened the door and called sternly, "William!"
 
 A CATASTROPHE 47 
 
 William, disturbed perhaps in his sleep by the 
 sound of that dreaded voice, answered with his 
 first snore. Goodrich looked out of the window 
 to hide a grin. " Come, sir ! William ! " William 
 awoke with a bad start. His right eyebrow had 
 stuck tight on to a wet sample in the sample- 
 book, and in starting up the page was torn vio- 
 lently out of the book and remained clinging to 
 his head. In the surprise and fright and be- 
 wilderment he lost his balance, and the high 
 stool toppled backwards, bringing his head with 
 a crash against the wall. John Walshe stalked 
 frowning back into his room. My father was 
 completely stunned, and there was an ugly cut 
 in the back of his head. Wills picked him up 
 and supported him on his knee. Goodrich 
 fetched water, bathed his face, and wiped the 
 wound with many kindly muttered " Poor little 
 devils," but he did not recover. Then he and 
 Wills fell to disputing which should have the 
 unpleasant duty of going in and telling " Old 
 Poker." Finally, Goodrich vaulted the counter 
 with a grimace, and boldly walked into the 
 " Governor's" sanctum. " Mr. Walshe is stunned, 
 sir," he said. " We can't bring him to. Shall 
 I go and fetch a surgeon ? " John Walshe glared
 
 48 MY FATHER GOES INTO BUSINESS 
 
 at him in a white heat of anger and acute irrita- 
 tion. He could get no word across his tightly 
 drawn lips. "Very well, sir," cried Goodrich in 
 alarm, affecting to have had an answer, and 
 darting out of the room. 
 
 The doctor pronounced the boy to have had 
 a bad concussion, and carefully dressed the 
 wound. Goodrich then took the doctor into 
 Mr. Walshe's room. Mr. Walshe was lying back 
 in his chair livid, doing nothing for the first time 
 in his business life. "The boy's very bad, sir," 
 said the doctor ; "he must go home and to bed 
 at once." It was about four in the afternoon. 
 "Shall I fetch a hackney-coach, sir? Shall I 
 take him home, sir ? " asked Goodrich in a breath, 
 and getting no answer but a stare, he ran out of 
 the room with another " Very well, sir ! " 
 
 Goodrich lifted his burden tenderly into the 
 coach and rested the restless rolling head gently 
 on his arm. He was a soft-hearted fellow, was 
 poor Goodrich. (Alas ! life in the counting-house 
 of John Walshe and a too wild life outside it 
 drove him into enlisting, and he was shot through 
 the head at Inkerman. May his soul, and the 
 souls of all the faithful few who were kind to my 
 father, rest in peace. Amen.) The boy had come
 
 THE ENDING TO THE FIRST DAY 49 
 
 to a bit and was muttering half deliriously. His 
 mind had wandered back to the Searle play- 
 ground and the Hoole Class-room. "Jesus! 
 Jesus ! " he was saying, " Jesus ! for Thy dear 
 sake, sweet Jesus ! " " Hello ! " exclaimed Good- 
 rich, " pious little beggar, poor little devil ! Who'd 
 have thought it in old Poker's offspring ! " 
 
 Arrived at the house, Goodrich set the big 
 bell booming and carried his charge into the 
 hall. It was the first time he had set foot 
 across the Governor's sacred portals. My gos- 
 samer grandmother came out of the morning- 
 room, held up her hands, screamed " Oh, la ! " 
 and fell into a. real faint. While the panic- 
 stricken maids ran for the hartshorn, Goodrich, 
 carrying the boy, made the cook show him the 
 way to the bedroom, and told her to send for 
 a doctor. He undressed his burden with all 
 the solicitude of a nurse and put him to bed ; 
 nor would he have left the bedside, but that he 
 did not relish the idea of meeting the Governor 
 in his own house. And so ended John William 
 Walshe's first day in that counting-house for 
 which he was so little fitted. 
 
 After that blow on the head the dew of re- 
 ligion once more watered his soul. He was 
 
 D
 
 50 MY FATHER GOES INTO BUSINESS 
 
 not moved to any extremes ; he did not go in 
 search of the Wesleyans, nor did he mortify 
 the flesh ; but he prayed without ceasing, and 
 experienced considerable spiritual consolation. 
 He was ten days in bed and five days more 
 invalided at home. During those last five days 
 he began again to say the Psalter at the third 
 hour and the sixth hour, and to invoke the 
 Holy Name with great fervour and comfort. 
 
 On the fifteenth day he reappeared in the 
 counting-house, pale and still suffering, but glad 
 in his new-found peace of soul. Goodrich 
 greeted him effusively. " Well, old chap ; how 
 are you ? Bobbish again ? " But my father 
 clasped his hand within both his, and would 
 not let it go. "God bless you!" he said with 
 tears in his eyes he had a very sweet voice, 
 had my father " God bless you! I've heard 
 of all you did for me." " Oh, that's all right, old 
 chap ! " cried Goodrich, uncomfortably affected. 
 "Have a pear?" he added hastily, diving into 
 his desk and producing a bag of Bishops' 
 Thumbs. " Don't feel like samples yet, I sup- 
 pose, eh ? But here's the Moselle's lot for 
 you to do ; sixteen bales marked and num- 
 bered as per margin. All flaring hankies for
 
 OFFICE-BOY AND MESSENGER 51 
 
 the nigger women. They're a bit livelier than 
 grey domestics." Later on, when Meade was 
 on 'Change and Wills in Mr. Walshe's room, 
 he leaned over the desk and said in a very 
 confidential whisper, " I say, old man, I don't 
 like asking ; it seems beastly mean, but I'm in 
 an awful hole. Could you lend me ten bob 
 till next screw-day ? " My father blushed with 
 vexation. He was kept entirely without money, 
 and had but the solitary " bob " which was doled 
 out to him daily for his luncheon. He at once 
 handed this to Goodrich, and with many regrets 
 promised him the remaining nine next morn- 
 ing. So that day he got no lunch, and that 
 night he asked his mother for money for the 
 first time in his life. " Money, child ! What 
 can you want with money ? " was all she said. 
 But she gave him a sovereign. 
 
 For a year and a half his principal work in 
 the counting - house was keeping the sample- 
 books. But John Walshe had no office-boy 
 or messenger, and so his son filled both offices, 
 running errands, delivering letters, carrying par- 
 cels of samples, leaving and collecting bills of 
 exchange, which latter charge he believed in 
 the innocence of his heart, under Goodrich's
 
 52 MY FATHER GOES INTO BUSINESS 
 
 chaff, to be of weighty importance. All this 
 my grandfather called " thoroughly grounding 
 him." He likewise did many errands for Good- 
 rich, as, for instance, " Bring me a couple of 
 bath buns from Harrison's or Bancroft's, Billy." 
 (Goodrich had called him Billy on the third 
 day, though any one more unlike a " Billy " it 
 would be impossible to imagine.) He was 
 glad to be out of the stuffy counting-house, but 
 the length of time he would be gone upon an 
 errand was the subject of many a sore and 
 harsh reprimand. The truth is, he would fall 
 a-dreaming over books which he picked up off the 
 bookstalls, or flatten his face against Cornish's 
 windows of well-bound books, gleefully chanting 
 their fascinating titles to himself. It was on a 
 bookstall about this time that he found, for 
 sixpence, a battered copy of the " Imitation," a 
 book of which he had only dimly heard. That 
 day he lunched for sixpence, and this gave him 
 the idea of lunching on a couple of dry rolls 
 and saving tenpence a day, which with his hand- 
 some salary of twenty-five shillings a month 
 enabled him to acquire a respectable little store 
 of books. Oh, the joy of those days when he 
 first began to buy books and boldly to ask
 
 A BOLT FOR IT 53 
 
 second-hand dealers for their catalogues ! Oh, 
 the joy of the long nights when he read alone 
 far into the morning! For the first time he 
 learned something about the moderns, and flared 
 forth into a strong fit of hero-worship for Carlyle. 
 
 It was about this time, too, that he noticed, 
 in passing on his errands, that St. Chad's and 
 St. Augustin's Catholic churches were always 
 open, and he made a convenience of them to 
 pray in and to munch his roll and piece of 
 chocolate in. He still knew absolutely nothing 
 of Catholic doctrines or practices, nor that the 
 Blessed Sacrament was reserved in Catholic 
 churches, and he had far more reverence for 
 Zion Chapel, Searle, than for St. Chad's in 
 Cheetham Road. 
 
 After a year and a half Goodrich announced 
 that he was going to make a bolt for it with- 
 out giving the " Governor " previous notice or 
 telling any of his own people. 
 
 "Why don't you come along with me, Billy?" 
 said the affectionate creature; "you'll never do 
 any good at this cursed trade." 
 
 My father parted from him with tears in his 
 eyes. He was the only creature approaching 
 a friend whom he had. They had absolutely
 
 54 MY FATHER GOES INTO BUSINESS 
 
 nothing in common, but there was such a 
 patient good-nature about Goodrich, such a 
 humble respect for any one whom he thought 
 a bit cleverer than himself, that my father found 
 it a relief in his overflow of enthusiasm to talk 
 "Past and Present" and "Novalis" to him. 
 'Tis true that Dick expressed the opinion that 
 Carlyle must be a "rum old codger," and that 
 Billy would end in Bedlam if he worried his 
 brains about "stickjaw stuff" of that kind, but 
 at least he listened. After reading the "Essay 
 on Novalis " for the first time, my father arrived 
 at the office with radiant dreamy eyes, and tried 
 to explain to Master Dick that phenomena 
 had no real existence, that the desk was not 
 hard but only seemed so, and if our fingers 
 were stronger it would appear soft. This was 
 too much for Goodrich ; he gave a long whistle, 
 jerked his thumb over his shoulder, and said, 
 " Yes, you didn't find the wall hard, did you ? 
 Oh, no! Not at all! You bet!" Still my 
 father could and did talk to the affectionate 
 fellow on all manner of subjects (saving only 
 personal religion), and now they both had a lump 
 in the throat at parting. " Sorry about that 
 quid I owe you. Can't wait till next pay-day
 
 A CLERGYMAN OF THE NEW KIND 55 
 
 now. But I'll send it, you bet," were Goodrich's 
 last words. 
 
 About this time a clergyman of the new kind 
 was appointed to Hale Parish Church. He 
 was a spare, worried-looking man, and people 
 said (though half incredulously) that he fasted. 
 He placed a plain cross and two candlesticks 
 above the Communion table, and tried to hide 
 the fact that it was a table. He put the choir 
 into surplices, and himself wore at the Com- 
 munion service a plain linen chasuble, scarcely 
 distinguishable from a surplice. There was a 
 great disturbance in the parish. More important 
 still, he preached Baptismal regeneration ; that 
 Christ was present in the Sacrament ; that 
 marriage was a sacrament ; that fasting com- 
 munion was a duty ; that auricular confession 
 was an obligation. In the middle of the sermon 
 on Confession my grandfather left the pew and 
 the church, taking his son with him. Several 
 other gentlemen followed his example. The 
 clergyman was very zealous, and did a lot of 
 good in the parish. He preached with great 
 eagerness and enthusiasm though, to be sure, 
 his zeal utterly outran his discretion and my 
 father would probably have learned something
 
 56 MY FATHER GOES INTO BUSINESS 
 
 of Catholic truth from him had he not been 
 forbidden the parish church after the sermon 
 on Confession. Besides, his mind at that time 
 was full of Carlyle, and he was likewise cudgel- 
 ling his brains over Jacob Bohme and absorbed 
 in the delights of Peter Sterry's " Rise, Race, 
 and Royalty of the Kingdom of God in the 
 Soul of Man." After about a year the clergy- 
 man preached a farewell sermon, and Mr. 
 Walshe met him in after years at Assisi, not 
 only a Catholic priest, but a Protonotary 
 Apostolic ad instar participantium. 
 
 After Goodrich's departure a new boy came 
 to do the sample-books and the errands, and 
 my father was promoted to Goodrich's place, 
 and had to copy invoices, cast up figures, and 
 keep the petty cash, The mere copying he 
 could do, but the addition of cwts., qrs., Ibs., of 
 pounds, shillings, and pence, presented heart- 
 rending difficulties. He would cast a column 
 and check it to get a different result, check it 
 again and again only to get a different result 
 each time. The new boy was as sharp as his 
 features, and my father had to spare some 
 shillings away from books to get his assistance. 
 Then debtor and creditor were more incompre-
 
 EXCESS IN THE PETTY CASH BOX 57 
 
 hensible to him than transcendental philosophy 
 to Goodrich, and he seems to have reduced 
 them to a sort of Hegelian hash of Absolute 
 Identity. After the first fortnight of the new 
 system a crisis occurred. Mr. Briggs, as in 
 duty bound, made a surprise descent upon the 
 petty cash box. It contained $ too much, 
 nor could the excess in any way be accounted 
 for. Mr. Briggs and Mr. Meade looked very 
 grave, and the new boy sniggered. My poor 
 father could only wonder why they should not 
 be highly delighted to find $ more than there 
 should be. John Walshe had to be told. A 
 hideously discolouring iron was fast entering 
 his soul, and his words and deeds reached the 
 cruelty of a desperate man, bafHed and thwarted 
 of his dearest wish. He must surely have seen 
 at last that this son of his, for all his "ground- 
 ing," could never carry on the house of "John 
 Walshe." He could no longer strike him, but 
 he could chill and freeze him ; he infused a 
 bitter, biting, black frost into the very marrow 
 of as sensitive a heart as ever beat, and in all 
 history I know nothing like the despairing 
 cruelty of it. 
 
 Be it noted that in the " Recollections,"
 
 58 MY FATHER GOES INTO BUSINESS 
 
 although John Walshe's words and deeds are 
 set forth, yet there is never a word of complaint 
 against him, never a murmur. 'Tis my pen 
 that has run into murmuring and more. But 
 it were useless to dwell upon the year of 
 freezing torture that succeeded. I should but 
 offend his modest spirit by laying bare his 
 sufferings. In that year he suffered all the 
 tortures of hell, and bore them like the dear 
 saint he was. But at the end of that year 
 he suddenly became a human being, and, like 
 Dick Goodrich, he bolted.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 MY FATHER LEAVES BUSINESS 
 
 MY father ran away from home and business for 
 much the same reason that a swallow migrates 
 because he could not help himself. There is, 
 I think, a theory that swallows during migration 
 are in a trance and propelled without volition. 
 Certainly his psychological frame was peculiar, 
 nay abnormal, at the time of his flight, but he 
 was subject (as will have been seen), now and 
 again, to powerful inrushings of feeling that 
 carried all along in the eddying flood. Nor 
 had he as yet that Faith which is a sure ballast 
 in the worst of storms, nor did he know to the 
 full that lofty Christianity which loves abjection 
 and seeks servitude. During that last year of 
 black frost, he had been warming his heart 
 for the first time with Byron and Shelley, and 
 developed, oddly enough, an enthusiasm for 
 Rogers' stilted " Italy." He read Roscoe's books, 
 Sismondi, Howell's Travels, Evelyn's Diary, 
 
 59
 
 60 MY FATHER LEAVES BUSINESS 
 
 Mrs. Stisted's " Bye-ways of Italy," l anything 
 and everything, in short, about Italy upon which 
 he could lay hands. And so his whole soul 
 became filled with the melody of Italy, and the 
 voice that chanted within sang of deliverance 
 and salvation, of knowledge and a vocation, of 
 rest and peace. 
 
 One evening, in the early days of April 1855, 
 as he was praying with fervour by his bedside, 
 there came down upon him one of those strong 
 inrushings of feeling which had visited him 
 three or four times in his life, and he became 
 as clearly convinced that he must forthwith 
 start for Italy as he had been convinced in 
 Zion Chapel of having found " Salvation." Since 
 the railway had come to Hale, he no longer 
 drove into town with my grandfather, but was 
 made to go into business an hour earlier by 
 train. So he kissed my grandmother (she 
 insisted on that sentimental ceremony every 
 morning before departure) and set out from Hale 
 in a fine tension of feeling, clearly setting Rome 
 
 1 To the end my father declared that this was one of the very 
 best books ever written about Italy, and that its truthfulness and 
 clear delineation merited that it should be rescued from oblivion. 
 In sentiment the author is strongly Protestant, but she is never 
 for a moment out of sympathy with the Catholic people she is 
 writing about.
 
 ON THE ROAD TO ROME 61 
 
 before him as a goal. He dare not carry off 
 any belongings with him for fear of observation, 
 and had taken an affectionate and sad farewell 
 of all his books his best friends and only com- 
 forters in the past three years. For his Bible and 
 the "Imitation" he found room in his pockets; 
 Shakespeare, and Rogers, and Peter Sterry he 
 carried under his arm. A cherry-wood stick, 
 and about 12 which he had been saving to 
 buy a second-hand copy of the " Encyclopedia 
 Britannica," were the only other possessions he 
 took away with him. 
 
 Arrived at Manchester, his next step on the 
 road to Rome was to take the Liverpool train. 
 I can picture John Walshe's face at not finding 
 him at the office. I seem to hear him say, 
 " Mr. Meade, tell Mr. William I desire to see 
 him at once when he arrives." I can picture 
 his angry restlessness during the day, his cold, 
 harsh communication of the news at night, and 
 my grandmother's pearly tears and rigid faint. 
 My father made inquiry in Liverpool, and found 
 there was a steamer sailing for Leghorn within 
 three or four days. That would bring him 
 tolerably near to Rome. He paid five pounds 
 for a second-class ticket, and rashly spent an-
 
 62 MY FATHER LEAVES BUSINESS 
 
 other five pounds in clothes and a valise, so 
 that, when he got on board the Seamew, he 
 had but ten shillings left in the world. On 
 the day of sailing he posted this letter to his 
 mother : 
 
 " LIVERPOOL, April 10, 1855. 
 
 " MY DEAR MAMMA/ I have gone away be- 
 cause I am unhappy in business and quite un- 
 fitted for business. Things would all go wrong 
 if I were to stay. I am going to Italy. What 
 is going to happen to me there I don't know, 
 but it will be something good. I am obeying 
 a call. Don't be distressed about me ; don't 
 be anxious ; don't worry. I will write to you 
 as soon as I am settled, and that will be very 
 soon. I remain, with love, your affectionate 
 son, WILLIE." 
 
 My father read the Bible and the " Imitation" 
 throughout the voyage. He tried Shakespeare 
 and Rogers, but was in too exalted a state. He 
 tried Sterry, but the salt of the sea seemed to 
 take all the savour out of his mysticism. He 
 had never been at sea before. The sea invigfo- 
 
 o 
 
 rated him ; it lifted him up out of himself. The 
 
 1 Mrs. Walshe would not allow the expression " mother," which 
 she thought " ungenteel and inelegant."
 
 A NEW SONG OF THE SEA 63 
 
 sea seemed to him so scriptural ; it brought him 
 nearer God. It seemed to him like a type of 
 God : creatures lived in it, moved in it, had their 
 being from it. So men lived and moved in God, 
 had their being from God, and yet were distinct 
 from God. Praise was in his heart. New songs 
 and hymns and psalms of praise, half his own 
 composition, surged in his soul and rang through 
 every corner of his mind. He made a new song 
 of the sea all taken from Holy Writ, and that 
 he would chant to himself to Mornington or 
 Windsor, lying in the bows or leaning over the 
 stern of the vessel : 
 
 " Sing unto the Lord a new song, and His praise from 
 the end of the earth, ye that go down to the sea, and all 
 that is therein ; the isles, and the inhabitants thereof. 
 
 " The earth is full of Thy riches. So is this great and 
 wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both 
 small and great beasts. 
 
 " There go the ships : there is that Leviathan whom 
 Thou hast made to play therein. 
 
 " They that go down to the sea in ships, that do 
 business in great waters : these see the works of the 
 Lord and His wonders in the deep. 
 
 " For He commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, 
 which lifteth up the waves thereof. 
 
 " They mount up to heaven, they go down again to the 
 depths ; their soul is melted because of the trouble.
 
 64 MY FATHER LEAVES BUSINESS 
 
 "The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have 
 lifted up their voice ; the floods lift up their waves. 
 
 " Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of Thy water- 
 spouts; all Thy waves and Thy billows have gone over 
 me. 
 
 " Thy way is in the sea, and Thy path in the great 
 waters, and Thy footsteps are not known. 
 
 " The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many 
 waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea. 
 
 " Let the heaven and earth praise Him, the seas and 
 everything that moveth therein. 
 
 " O ye seas and floods, bless ye the Lord : praise Him 
 and magnify Him for ever. 
 
 " Glory be to the Father and to the Son : and to the 
 Holy Ghost. 
 
 " As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall 
 be, world without end. Amen." 
 
 Time passed with incredible swiftness. The 
 fit of exaltation was strong upon him ; he cannot 
 remember what the captain was like, or any of 
 his fellow-passengers. On the evening of the 
 fifteenth day the Castle of Leghorn was sighted. 
 The flag which flew over it no longer flies in 
 Tuscany. It was a red flag with a broad white 
 stripe, and in the centre of the stripe were the 
 arms of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, destined to 
 reign only four years more over his Duchy. My 
 father landed, and had his valise carried to a little
 
 MY FATHER'S APPEARANCE 65 
 
 inn in the main street : it was impossible to start 
 for Rome that night. By the time he had paid 
 his boat and porterage, he had but two florins left. 
 The circumstance did not trouble him in the least ; 
 he intended to start for Rome the next day. 
 
 In the morning he sallied forth to sell his 
 watch. It was an inexpensive silver watch given 
 him by his father at the time he entered business, 
 so that he might in no wise exceed the luncheon 
 half-hour. He could not hope to realise more 
 than thirty Tuscan livres upon it, but these 
 might take him to his goal, and there God 
 would provide. I must tell you that by this time 
 my father had grown into a very engaging and 
 striking-looking youth ; nay, I will call him a 
 very handsome youth. His thick, straight, deep 
 chestnut hair was of a most beautiful rich tint ; 
 he wore it rather long, as was the fashion then, 
 and it still inclined forward as in Boxall's picture, 
 giving him a most winning look of innocence 
 and wisdom. The bright eyes were clear hazel, 
 the soft lashes still those of a child, his chin was 
 grown longer, though most delicately moulded. 
 And there was still upon the face that slight 
 look of sad and serious questioning (though to be 
 sure mingled with a serene loving-kindness), that
 
 66 MY FATHER LEAVES BUSINESS 
 
 faint perplexed drawing together of the eye- 
 brows, which had been entirely smoothed away 
 when I came into the world. 
 
 The wondering Livornesi stared at him as he 
 walked down the high street in search of a 
 jeweller. He heeded them not, heeded none, 
 save a tall, spare, grave gentleman whose face 
 seemed to shine like a beacon. Upon him he 
 gazed very steadfastly, and the gentleman as 
 steadfastly returned his gaze. They passed very 
 close, and their eyes met very full. My father's 
 heart thumped against his side. After they had 
 passed he turned round to look, and the gentle- 
 man too had turned round and was looking. 
 Then my father stopped short for very wonder- 
 ment, and the gentleman too stopped short, and 
 came back upon him with three of his long 
 swinging strides. 
 
 " Did you wish to speak with me, young 
 gentleman ? " he inquired in a voice singularly 
 sweet and piano in one so tall and wiry. 
 
 My father's answer was peculiar. It was a 
 question, the question of one who believes most 
 thoroughly in the intimate affectionate interpo- 
 sitions of Divine Providence. " Were you sent 
 to meet me, sir ? " he asked.
 
 A RENCONTRE 67 
 
 The gentleman looked at him curiously. " Who 
 knows, " he said, " that I may not have been 
 sent to meet you. Almighty God moves in a 
 mysterious way, and chooses strange instruments 
 in the working of His mercies." 
 
 Now my father had never been accustomed 
 to meet with men who spoke of " God " and 
 His "mercies" and His "marvels" just as if it 
 were all the most natural thing in the world, 
 and when he heard this gentleman in his soft 
 tones assign to Almighty God that position in 
 the universe which the boy had ever striven to 
 give Him in his heart, he was so affected that 
 he could utter no word. 
 
 The gentleman looked hard at my father in 
 his grave, kind way. Then he spoke : " You're 
 in trouble, young sir. Come and tell me all 
 about it ; then we shall know whether I was 
 sent to meet you or not. If I can help you I 
 gladly will." 
 
 My father dared not thank him for fear the 
 tears should have burst their floodgates. The 
 gentleman linked his arm through my father's, 
 and they walked back in silence to the little 
 inn and went straight up to the dingy little 
 bed-chamber. Once there, my father began to
 
 68 MY FATHER LEAVES BUSINESS 
 
 talk. It was the first time in his life that he 
 had ever talked of himself. He did not merely 
 tell the story of his running away ; he began 
 at the beginning and told everything every- 
 thing. He did not blame his father and mother, 
 but he did not shield them. He told every- 
 thing everything : his beatings at home ; his 
 furtive readings ; how he had tried to hide his 
 life with Christ in God when a baby ; then his 
 school life, his beatings and bullyings there ; of 
 the Rev. Isaac Mitton ; of the "laura" on the 
 
 sandhills ; of Mr. B and the noble Latin 
 
 language, and how he might not continue Latin 
 in the last term ; of his disastrous first day in 
 business ; of his desultory readings and blind 
 aspirations ; of his last day in business and des- 
 perate flight. He told everything everything ; 
 more than I have told you, reader, more perhaps 
 even than is set down in the " Recollections." 
 
 The gentleman had been standing at first 
 during this recital, and so had my father. 
 Midway he sat down on the edge of the bed, 
 and my father dropped on his knees beside 
 him and gripped his hand tight, sometimes 
 burying his face in the coverlid, and now and 
 again looking up for invigoration into the
 
 THE ENVOY OF GOD 69 
 
 gentleman's kind, serious face. When he had 
 made an end of the long story, the gentle- 
 man was silent for a space, thinking very hard, 
 and in the process his eyes got very soft and 
 moist. My father seized his hand and kissed 
 it with fervour. At length the gentleman 
 broke silence. 
 
 " I think, young sir," says he, " that I can 
 now answer your first question. I was sent 
 here to meet you to-day, and it was Almighty 
 God who sent me. Will you trust His envoy 
 and come home with me ? I live above Lucca." 
 
 " Indeed I will ! " cried my father eagerly. 
 "But I have no money to pay the journey," 
 he added ruefully, " unless I can sell my watch." 
 
 The gentleman laughed for the first time. 
 " You will travel in my postchaise," he an- 
 swered. " And as regards money," he went 
 on, "I will teach you how to make money ; 
 and you will have to do a good deal of Latin 
 in the process of making money," he added 
 with a smile. " Do you know if the Seamew 
 has put in ? " 
 
 " I travelled by her, sir," answered my father. 
 
 " Good ! " said the gentleman emphatically. 
 " She is bringing me a case of rare books. I
 
 70 MY FATHER LEAVES BUSINESS 
 
 wish to see them through the custom-house 
 myself." 
 
 " Books ! " cried the young gentleman from 
 Manchester with his mouth open. 
 
 "Oh, you'll find my home full of books, and 
 some very good books too," replied the gentle- 
 man, laughing again. " But, by the way," he 
 added good - humouredly, " you've told me a 
 long story, young sir, but there's one thing 
 you have not told me, and that is your name." 
 
 My father excused himself for the unwitting 
 omission. " My name is Walshe," he answered ; 
 "my father is " 
 
 "We are of the same county," interrupted 
 the gentleman. " My name is Markham, and 
 I am called Lord Frederick Markham because 
 my father was the Marquis of Clitheroe. Your 
 father must be the merchant of Preston Square. 
 I have heard of him. My brother, the present 
 owner of Clitheroe, has dined at his house 
 upon some political occasion. And now to 
 the custom-house," he continued, " and then 
 to luncheon or ' collazione,' as you will soon 
 come to call it, and in the cool of the evening 
 we will drive home to Lucca." 
 
 In the cool of the evening they started off
 
 A BEAUTIFUL DRIVE 71 
 
 in an open chaise, and my father's eyes, you 
 may be sure, were staring wide at the strange 
 new country through which they passed. Their 
 road took them through Pisa, and when the 
 new-comer beheld the stately magnificence of 
 the palaces on the Lung' Arno, he held his 
 breath in exultation. Lord Frederick made 
 his driver go a little out of the way, so as to 
 pass the group of the Duomo, and Baptistery, 
 and Leaning Tower. These were the first 
 beautiful and noble buildings that my father 
 had ever gazed upon, and he closed his eyes 
 at the sight of their splendour, just as if he 
 had been gazing at the sun. 
 
 When they got outside the city Lord 
 Frederick said to him : " I might take you by 
 a shorter road over those hills there that shut 
 out the sight of Lucca from the Pisans. But 
 I have some business in the town of Lucca, so 
 we will take the main road through Rigoli and 
 Ripafratta. The fact is, I've ordered a very 
 modest Te Deum in the Cathedral at six this 
 evening in thanksgiving for the recovery of 
 one of my peasants after a dangerous accident. 
 It's quite a small affair, without organ or orches- 
 tra. I prefer it like that when I can get it."
 
 72 MY FATHER LEAVES BUSINESS 
 
 To order a Te Deum struck my father as a 
 strange phrase. " Can an Englishman have a 
 Te Deum in an Italian cathedral, sir?" he asked. 
 
 "Oh, I'm a Catholic, you know," replied 
 Lord Frederick. 
 
 A Catholic ! That was an even stranger 
 phrase to my father. He associated it with 
 nothing, or only with formalism and idolatry, 
 with burning and torture, and here was the 
 envoy of God, a Catholic. 
 
 The chaise jog-trotted through the Porta 
 Santa Maria and through the narrow streets 
 of Lucca into the still and deeply devotional 
 Piazza del Duomo. The fountain in the ad- 
 jacent Piazza degli Antelminelli was leaping 
 high into the blue heavens. The chaise pulled 
 up in front of the Duomo. My father lifted 
 his eyes and gazed up at the austere yet 
 elaborate fa9ade. He saw there the rude 
 effigy of a mounted warrior dividing his cloak 
 with his sword, and giving the half of it to 
 another man. He knew nothing of St. Martin 
 or of any of the Saints, but his first impression 
 of Lucca was of a man in the act of giving. 
 
 " May I come in ? " asked my father as Lord 
 Frederick descended. 
 
 " To be sure, if you like. Why, they've 
 begun ! " he continued under his breath as they
 
 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS 
 
 73 
 
 entered the cool, grey devotional Duomo ; " what 
 unusual punctuality ! " 
 
 The Duomo was about a quarter filled, chiefly 
 with poor people and peasants. My father was 
 struck dumb with amazement. "Why, what is 
 this language that these poor people are sing- 
 ing?" he thought. 
 
 Ti - bi Che-ru- him et Se ra-phim, in - ces - sa - bi - li 
 
 vo - ce pro- cld-mant. 
 
 Why, it is Latin ! he said to himself exultantly, 
 
 Latin ! Latin ! not as Mr. B had pronounced 
 
 it, but Latin surely something as Horace himself 
 must have pronounced it. Latin ! Latin ! the 
 sweetest consolation of the darkest hours of his 
 dark school-life. 
 
 San 
 
 ctus. 
 
 sang the choir in the 
 sanctuary. 
 
 San 
 
 ctus. 
 
 replied the people 
 in the body of the 
 church. 
 
 San - ctus, D6 - mi nus De -us Sa ba - oth. 
 answered the choir triumphantly.
 
 74 MY FATHER LEAVES BUSINESS 
 
 The congregation was standing bolt upright, 
 but my poor father had sunk upon his knees to 
 try and hide his emotion. Latin ! Latin ! Then 
 Latin was not dead, but living! Latin! And 
 there were people, and there were peasants, who 
 praised God in Latin ! 
 
 Tu Rex glo - ri - ae, Chri - ste. 
 Christe! then Jesus of the orchard, Jesus 
 of the "laura" on the sandhills, Jesus of black 
 Manchester was praised by living human beings 
 in Latin ! 
 
 m 
 
 1 
 
 Te er - go quae-su-mus, tu - is fa - mu-lis sub -ve- ni, 
 
 quos pre - ti - 6 so san - gui - ne red - e - mi - Bti. 
 Here all the people dropped on their knees 
 beside my father 
 
 IE - t6r - na fac cum San - ctis tu - is, 
 
 * . B 
 
 in g!6 - ri - a nu me - ra ri. 
 
 Here all the people rose, and my father rose 
 with them, a much changed young man. The
 
 THE ACT OF PRAISE 75 
 
 people and the peasants of Lucca had taught 
 him in a brief quarter of an hour that which 
 he had blindly sought from infancy : how to 
 praise, in spirit and in truth, the Lord God of 
 Hosts, the Creator of the universe, the Author 
 and Ruler of his being. Praise, he suddenly 
 divined, was an act an inward act, independent 
 of all words, and yet clothed in words because 
 of the nature of things. This clothing of words 
 should then be in the most beautiful, the most 
 majestic, the most devotional language known, 
 and that was Latin ! Latin ! This act of praise 
 should be clothed in the same language all the 
 world over ; it should be used by the simple 
 and humble, equally with the wise and learned. 
 Not all would understand the words of this 
 mystical tongue, but all would comprehend the 
 mystical grandeur of the act. And this lesson 
 he had learned from hewers of wood and drawers 
 of water, from tillers of the earth and drovers 
 of flocks and herds, and in Latin ! in Latin ! 
 
 Lord Frederick touched his elbow. They 
 were already out in the open green country. 
 He pointed up to a great grey building, with 
 many small windows and a diminutive spire at 
 one corner. " That," he said, " is a Franciscan
 
 76 MY FATHER LEAVES BUSINESS 
 
 convent Observantins a novitiate." His words 
 were unintelligible to my father, but he sought 
 no explanation. " Sanctus . . . Sanctus . . . 
 Sanctus ..." rang in his brain. " And the 
 building just below," continued Lord Frederick, 
 "is my house, which I hope you will make your 
 home until Heaven is pleased to show you your 
 vocation in life." 
 
 " Sanctus . . . Sanctus . . . Sanctus ..." 
 answered my father, half aloud. 
 
 The heavy wrought-iron gates of the villa 
 creaked loudly as the smiling lodge-porter opened 
 them, and the chaise rolled leisurely down a 
 shady avenue of maples. A peasant or two 
 doffed caps and smiled ; half a dozen barefooted 
 women curtseyed and smiled ; an old man 
 munching his evening meal held up his crusts, 
 smiling, and said to his rich and noble master : 
 "Vuol favorire, Signer Barone? Will you par- 
 take with me, my lord ? " A smiling old serving- 
 man, with brown wrinkled face and short white 
 hair, was at the foot of the perron, waiting to 
 receive them. 
 
 "Ben tomato, Signer Barone ! " 
 
 " Buona sera, Baldassare ! All well ? " 
 
 "Yes, my lord."
 
 SAFE INTO HAVEN 77 
 
 ''And the Signorina?" 
 
 " The Baronessina has gone to dress for 
 dinner." 
 
 "Then we must hurry. Come!" he said to 
 my father. 
 
 The young gentleman from Manchester walked 
 up the noble marble steps of the perron in a 
 dream. He felt that he had come safe into 
 haven at last, after terrific storms and untold 
 dangers, and as he paused at the top of the 
 steps and gazed over the smiling fertile country, 
 the act of praise welled up in his heart : " Sanc- 
 tus . . . Sanctus . . . Sanctus . . . Dominus 
 Deus Sabaoth. Pleni sunt cceli et terra : ma- 
 jestatis glorise tuse ... In te, Domine, speravi : 
 non confundar in seternum."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 MY FATHER FALLS IN LOVE 
 
 THE villa was a much bigger place than it 
 seemed as seen from the road below. There 
 were some huge rooms in it ; the hall was huge ; 
 the library on the first floor (which should have 
 been the salone) was hugest of all. Frescoes 
 in monochrome decorated the exterior, and a 
 Renaissance frieze ran round the whole build- 
 ing beneath the overhanging eaves. The marble 
 perron and the loggia were of the noblest pro- 
 portions. Lord Frederick Markham had been 
 living here some twenty years now. He had 
 become a Catholic in 1826, long before the tide 
 of conversions set in, and independent of any 
 Oxford influence. His conversion made a family 
 stir, for the Markhams were very Evangelical. 
 (You may have heard of the prayer-meetings at 
 Clitheroe House in St. James Square, and of 
 the late Marquis' preaching.) He had already 
 
 inherited a handsome portion from the sixth 
 
 78
 
 LORD FREDERICK MARKHAM 79 
 
 Marquis, or it might have gone but hardly with 
 him. 
 
 Life at home or among his set had become 
 difficult, if not impossible. He drifted abroad. 
 When at Cambridge he had thought of becom- 
 ing a priest. His confessor at Rome told him 
 that he had no vocation ; he tried two other 
 confessors, and they told him the same story. 
 He would have tried a fourth, so determined 
 was he, but that he suddenly fell deeply in love 
 with Elisa Fabriani, only daughter of Count 
 Fabriani of Lucca and Rome, and so found his 
 vocation. They were married, and she brought 
 him the big villa above Lucca as her portion. 
 Alas, poor lady ! she died in childbirth in the 
 year 1841 after but six years of a most felici- 
 tous wedded life, and it was the great sorrow 
 of her death that made Lord Frederick a trifle 
 grave. 
 
 There was a large podere attached to the 
 Villa Fabriani. Lord Frederick bought two 
 others near the villa, so that he might have an 
 active interest in life. His contadini adored 
 him. Had he used the power of life and 
 death among them, not a soul of them would 
 have demurred. He did very frequently use
 
 8o MY FATHER FALLS IN LOVE 
 
 his power to prevent premature and unsuitable 
 marriages. Lord Frederick was an expert hus- 
 bandman, but he made no attempt to introduce 
 " reforms," or machinery, or English methods 
 on his poderi, holding such things to be en- 
 tirely unsuitable to the needs of Tuscan agri- 
 culture and the Tuscan peasants at that time. 
 Rising up behind the villa was terrace upon 
 terrace of olive trees, and his oil was eagerly 
 sought upon the Leghorn market. Running 
 round three sides of the garden was a pergola 
 that recalled a monastic cloister, and enjoyed 
 great fame in the neighbourhood. The garden 
 was a bit wild, but so Lord Frederick had 
 found and liked it, and so he declared it should 
 be kept. There was an abundance of chrysan- 
 themums, verbena, mignonette, feather-grass, 
 calycanthus, and yellow mimosa ; sweet jasmine 
 ran wild over the terrace walls ; azaleas, oleanders, 
 lilac, peonies, guelder roses, the purple and white 
 orris, here and there made agreeable patches of 
 bright colour. Among the trees, forming a bosco 
 on either side, were the homely hazel and the 
 hornbeam, the cypress, tall holly, and the holm- 
 oak, pomegranates and magnolias in full flower. 
 And note that the hill rose up almost immedi-
 
 AN OLD GARDEN 81 
 
 ately at the back of the villa, so that there 
 was terrace upon terrace in this garden after 
 the first three hundred feet of level ground. 
 White statues of gods and goddesses (mostly 
 with their noses and fingers broken) shone out 
 among the acacia groves, and moss-covered 
 busts and lichened vases dotted the broad balus- 
 trades of the terraces. Ruffs and reeves, lapwings 
 and curlews, and many a strange red-legged 
 bird from the marshes, stepped daintily across 
 the grass plots, clearing the garden of snails 
 and slugs, while from the top of one of the 
 marble pilasters an arrogant white peacock sur- 
 veyed the domain as if it were his own, shriek- 
 ing a caveat to all comers. On the second 
 terrace there was a brave show of fountains 
 that played on saints' days and holidays, and 
 a pond full of carp for Fridays and the Lenten 
 season. 
 
 At the end of the last of the garden terraces 
 began the terraces of the olive orchards, and 
 when you had passed the last of these you 
 were in the woodland path that led up to the 
 Observantin Convent. Oh, what gentle, what 
 exquisite, what sweet-smelling woods ! Oxeye 
 
 daisies, marigolds, and feverfew, the purple and 
 
 F
 
 82 MY FATHER FALLS IN LOVE 
 
 bee orchis, red and white rock cistus, red and 
 white campions, grape hyacinths, stars of Beth- 
 lehem, wood anemones, and how many more, 
 were among the flowers ; thyme and mint, borage 
 and rosemary, lavender and horehound, among 
 the herbs ; honeysuckle and old man's beard, 
 bryony and sarsaparilla and dog roses, among 
 the creepers ; myrtle and arbutus, juniper and 
 broom, and the Erica arborea, among the 
 shrubs ; while chestnut and ash, larch and the 
 elder-tree, stone-pines and holmoaks were among 
 the trees. Green lizards tumbled and darted 
 across the yellow path ; snakes left their sun- 
 bath for the underwood at your coming ; the 
 birds joined in chorus with the dealt and the 
 frogs. And do but turn you round about and 
 behold the gentle city of Lucca gentle as the 
 Holy Face which it enshrines with her many 
 towers and green ramparts, slumbering in a 
 heat mist of the early spring ; the great plain, 
 dotted with villages and studded with villas, cut 
 in two by the noble aqueduct of Duchess 
 Maria Louisa ; and far away beyond upon the 
 horizon the tall tower of Porcari and the walled 
 township of Montecarlo San Salvadore. 
 
 Into this realm of sunshine, into this sweet
 
 A TUSCAN BEDROOM 83 
 
 and restful paradise, into a blithe company of 
 the lowly who praised God in Latin, stepped my 
 father with his vivid imagination, straight from 
 the smoke and grime and fog, from the hurry 
 and scurry, the rattle and roar, the give and take, 
 of Manchester : for freezing hate he found warm 
 love ; for drudgery, liberty ; for darkness, light. 
 He had fallen asleep in Hades ; now he dreamt 
 that he was in Paradise, and he knew -that 
 some great awakening was at hand. 'Twas the 
 awakening of his real self which had hitherto 
 slumbered, or only fitfully been roused as be- 
 tween waking and sleeping. 
 
 But I must go back to my narrative. On that 
 first evening of arrival, Baldassare led my father 
 up to a lofty airy bedroom. The furniture in it 
 was spare ; the walls washed with but a plain 
 yellow distemper ; the floors paved with broad 
 red bricks, now shining with the polish of cen- 
 turies. White dimity curtains hung from the 
 oaken bedstead ; the high-backed chairs were 
 likewise of oak ; the mirror stood in a great 
 swing frame ; green jalousies, which Baldassare 
 now opened wide, had kept the room cool and 
 sweet ; on the ceiling five or six putti sported in 
 the bulging masses of a white cloudland. It was
 
 84 MY FATHER FALLS IN LOVE 
 
 the wholesomest sight my father had ever seen 
 within doors, and the Tuscan simplicity of it 
 went straight to his heart. But what is this on 
 either side of the bed? On the one side a 
 triptych with Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, 
 St. Michael, our defender in the day of battle, and 
 St. Martin, that dispenser of goods to the poor 
 whom he had seen over the Duomo. On the 
 other 
 
 " Ah ! " cried my father with much feeling. 
 
 " E il volto Santo di Lucca, Signorino," ex- 
 plained Baldassare, approvingly. 
 
 But my father knew no word of the Tuscan 
 tongue. He gazed in mute meditation upon the 
 most beautiful, the most touching, the most 
 speaking face of the Redeemer which he had 
 ever beheld. Often had he spoken to Jesus ; 
 now the Lord Jesus was speaking to him. 
 
 " Si spicci, si spicci, hurry, hurry," said 
 Baldassare; "el'ora del desinare." (Note that 
 simple and beautiful "desinare" to dine, even in 
 a great house. Now-a-days we no longer dine 
 we "pranzare" or banquet.) 
 
 My father washed himself in haste, changed 
 his shirt, got into a very ill-fitting suit of black 
 which he had bought at Liverpool, and loosely
 
 THE LIBRARY 85 
 
 tied his Byronic wisp of black silk. Then he 
 descended to the library. There he stood gasping 
 in the middle of the huge room, his breath taken 
 from him by these rows upon rows of leather 
 and parchment backs, fine folios in the lower 
 shelves, rising up to quartos and octavos and 
 diminutive duodecimos in the shelves above. 
 There was a glass cupboard of parchments care- 
 fully rolled or folded, with a ticket hanging from 
 each ; these were the charters, the briefs and 
 bulls, the letters - patent and notarial deeds. 
 There was a glass cupboard of books bound in 
 boards or parchment ; these were the codexes. 
 On the ceiling there was another heaven ; Our 
 Lady was being assumed into it, surrounded by 
 angels and many putti; nosegays of bright 
 coloured flowers were strewn among the clouds 
 and the angels. And as my father gazed up in 
 wonder at this constant presentment of heaven 
 upon earth, and marvelled at the people who 
 were for ever presenting it, he heard a sound as 
 of the rustling of these angels' wings. But the 
 sound brought him down to the earth from 
 whence it came ; and looking over towards the 
 high marble mantelpiece, he saw a young girl 
 buried deep in a brown high-backed leathern
 
 86 MY FATHER FALLS IN LOVE 
 
 arm-chair. Her elbow rested upon the twisted 
 wooden arm of the chair ; her head rested upon 
 her right hand ; her left hand held up a big 
 book ; and the book rested upon her knee. The 
 girl was not more than fourteen, though well- 
 grown after the manner of Italian children. She 
 was dressed in a thin black merino, and her 
 frock was still short. She wore a white cambric 
 pinafore, white stockings and black shiny shoes, 
 buttoned across the instep by a strap. Her 
 black hair, cut short, but now grown down below 
 the neck, was held back by a tortoise-shell 
 " crop " comb, which kept the black shock from 
 falling in her eyes. Her face was marble white 
 rather than Tuscan olive ; her black eyes dazzled 
 by their mingled sweetness and vivacity. My 
 father stood stock-still and clasped his hands. 
 The girl looked full at him in great surprise, but 
 he looked up into the painted heaven as if to 
 see which of the angels it was that had left its 
 paradisaical abode there and come down upon 
 earth. My poor dear father ! What inrushings 
 of feeling had come down upon him since he left 
 Manchester ! The inrushing which had propelled 
 his migration ; the inrushing of the sea into his 
 heart ; the inrushing which had carried him into
 
 IN LOVE 87 
 
 Lord Frederick's arms ; the inrushing which had 
 taught him how the Creator may be praised in 
 Latin ; and now the inrushing which no man 
 may escape love, the love of man for woman. 
 For he was in love, in love, this dear father of 
 mine, in love, and the inrushing stirred within 
 him for the first time lyrics that were not hymns 
 or psalms of praise to the Lord of all things. 
 'Twas a sublime moment, but that it was love let 
 one thing prove, that he who had never before 
 distinguished between man and woman, that he 
 who had never before taken thought what he 
 should wear, at that sublime moment realised 
 that his clothes were ill-fitting, that his cravat 
 was loosely tied, that his hair might be arranged 
 to greater advantage, that a less clumsy shoe 
 would add lustre to his appearance. If all this 
 be not evidence of true love, there is no love in 
 all the universe. 
 
 The girl closed her book and rose gravely 
 out of the depths of the arm-chair. Lord 
 Frederick had hurried up to his room to make 
 ready for dinner, and she had heard nothing of 
 the presence of- a stranger in the house. But 
 this gentle stranger did not alarm her ; his 
 presence seemed to her a thing most natural,
 
 88 
 
 and she held out her hand. My father still 
 kept his hands tightly clasped : the right attitude 
 in the presence of angels is one of adoration. 
 Then the bright vivacious light in her eyes 
 changed and softened wonderfully : perhaps she, 
 too, had become a captive. Remember that she 
 was half Italian, and let me hasten to tell thee, 
 reader, that my father, like Jacob for Rachel, 
 served seven years for her without speaking 
 one word of love. This girl was Mary, only 
 daughter of Lord Frederick Markham, called 
 by the peasants "la Baronessina." She was 
 the only child of her father, and the child that 
 had cost him the life of his wife. 
 
 Lord Frederick entered briskly upon this 
 dumb rapture. He was already late for dinner. 
 "Been making friends?" he exclaimed; "that's 
 right ! Mary, this is young Mr. Walshe of 
 Manchester, who is coming to live with us. 
 He is to take the place of a son to me, and 
 therefore he is your brother. What shall we 
 call you?" he continued, turning to young Mr. 
 Walshe. " Shall we call you Willie ? " 
 
 My father dreamily signified assent, and walked 
 down the broad marble staircase in a deep 
 dream. They sat at the end of a long table,
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT 89 
 
 Lord Frederick at the head, Mary on his right 
 hand and my father on his left. But before 
 Lord Frederick had sat down he had said in 
 simple reverent tones, first crossing himself, 
 " Benedic nos, Domine, et h&c tua dona qua de 
 tua largitate sumus sumpturi, per Christum 
 Dominum nostrum." " Amen," answered Mary, 
 and it was the first word which had crossed 
 her lips. (Then Latin even had its every-day 
 and family uses in this country, thought my 
 father.) The plainest fare was served, a com- 
 mon brodo with paste, a bit of lesso with carrots 
 and artichokes, a roast chicken with salad and 
 beetroot, a kind of custard in cups known as 
 zabaione, and for dessert wild strawberries and 
 Japanese medlars. Throughout the dinner, one 
 kind of wine only, and that mixed with water, 
 the plain red wine which had come from the 
 villa's vineyards. 
 
 But my father had lost both appetite and voice. 
 And to show you that he really was in love, he 
 desired all the time to shine by conversation, 
 and yet could get no word across his lips. 
 There was no sitting over wine, as at Hale. 
 Lord Frederick rose, and, once more crossing 
 himself, said
 
 90 MY FATHER FALLS IN LOVE 
 
 "Agimus tibi gratias, Omnipotens Deus, pro 
 universis beneficiis tuis, qui vivis et regnas per 
 omnia scecula sceculorum" 
 
 " Amen," said Miss Mary. 
 
 " Et Fidelium animcz" Lord Frederick went 
 on, with more fervour in his voice, "per miseri- 
 cordiam Dei, requiescant in pace." 
 
 And " Amen," once again said Mary. 
 
 Then they went upstairs to the library, and 
 Lord Frederick began to entertain his young 
 guest by showing him a portfolio of engraved 
 portraits. My father looked over from every 
 portrait to Mary, and quickly back again from 
 Mary to the portrait. Somewhere about half- 
 past eight, the piercing bell of the Observantin 
 Convent rang out and echoed among the hills. 
 " What ! " cried Lord Frederick, springing to his 
 feet, "un ora della notte already!" Then he 
 and his daughter began the rapid recitation of 
 the " De Profundis " in alternate verses, includ- 
 ing the versicles and responses and the collect, 
 " Fidelium Deus." Lord Frederick once more 
 said " Oremus," and recited the following collect, 
 with some little emotion : 
 
 " Quasumus, Domine, pro tua pietate miserere 
 animce famulce tua Elisae : et a contagiis morta-
 
 A NIGHT SCENE 91 
 
 litatis exutam, in (zternce salvationis partem 
 restitue. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. 
 
 R. Amen. 
 
 V. Requiem ceternam dona ei, Domine. 
 
 R. Et lux perpetua luceat ei. 
 
 V. Requiescat in pace. 
 
 R. Amen. 
 
 And " Amen," said my father, joining in these 
 simple beautiful family devotions for the first time. 
 
 That evening he begged to retire early. He 
 felt the need of being alone. The emotions of 
 the day had been great. Why, it was only this 
 morning that he met Lord Frederick, and he 
 had already found a home, a father, a bride, 
 and the first beginnings of a religion. He put 
 back the green persiane, and gazed out into the 
 night. It seemed to him as if he might have 
 reached the stars, so brightly near did they 
 shine ; the crescent moon seemed suspended 
 among the towers of Lucca, and lit up Maria 
 Louisa's aqueduct. Lights twinkled in the 
 great plain and up the hills over away to Monte- 
 carlo San Salvadore. The nightingale sang, 
 the cicali chirped, the green frogs sent up their 
 peculiar slow melodious gurgle ; owls flew by 
 with a noisy whirr, calling loudly. My father
 
 92 MY FATHER FALLS IN LOVE 
 
 gazed long upon the wonderful scene. He 
 knelt down in reverence before the open window 
 and folded his hands. The first words of the 
 grace after meals came into his mind, and he 
 repeated them with fervour. " Agimus tibi 
 gr alias . . . agimus tibi gratias, Omnipotens 
 Deus" What a sonorous roll they had, to be 
 sure, how acceptable they must be in the sight 
 of Almighty God. And just as he had learned 
 in the Duomo the true nature of praise, so now 
 he learned a real understanding of thanksgiving. 
 This, too, was an act independent of all words : 
 language could give it no force or validity ; 
 but since language could give it beauty, let it 
 be clothed for ever in the most beautiful lan- 
 guage known, and that is Low Latin. He prayed 
 a long while at the open window, prayed with 
 a new, because a calmer ecstasy. Then he 
 undressed and went to bed with "agimus tibi 
 gratias, Omnipotens Deus" humming in his brain. 
 Suddenly between waking and sleeping he sat 
 up in bed ; the remainder of the grace had 
 come back to him : "pro universis beneficiis tuis, 
 qui vivis et regnas per omnia scecula scecii- 
 lorum. Amen" Then he turned over and 
 fell asleep very sweetly and peacefully.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 MY father rose at six next day mightily refreshed 
 in body and spirit, and with an equable un- 
 ruffled peace upon him that he had never known 
 before. He threw wide the sun-shutters and 
 looked out into the beautiful wild garden : the 
 smell of the jessamine filled the air ; the green 
 woods beyond the garden called to him to 
 come ; the bell of the Observantin Convent was 
 ringing the peremptory last summons for the six 
 o'clock mass. He dressed hastily and shortened 
 his bedside prayers that he might go out and 
 pray among the arbutus and myrtle. He passed 
 through the three garden terraces, climbed up 
 the orchard, and when he got a little way up 
 the path in the wood he turned aside a few 
 yards, and kneeling down among the juniper 
 bushes and crushing out the odour of the thyme 
 with his knees, he looked over towards the city 
 of Lucca and began to pray. He forgot where 
 
 93
 
 94 
 
 he was and stretched out his arms in an ecstasy 
 of joy ; he forgot that he was near the pathway 
 and cried out aloud ; for he had recalled the 
 Latin prayer of last night, and it welled up 
 in his heart again : " Agimus tibi gratias . . . 
 agimus tibi gratias, Omnipotens Deus." He re- 
 peated it over and over again, and each time 
 found in it a wonderful relish and consolation. 
 It seemed to him that he had never known 
 how to thank God before. The convent bell 
 rang out sharply three times. He paused. 
 Again it rang out three times. It was the 
 Elevation bell My father knew nothing of its 
 significance, but it seemed like a call to prayer, 
 and instinctively turning towards the church, 
 he fell upon his face, adoring God in spirit 
 and in truth. 
 
 When he raised his eyes from the ground it 
 was to leap hastily to his feet. There had 
 been a spectator of his prayer and adoration, 
 and of all spectators the one most calculated 
 to astonish a young gentleman who had never 
 until now been outside Manchester. The spec- 
 tator wore a deep brown habit, a white knotted 
 cord was round his waist, and sandals were 
 upon his bare feet. He was very old, the fore-
 
 THE PADRE GUARDIANO 95 
 
 head was a mass of wrinkles, and the long pro- 
 truding chin was ploughed with deep furrows ; 
 the old head was finely poised upon a pair of 
 bowed shoulders, the white corona shone bright 
 against a deep olive complexion. The old spec- 
 tator was one of the friars from the Observantin 
 Convent no less a person, in fact, than the 
 Padre Guardiano himself. There was a settled 
 look of benignity in the face that reassured my 
 father, a look too that spoke of a familiar ex- 
 perimental knowledge of the science of prayer. 
 
 " Buon giorno, signorino," he said, following 
 up his greeting with a melodious speech, of 
 which my father understood not a word. But 
 the friar pointed to the ground below, he clasped 
 his hands, he pointed to the heavens above, and 
 my father supposes he must have been saying 
 that God's own blue-vaulted temple was a very 
 good place to pray in. My father made known 
 by signs and nods that he could not communi- 
 cate with him, and then the old friar laid a 
 kindly hand upon his shoulder and said in the 
 most natural way in the world 
 
 " Potesne loqui Latine f " 
 
 The blood flew into my father's face in his 
 excitement. Then in this country they not only
 
 96 MY FATHER TURNS STUDENT 
 
 praise God in Latin, and thank Him for His 
 mercies in Latin, but they even speak to one 
 another in Latin. He stuttered and stammered. 
 How easily he could have given this old friar 
 points upon points in a classical bout, but when 
 he came to try and fit his Latin to the needs 
 of modern speech it clean went out of his head. 
 What may be the Latin for " yes," he wondered ? 
 and he tried etiam ; but as he called it eeskam, 
 the friar must have divined his answer from his 
 manner and not from his speech. 
 
 " Bene est" he answered. " Vado ad villam 
 Domini Frederici ad dicendam missam. Veni 
 mecum, fili: ibi^ coram Domino Nostro Jesu 
 Christo, potes finire orationes tuas" 
 
 My father turned and walked with him, but 
 without having comprehended the unclassical 
 word " missa." The pronunciation, too, was 
 a difficulty. When they reached the second 
 garden terrace they found Lord Frederick there, 
 superintending the catching of some carp, for 
 it was a Friday. He advanced to meet them 
 with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. 
 "Well, young gentleman," he said, "you're up 
 betimes. Good morning ! Where have you 
 been?"
 
 THE FRIAR'S EXCITEMENT 97 
 
 But the Father Guardian was bubbling over 
 with speech which he could not contain. He 
 clasped his hands in the action of prayer, he 
 raised his eyes to heaven, he bowed his old 
 knees, he beat his breast and extended his 
 arms like one in an ecstasy, talking very volubly 
 the while, and many times repeating " agimus 
 tibi gr atias." It was only too evident that he 
 was recounting all he had seen among the 
 arbutus and juniper bushes. My father blushed 
 as scarlet as an arbutus berry. Lord Frederick 
 clapped him on the shoulder in his kindly fashion 
 and said something to the old friar that threw 
 him into a still greater heat of excitement. My 
 father learnt what it was afterwards. " Ma 
 impossibile ! He not a Catholic ! Ma e impos- 
 sibile ! Why, I saw him in an ecstasy ! I heard 
 him pray in Latin ! I saw him pray over to- 
 wards the Volto Santo ! I saw him turn round 
 and fall down in adoration when the Elevation 
 bell rang! It is impossible that he should not 
 be a Catholic!" 
 
 "Come, come, Padre Eliseo," said Lord. 
 Frederick, "it is two minutes to seven. You, 
 young gentleman, must amuse yourself for half 
 an hour ; then you shall have some breakfast."
 
 98 MY FATHER TURNS STUDENT 
 
 " But might I not come to the religious ser- 
 vice?" asked my father, using the language of 
 Searle House and Hale. 
 
 "As you please, young sir," replied Lord 
 Frederick with a shrug of the shoulders. 
 
 The chapel was a little building distinct from 
 the villa, placed in the thickest part of the 
 garden " bosco." A marble cross surmounted 
 the apex; a black wooden cross was affixed to 
 the green wooden door. A light in the little 
 sanctuary, a silken veil before the tabernacle, 
 most of all the little glass vessel in which the 
 priest washes his fingers when giving com- 
 munion out of the Mass, showed that Lord 
 Frederick enjoyed the awful and anxious pri- 
 vilege of reserving the Blessed Sacrament. 
 Here every day, except on Sundays, when he 
 made a point of attending the parish church, 
 Mass was said by one of the Franciscan fathers 
 from Monte Santa Maria. The servants of the 
 villa, the two gardeners, and a handful of con- 
 tadini were already assembled ; Miss Mary was 
 kneeling at the front bench devoutly reading 
 out of a dumpy well-thumbed " Garden of the 
 Soul." Lord Frederick knelt down beside her, 
 and my father knelt beside him. The simplicity
 
 EARLY MORNING MASS 99 
 
 of the surroundings, the humble character of the 
 congregation, the seclusion of the little chapel, 
 suggested a gathering of primitive Christians. 
 This was the first time that my father had ever 
 heard Mass, and he knew nothing of its signifi- 
 cation. The serving-boy was rapid and inatten- 
 tive, and played with the sacring-bell. Padre 
 Eliseo cleared his throat and spat long distances 
 before he ascended the altar steps. The new- 
 comer from Manchester could not well see how 
 such a service might satisfy mystical devotion ; 
 but he caught the solemn sound of Latin (and 
 even of Greek), which went to his heart, and he 
 could not but be impressed by the fact that a 
 handful of illiterate workers in the fields seemed 
 to think it the most natural thing in the world 
 to kneel behind a man who had his back to 
 them all the time, and that they followed with 
 obvious devotion a service in a language which it 
 is the custom to call " dead." He was impressed, 
 too, by the silence at the two Elevations, and im- 
 pressed most of all, perhaps, when Padre Eliseo, 
 after a long silence, said in a loud voice, " Nobis 
 quoque peccatoribus" Dimly he realised that this 
 service, too, was an "act," though he had not the 
 faintest conception of its nature or grandeur.
 
 ioo MY FATHER TURNS STUDENT 
 
 Lord Frederick, his daughter, and his new- 
 made son then adjourned to breakfast in the 
 dining-room. Padre Eliseo joined them after 
 he had made his thanksgiving. Black coffee 
 and bread was the usual staple breakfast of this 
 frugal family, but to-day there was also butter 
 and honey and milk, in case the young gentleman 
 fresh come from Manchester should need the 
 support of such delicacies. Padre Eliseo had 
 got back to the subject uppermost in his mind : 
 " Ma e impossibile ! He not a Catholic ! Ma 
 le dico che " 
 
 Breakfast was over and done in this frugal 
 household before eight o'clock. From eight to 
 twelve Lord Frederick usually kept his study. 
 The afternoon he devoted to his poderi, and the 
 evenings to his daughter and to lighter reading. 
 At nine o'clock he had prayers, and by eleven 
 he was invariably in bed. On this particular 
 morning he took my father with him into his 
 study, and they fell to talking about plans. 
 
 My father was the first to speak ; he was 
 coming out of his enchanting dream. " I cannot, 
 sir," he said, hotly but respectfully, " I cannot 
 stay with you in this way. It is not right that 
 I should be a charge upon you. I must go to
 
 THE NEW LIBRARIAN 101 
 
 Rome in search of work. I must maintain my- 
 self. I must try " 
 
 " Softly ! softly ! my boy," interrupted Lord 
 Frederick. " Now let me speak, and don't 
 attempt to interrupt until I have finished. If 
 it's work you want, I've plenty for you, and hard 
 work too. Look round at this goodly array of 
 books. There must be nearly twenty thousand 
 distributed about the house, and I haven't the 
 shred of a catalogue. I appoint you my librarian 
 if you'll accept the modest post, and your first 
 business will be to catalogue the library. What 
 salary were you getting in business ? What ! as 
 much as ^25 a year! Well, I make you the 
 tempting offer of ^50. What say you to that ? 
 Good ! Then you're my librarian, but you've got 
 to be my son too, and it is a father's business to 
 see to his son's education. You've read a lot for 
 your age, but let me use a father's privilege of 
 plain speech and tell you that you are almost 
 wholly without real education and entirely with- 
 out training. How could it be otherwise, my 
 dear boy, snatched away as you were at a tender 
 age from the only chances you had. And, God 
 knows, you made the most of these. Thank 
 Heaven, your Latin is good, and you are well
 
 102 MY FATHER TURNS STUDENT 
 
 grounded in the principal classics. That is 
 much, but what is even that without balance of 
 mind and a sense of proportion and fitness ? 
 Now, my son, you've got to humble yourself, to 
 turn boy again, and to go to school. For the 
 present, content yourself with two hours cata- 
 loguing a day. I only want you to take up three 
 subjects of education at present : logic, a stiff 
 course of it : that will brace your mind and teach 
 you to think accurately ; French : that will teach 
 you neatness of expression, help you also in 
 arriving at accuracy of thought, and show you 
 that there is a way of saying clearly even the 
 most difficult things ; and Italian, which you 
 will need to communicate with those about you 
 (though to be sure you will find that it has 
 many other delights). Now do you agree to 
 all this?" 
 
 What could my father do but agree to pro- 
 posals made with so much fatherly affection, and 
 which chimed so perfectly with his own inclina- 
 tions ? 
 
 " Very good, then," continued Lord Frederick. 
 " But I can't be harbouring runaway young 
 gentlemen under age without the consent of their 
 parents. Write at once and tell your mother
 
 RELIGIOUS PRACTICES 103 
 
 where you are and what you propose to do. 
 And now, my dear boy," he went on in more 
 earnest tones, " there is but one thing left to say, 
 and then all our arrangements will be complete. 
 You will have seen that we are people with a 
 different religious belief to the belief you have 
 been brought up in ; perhaps you will already 
 have seen that the practices of this religion enter 
 into our lives at all hours of the working day. I 
 would not for worlds have you, out of any con- 
 sideration for me, take part in these practices. 
 If it please you to assist at our morning Mass; 
 if you care to say ' Amen ' to our grace at 
 meals ; if it interest you to be present at our 
 evening Rosary well and good. No one will 
 say you nay. And if you prefer to be absent 
 from Mass and Rosary and to be silent at grace, 
 then likewise well and good. No one will re- 
 proach you. I desire that you should be, and 
 that you should feel, utterly and entirely free. 
 It would grieve and not please me, were you to 
 pay one single exterior act of devotion to the 
 practices of our holy religion out of any regard 
 for me. I will not hide from you that the dearest 
 wish of my heart, as of every Catholic heart, is 
 to see all the human race brought to the perfect
 
 io 4 MY FATHER TURNS STUDENT 
 
 knowledge of God's entire truth. Is it not a 
 right, a natural instinct? Does not the Angli- 
 can, the Wesleyan, the Lutheran, the Plymouth 
 Brother, who believes that he has the whole 
 truth, seek to bring that truth home to the hearts 
 of all men ? And rightly. Nor will I hide from 
 you that I believe Almighty God has sealed you 
 to Himself. In a life that is three times as long 
 as your own, I cannot help having had some 
 experience of the merciful and marvellous ways 
 of God. Have you not told me all the story of 
 your life, and in that story I read the story of a 
 soul that has ever anxiously sought, and with 
 single mind striven to find, the just judgments of 
 the hidden God. But my only weapon shall be 
 prayer ; not a soul will speak to you of religion 
 unless you are the first to speak. I will pray for 
 you. It is in the nature of things, it is inevit- 
 able, but a great campaign of prayer will be 
 organised against you," he continued, smiling. 
 "My daughter will pray for you ; Padre Eliseo 
 (who, by the way, will have it that you already 
 are a Catholic), he and his Community will 
 assuredly pray for you ; and so will the poor 
 workers on this estate, should they ever come 
 to realise that you are not a Catholic. And
 
 FRIDAY FARE 105 
 
 now, my dear boy, I have done with sermon- 
 ising. May God bless you, and guide you, 
 and prevent you in all your doings . . . This," 
 he continued, pointing to the south wall, " is my 
 Patristic library. I am old-fashioned, and it is 
 my favourite. So start first of all on the cata- 
 loguing of this section." 
 
 Perhaps I ought to mention one other little 
 incident in connection with "arrangements," and 
 then I shall have done with the subject. It was 
 Friday, as I have said, and there was macaroni 
 in butter and cheese ; there were eggs in a 
 tomato sauce ; there was boiled carp ; and for the 
 young gentleman from Manchester there was a 
 fillet and fried potatoes. My father ate the meat 
 under protest, and with the proviso that hence- 
 forth he should in all things conform to the ways 
 of the household. And I may add that he was 
 daily present at Mass; that he said " Amen" at 
 grace ; that he joined in the " Angelus " and the 
 " De Profundis ; " and that he took part in the 
 nightly Rosary, though he found no savour in 
 it. It took him some time to find out that the 
 language of love is a language of repetition. 
 
 And now as to the scheme of education. And 
 first as to Italian. There was an old pensioner
 
 106 MY FATHER TURNS STUDENT 
 
 living in a cottage hard by the villa, who had 
 taught in the Duke of Lucca's household, and 
 was pensioned off when the Duchy was made 
 over to Tuscany in 1847. He was my father's 
 tutor in Tuscan. Better tutors still, perhaps, 
 were the peasants of the poderi, who, I suspect, 
 must have worshipped this simpatico young gen- 
 tleman of affable manners and large heart. As 
 the reader will have seen, he was a lad of quick 
 parts, and under such favourable circumstances 
 the acquisition of the Tuscan tongue came to him 
 speedily, pleasantly, and unconsciously. 
 
 As to French, there was Miss Mary's "Made- 
 moiselle," whom I have not yet mentioned, 
 because she was absent from the villa, called 
 to Tours upon the death of her mother. My 
 father, I have already mentioned, had acquired 
 a working knowledge of French from Herr and 
 Monsieur Ebermann at Searle House, but that 
 knowledge had grown over - rusty among the 
 samples and invoices of the counting-house. He 
 never spoke French quite comfortably, but he 
 wrote it correctly and elegantly, and the reading 
 of good books in French was ever one of his 
 keenest delights. (St. Francis of Sales, F6nelon, 
 Corneille, and the " Pensees " of Pascal were
 
 A PROFESSOR OF LOGIC 107 
 
 among his favourites, while an odd taste it 
 may seem in one of his bent he delighted in 
 the " Maximes " of La Rochefoucauld, which 
 he was wont to characterise as one of the pro- 
 foundest examinations of the human heart. To 
 the French writer, or rather writer in French, 
 who influenced him most of all, the Count de 
 Maistre, I ought to devote a whole chapter.) 
 
 Then as to the all-important subject of logic. 
 He went down three days in the week to Lucca 
 to the Dominican Convent of San Romano, to 
 receive his lessons from an acute young friar 
 preacher, who carried the proud letters S.T.L. 
 after his name. This young friar, Padre Rai- 
 mondo Beltrami, to give him his name (he is dead, 
 alas !), was endowed with a subtlety of intelligence 
 peculiar in its kind to the Catholic Church, and 
 even more peculiar to the Order which has pro- 
 duced the Angelic Doctor. Padre Raimondo 
 could split up the narrowest idea into a surpris- 
 ing number of component parts. He found a 
 distinguo quoad for almost every proposition, 
 and he uttered that word distinguo with a gusto 
 and relish that seemed to add a force to all his 
 arguments. My father in one thing may be 
 said to have been like Mr. Walter Shandy, and
 
 io8 MY FATHER TURNS STUDENT 
 
 that was in his careful regard for the minutia 
 of philosophy. " Knowledge, like matter, Mr. 
 Shandy would affirm, was divisible in infinitum, 
 that the grains and scruples were as much a part 
 of it as the gravitation of the whole world. In 
 a word, he would say error was error, no matter 
 where it fell ; whether in a fraction or a pound, 
 'twas alike fatal to truth ; and she was kept down 
 at the bottom of her well as inevitably by a mis- 
 take in the dust of a butterfly's wing, as in the 
 disk of the sun, the moon, and all the stars of 
 heaven put together." l 
 
 Goudin was the Manual he used. When I 
 came to do my course of logic Goudin was 
 already supplanted by Cardinal Zigliara ; but I 
 remember that we used to take our " Regulae 
 Syllogismi " from Goudin as a thing which was 
 final and could not be improved upon. And 
 note that these lessons in logic were done from 
 beginning to end examples, definitions, chit- 
 chat and all in Low Latin. If the pupil, in 
 a quandary, dropped into broken Tuscan or im- 
 perfect French, he was immediately pulled up 
 and rapped over the knuckles. In this way 
 my father laid that foundation of easy conver- 
 
 1 " Tristram Shandy," vol. ii. chap. xix.
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF LOGIC 109 
 
 sational Latin for which he was afterwards 
 distinguished, and which helped him, both in 
 correspondence and speech, to communicate with 
 German, Portuguese, and Spanish ecclesiastics. 
 How eagerly he plunged into the bracing science 
 of logic ! The " prolegomena " disheartened and 
 bewildered him a bit. He woke up with a 
 burst of understanding when he came to the 
 " categories " or essential " genera " which may 
 be predicated of a given thing. He began to 
 divine the science of allocation or arrangement, 
 and his mind took to constructing instead of 
 dissecting. He learned that perception was an 
 intuitive act of the mind, which, when formu- 
 lated within the mind, became an affirmative or 
 negative "judgment," and when put into words 
 became an affirmative or negative " proposi- 
 tion." Another act of the mind was " ratiocina- 
 tion," which was a mental comparison of several 
 of those acts of the mind called "judgments," 
 and " ratiocination " when formed in words be- 
 came " argumentation " (argumentatio). There 
 were seven kinds of "argumentatio," but the 
 divinest kind of all was the syllogism, which 
 my father never moved a step without employ- 
 ing in all and sundry matters. 'Twas the
 
 no MY FATHER TURNS STUDENT 
 
 science of logic, he was wont to say, that kept 
 the world upon its axis and a man's head upon 
 his shoulders. In fact, it was the beginning 
 and end of wisdom and common sense. It 
 was, he would say, the want of logic or the in- 
 ability to draw the right conclusions from pro- 
 positions that caused the Fall of Man, the 
 Deluge, the Destruction of Jerusalem, the Dis- 
 ruption of the Eastern Empire, the Schism of 
 the Oriental Churches, the Protestant Revolt, 
 the Puritan Regime, the Whig Revolution, and 
 the Cataclysm of 1789. 
 
 Though never deep in science, my father 
 could prove to you by the rule of the "Con- 
 tradictories " that the earth, although revolving 
 on its axis, only showed one face to the sun. 
 And on this wise : if the earth did not move 
 on its axis it would show both sides to the 
 sun ; that is obvious. But the earth does the 
 " contradictory " to not moving on its axis, there- 
 fore it does the opposite, and only shows one 
 side to the sun. Perfectly sound and very 
 useful reasoning, and he would add that modern 
 men of science lost half their usefulness and 
 wasted half their energies through not having 
 been properly grounded in logic.
 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES in 
 
 From logic he gathered a few first principles 
 which were as the light of his eyes at all times. 
 They may sound exceedingly elemental, yet I 
 find them and especially Nos. 3, 4, and 5 
 most constantly denied or belied by the modern 
 world : 
 
 1. The same thing cannot be and not be at 
 the same time. 
 
 2. What can be predicated of the whole may 
 be predicated of its parts. 
 
 3. You cannot find in the conclusion that 
 which does not exist in the premises. 
 
 4. Contradictories cannot be both true and 
 both false. 
 
 5. Yet contraries can be both false, though 
 never both true. 
 
 Here is a little outburst in his diary written 
 in 1899 just before his death. "Alas!" he 
 says, " common-sense methods and common- 
 sense philosophy seem daily on the decline. 
 There is less vital power of thought now-a-days, 
 and next to no exactitude ; men fritter away 
 time and intellectual energy in reading ephe- 
 meral, unsubstantial, loose - thinking moderns, 
 who shed nebulosity as they go. How much 
 of the belief around us is founded on the prin-
 
 ciple that the same thing can be and not be at 
 the same time, that a little less than the whole 
 is as good as the whole, that contradictories 
 may both be true ; nay, have not people of late 
 been affirming that there is an Anno Domini 
 Zero, and that a series of i to 100 may end 
 with 99. Three centuries of separation from 
 the exact thought and common-sense methods 
 of Catholicism is beginning to tell upon the 
 European intellect. Men have need to return 
 for an intellectual bracing to some of the giants 
 of the past with their robust thought, clear 
 methods, and keen sense of the consequences 
 of a syllogism. I have just been reading a 
 chapter by one of those giants. It is that 
 familiar letter which the Count de Maistre wrote 
 to a ' dame Protestante ' on the time-honoured 
 maxim, ' Qu'un honnete homme ne change 
 jamais de religion.' What lucidity of thought, 
 what remorseless, irrefragable reasoning ! It 
 puts the point as between Catholics and non- 
 Catholics in a nutshell one of the characte- 
 ristic gifts of common sense. How obvious, 
 we exclaim, as we follow the argument ; yes, 
 but how seldom in argument do we find the 
 Catholic driving home the fact that the non-
 
 ARGUMENT OF COUNT DE MAISTRE 113 
 
 Catholic Christian does not deny his faith by 
 becoming a Catholic ; that he continues to be- 
 lieve all he used to believe plus some further 
 doctrines ; that he has added to his faith, not 
 changed it. There is nothing new in all this, 
 we again exclaim. No, there is nothing new ; 
 but it is just the old and the obvious that need, 
 in these days, the elucidation of genius, and 
 the great Count has illustrated this old point 
 with a clearness and precision that should pene- 
 tra^e the vapours of the cloudiest brain." 
 
 But I must draw rein. I could continue for 
 ever with instances of my father's fondness of 
 nice reasoning, but there is no need to try the 
 reader's patience ; the subject will become evi- 
 dent enough as this Memoir proceeds. 
 
 H
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MY FATHER BECOMES ACQUAINTED WITH 
 HERALDRY 
 
 LIFE moved along tranquilly at the Villa Fabriani. 
 For the first time in his life my father came 
 under humane and civilising influences. Intel- 
 lectual intercourse with Lord Frederick, with 
 ecclesiastics and professors from the town, his 
 friends ; the new savour of what I might call 
 domestic archaeology and history derived from 
 contact with the old patrician families of Lucca ; 
 the secret worship of Mary Markham ; the de- 
 monstrative kindness of Baldassare, and all the 
 servants, and all the contadini; the cheery friend- 
 ship of the frati up at Monte Santa Maria; the 
 green woods, the beneficent heat, the still starry 
 beautiful nights ; the sights of an ancient city, 
 whose roots stretch deep down into an illustrious 
 past, and the knowledge of her noble history ; 
 and then the religious shrines at every turn, the 
 bells which twenty times a day rang out to 
 proclaim man's recognition of his Creator, the
 
 TYRRHENIAN BATHING 115 
 
 constant services of praise and prayer, the con- 
 stant religious practices, which exalted some days 
 above Sundays and sanctified all working days : 
 all these things worked powerfully in his soul 
 and brought him a sense of continuous peace 
 which he had never known before. 
 
 I have said that he arrived at the Villa Fabriani 
 in the early days of May 1855. After two and 
 a half months reading, study, and cataloguing 
 (which he enjoyed immensely, picking up great 
 stores of knowledge by the way), there was an 
 adjournment to a small villa below Antignano 
 for sea-bathing. He had spent some unhappy 
 weeks at New Brighton and Rhyll. These 
 were the only sea-bathing places he knew, but, 
 being in misery at the time or morbidly absorbed 
 in books, he had never learned to swim. The 
 villa at Antignano had its own baracca, or 
 bathing-place, and in the buoyant Tyrrhenian 
 waters he found it impossible to sink, and in a 
 fortnight could swim out as far as Lord Frederick 
 himself. 
 
 But all the while he was longing to be back 
 at the villa and in the library, longing above 
 all to be back at his logic. He had already 
 tasted of the sweets of the syllogism ; the joys
 
 u6 ACQUAINTANCE WITH HERALDRY 
 
 of applied logic awaited him at his return. 
 There is a curious climatic fact in Italy. If one 
 gets but a few feet above the sea-level, the air 
 at once undergoes a surprising change. In the 
 year 1855, of which I am writing, no one thought 
 of going to those high Apennine resorts which 
 have since become so fashionable. The Tuscan 
 instinctively went to the nearest hill beyond 
 the plain on which he lived, irrespective of its 
 altitude. Thus the Livornesi were content with 
 the close-lying Montenero ; the Pisans never 
 went beyond Bagni San Giuliano ; the Lucchesi 
 were well satisfied with the beautiful hills round 
 about the city, or the Bagni di Lucca (quite 
 a formidable mountain resort, 800 feet) ; the 
 Florentines flitted to the hills which surround 
 their enchanting city. What a change now-a- 
 days, when Italians think that they must breathe 
 the air of 3000 or 4000 feet to keep sane and 
 sound. Lord Frederick sought no other moun- 
 tain resort than the Villa Fabriani (200 feet) ; 
 so my father was glad to find himself back there 
 at the beginning of September. 
 
 He set to at once upon French and Tuscan 
 again, but logic he could not recommence be- 
 cause Padre Raimondo was absent until October.
 
 A FIRST GLIMPSE OF HERALDRY 117 
 
 The cataloguing of the Patristic section of the 
 library had been finished before going to the 
 seaside. On their return Lord Frederick set 
 him upon cataloguing the rich heraldic section. 
 Heraldry! he did not even know what it was. 
 If he had ever seen coats-of-arms upon build- 
 ings, or carriages, or engravings, he had not 
 given them a thought, but, after the manner of 
 men, had looked upon them as a mere decora- 
 tive adjunct. He had, then, absolutely not the 
 faintest notion what it meant to catalogue 
 heraldic books when, on the 3rd September 
 1855, he took down Hugh Clark's "Introduc- 
 tion " to make the first entry, because the idea of 
 an "introduction" had an easy sound about it. 
 He skipped the introduction to the " Intro- 
 duction," and glanced at Table I. : points of 
 the Escutcheon. At once he detected those 
 elements of finality and completeness which 
 always had a fascination for a mind that from 
 infancy had thirsted for that finality which is 
 surely the natural food of the human mind. 
 Yes ; here was a thing called an escutcheon, 
 a mathematical diagram, and it was divided 
 into all the possible points of which it could 
 possibly admit. He passed on to tinctures and
 
 n8 ACQUAINTANCE WITH HERALDRY 
 
 furs, and found, if not all the metals and colours 
 in existence, yet all that were admitted by this 
 science. Finality again, and finality without 
 explanation or apology. Then he came to the 
 partition lines and more finality. Just as he 
 always had, with that unscientific mind of his, 
 the greatest difficulty in remembering whether it 
 was the east the sun set in or the west, so with 
 regard to the direction of a thing he always 
 had to pause and consider whether it was 
 perpendicular he meant or horizontal. Away 
 for ever with such initial difficulties : his per- 
 pendicular became " per pale ; " his horizontal 
 "per fess;" a conjunction of the two, "per 
 cross;" oblique became "per bend" or "per 
 bend sinister," according to position ; a con- 
 junction of the two, "per saltire." No longer 
 would he have any difficulty in distinguishing 
 between the French and the Dutch tricolours (a 
 point that had arisen upon the voyage). Why, 
 of course, the French tricolour was tierced "in 
 pale," the Dutch was tierced " in fess ; " what 
 need, then, of such confusing terms as horizontal 
 and perpendicular. He laughed aloud at the 
 exquisite elemental simplicity of it all, and 
 plunged into the ordinaries and subordinaries.
 
 A NEW WORLD OF KNOWLEDGE 119 
 
 He leaped over the charges, for he saw at a 
 glance how they should be used ; he came to 
 the rules of blazoning, and drew a deep breath ; 
 his eyes grew dim with excited tears. 
 
 Rat! tat! tat! Rat! tat! tat! came three 
 times at the library door before he could re- 
 call that the right answer to such a sound 
 was "avanti." Old Baldassare put his grey 
 head in at the door, and announced that "col- 
 azione" was "in tavola." "Where am I ?" the 
 student asked himself, " and what may luncheon 
 be, and who is this respectable old person who 
 seems to know me ? " Baldassare inquired if the 
 Signorino were indisposed, and again announced 
 that luncheon was ready, and that the " Signer 
 Barone" and the " Baronessina" awaited his 
 good pleasure. The " Barone," who might he 
 be ? The " Baronessina " ah ! he remembered 
 her well enough, the bright sweet face and 
 black tumbling hair. He made haste to come 
 to the luncheon table. His eyes were bright and 
 glistening : not even the " Baronessina " called 
 him to this from his new world of knowledge. 
 
 "Well," cried Lord Frederick cheerily, "had 
 a pleasant morning?" 
 
 "Pleasant? Yes, sir!"
 
 120 ACQUAINTANCE WITH HERALDRY 
 
 "Done a lot of cataloguing?" 
 
 My father blushed scarlet. Only then did it 
 occur to him that he had been wasting his 
 master's time. He equivocated for the first 
 time in his life. "Not ve-very much, sir," he 
 answered. He resolved to make up for his 
 dereliction of duty in the afternoon, for that 
 was his free time, and he could then do his 
 two hours of cataloguing. 
 
 Back he went to the library. Lord Frederick 
 was out of doors all day in these days, busy 
 about the olives and the vintage. He turned 
 to the title-page of Clark to make a proper entry 
 in the catalogue. A page or two slipped back, 
 and he read in the table of contents the word 
 " marshalling." What may marshalling mean, 
 he wondered. Conscience died within him all 
 of a sudden. How much more high-sounding 
 and noble a thing was " marshalling " than poor, 
 timid, shrinking, cowering, worrying conscience! 
 He turned to see. " Marshalling coats-of-arms 
 is the art of disposing several, or more than 
 one, of them in one escutcheon, and of distri- 
 buting their parts and contingent ornaments in 
 proper places." Distributing parts! and con- 
 tingent ornaments ! and in their proper places !
 
 ABSORPTION IN STUDY 121 
 
 Conscience lay down and had a long sleep, during 
 which countless delicious experiments in mar- 
 shalling were made. Then he passed on to 
 exterior ornaments helmets, mantling, wreaths, 
 crests, badges, mottoes, supporters, and back 
 again convulsively to the partition lines, lest 
 he should have forgotten them. Conscience 
 woke up with a start at four o'clock. The devil 
 was quickly at his ear, telling him he could do 
 four hours cataloguing to-morrow, and make up 
 for lost time. So he could, to be sure ; what a 
 simple solution ! " Shame upon you," said con- 
 science. And then my father got up resolutely 
 and put the fiend Clark back upon the shelf. 
 Why, he could begin cataloguing forthwith ; 
 there were still two hours before dinner. But 
 the devil would have it that his eye should 
 catch " Spener " on the shelves. Heaven help 
 him now, for the " Opus Heraldicum " is writ 
 entirely in Latin! If Heaven helped him, he 
 heeded not its succour, and soon knew not where 
 he was or what he did. Not only had he dis- 
 covered a science which is at the same time exact 
 and picturesque, but he had lit upon a treatise 
 on it in the exactest, the most absorbing, and 
 the most expressive of all languages!
 
 122 ACQUAINTANCE WITH HERALDRY 
 
 Rat! tat! tat! Rat! tat! tat! came at the 
 door, and old Baldassare put his head in with 
 the announcement, " E in tavola, sa ! " But his 
 manner changed all of a sudden as he gazed 
 upon the flushed face and dancing eyes before 
 him and noted the dishevelled hair. " Ma cos' 
 ha, Signorino ? What is the matter with you? 
 But you are ill ; you have the fever ; you should 
 be in bed ! " 
 
 They were all in the pay of the devil that 
 day. The old man put the idea in his head, and 
 from equivocation he passed on to lying. " Yes, 
 Baldassare, I am not well. I am going up to 
 bed. Good-night. Make my excuses to the 
 Signer Barone." 
 
 The powers of darkness had triumphed. He 
 put volume i. of the " Opus Heraldicum " back 
 on the shelves, seized upon Clark and the notes 
 he had made, and hurried up to his bedroom 
 for some hours of stolen delight. 
 
 At Hale he might have been left in peace 
 had he not showed up at dinner. But he had 
 forgotten that here he was surrounded with a 
 loving solicitude. About half-past nine there 
 came a firm rat ! tat ! at his door, and in walked 
 my Lord Frederick, with a look of concern upon
 
 A PENITENT 123 
 
 his face. At the sight of that dear benefactor 
 and kind father, when he beheld the noble face 
 that had shone upon him as a beacon in his lost 
 condition in the streets of Leghorn, my father 
 rushed forward and fell upon his knees in a fit 
 of weeping. His attitude said, as plain as words 
 could say, " Father, I have sinned against Heaven 
 and before thee, and am no more worthy to be 
 called thy son." My lord sat him down on one 
 of the high-backed bedroom chairs looking a 
 trifle grave, and my father took three steps 
 towards him on his knees, and buried his face 
 in a loving embrace. "My dear boy, what is 
 the matter?" asked Lord Frederick in his 
 kindest tones. And then my father told him 
 everything everything ; just as he had told him 
 everything in the little inn at Leghorn ; how 
 he had been guilty of five heinous sins that 
 day ; how he had forgotten God ; how he had 
 failed in his duty to his benefactor ; how he had 
 been guilty of idleness, equivocation, and lying. 
 
 But Lord Frederick put his arm round the 
 penitent, in a very uncomfortable state of the 
 emotions, and said, " My dear, dear boy." And 
 this he repeated a great many times. But when 
 he had got the better of his emotion he said in a
 
 124 ACQUAINTANCE WITH HERALDRY 
 
 very fine burst of mock anger, " You have con- 
 fessed your sins to me, and for your sins you 
 must do penance. Understand me, young man : 
 for two whole weeks I suspend your studies ; you 
 do no cataloguing in my library ; and for two 
 whole weeks you are to read no books save such 
 as relate to the noble and most exalted science of 
 heraldry." Lord Frederick got up very abruptly 
 and made for the door. But he turned quickly 
 on his heel. " I have not quite completed your 
 penance," he said. " Give me that book. And 
 now," he went on, " say your prayers and go to 
 bed like a good boy and sleep sound." 
 
 Once more he turned to go, but somehow, 
 without knowing how, he was back again, hold- 
 ing my father to his breast in a close embrace. 
 " My dear, dear boy ! " he said, fairly choking ; 
 " my dear, dear boy ! " And no other words 
 could he get across his lips for the tears that 
 were in his voice, but he repeated them again, 
 and again, and again, in every cadence known 
 to love's gamut. But I say, may God bless him 
 with a triple benediction, nor do I forget daily to 
 pray the Dispenser Supreme that his dear soul 
 may be at rest in the peace of eternity, though 
 all the while I feel sure that the immortal part of
 
 A NOBLE CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN 125 
 
 him sped straight from his peaceful deathbed, 
 through the Gates of Paradise into the loving 
 arms of Him in Whose sight he had ever striven 
 to live the life of a pure and loyal Christian 
 gentleman.
 
 ' 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 MY FATHER TURNS CATHOLIC 
 
 AND now, dear reader, if you have followed me 
 thus far, I crave your leave to make a brief 
 personal explanation. In writing the necessary 
 memoir of Mr. Walshe to precede his complete 
 works, I had thought of dismissing in one brief 
 chapter his father and mother, his childhood and 
 boyhood, his going into business and his flight 
 therefrom, his reception into the Catholic Church 
 and his marriage. I had intended to commence 
 from the days that I could first remember him, 
 and to dwell upon those later days in which I 
 was joined to him in the happy excitement of 
 absorbing studies. But I had read and re-read 
 those " Recollections " so dear to me, and my 
 pen, inspired by them, has run away with me. 
 My idea had been that this Memoir should have 
 been published together with his exquisite little 
 " Life of St. Clare " as the first volume of the 
 series. Now I see that the Memoir is sure to 
 
 run to a bulk which will need separate publica- 
 
 126
 
 NO RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY 127 
 
 tion. One thing more (alas !) : the first part of 
 this book being inspired by the " Recollections," 
 cannot fail to be much more interesting than the 
 latter half, which is derived mainly from my own 
 observations. Moreover, incident, as the world 
 understands that term, practically drops from Mr. 
 Walshe's life with his marriage, and I have to 
 enter upon the domains of a patient, retiring 
 scholar and a humble, retiring saint. But let all 
 that pass. Even the rudest hand, I will hope, 
 could not help bringing out some of the finer 
 qualities of so simple, so unspotted, so beautiful 
 a character. 
 
 Yet a further word of explanation. I have 
 called this chapter " My Father turns Catholic," 
 and in it he does turn Catholic. But of the 
 arguments which influenced him to that step, or 
 the difficulties which kept him for a time from 
 taking it, I would say as little as is possible 
 consistent with the rationale of this Memoir. 
 I would not for a kingdom that a biography of 
 my gentle father should become, through any 
 means of mine, an occasion of religious contro- 
 versy. He was never in any definite sense 
 an Anglican ; he escaped confirmation in that 
 Church through leaving school at fifteen ; he
 
 i 2 8 MY FATHER TURNS CATHOLIC 
 
 never took the Sacrament in that Church, be- 
 cause there was no one in his home who cared 
 whether he did or not. He was accustomed to 
 say in after life that he knew nothing of the 
 virtues of the English Church until he left it, 
 and never appreciated the good qualities of the 
 dissenting sects until he turned Catholic. What 
 need have I to emphasise the weak points of 
 so respectable a communion as the National 
 Church by law established, or to call attention 
 to the want of logic in the sects by law tolerated ? 
 My father's life of itself justifies his faith, com- 
 mends and recommends it more eloquently than 
 all the irrefragable "pros" and "cons" ever 
 adduced in support of a system of religious be- 
 lief. Besides, there is no need to make excuses 
 for obedience to conscience, or to justify a step 
 which has been taken by many of the noblest 
 and best Englishmen of the nineteenth century. 
 And yet something must be said if I am to 
 be faithful to my subject. I think my father's 
 immediate conversion came through the Catholic 
 mystics. In them he found mysticism depending 
 upon a system which was not in itself neces- 
 sarily mystical, but rather practical. In them 
 he found every avenue to personal pride or self-
 
 THE MYSTICS 129 
 
 esteem rigorously cut off; in them he found 
 men and women who, while rapt in contempla- 
 tion of the dizzying heights and the vertiginous 
 depths of the Divine Being, yet had a scru- 
 pulous care of the daily practical virtues, and 
 never failed in their obedience to the natural 
 homely instinct of common sense. In other 
 words, and to put it quite bluntly, the Catholic 
 mystics were people who kept their heads upon 
 their shoulders, and would allow of no sublime 
 contemplation that was not accompanied by the 
 homespun virtues. The Catholic mystics did 
 not insist upon mysticism for all ; they distin- 
 guished between the commandments and the 
 precepts ; the Catholic mystic was wide-minded, 
 the non-Catholic narrow and yet unrestrained. 
 When he was seventeen (and earlier) he had 
 known and been fascinated by William Law and 
 Peter S terry, Jacob Bb'hme and Robert Fludd, 
 Francis Lee and Jeremy White, Mary Anne 
 Schimmelpenninck, Henry More's " Divine Dia- 
 logues," Jane Lead's " Fountain of Gardens," 
 Robert Roach's " Imperial Standard," Bromley's 
 "Way to the Sabbath of Rest," Bramwell's 
 "Life" by Sigston, "the Lord's Dealings with 
 Mtiller," and how many other strange writers
 
 1 3 o MY FATHER TURNS CATHOLIC 
 
 whom I find briefly commented upon in the " Re- 
 collections," but of whom I know nothing whatso- 
 ever myself. It was not until he came to have 
 the run of Lord Frederick's library that he read 
 Walter Hilton's " Ladder of Perfection," Father 
 Baker's "Sancta Sophia," St. Theresa and St. 
 John of the Cross in an Italian version, Father 
 Constantin de Barbanson's " Compendium of 
 True Mystical Theology," Denis the Carthusian, 
 St. Francis of Sales and Fenelon, Henry Suso 
 in the Latin, Harphius, Taulerus, and Rus- 
 brochius, 1 and, above all, the great Abbot 
 Blosius, who remained unto the very last his 
 favourite spiritual writer. Father Lorenzo Scu- 
 poli I do not reckon among mystical writers ; 
 nay, rather will I call him the sure corrective 
 of the excesses into which mysticism might 
 lead the vain and unwary ; but about this time 
 
 1 Or Ruysbroeck, as M. Maeterlinck, a modern of the moderns, 
 persists in calling him. I could as triumphantly call Hugo Grotius 
 " Huig van Groot" (and then triumphantly ask you whom I mean). 
 The dead Latin language has a vitality known to no other tongue : 
 it has actually been able to strip a genius of the name which God 
 gave him, and endow him with a name by which all mortals know 
 him. I know of no spirit more paltry and pitiful than that which 
 would rob a great man of his Latin appellation. Some day, per- 
 haps, an enlightened age will kick against Slawkenbergius, and 
 insist upon calling the immortal author of the treatise " De 
 Nasis" Herr Slawkenberg. P. M. W.
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF LOGIC 131 
 
 my father was greatly influenced and braced by 
 the daily absorption of his " Spiritual Combat." 
 I cannot now recall who the holy person was that 
 said the "Imitation" told him what to do and 
 the "Spiritual Combat" how to do it (surely it 
 must have been St. Francis of Sales?), but it 
 is certain that my father had a similar experi- 
 ence, and through the influence of this little 
 book he had begun a Catholic life some months 
 before he became a Catholic. 
 
 Catholic mysticism was then, I take it, the 
 causa adequata of Mr. Walshe's conversion to 
 Catholicism. But I must not omit, as causa 
 inadequata superior, Logic, which helped him to 
 grasp the idea of oneness. A very simple matter 
 the candid reader may think, but that there is 
 in the complex human mind a strange natural 
 tendency to embrace as consistent, contradic- 
 tories in one and the same idea of unity. Are 
 there not Englishmen who affirm that there are 
 three branches of a Church, each contradicting 
 one another in dogma, the only true test of one- 
 ness, and yet forming one and the same body ? l 
 It may be but the grain of dust of a butterfly's 
 
 1 My friend seems momentarily to have forgotten his resolve 
 not to trench upon controversial matter. But I am bound to 
 print what he has written. M. C.
 
 132 MY FATHER TURNS CATHOLIC 
 
 wing that separates East from West, but the 
 grain happens to relate to an infinite matter, and 
 therefore the separation is infinite. Nor should 
 I omit as causa inadequate!, inferior the noble 
 Latin tongue, which, as the language of the 
 Church, told upon my father's emotions by its 
 sublimity, and helped him in his reasonings by 
 its subtlety and lucidity. How much more 
 might I not say, were I not resolved that peace 
 is to come out of a peaceful life, and not a 
 strife of words or a storm of controversy. 
 
 John William Walshe, the subject of this 
 Memoir, was received into the Catholic Church 
 on the eve of Palm Sunday, 1856. As you 
 drive from Lucca to the baths of Lucca, just 
 beyond Ponte-a-Moriano, in the valley of the 
 Serchio, rises the Monte S. Angelo, and the 
 white building on the top of it is a Passionist 
 retreat. Here my father arrived on the eve of 
 Passion Sunday to prepare himself in peace and 
 quietness for the step he was about to take. 
 He went through the regular exercises of a 
 retreat, tasting the sweets of silence which was 
 naturally so dear to him. He also kept choir 
 with the fathers, thus receiving his first lesson 
 in practical liturgy. On Thursday and Friday
 
 FIRST COMMUNION 133 
 
 he made his general confession ; on Saturday 
 was conditionally baptized ; and on Palm Sunday 
 at seven in the morning, Lord Frederick and 
 his daughter having come over for the occasion, 
 he knelt at the altar rails to receive into his 
 bosom that dear Lord Jesus upon whom he 
 had so often called in the bitter hours and 
 turbulent days of his childhood and boyhood. 1 
 
 1 I cannot but regret that Mr. Philip Walshe has thought fit 
 to pass over with such exceeding brevity this momentous event 
 in his father's life. It would surely have been extremely instruc- 
 tive to have had a full account of all the circumstances and 
 reasons which led to the change. My friend, I know, was 
 sensitively anxious to avoid anything which would lead to reli- 
 gious controversy. But oh ! the vanity of human wishes, for 
 surely in the very next chapter he has forgotten that De Maistre's 
 argument against the Anglican Church is just of the sort to lead 
 to a storm of controversy. Perhaps in copying straight from 
 the " Recollections," instead of writing himself, he was led to 
 forget the very salutary principle which he had set before him. 
 M. C.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 MY FATHER IS INTRODUCED TO THE COUNT 
 JOSEPH DE MAISTRE 
 
 IT is extraordinary to me, when I remember 
 the inrushings of feeling to which he had been 
 subject, how tranquilly my father came into the 
 Church. It was for all the world like coming 
 into the still waters of a harbour after a raging 
 storm. He was at rest, and his mind in conse- 
 quence began to work with great vigour and 
 activity. That Carlyle, whom he ceased to read 
 but never ceased to admire, has said that a 
 clerk cannot for ever be verifying his ready- 
 reckoner. My father had acquired complete 
 faith in God's own ready-reckoner, as I may 
 call the Church, and he never once found it 
 fail him in his life's calculations. 
 
 He came into the Church tranquilly, as I 
 have said, but he did not immediately discover 
 his settled place therein. Faith, like marriage, 
 is a leap in the dark into a new state of life. 
 Not until the leap is taken does real knowledge 
 
 134
 
 A STEADYING INFLUENCE NEEDED 135 
 
 come, and only then when sufficient time has 
 passed to allow of recovery from the dizzying 
 effects of the leap. My father had very much 
 yet to learn about the Catholic Church : he 
 could barely follow the Mass ; Vespers still 
 muddled him ; he could in nowise come to a 
 satisfactory conclusion as to his private devo- 
 tions, or the pious practices he should adopt, 
 or the Sodalities he should join. The born 
 Catholic takes the Church's riches as a matter 
 of course ; he comes of a long line of Catholics, 
 and was born to untold spiritual riches ; how- 
 ever humble in the world, in the Church he is 
 an aristocrat. The convert comes into his spiri- 
 tual riches by the sweat of his brow and after 
 much tribulation and anguish ; like the gainer 
 of new wealth, he is apt to handle his riches 
 overmuch, to waste time in grateful raptures over 
 them, and Mr. Walshe was no exception to the 
 rule. Peace, perfect peace was in his soul, but 
 it was obvious that he needed a steadying 
 influence. That steadying influence appeared 
 upon the scene about six months afterwards in 
 the majestic figure of the Count Joseph de 
 Maistre. 
 
 The Count de Maistre died in 1821, and his
 
 136 COUNT JOSEPH DE MAISTRE 
 
 " Letters " did not appear until 1851. It had been 
 the fashion up to that date to decry the great 
 Count as hard and stern and narrow, to call him 
 a bigot, an absolutist, a reactionary, an obscur- 
 antist, and all the stock epithets which it is the 
 custom of the little to apply to the great who 
 will not walk on the broad and easy way which 
 leadeth to destruction. But after the appearance 
 of the " Letters," for very shame, the puny had 
 to keep silence, while the better sort gladly 
 admitted that the formidable Count was wise 
 and witty, affectionate and even tender in his 
 domestic circle, skilled in human weaknesses and 
 extremely tolerant of human failings (" Quand on 
 ritviterait qu'une faute en dix ans, ce serait quelque 
 chose" he says somewhere). Since then, the 
 world, on the whole, has ceased to cavil at this 
 great man ; it has known how to serve its pur- 
 pose better : it has left him severely alone. 
 
 The Lettres and Opuscules was the first work 
 of De Maistre's 1 that came in Mr. Walshe's 
 
 1 Of course, as he himself pleads (in a letter to M. Syon, a 
 Piedmontese, dated i4th November 1820), he should be called 
 " Maistre " in such a connection in accordance with the elementary 
 rules of French grammar. But it is too late now, and it would be 
 idle and pedantic, to try and remedy an error which has be- 
 come deep-rooted in all English references to the great writer. 
 P. &. W.
 
 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF DE MAISTRE 137 
 
 way. He read the two volumes through three 
 times, and so greatly was he carried away by 
 the charm of the work, that he never even 
 paused to ask what other works this author might 
 have written. But he was soon deep in Du Pape, 
 the Principe Gdntrateur, and the Soirees de St. 
 Petersbourg. Under the invigorating influence 
 of this bracing thought, the last of the cobwebs 
 were fairly brushed out of his mind for ever, and 
 he found himself equipped not only with a true 
 and robust view of his religious belief, but like- 
 wise with a complete and convincing scheme of 
 political science. I regret that he has not left us 
 a Life of the great " Allobroge " with a complete 
 exposition of his teaching : 'tis a work much 
 needed in England. But I copy some impres- 
 sions of De Maistre from the "Recollections" 
 which relate to this period. 
 
 " The night was dark ; I was far from home ; 
 an ugly journey lay before me through dreariest 
 difficult country. It was useless to try and grope 
 my way alone ; the necessity of a guide had 
 become obvious. Guides there were in plenty 
 swarming about the halfway house, attractive, 
 pleasant fellows many of them, excellent conver- 
 sationalists and charming companions all of them.
 
 138 COUNT JOSEPH DE MAISTRE 
 
 But when I came to examine their credentials, 
 they were all woefully deficient ; not one of them 
 could produce a certificate legalised by the Master 
 of the Road. Not one, until, as a last resort, I 
 examined the credentials of the least officious 
 and most unattractive of them all, an old man, 
 to me seemingly past work, coming of an ancient 
 family of guides founded by one Peter the Gali- 
 lean, now nearly two thousand years ago, and, 
 strange to say, his papers alone were in order. 
 It was no time for trifling ; reason and common 
 sense obliged me to engage him in spite of a 
 strong personal antipathy. 
 
 " So we started out together on that memorable 
 journey. My antipathy seemed to increase with 
 the difficulties of the road : he was no boon 
 companion this guide of mine ; he declined to 
 learn of me or be lectured by me ; he ignored 
 all my suggestions to proceed by pleasant places, 
 and ever led me from the broad highways to 
 narrow rough impassable paths. It was not 
 until I had accomplished a good stretch of the 
 journey, wounded, weary, and footsore through 
 overmuch neglect of orders, that I met on the 
 road the venerable and majestic figure of the 
 Count de Maistre, who, turning back with me,
 
 DU PAPE 139 
 
 unfolded all the rich treasures of his heart and 
 mind, and taught me to love my guide, and to 
 follow him with implicit confidence and rever- 
 ential obedience. 
 
 " It was not that De Maistre had anything 
 precisely new to tell me about the road : it was 
 his view of the road, his view of my guide, his 
 neat conclusive exegesis of the reasonableness of 
 common sense, his common-sense uses of reason, 
 his terse refutations, without weary ratiocination, 
 by inspiration as it were, of popular, dearly loved 
 theories, his thousand and one wise and witty 
 sayings, all of them springing to my lips in happy 
 rejoinder to the insolent passers-by who mocked 
 at my guide. It was all these things, coupled 
 with his splendid exposition of the Catholic 
 attitude, that caused me to bow down and call 
 him master. 
 
 " I suppose that no Catholic book of the century 
 has had so great an influence upon the conduct 
 and destinies of modern Catholics as Du Pape, 
 which appeared in 1820. Gallicanism fled before 
 it ; Febronianism lay down and died under it ; 
 the gibbering ghost of Jansenism melted into 
 thin air at its coming. It is not too much to 
 say, humanly speaking, that Du Pape made the
 
 140 COUNT JOSEPH DE MAISTRE 
 
 great Syllabus possible and the Vatican defini- 
 tion imperative. Nor was this book without its 
 influence on the Catholic revival in England. 
 Alas! that it should not have been more studied 
 at Oxford ; but the leaders of the Tractarians 
 were too much occupied by the necessity of 
 acquiring, after a long slumber, the very elements 
 of Catholicism and liturgical science ; and the 
 fatal fascination which the indeterminate in re- 
 ligion has for the modern mind, has been suffered 
 to grow apace until it threatens to become a 
 national danger. 
 
 "One of my dearest friends was an Anglican 
 who had been in the thick of that Oxford move- 
 ment. His views would be considered moderate 
 now-a-days ; they were thought extreme in 1870. 
 I think he was altogether the most lovable soul 
 I have ever known, and he had as fine an 
 intelligence as I have ever met with. God 
 knows how I longed to see him a Catholic, 
 how I prayed for him, how I offered my com- 
 munions for him, how I had holy mass said for 
 his conversion. But he, while daily growing in 
 charity and all lovable qualities, seemed to be- 
 come more than ever rootedly fixed in High 
 Church Anglicanism. I cannot to this day tell
 
 ARGUMENT AGAINST THE VIA MEDIA 141 
 
 what held him back. He could not explain it 
 himself; I do not think he was conscious of 
 being evasive, yet he perpetually slipped through 
 my fingers. It is seldom, indeed, that I have 
 ever entered into anything approaching religious 
 controversy, but I did ask this friend, for the 
 great love I bore him, to read Du Pape. He 
 smiled and was evasive. I returned to the charge 
 again and again ; I wrote to him ; I asked him 
 as a favour that he would read Du Pape, but a 
 year went by and he never did so. 
 
 " I then sat down and copied out a page of 
 the book. It contains an argument against 
 Anglicanism, but not the argument of a contro- 
 versialist ; simply the common-sense conclusions 
 of a wise man clothed in winged words. My 
 friend read this page through thrice, knelt down 
 in prayer for ten minutes, put on his hat, went 
 out in search of the nearest Catholic priest, 
 and tumultuously demanded to be received into 
 the Church. The winged words of De Maistre 
 had brought the card castle of the Via Media 
 toppling about his ears beyond all earthly hope 
 of reconstruction. These were the words which 
 I had copied : 
 
 " ' L'Eglise anglicane est d'ailleurs la seule
 
 142 COUNT JOSEPH DE MAISTRE 
 
 association du monde qui se soit declaree nulle 
 . . . dans 1'acte meme qui la constitue. Elle a 
 proclame solennellement dans cet acte Trente- 
 neuf Articles, ni plus, ni moins, absolument 
 necessaires au salut, et qu'il faut jurer pour 
 appartenir a cette Eglise. Mais Tun de ces 
 articles (le xix e .) declare solennellement que Dieu, 
 en constituant son Eglise n'a point laisse 1'in- 
 faillibilite sur la terre ; que toutes les 6glises se 
 sont trompees, a commencer par celle de Rome ; 
 qu'elles se sont trompdes grossierement, meme 
 sur le dogme, meme sur la morale ; en sorte 
 qu'aucune d'elles ne possede le droit de prescrire 
 la croyance, et que 1'ecriture sainte est 1'unique 
 regie chr&ien. L'figlise anglicane declare done 
 a ses enfants qu'elle a bien le droit de leur 
 commander, mais qu'ils ont le droit de ne pas lui 
 ob&r. Dans le meme moment, avec la meme 
 plume, avec la mme encre, sur le meme papier, 
 elle declare le dogme et declare qu'elle n'a pas le 
 droit de le declarer. J'espere que dans 1'inter- 
 minable catalogue des folies humaines, celle-la 
 tiendra toujours une des premieres places.' How 
 simple the view: yet it had never occurred to 
 my friend that his Church, while prescribing to 
 her children the articles touching true religion,
 
 THE SOIREES DE ST. P&T&RSBOURG 143 
 
 admitted at the same moment that she might be 
 in error about those articles. 
 
 "But if Du Pape has had the widest influence 
 of all De Maistre's works, the influence of the 
 Soirees de St. Pdttrsbourg has even been more 
 momentous, in that it has appealed to and satis- 
 fied that smaller section of mankind much to 
 be pitied and much to be considered that is 
 troubled by reason of God's inscrutable ways 
 with the children of men. This book, more 
 than any other, has helped a few struggling 
 souls to see that the mysteries of faith are a 
 light and easy burden beside the mysteries 
 of the grievous, hopeless burden of unbelief. 
 Mystery against mystery : if original sin and 
 the exclusion of one single soul from the beatific 
 vision trouble and perplex the intellect, how easy 
 of belief are they, how reasonable, in compari- 
 son with belief in a First Cause that you must 
 call Unknowable, though its very appellation 
 implies the knowledge that it has causality, or 
 with that God of the Theists who, denying the 
 calamity of the Fall, have to believe that man 
 left his Creator's hands fractured in the will. 
 ' Assemblage inconcevable de deux puissances 
 differentes et incompatibles ' thus De Maistre
 
 144 COUNT JOSEPH DE MAISTRE 
 
 describes man in his famous Deuxieme Entretien 
 ' centaure monstreux, il sent qu'il est le re- 
 sultat de quelque forfait inconnu, de quelque 
 melange detestable qui a vici6 I'homme j usque 
 dans son essence la plus intime. Toute intelli- 
 gence est par sa nature me"me le resultat, a la 
 fois ternaire et unique, d'une perception qui ap- 
 prehende, d'un raison qui affirme, et d'une volonte 
 qui agit. Les deux premieres puissances ne sont 
 qu'affaiblies dans 1'homme ; mais la troisieme 
 est brisee. . . . C'est dans cette troisieme puis- 
 sance que rhomme se sent blesse a mort. II 
 ne sait ce qu'il veut ; il veut ce qu'il ne veut 
 pas ; il ne veut pas ce qu'il veut ; il voudrait 
 vouloir. . . . Qui pourrait croire,' he then cries, 
 4 qui pourrait croire qu'un tel tre ait pu sortir 
 dans cet 6tat des mains du Createur? Cette 
 idee est si revoltante que la philosophic seule 
 ... a devine le peche originel.' 
 
 " There is one point on which no man has 
 ever quarrelled with Joseph de Maistre, and that 
 is the quality of his style. He was not a 
 Frenchman, but a subject of the King of Sar- 
 dinia, and yet I should suppose that he is the 
 greatest master of French style who ever lived. 
 'Son vraie triomphe,' says Lamartine, 'est
 
 SOME WISE SAYINGS 145 
 
 dans le style. II est ici, non sans 6gal, mais 
 sans pareil.' By reason of his style, he goes 
 on to say, you will read him for the mere plea- 
 sure of reading. It needs, he continues, a com- 
 pound of the styles of three great Frenchmen 
 to make up the style of this great writer. He 
 has the elevation of Bossuet, the sarcasm of 
 Voltaire, the depth of Pascal. 
 
 "In De Maistre wit and wisdom go hand in 
 hand ; neatness, deftness, conciseness are ele- 
 ments of his every phrase ; he can tell you the 
 whole duty of man or the real object of religion 
 or philosophy in a single sentence of a few 
 winged words. Would you know the whole 
 duty of man ? ' L'homme doit agir comme s'il 
 pouvait tout, et se resigner comme s'il ne pouvait 
 rien.' Or the whole duty of parents? ' II faut 
 amuser les jeunes gens afin qu'ils ne s'amusent 
 pas.' Or the whole duty of the student? ' II 
 n'y a point de m^thodes faciles pour apprendre 
 les choses difficiles. L'unique methode est de 
 fermer sa porte, de faire dire qu'on n'y est pas, 
 et de travailler.' Or would you know the most 
 dangerous form of ignorance, the ignorance 
 which is the cause of the worst prejudices 
 against the truth ? ' Les plus ignorants des
 
 146 COUNT JOSEPH DE MAISTRE 
 
 hommes sont ceux qui prennent pour un mal 
 I'inconv&nient du bien.' L 'inconvenient du 
 bien! It seemed to me that I had known no 
 wisdom until I read this phrase. Why, I too, 
 all my life long, had been taking the mere * in- 
 conve"nient du bien ' for a positive evil, and had 
 indeed been the most ignorant of men. 
 
 " But one other tribute to my Master. One, 
 Holy, Catholic, Apostolic : those are the four 
 great notes of the Church. But they need 
 much proof and exposition. Joseph de Maistre 
 has divined a fifth note, which is now-a-days 
 every bit as conclusive : ' Tous les ennemis de 
 Rome sont amis ! ' That is the great glory of 
 the modern Church : she is one within herself, 
 and is yet so powerful as to make all other 
 bodies outside her one against herself."
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 MY FATHER MARRIES 
 
 THE years 1855 to 1861 slipped away speedily 
 and tranquilly. They were years of perfect 
 happiness to my father. Under such favour- 
 able circumstances he gradually ripened into a 
 consummate scholar. Bibliography, Palaeography, 
 and Liturgical studies divided his attention with 
 Heraldry, Numismatics, Chronology, Genealogy, 
 and the Laws of Succession. By the time he 
 was twenty-one he was in active correspondence 
 with a number of learned societies and distin- 
 guished men ; and it must have been rather a 
 proud moment if ever, indeed, he felt the 
 sensations of pride when the learned Cardinal 
 Palladini gratefully acknowledged the valuable 
 assistance of " D. Joannes Walshius " in the 
 preface to his Tractatus de Rebus Liturgicis. 
 I could point to more than one second edition 
 which owes its greater value to the long list of 
 corrigenda which "Walshius" had noted in the 
 first edition. Indeed, he had a hawk's eye for
 
 148 MY FATHER MARRIES 
 
 inaccuracies of fact, and a no less keen per- 
 ception of the false consequences, however elu- 
 sive, which must always flow from false fact. 
 With Padre Raimondo he passed on from logic 
 through the whole curriculum of scholastic philo- 
 sophy. It was an excellent mental training, and 
 he thoroughly enjoyed it, nor did he in after life 
 ever cease the study of philosophy. As to 
 theology, I should say he would have made an 
 excellent theologian, but though he had a strong 
 theological bent, he would never take up an 
 elaborate systematic study of the great science. 
 That, he would declare, was the work of a life- 
 time, and, moreover, that a layman had no need 
 of theology on a great scale. 
 
 During these tranquil years my father does 
 not seem to have manifested any signs of that 
 interior mystical piety, of that lofty contempla- 
 tive sanctity, which was a growing quality with 
 him in the latter half of his life, and had reached 
 a surprising degree of elevation ere his course 
 was run. He was very careful in observing all 
 fasts and abstinences, went daily to Mass, and 
 to monthly Confession and Communion, gave a 
 good hour of the day to prayer and religious 
 exercises, and never omitted a brief annual
 
 TRANQUIL YEARS 149 
 
 retreat. He seems in these years to have been 
 content with the commandments, and not to have 
 dreamt of aspiring even to the spirit of the pre- 
 cepts. He practised no voluntary mortifications 
 or austerities, and though he had read so much 
 of contemplation, he made no effort to become a 
 contemplative himself. He was always patient, 
 sweet, unselfish, open - handed with the poor, 
 long-suffering with the fatuous, charitable to the 
 ignorant, and scrupulous in the discharge of every 
 duty. But there was scarce a ripple in the quiet 
 stream of his life, and his virtues, in the absence 
 of voluntary sacrifice, could not take heroic shape. 
 He was simply full of the tumultuous joy of 
 study, turning over and over again in his mind 
 with infinite relish the rich stores which he was 
 garnering up. Nor should it be forgotten that he 
 was serving his seven years' apprenticeship of 
 silent adoration that he might become worthy of 
 the hand of Rachel ! He never seems to have 
 had the least temptation to become a priest, and 
 for that he has, perhaps, to thank the good angel 
 Rachel. He would never have made a priest, 
 though he died in something like the odour of 
 sanctity. It is the torment of many converts 
 that, in gratitude for their conversion, they
 
 150 MY FATHER MARRIES 
 
 desire to consecrate their lives to God in the sacer- 
 dotal state. From that torment, and the failure 
 which so often attends the effort, my father was 
 mercifully spared. Of the sacerdotal, as of the 
 perfect Christian state, it may truly be said that 
 many are called but few are chosen. 
 
 John Walshe died in 1860. He was found 
 in his office chair, stiff and stark, chill and for- 
 bidding as the Manchester February day on 
 which he died. He had never written a line 
 to his son, nor made any attempt to approach 
 him or recover him. From the moment of the 
 flight he began to stiffen under the rigid hand 
 of death. He never did a mean or dishonour- 
 able thing in business ; his word was as good 
 as his bond ; he observed all the outer decen- 
 cies of life : that is the best epitaph I can write 
 upon him, and it is much when compared with 
 many of the affable, easy-going, pleasure-loving, 
 unscrupulous men of business of to-day, who, 
 without trickery and make-believe, would soon 
 fall far behind in the race for wealth. 
 
 My father had written regularly every month to 
 his mother, and had in return regularly received 
 gushing, sentimental, effusive epistles. He roused 
 himself from his beautiful dream, and hurried
 
 MANCHESTER REVISITED 151 
 
 home to her at the time of the crisis. After a 
 most genuinely cordial greeting she very pro- 
 perly fainted. My father saw the old house 
 again with a confused kind of pleasure ; he went 
 out into the old orchard and looked up at the 
 apple-tree cradle ; it was covered with snow. 
 Manchester was fast creeping out towards Hale, 
 and the snow was covered with a sooty black. 
 He went into the dingy counting-house once or 
 twice, and was received by Mr. Meade with 
 effusive humility. Mr. Briggs had been ousted. 
 Wills had gone to Australia. He saw the 
 sample-book on his desk, and yet another new 
 boy at work upon it. How unsubstantial the 
 whole thing seemed like some half-remembered 
 nightmare. He trapsed about in the slush of 
 Manchester, up and down the streets where he 
 used to run errands and carry parcels. He went 
 to a favourite second-hand bookshop of his, 
 where he had spent many sixpences and shillings, 
 saved from his scanty allowance for lunch- 
 eon, and bought a copy of Palmerin d'Oliva's 
 Mirrour of Nobilitie, which was wanting in 
 Lord Frederick's library. The bookseller did 
 not know him again, and my father was not 
 at the pains to make himself known. He went
 
 152 MY FATHER MARRIES 
 
 into St. Chad's and St. Augustine's, where he 
 used to take shelter during the luncheon half- 
 hour and pray and read, in the quiet seclusion 
 of which, too, he had often munched his roll 
 and piece of chocolate. How wonderful it all 
 seemed that he should now know the meaning 
 of a Catholic Church. He came out of his 
 dream fit and thanked God devoutly for all 
 His mercies. 
 
 Mr. Walshe stayed at Hale until the business 
 was wound up and the estate realised. Of 
 course he was not mentioned in the will, every- 
 thing having been left absolutely to my grand- 
 mother. She found herself in possession of an 
 income of nearly ^"2000 a year, derived chiefly 
 from shares in the Manchester, Sheffield, and 
 Lincolnshire Railway, of which John Walshe had 
 for long been a director. It is to her credit 
 that she made my father an allowance of .300 
 a year, and still more to her credit that she 
 spontaneously increased this allowance to ^400 
 upon his marriage. Of course there was some 
 vague talk of his continuing the business, but 
 against that he resolutely set his face, and the 
 subject speedily dropped. Mr. Meade started 
 on his own account, and succeeded in absorb-
 
 MY FATHER'S MARRIAGE 153 
 
 ing John Walshe's influential connection. He 
 flourished like the green bay-tree. And so the 
 name of Walshe departed for ever from the 
 sphere of Manchester commerce. 
 
 My father, thus unexpectedly possessed of 
 money, plucked up heart of grace and spoke to 
 Lord Frederick when he returned to Lucca. 
 That kind father and benefactor had well enough 
 known that this declaration would come some 
 day ; nay, he had even made every arrange- 
 ment for the marriage had my father never 
 become possessed of a stiver. As for Mary, 
 she had loved him all along these six long 
 years. The young pair were married with some 
 pomp in the Duomo of Lucca by the Archbishop 
 himself on the nth November 1861, the Feast 
 of St. Martin, to whom that noble church is 
 dedicated. They spent a brief honeymoon in 
 France, visiting Paray-le-Monial, La Salette, 
 and the new sanctuary of Lourdes, and then 
 returned to the Villa Fabriani for a few years 
 more of the same even, tranquil existence.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 I AM BORN LORD FREDERICK DIES MY FATHER 
 
 MOVES TO ASSISI 
 
 IT was about six months after his marriage that 
 a great change came over my father. To speak 
 strictly, it was the beginning of a change that 
 grew onward and upward, steadily maintaining 
 itself, steadily increasing in force, until, in the 
 last ten years of his life, it had reached a point 
 of very significant importance. He was to leave 
 the commandments far behind him, and to soar 
 up, if still clogged with some of the venial faults 
 to which the soul is heir, into the rarified atmos- 
 phere of the precepts. It was about six months 
 after his marriage that he first came across the 
 " Fioretti di San Francesco." Lest this state- 
 ment seem strange to some readers, let them 
 remember how absorbed he had been in certain 
 set studies. The " Fioretti " worked an instant 
 change in him. The gentle figure of St. Francis 
 rose up before him, and in the most loving manner 
 accused him of selfish absorption in study, of 
 
 154
 
 RELIGIOUS AWAKENING 155 
 
 undue indulgence of " Brother Ass," the body, of 
 a niggardly quantum of time given to Almighty 
 God, of a total neglect of Christ's dear friends, 
 the poor, the sick, the halt, and the plague-stricken. 
 Down once more came a mighty wave of feeling 
 upon him : he could have fasted on bread and 
 water ; he could have kissed the sores of lepers, 
 clothed himself in rags, and begged from door 
 to door. But he was a Catholic now, and no 
 longer the sport of mere feeling however exalted. 
 He sought the counsel of Heaven through the 
 confessional, and being counselled, began a new 
 life, which, if mortified far beyond the life of these 
 years of study, was yet conducted with such 
 modesty and simplicity as almost to escape the 
 observation of those of his own household. It 
 is the tendency of modern sanctity, far more than 
 of mediaeval, to forego an act of mortification 
 rather than have it become known. And for this 
 reason the modern sanctity is, in a sense, the 
 higher sanctity, just because it is so often obliged 
 to forego acts of mortification, and is thus con- 
 stantly exposed to a drain upon its main gener- 
 ating faculties, for there can be no sanctity without 
 voluntary mortification. Most truly doth the 
 Liber Sapientics say that the corruptible body
 
 156 I AM BORN 
 
 is a load upon the soul, and that its earthly habi- 
 tation oppresses the mind of him who museth 
 upon many things. 1 The soul's great need, there- 
 fore, is to nullify the weight of the body, and 
 my father set about the business with something 
 like mediaeval rigours. 
 
 The effect which the " Fioretti " had upon him 
 immediately caused him to read more about St. 
 Francis, and with his logical mind he went 
 straight to the sources, to Thomas of Celano, 
 the Three Companions, and St. Bonaventure. 
 Here he learned his true vocation. Just as St. 
 Francis had changed the whole tenor of his life, 
 so now St. Francis changed the whole course 
 of his studies. He had learned his vocation, 
 which was to devote himself entirely to writing 
 about the dear Saint and his Order. All his 
 previous studies had been an excellent prepara- 
 tion for the life's work which he had now found. 
 Logic and scholastic philosophy kept him sane 
 in his views and delivered him from all temp- 
 tation to crotchets ; Latin, conjoined to palaeo- 
 graphy, enabled him to read thirteenth-century 
 codexes with comparative ease ; genealogy and 
 chronology helped him in a discriminating 
 
 1 Wisd. ix. 15.
 
 THE STUDY OF ST. FRANCIS 157 
 
 arrangement of events ; bibliography taught him 
 the systematic digestion and arrangement of 
 available fundamental matter ; liturgical and her- 
 aldic studies gave him the key to many sym- 
 bolic mysteries of the keen mediaeval imagination. 
 I think when his works are published that it 
 will be found that he has, by a rare instinct, 
 singularly illumined the history of the thirteenth 
 century. His own intimate life was that of a 
 holy person of the Middle Ages in word, thought, 
 and deed : he saw St. Francis with the eye of 
 an admiring contemporary ; he thought of St. 
 Francis with the mind of an intelligent con- 
 temporary ; and, like a holy contemporary, he 
 was not over-troubled by the evil which is ever 
 with us, and is especially prone to invade high 
 places ; while, like a practical contemporary, 
 having all the common sense of the Middle Ages, 
 he was fully reconciled to the inevitable incon- 
 vdnient du bien, which the wise and good have 
 sought to distribute, but only the foolish and 
 headstrong have attempted to eradicate. A 
 changed atmosphere indeed from the blind, un- 
 regulated strivings after sanctity of his child- 
 hood at Hale and his boyhood at the Searle 
 House Grammar School.
 
 158 I AM BORN 
 
 Six months or thereabouts after the change in 
 his life so fervently embraced, and the commence- 
 ment of the new studies so eagerly pursued, my 
 brother and I came into the world at one birth. 
 My brother being the first born, was called Francis 
 after the Saint, and Michael, not after the Arch- 
 angel, but after the Spanish ecstatic, San Miguel 
 de los Santos or St. Michael of the Saints, who 
 in the year of our birth had been canonised by 
 Pius IX. 1 According to the beautiful legend, 
 Michael was of so great natural purity of heart 
 that our Lord assumed unto Himself the Saint's 
 natural heart during his lifetime, and gave him a 
 mystical heart with which to end his days. He 
 is the Saint who most eminently symbolises 
 change of heart, and change of heart was at that 
 time uppermost in my father's thoughts. Besides, 
 he ever loved to honour the newest Saints. I 
 was called Philip, not after the Apostle of the 
 two Phrygias, but after the Apostle of Rome, St. 
 Philip Neri ; and ^Egidius, not after St. Giles the 
 
 1 St. Michael, whose family name was Argemir, was born on the 
 29th September 1591, at the little town of Vich, in Catalonia. At 
 a tender age he entered the Order of the Most Holy Trinity for 
 the Redemption of Captives (lingua laica : Crutched Friars), and 
 died at Valladolid on the loth April 1625. He was one of the 
 most astounding ecstatics in the whole range of hagiography, and 
 the strange phenomena of his ecstasies are perhaps better within 
 reach of proof than any other case of the kind. P. AL. W.
 
 LAST ILLNESS OF LORD FREDERICK 159 
 
 Hermit, but after the great ecstatic, the Blessed 
 .^gidius, one of the first companions of St. 
 Francis, for whose profound sayings and holy life 
 my father had the greatest admiration. I have 
 no doubt that he would have liked to have given 
 us one family name apiece as well as a patronal 
 name, but, as will be seen hereafter, he knew 
 nothing of his father nor of any family name 
 save the John of our grandfather. 
 
 Our young lives were to be the herald of death. 
 Lord Frederick Markham had been ailing for 
 the past year or two, and he died six months 
 after my birth. He was conscious to the very 
 end, and received the last Sacraments in peaceful 
 fervour and with every demonstration of a lively 
 faith. The Blessed Sacrament was brought to 
 him from the tabernacle in the little chapel in 
 the "bosco," where he had for so many years 
 provided for its reverent reservation. The 
 peasants on the poderi had ceased work, and 
 were collected in great numbers inside and 
 outside the chapel. The priest, bearing his price- 
 less Burden in the pyx, and accompanied by a boy 
 holding over him a quaint old yellow ombrellino, 
 was followed to the foot of the perron by the 
 motley crowd of contadini, all praying that the 
 Lord of heaven, in His quality of Divine
 
 160 I AM BORN 
 
 Physician, would spare their beloved master for 
 many years to come. Lord Frederick had first 
 sent for us two babies, and given us his blessing. 
 It seems that I crowed at him and clapped my 
 hands at him, as if rejoicing with him upon some 
 joyful event. Then he made his last confession 
 and received the Blessed Sacrament, and after a 
 quarter of an hour's thanksgiving and recollec- 
 tion, he sent for my father and mother. They 
 knelt on either side of the bed, my father on 
 the right side and my mother on the left. He 
 rested his hand upon my father's head in the act 
 of blessing, and from his lips there fell, but over 
 and over again, those words which had for ever 
 been engraven on my father's heart, "My dear, 
 dear boy ! My dear, dear boy ! " Then rallying 
 for a moment, he stretched his hands out on either 
 side of the bed, and taking one of their hands 
 in each of his, said in Italian, " Arrivederci in 
 Paradiso ! " And then with a sigh and a smile 
 he fell peacefully asleep. 
 
 His death caused the greatest consternation 
 and grief in the neighbourhood. The funeral 
 was a great affair, about which the old peasants 
 still talk to this day. My father, with his accu- 
 rate historic instincts, was determined that all due 
 honour should be paid to one in death whom he
 
 LORD FREDERICK'S LYING IN STATE 161 
 
 had so honoured in life. Besides, popular senti- 
 ment required it. Lord Frederick's body was 
 carried from his own modest little room to the 
 great red damask bedroom, which had never been 
 used since the Duke of Lucca slept there in the 
 late Count Fabriani's time. There, upon the 
 great four-post eighteenth-century bedstead, hung 
 with red damask and covered with a damask 
 coverlid, Lord Frederick's body was laid out in 
 state. Six lighted candles in tall rococo candle- 
 sticks stood round the bed. On a prie-dieu at the 
 foot of the bed two Religious kept watch, saying 
 the Office of the Dead. Lord Frederick had 
 been a Knight of St. Stephen, the last English- 
 man to be invested ere the suppression of that 
 Order of Chivalry in 1859. The body was 
 therefore dressed in the imposing cappa magna 
 of the Knights. It was of white camlet lined 
 with red silk, and having a large red silken cross 
 of Maltese shape affixed on the left side. 'Twas 
 a fitting shroud for one who in his charities had 
 been a true knight-errant. The peasants of the 
 poderi, nay, hundreds of poor people from the 
 country round about (for Lord Frederick's chari- 
 ties had penetrated far and wide), flocked to the 
 villa, and reverently defiled through the red room 
 where the body was lying in state. There wsa
 
 1 62 I AM BORN 
 
 scarce a tear from any one : the sight of that peace- 
 ful, smiling, serene figure aroused awe and wonder, 
 but checked all thought of sorrow for the moment. 
 It was not until the coffin, bearing his knightly 
 insignia, was carried down the steps of the perron 
 by eight masked brothers of the Archconfraternity 
 of the Misericordia, that the poor friends whom he 
 had so loved and benefited broke down and burst 
 into loud lamentations, " Padrone ! padrone ! Mio 
 povero padrone ! Mio caro padrone ! La Madonna 
 Taccompagni ! Iddio le conceda il bene del Para- 
 diso ! " Their cries were drowned by the roll of 
 the drums of the village band. The procession 
 had formed up, and began slowly to defile down 
 the stately avenue of maples, to the solemn 
 accompaniment of the drums. Then came the 
 warning clash of the cymbals ; the drums ceased 
 and the band broke out into one of those slow, 
 long-drawn-out, thrilling funeral marches of which 
 no one knows the date or authorship. 1 
 
 1 My friend has somehow fallen into error in trying to repro- 
 duce the march played at Lord Frederick Markham's funeral, 
 how I know not. But the march that I find attached to the 
 MS. is very well known to me. It is not of unknown date or 
 authorship, but was written by the Livornese maestro, Oreste 
 Carlini (still happily alive), in the year 1880. I am free to admit, 
 however, that it is a thoroughly typical specimen of the sweet, 
 serene, sanguine funeral march of Tuscany, and that I should 
 have felt no astonishment in being told that its author's name 
 had not come down to posterity. M. C.
 
 A TUSCAN FUNERAL MARCH 163 
 
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 The music ceased abruptly, and again the 
 sound of lamentations arose : "Padrone! padrone!
 
 1 64 I AM BORN 
 
 padrone ! Mio caro padrone ! Iddio le bene- 
 dica ! La Madonna 1'accompagni ! " The roll 
 of the drums drowned these pathetic lamenta- 
 tions, and continued for a while ; again came 
 the warning clash of the cymbals, and once 
 more the sweet piercing notes of the funeral 
 march rang out. There is no gloom about a 
 Tuscan funeral march, but always an inspirit- 
 ing melody of surest hope ; for while the Tuscan 
 peasant knows it to be unreasonable, nay, absurd, 
 to suppose that he or any other human being 
 should go straight from a life spotted by sin 
 into God's perfect paradise, he believes in 
 purgatory where the soul's stains are washed 
 away ; and so his funeral marches, if they express 
 sorrow for the transitus of one dear to him, are 
 yet sweet and free from gloom, and have no 
 note about them of final irreparable calamity. 
 
 Hundreds upon hundreds of peasants, cheek 
 by jowl with the gentry, followed the hearse, 
 with its black horses and bagwigged coachman, 
 and after the walkers came the empty carriages 
 of the Lucchese nobility. In Italy it is the 
 custom to show respect to the dead by walking 
 at a funeral : carriages only follow to bring their 
 owners home again. Lord Frederick was laid
 
 MY MOTHER'S DEATH 165 
 
 to rest in the Misericordia section of the Campo 
 Santo outside Lucca, and there is a handsome 
 monument over the grave with a creditable 
 medallion of him, his arms (my father took care 
 of that), and the text : " Beati mortui qui in 
 Domino mor^unt^lr" His pure and generous 
 soul, I am sure, soon came to its eternal rest ; 
 but we have never missed the month's mind 
 for him. 
 
 My poor mother, prostrated already by griev- 
 ous sufferings at our birth, never recovered the 
 blow of her father's death, and soon followed 
 him to the grave. As for my father, I can best 
 measure the depth of his grief by his complete 
 silence on this terrible event in the " Recollec- 
 tions" and the "Diary." Nor did he ever 
 allude to it in speech, nor had I ever again 
 the courage to speak to him of my mother's 
 death after witnessing his pathetic breakdown 
 the first and only time I ever did so. 
 
 My grandmother could not resist so fine an 
 occasion for tears and sentimental moral lessons. 
 She hurried out to Italy to " console " her son 
 and "look after" his "motherless babes." It 
 was an unhappy, uncomfortable, impossible ar- 
 rangement, full of humiliations for my father ;
 
 1 66 I AM BORN 
 
 but he bore it with an heroic resignation that 
 was never allowed to declare itself. Resigna- 
 tion which is obvious ceases to be resignation. 
 My grandmother's sentimental grief soon oozed 
 away, and in three months, or less, she was 
 glad to return to the old house at Hale and to 
 the considerable court which the wives of the 
 bourgeois traders of the place were ever ready 
 to pay to so veritable a grande dame. My 
 father had inherited the Villa Fabriani, the 
 library, and a portion of Lord Frederick's for- 
 tune ; but life at the villa became intolerable to 
 him after his great bereavement. Besides, in 
 the midst of his grief he had not lost sight of 
 the life's work which he had set himself, and 
 he had to consider what course of life would 
 best serve that. So he shut up the villa, and 
 after making proper provision for the working 
 of the poderi, he moved to Assisi, the centre 
 of his thoughts, and there he lived a saintly, 
 studious, uneventful life until the eventful saintly 
 end of his studious days.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 MY FATHER GOES TO SEE THE POPE 
 
 BEFORE going to Assisi my father went to Rome 
 to seek the blessing of St. Peter's successor. 
 He felt the need of a new force to support him 
 in his labours and to console him in his great 
 grief. Of that memorable visit he shall him- 
 self, in his own words, tell the moving story. 
 Some allowance must be made for the strong 
 emotion under which he was labouring at the 
 time. 
 
 "It was on the Epiphany of this year of 
 grace," he writes, "that I first assisted at the 
 Holy Father's Mass. About a hundred other 
 persons were present, the women all clad in 
 black with black veils over their heads, the 
 men in frac or uniform. We sat close-huddled 
 upon narrow wooden benches covered with green 
 cloth ; I have been more comfortable in the 
 rudest village church. Indeed, the severity of 
 everything in the Vatican soon impresses ; we 
 
 have heard it called a palace and think of 
 
 167
 
 168 MY FATHER VISITS THE POPE 
 
 luxury ; there is much state if you will, but no- 
 where a trace of luxury. 'Tis a curious infir- 
 mity of the modern mind that it is often unable 
 to distinguish between state and luxury ; there 
 are good people who seem to think that because 
 the Pope's cassock is made of taffetas and his 
 slipper of velvet, he is therefore a luxury-loving 
 sybarite. That the state and ceremony of the 
 semi-public life of highly placed ecclesiastics 
 has come into being solely because of the rela- 
 tion in which they stand to Almighty God, we 
 cannot of course expect them to believe ; but 
 that they should cavil at state in a great king- 
 dom like God's Church upon earth, and acclaim 
 and approve it even in the petty officers of a 
 temporal dominion, is a striking instance of that 
 topsy-turveydom of mind which is fast becoming 
 one of the gravest dangers of the day. 
 
 " Mass was said in the Sala degli Arazzi (not 
 to be confounded with the Galleria degli Arazzi] 
 a big square room, beautiful but severe in its 
 decorations. The Holy Father entered at eight 
 o'clock and passed to the altar steps, sprinkling 
 us with the aspergillum as he went. It is 
 really a moment of excitement to any one, 
 whatever his belief, to look for the first time
 
 THE HOLY FATHER'S MASS 169 
 
 upon a living Pope. Let any one, whatever 
 his belief, ask himself who is the most impor- 
 tant man on earth, and candour will constrain 
 him to answer, the Pope of Rome. There is 
 no priest or potentate, no king or emperor, no 
 man of letters or man of science, no leader of 
 political or religious movements, that may com- 
 pare for an instant with the Pope in importance 
 of any and every description : a characteristic, 
 by the way, which reason would naturally pre- 
 dicate of Christ's Vicar, if indeed He should 
 have appointed a Vicegerent upon earth. The 
 thought rushed into my mind as I knelt to 
 receive the Holy Father's passing benediction, 
 and I blessed God that He had set His Church 
 upon a hill, and endowed her, in pity of our 
 weakness, with so many marks that convinced 
 and compelled even pure and absolute reason. 
 
 " The Holy Father knelt at a prie-dieu before 
 the altar, and, after saying the preces ante missam, 
 was vested. His Mass was served by two 
 priests. The Holy Father's enunciation is 
 wonderfully distinct and impressive. To hear 
 him say Mass is a new lesson in the interior 
 meaning of the Holy Sacrifice. Every word 
 seems an intense supplication. In the Pater
 
 170 MY FATHER VISITS THE POPE 
 
 Nosier, when I thought of his high schemes for 
 the regeneration of mankind, his Adveniat regnum 
 tuum seemed to take new shape and meaning ; 
 and when I thought of all his sufferings and 
 anxieties, his fervent Fiat voluntas tua seemed 
 impregnate with the supernatural resignation of 
 Gethsemane. What a pathetic cry for mercy 
 was not the Kyrie Eleison; what a hymn of 
 praise the Gloria in excelsis ; what an act of 
 faith the Credo ; what awe and veneration in the 
 Domine non sum dignus ! And when his hand 
 went up in the final blessing he paused a long 
 while, seeming to wrest from Heaven by sheer 
 violence Heaven's benediction for our starving 
 souls : Benedicat vos . . . Omnipotens Deus . . . 
 Pater . . . et Filius . . . >J et Spiritus Sanctus ! 
 A great AMEN welled up in all our hearts as we 
 rose, refreshed and strengthened, to confess our 
 faith in the last gospel. 
 
 "The Pope always hears a Mass in thanksgiving 
 for the one he has said, and those who have been 
 privileged to assist at it are also allowed to 
 remain for this second Mass. He knelt at the 
 same prie-dieu in front of the altar, and was 
 soon far away from his surroundings. Something 
 seemed to have moved him profoundly that day.
 
 THE HOLY FATHER'S AUDIENCE 171 
 
 Perhaps, though, it is his habitual demeanour. 
 I do not know. I only know that I was in the 
 presence of a soul rapt, absorbed, in an inten- 
 sity of prayer, yet wrestling, struggling, keenly 
 suffering. I cannot help thinking that it was 
 not his habitual demeanour, that something must 
 have moved him profoundly that day ; that the 
 wickedness of the world, the heartlessness of 
 man, the perfidy of princes, the dark prevail- 
 ing irreligion and indifference, the sufferings of 
 Christ's Church and the heavy burdens of his 
 Vicar, must have risen up before him that 
 Epiphany morn in a more than ordinarily lumi- 
 nous vision. 
 
 " The Mass of thanksgiving concluded, the 
 Holy Father seated himself on a chair placed 
 on the predella, and received each person 
 present. Families of three or four persons, or 
 three or four members of a religious order who 
 had come together, were received in groups, so 
 as to shorten a little the ceremony of presenta- 
 tion. All knelt and reverently kissed the hand 
 and foot of St. Peter's successor, and all remained 
 kneeling while he conversed with them. A 
 chamberlain stood on either hand of the Pope. 
 The one on the right hand supervised the
 
 172 MY FATHER VISITS THE POPE 
 
 presentations, the one on the left saw that none 
 of us exceeded a just measure of time, and in 
 nearly every case it seemed necessary for him 
 gently to raise the kneeling suppliant by the 
 elbow in polite signification that it was time to 
 depart. 
 
 "What a contrast the Holy Father was through- 
 out this familiar ceremony to the bowed, suffering, 
 recollected figure that had knelt in the intensity 
 of prayer at the prie-dieu. A venerable old man 
 full of a quiet dignity, fatherly in the extreme, 
 affable, cheerful, courteous, radiating a serene be- 
 nignity and kindliness that set us all laughing 
 and crying by turns. Instinctively there rose to 
 my mind the words of the Count de Maistre when 
 first he saw Pius VII., and was so dumbfounded 
 by his simplicity and humility : ' J 'ai cru voir 
 St. Pierre au lieu de son successeur.' I, too, 
 seemed to see St. Peter rather than his successor ; 
 for if St. Peter in the rude primitive age of the 
 Church had been receiving a small band of the 
 faithful, he could not have done so with more 
 humility, less state, and greater love and en- 
 couragement ; nor would the issues depending 
 upon his words have seemed more real and 
 momentous than did the stern importance of the
 
 THE CHURCH IN LITTLE 173 
 
 Catholicism of to-day, suddenly illumined for 
 me with new proofs of its truth and saving 
 mission. 
 
 " To each one of us the Holy Father contrived 
 to address a few words, and that with so obvi- 
 ously heartfelt an interest in our welfare, we 
 might' have constituted the whole of his spiritual 
 family. Though there were only a hundred of 
 us present, it seemed as if no nation of the earth 
 was unrepresented : the gathering was indeed 
 the Church in little. Americans, English, Scotch, 
 Irish, Germans, Austrians, Poles, Spaniards, 
 Italians, all were there, and all received a 
 fatherly word that left abiding strength and 
 consolation. There was not a dry eye in all 
 the assembly. 
 
 " I was almost the last to be presented. I 
 thought of many things I should like to say, 
 and of what I might hear in reply, but a traitor 
 lump in my throat deprived me of all possi- 
 bility of connected speech. I looked up from 
 my knees, as through a mist, into the benign, 
 reassuring face with its recent traces of spiritual 
 suffering, and could do no more than choke out 
 a faltering request for the apostolic benediction 
 upon me and my motherless boys. Hastily I
 
 174 MY FATHER VISITS THE POPE 
 
 kissed the Holy Father's hand and foot, and 
 alone of all the company, perhaps, hurried away 
 of my own motion without feeling the kindly 
 chamberlain's admonitory hand upon my elbow. 
 
 " But I had not knelt in vain. ' E accordata ! ' 
 the Holy Father had said in answer to my 
 prayer for his blessing, and it will be my own 
 most grievous fault if it do not rest upon me 
 through life, unto life's evening, and in the hour 
 of my death. Amen. 
 
 "'O sainte e"glise romaine!' cried Bossuet 
 on a memorable occasion, ' O sainte glise 
 romaine ! si je t'oublie, puisse-je m'oublier moi- 
 meme! que ma langue se seche et demeure 
 immobile dans ma bouche ! ' 
 
 "'O sainte e"glise de Rome!' cries the Count 
 de Maistre in his famous peroration to Du Pape t 
 4 O sainte eglise de Rome ! tant que la parole 
 me sera conserved, je 1'emploierai pour te cele- 
 brer. Je te salue, mere immortelle de la science 
 et de la saintete ! ' 
 
 " O Holy Roman Church ! (if indeed the low- 
 liest of thy sons may be permitted to join in 
 the chorus of thy Elders), O Holy Roman 
 Church, I, too, may I forget myself if I forget 
 thee and all thy benefits ! And if I prefer i not
 
 O HOLY ROMAN CHURCH! 175 
 
 thee above my chief joy, may my tongue cleave 
 to the roof of my mouth and my right hand 
 forget her cunning ! O Holy Roman Church ! 
 ground and pillar of truth, I will be faithful 
 to thee until death ! No sophisms of the new 
 learning, no fallacies of the new science, no 
 allurements of the new polity, shall wean me 
 of my loyalty to him who is the centre and 
 source of thy visible unity ! O immortal Mother 
 of Saints, into thy keeping do I commend my 
 soul upon earth, because thou alone upon earth 
 canst surely lead my soul into paradise. At 
 the feet of the Vicegerent of God upon earth 
 do I pay homage and proffer allegiance, because 
 he alone upon earth has divine authority to 
 guide and command me. In the stir and stress 
 of the terrible time that the vices of man are 
 preparing for the children of men, blessed is 
 he who has found shelter under thy wing ; 
 blessed is he whose foot resteth upon the rock 
 of thy truth. H is soul shall be restored ; he 
 shall be led into the paths of justice ; he need 
 fear no evil, for thy rod and thy staff shall 
 comfort him. Goodness and mercy shall follow 
 him all the days of his life, and he shall dwell 
 in the house of the Lord for ever."
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 MY FATHER SETTLES AT ASSIST OF THE EVEN 
 TENOR OF HIS LIFE THERE 
 
 WE lived in a big stone house at Assisi. It 
 may sound grandiose, but to be correct, I ought 
 to call it a palazzo. The house was situated 
 high up in this city set upon a hill, and the 
 windows at the back commanded a glorious 
 view of proud Perugia and the Umbrian plains. 
 More than one cardinal had been born within 
 its stately precincts, and the family to which 
 it had belonged counted a sixteenth-century 
 Pope among its members. A Londoner would 
 smile if he knew how low was the rent we 
 paid for this palace, and yet it was vast 
 enough for a royal reception. My father, how- 
 ever, had no thought of holding receptions : he 
 took a big house because he required space for 
 his books. The whole of the first floor was a 
 huge library ; the very lobbies were lined from 
 floor to ceiling with books. The room in which* 
 
 he habitually worked contained the library of 
 
 176
 
 MY FATHER'S LIBRARY 177 
 
 Franciscan books which I take to have been 
 the most complete of its kind in the world. 
 Among the folios he had all five volumes of 
 De Gubernatis' Chronicle, 1 and Wadding, in- 
 cluding the scarce twentieth volume ; 2 the five 
 editions of the Conformitates ; the seven editions 
 of the Speculum Vitce Beati Francisci et Soci- 
 orum ejus. But the rarity which perhaps most 
 of all excited the envy of his scholarly friends 
 was a little octavo of but twenty-four sheets, an 
 edition of the Sacrum Commercium Beati Fran- 
 cisci cum Domina Pauper tate, printed at Milan 
 in 1539. During his lifetime the copy was be- 
 lieved to be unique, but Pere Francois Van Ortroy, 
 the noted Bollandist, has since discovered a copy 
 in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. 3 
 
 1 Padre Marcellino da Civezza in his Bibliografia Sanfrancescana 
 (1879) states that in all Italy he had never found the five volumes 
 together. This is no doubt owing to the fact that vols. i., iii., 
 iv., and v. were printed at Rome (1681, 1684, 1685, 1689), and 
 vol. ii. at Lyons (1685). I have myself, however, found the five 
 volumes complete in the Communal Libraries of Assisi and Leg- 
 horn. It is only right to add that the Assisi Library was buried 
 away in wooden cases when Padre Marcellino was making his 
 researches. M. C. 
 
 2 Nearly the whole of the edition of vol. xx., printed at Rome 
 in 1794, was destroyed by fire. It has since, to the great con- 
 venience of scholars, been reprinted by the Franciscan Fathers in 
 their noble printing press at Quaracchi, near Florence ( 1 899). M. C. 
 
 3 See Miscellanea Francescana, vol. viii. p. 27, and Analecta 
 Bollandiana, vol. xix. p. 460. 
 
 M
 
 178 MY FATHER SETTLES AT ASSISI 
 
 Before he had arrived at Assisi, Mr. Walshe 
 had become a Franciscan Tertiary, or, to speak 
 more precisely, he had taken the first step 
 towards becoming one, having been clothed as 
 a Novice at Monte Santa Maria, near Lucca. 1 
 His profession he made at the Porziuncola in 
 the little hut where St. Francis died, and on 
 the Feast of St. Francis, 4th October 1863. It 
 is the custom of members of the Third Order to 
 take a name in religion when they first join the 
 Order, and my father took the name of Leo, not 
 only because of his devotion to the Blessed Leo, 
 St. Francis' secretary and confessor, but because 
 it was for him that the Seraphic Benediction was 
 written, and my father would delight in the 
 fancy that its concluding words were addressed 
 to himself directly : Dominus benedicat te, f rater 
 Leo. When first he developed his love for St. 
 Francis my mother had given him an exquisite 
 little picture of the Saint, which had been in the 
 Fabriani family for centuries. It is a painting 
 on copper only 2| by 2^ inches in size, and is 
 assuredly a work of the early fifteenth century, 
 if not older. In his left hand the Saint holds 
 
 1 The " clothing " consists of a small scapular and cord, which 
 are always worn, though not so as to be visible. Tertiaries may be 
 buried in the full Franciscan habit if they choose. M. C.
 
 VERA EFFIGIES SANCTI FRANCISCI 179 
 
 a red book bearing the inscription in characters 
 of a later age, "VERA S.F.E." : Vera Sancti 
 Francisci Effigies; while his right hand almost 
 seems to be raised in the act of blessing. There 
 are one or two famous portraits of St. Francis, in 
 which he is lifting his hand as if to show the wound 
 in it. Perhaps no more than that was intended 
 by the artist of this little picture, but certainly 
 it does seem to breathe a blessing, and a bless- 
 ing my father would always see in it. Indeed, to 
 him, since St. Francis was in the act of blessing, 
 he could only be imparting that triple benediction 
 so peculiarly associated with his name. Therefore 
 in the broad frame which surrounds the picture 
 he inserted a scroll under glass, upon which was 
 written beneath a Cross Tau : 
 
 Jube, domne, benedicere. 
 
 Benedictio Scrap hica. 
 Benedicat tibi Dominus et custodial te : 
 Ostendat faciem suam tibi et misereatur tui : 
 Convertat vultum suum ad te et det tibi pacem. 
 Dominus benedicat te, frater Leo. 
 
 At first he used to keep the picture in his 
 Oratory, but afterwards he placed it on the 
 landing at the head of the stairs, that all who 
 passed might ask the Seraphic Benediction. A 
 little lamp constantly burned before it, and I can
 
 i8o MY FATHER SETTLES AT ASSISI 
 
 remember that my brother and I, in the midst of 
 our childish romps, used to stop in awe in front 
 of the picture and whisper a Jube, domne, bene- 
 dicere. Thus was St. Francis impressed on my 
 heart and mind even from my earliest days. 
 
 In the days when Mr. Walshe was received 
 into the Third Order the older and severer Rule 
 of Pope Nicholas IV. was still in force. The 
 present modifications in the Rule were first 
 introduced by Pope Leo XIII. in the Apostolic 
 Constitution " Misericors Dei Filius," dated 3Oth 
 May 1883. Tertiaries under the old Rule were 
 bound to a daily recital of the whole Office of the 
 Church or of the Office of Our Lady ; under the 
 modified Rule, twelve Paters, Aves, and Glorias 
 may take the place of either Office. To the end 
 of his days, however, when not prevented by 
 sickness or duty to his neighbour, my father daily 
 recited the whole Office of the Church ; his skill 
 in liturgical science made the task easy, his 
 devout imagination found new beauties in it 
 every day. The Divine Office readily wearies 
 the languid and lukewarm ; the devout and the 
 ascetic find in it every day a fresh incentive to 
 devotion. The more they repeat it the better 
 they love it ; for after all, 'tis composed almost
 
 THE DIVINE OFFICE 181 
 
 entirely of God's word, and he who should find 
 God's word wearisome stands self-condemned of 
 his own folly and emptiness ; the palate of the 
 God-given part of him has lost all savour of 
 celestial sweetness. My father kept before him 
 the precepts of the great Cardinal Bona, and 
 more especially of the " De Disciplina Psallendi " 
 in the Divina Psalmodia, and under this ascetical 
 guidance derived a constant new relish from the 
 Divine Office. But even up to the last year of 
 his life he would suddenly discover that he had 
 only then just become illuminated as to the real 
 interior meaning of some verse in the Psalms 
 which he had daily been repeating for so many 
 years. The diurnal recital of the Canonical 
 Hours was to him an exercise in contemplation ; 
 at the back (so to speak) of each verse of a 
 psalm, of every versicle and responsory, of all 
 the antiphons, was his own parallel meditation 
 or concept, more vivid and varying some days 
 than others, but always a sweet exercise of 
 Divine Praise, a loving flight of the imagination 
 into the Realms of the Divine Being, a further 
 step in the sublime science of Divine Perfection. 
 Indeed, the Psalter, which had sustained him 
 in his lonely childhood and in the cruel assaults
 
 182 MY FATHER SETTLES AT ASSISI 
 
 of the Hoole Class-room, remained his chief 
 spiritual nourishment to the end of his days. 
 It was as the bread of his soul, indispensable. 
 The " Imitation " was his meat ; the " Spiritual 
 Combat " his drink ; Blosius was the fresh- 
 gathered fruit of this ghostly banquet ; Harphius, 
 Rusbrochius, Suso, Taulerus, Hilton, St. Theresa, 
 St. John of the Cross, St. Catherine of Genoa, 
 Denis the Carthusian, and how many more, were 
 as the dainties and delicacies at the end of the 
 feast. But of them all the Bread of the Psalter, 
 that staff of the soul's life, was the most essential 
 and necessary. If the soul may not live by the 
 Psalms alone, it cannot live without them. The 
 Psalter became to him what his beloved Blosius 
 says of it, a tower, an helmet, a sword, both 
 medicine, food, and the seasoning of food, a 
 beacon and a crown. It delivers those in danger, 
 the holy writer goes on to say ; it heals the 
 wounded, enlightens the blind, stirs up the idle, 
 inflames the cold, consoles the sad, confirms the 
 waverer ; it makes a man hate his sins, despise 
 the world, love God and desire Eternal Life ; 
 it strengthens Faith, infuses Hope, increases 
 Charity ; it commends patience, teaches sobriety, 
 imparteth chastity, purifies the heart, tranquillises
 
 THE VIRTUES OF THE PSALTER 183 
 
 the conscience, and exhilarates the mind ; it re- 
 news the interior man, and diffuses a wondrous 
 sweetness throughout his whole being. The 
 mind of man can devise no prayer more perfect 
 or sublime. The soul whose internal palate is 
 still unspoiled may taste therein untold delights. 
 In a word, the Psalter is a heavenly canticle, and 
 those who cultivate it assiduously are changed 
 thereby from men to angels. Having therefore 
 left behind the vanities of the world, let us, 
 according to the counsel of the Blessed Paul, 
 teach and admonish one another in psalms and 
 hymns and spiritual songs. And let us adorn 
 our souls with prayer and divine praise so that 
 we may be joyful in this life, and merit to attain 
 eternal bliss hereafter. So writes the divine 
 Blosius in his preface to the " Marrow of the 
 Psalter." 1 
 
 When I was a boy about twelve my father's 
 daily life was something as follows. He would rise 
 at five, both summer and winter, and after his 
 morning prayer betake himself to the six o'clock 
 mass at the Basilica of San Francesco. In thanks- 
 giving for having heard mass he would serve 
 
 1 D. Ludovici Blosii Opera. Colonise, 1615. Preface to the 
 Medulla Psalmodies, p. 750.
 
 1 84 MY FATHER SETTLES AT ASSIS1 
 
 another mass, usually at the tomb of St. Francis. 
 On returning home he said prime, tierce, sext, 
 and none (having already said matins and lauds 
 overnight), and made half-an-hour's meditation 
 in his oratory. There is no such meal as 
 breakfast in Italy, but many people add bread, 
 or bread and butter, to their coffee. My father 
 only took one small cup of black coffee. From 
 about eight to twelve-thirty he kept his study. 
 He was an incredibly slow worker, and went 
 over the same ground again and again ; but 
 when it came to actual writing he wrote swiftly 
 and, as I think, well. At half-past twelve we 
 went to a simple but abundant dinner. It was 
 abundant to us but not to him, for he kept his 
 appetite under daily mortification, and his every 
 meal was an attempt to appear to eat of what 
 everybody else did, while really eating infini- 
 tesimal quantities. It was for this reason, no 
 doubt, that he would have no dishes handed, 
 but helped all himself, so that with the least 
 possible observation he might be niggardly to 
 himself. But half a spoonful of minestra would 
 go into his plate, and I, early made observant 
 by love, would notice how often his helpings 
 of meat would consist chiefly of bone. A fiction
 
 SECRET MORTIFICATIONS 185 
 
 had got about that he was of a weak stomach, 
 and that food in the evening would prevent 
 him sleeping at night. He was himself the 
 cunning author of this fiction ; I traced it to him 
 easily enough when I had grown up. So at 
 the evening meal he ate an egg, or a square 
 inch of tunny, or two or three anchovies, or 
 a salted herring which had found its way from 
 Yarmouth to Assisi ; and to this slender colla- 
 tion he took a little of the white wine of 
 Umbria with water. How modest and how en- 
 gaging is modern piety and austerity ! A medi- 
 aeval father, who was inspired like my father to 
 be rid of creatures so that he might join himself 
 more closely to the Creator, would have denied 
 himself openly ; mortification was so common a 
 thing then that it was allowed to pass without 
 comment hurtful to modesty. There is perhaps 
 no trait of piety more touching and beautiful 
 than the foregoing of mortification for humility's 
 sake. The trait was strong in Mr. Walshe. 
 In company he was ever all things to all men ; 
 while with sinners it might be said of him what 
 Thomas of Celano says of St. Francis, that he 
 was " quasi unus ex illis." 
 
 After the mid-day meal my father would
 
 1 86 MY FATHER SETTLES AT ASSISI 
 
 retire for an hour's siesta, at least during the 
 hotter months ; but towards the end of his life 
 he dropped even this mild and necessary in- 
 dulgence. He then said Vespers and Com- 
 pline, and if the weather allowed of it, would 
 walk out with us for a couple of hours, or pay 
 a friendly visit to the fathers at St. Damian's 
 or the Porziuncola. On Sundays and festas, 
 when no work was done, we had many a de- 
 lightful excursion into the remotest parts of 
 Umbria, hearing mass upon our way, or maybe 
 at our distant destination, for we were always 
 off betimes in the morning ; and many is the 
 curious custom, many the moving exhibition of 
 primitive faith I have witnessed in the unex- 
 plored regions of this holy land. Our evening 
 meal was of so simple a character as to be an 
 easily movable feast ; but we seldom partook 
 of it later than half-past six. From seven to 
 nine-thirty my father was once more in his 
 study, working if there was much work on 
 hand, or doing such ephemeral reading as he 
 found necessary, or perhaps wholly absorbed 
 in spiritual reading. At least one hour of the 
 day he devoted to reading in the Lives of the 
 Saints, the ascetical writers, or Holy Writ in
 
 NIGHT PRAYERS 187 
 
 St. Jerome's moving Latin. At nine-thirty 
 the household assembled for prayers. We said 
 five mysteries of the Rosary, the Litany of Our 
 Lady, some prayers for the Dead, some prayers 
 for Holy Church and the Holy Father, the 
 Hymn and Collect from Compline ; and it 
 moves me immeasurably when I remember 
 how we all servants and all ended by repeat- 
 ing after my father : In nomine Domini Nostri 
 Jesu Christi Crucifixi cubitum eo: ille me bene- 
 dicat . . . regat . . . custodial . . . et ad vitam 
 per ducat ceternam. Amen. 
 
 About ten o'clock my father retired to rest, 
 but not to bed. He had no fixed time for going 
 to bed sometimes it may have been twelve, 
 sometimes one, sometimes even later. In the 
 last ten years of his life, I know, he was content 
 with four, and even three hours' sleep. These 
 night hours were the hours of his recollected 
 devotions, in which he could indulge to the full 
 his experimental science of spiritual things. In 
 the night watches he tasted all the sweets of 
 Divine contemplation, and something, I am sure, 
 of the bliss of the prayer of Quiet. God favoured 
 him at times with a torrent of abundant sweet- 
 ness in prayer, and at times tried him with a
 
 i88 MY FATHER SETTLES AT ASSISI 
 
 grievous spiritual dryness and desolation ; but 
 whether in a happy ecstasy, divine praises 
 readily falling from his lips, or in the outer 
 darkness seemingly abandoned by the Paraclete, 
 he was instant in prayer and spiritual exercises. 
 He had ceased to be the sport of mere feeling, 
 the dupe of a subjective religion ; prayer was the 
 more meritorious without feeling ; prayer was 
 a duty whatever the state of the feelings. In 
 the midst of the sweets of contemplation and 
 divine praise, he never lost his equilibrium, he 
 never forgot practical subjects of prayer. And 
 indeed there was no lack of subjects. Had he 
 not, as every holy soul has, the entire universe 
 upon his shoulders? There was the suffering 
 Father of the Faithful, the sore needs of Christ's 
 Church upon earth, the galloping devastations 
 of the Revolution and modern thought, the 
 tempestuous ravages of sin and the tumultuous 
 invasions of luxury, the heedlessness and great 
 perils of the rich, the indifference of the poor 
 to the great privileges of poverty, his own two 
 boys growing up in the midst of a new world 
 that was putting a false gloss upon morality and 
 a false glamour upon vice, the soul of his wife, 
 the soul of Lord Frederick, and the souls of all
 
 AN UNPROFITABLE SERVANT 189 
 
 the faithful departed. Indeed, there was no lack 
 of subjects. And, greatest burden of all upon his 
 shoulders, there was himself, whom he regarded 
 to the end of his days as an unprofitable servant 
 in the Lord's vineyard, chief among the sinners 
 who had been called into the narrow way, lowest 
 among the servitors in God's holy house. In 
 those lone night watches in the little town of 
 Assisi, unknown to the world, a holy soul 
 wrestled nightly with the Creator of the world, 
 beseeching Him by that infinite incomprehensible 
 Act of Love by which He has sought to redeem 
 the myriad infinite wickednesses of the children 
 of men, to blot out all the world's transgressions 
 and regenerate the children of His handiwork. 
 It would go ill with the world if there were not 
 many such, and because of his love of the world 
 I ask the world's love for him. If he could not 
 save the world, I yet know of many an elect 
 vessel whom, by prayer and good counsel, he 
 has rescued from shipwreck and everlasting 
 disaster ! 
 
 One night, when I may have been about seven 
 years of age, I lay awake as too often happened 
 with me troubled by the thought of ghosts, 
 seeing all manner of fantastic lights dancing
 
 190 MY FATHER SETTLES AT ASSISI 
 
 across the room, and hearing all manner of in- 
 explicable creaking noises in the walls and rafters. 
 Shivering and cold all over with childish fear, 
 I would put my head under the clothes for a 
 long time together. I remember on this night, 
 while I was thus buried under the clothes, hear- 
 ing the great booming clock of San Francesco 
 strike six strokes (and that of course means 
 midnight in its ancient mechanism). I remember 
 how terrible the hollow sound of the bell seemed 
 to make my dark prison-house. I flung back 
 the clothes and willingly returned to the dancing 
 moonlight and the mysterious noises. But the 
 character of the noises had changed. There 
 was a real noise now, a faint, far-away rhythmic 
 noise, not in my room, but certainly in the house, 
 and I suddenly realised the difference between 
 real and imaginary noises. I had no fear now, 
 but a great anxiety. I leapt from my bed and 
 listened at the keyhole of the door. There was 
 no doubt about the sound ; it was faint still, but 
 rhythmic and measured. I softly opened the 
 door and peered out into the long dark landing. 
 The sound, clearer now than ever, came from 
 the other end of it. There I saw a bright light 
 under the door of my father's oratory, and a
 
 TAKING THE DISCIPLINE 191 
 
 bright stream of light shining through the key- 
 hole. The noise was clearer than ever. It was 
 not curiosity that led me, but a nameless anxiety. 
 I crept to the end of the marble-paved landing, 
 and kneeling down, looked through the keyhole. 
 
 O Heaven! what a sight I saw! My father 
 on his knees before his little altar, his night-dress 
 girded round his loins, the edge of a cilicium 
 just visible above it, wielding a cruel scourge 
 which he brought down with full force upon his 
 bare shoulders in the blows which accompanied 
 the rhythmical recital of a psalm ! " Oh Dad ! 
 dear Dad ! don't ! don't ! upon me instead ! upon 
 me ! " This was surging in my childish brain, 
 but my lips refused to move. I think I should 
 have cried aloud in horror, but that he was 
 kneeling sideways and I could see his dear face, 
 twitching now and again a little with the pain, 
 but so mild and sweet and composed, so modest 
 and gentle, and yet illumined withal with so 
 seraphic an ardour, that I was kept dumb by 
 amazement and admiration. I knew well enough 
 that the Saints did such things, but I was not 
 old enough to know that there were also moderns 
 who practised the like austerities, and I rose 
 from my knees in a boyish fit of exaltation,
 
 192 MY FATHER SETTLES AT ASSISI 
 
 praising God that He had made my father a 
 Saint. Away now for ever all those childish 
 fears of the night, for a Saint slept under our 
 roof and his presence would protect me from all 
 harm ; yea, though my room should be filled 
 with blackest devils in darkest night-time, I 
 would fear no evil ; his prayers and his stripes 
 would comfort and shield me. 
 
 Next day at dinner-time I glanced at my 
 father with considerable awe. He was the same 
 gentle unassuming father, generously ladling out 
 the minestra to all of us we had a priest-tutor 
 and a French governess in the house at the 
 time and trying to hide his own scanty portion 
 behind the big tureen. But from that day my 
 affection for him redoubled ; for the first time I 
 began to show him little attentions, and to take 
 a childish interest in his work. I was repaid by 
 his wonder and delight, and still more by the 
 tender affection which he lavished upon me. In 
 the long wet winter afternoons, we two alone 
 by ourselves in the big study, sitting before the 
 great open wood fire, he would take me on his 
 knee, and tell me again and again the wonderful 
 story of St. Francis and his first followers. And 
 as the day drew in, under cover of the dusk, he
 
 IN THE ECSTASY OF PRAYER 193 
 
 would lose that certain shyness which he had 
 even with his children or was it diffidence? 
 and speak to me long and lovingly of Him who 
 was the great exemplar of Francis and all the 
 Saints. And when the light of the fire shone 
 upon his face, I used to think that so Moses 
 must have looked when he came down from 
 communing with God upon Mount Sinai. 
 
 After I made the discovery of my father's 
 secret mortification, I would often lie awake at 
 night, or wake up suddenly in the middle of 
 the night. I no longer saw dancing lights which 
 frightened me or was terrified by mysterious un- 
 accountable noises, but I often heard the far-away 
 rhythmic noise of that cruel scourge. I never 
 again ventured to look upon that sight, but I 
 used to look through the keyhole before or after, 
 and watch him through my blinding tears in the 
 blissful ecstasy of prayer and contemplation. 
 'Twas a sight to melt the hardest heart, to 
 move the dourest unbeliever. He knelt before 
 a crucifix and two lighted candles ; his head 
 bowed low, the mouth resting upon his long 
 slender finger-tips ; and all the while he smiled 
 to himself in great contentment. Then the 
 hands would go apart, the arms be stretched 
 
 N
 
 194 
 
 out wide in supplication ; deep sighs would 
 escape him as the Holy Name fell from his lips 
 in accents of tenderest love ; and then the hands 
 would close again and the smiling mouth once 
 more rest upon the finger-tips. No words of 
 mine could ever convey the purity and innocence 
 of that dear figure at prayer. 
 
 This may have continued a year or so when 
 my curiosity grew faint ; Nature had her way 
 with me ; and I began to sleep the whole night 
 through. And of my secret watchings he never 
 knew anything till long after, and he now knows 
 all my thoughts in the Paradise of the Angels 
 to which his soul has fled.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 MY FATHER'S VENIAL FAULT 
 
 BUT though Mr. Walshe was ever a very saintly 
 man, I dare not call him Saint in the very strict 
 sense in which the term is used technically, not 
 at all events in the middle epoch of his life. He 
 had one fault which the Devil's Advocate would 
 certainly have made the most of and much, if ever 
 the process of his canonisation were introduced. 
 It was certainly a most interesting fault. I loved 
 it, and indeed could find no fault in it, but it were 
 idle to cavil at the Church for being over-strict 
 in the matter of her Confessors' virtues. That 
 she is strict and exacting it is easy to understand 
 when one reflects what myriads of holy souls have 
 walked across the stage of life, and how compara- 
 tively few of them have been raised to the full 
 honours of the altar, and are commended by her 
 to the perpetual veneration and invocation of the 
 faithful. But I take comfort in, and never cease 
 to admire, that saving clause daily read by the 
 Church at Prime at the end of her Martyrology : 
 
 195
 
 196 MY FATHER'S VENIAL FAULT 
 
 Et alibi aliorum plurimorum sanctorum marly rum 
 et confessorum t atque sanctarum virginum. (Deo 
 gratias! answers the choir, and it has good reason 
 to be thankful to God.) And I am certain that 
 my father will be commemorated with the unenu- 
 merated confessors every 2nd July, the day of his 
 death. 
 
 My father's failing if so indeed I must call it 
 had disappeared altogether a good fifteen years 
 before his death. It was at its hottest for about 
 ten years before that time. Never once did it 
 cause his religious practices to slacken, or his 
 large-hearted charity to grow cold ; nor did it ever 
 so lightly warp his sound judgment or obscure his 
 clear vision of celestial things, and therefore why 
 should I bemoan it? My father's fault was no 
 worse than a hobby, and its worst consequences 
 were the loss of some time (taken from study, not 
 from spiritual exercises), and some money (to the 
 detriment of his library, and not of the needy 
 poor). I am free to admit that the venial faults 
 of the saints were passing and not lasting, as is 
 the way with venial hobbies, which are always 
 endowed with a terrible vitality. There are faults 
 which are but a faint shadow momentarily cast 
 across the mind, but a hobby takes deep root in
 
 A PROBLEM OF ANCESTRY 197 
 
 the sensitive parts and courses in a vicious circle 
 through the whole arterial system. I am not in 
 the least ashamed of my father's failing ; indeed, 
 I rejoice that the severity of his life should have 
 been tempered by this little worldly solace and 
 excitement. (Ah ! what excitement it was, to be 
 sure !) But if I were ever so much ashamed of 
 it, this is a veracious history, and here it should 
 find a sufficient record. 
 
 This, then, was my father's hobby. You will 
 have seen, of course, how fine, how keen, how 
 nice, how eager an herald he was. One day he 
 awoke very suddenly to the fact that he had no 
 arms, nor yet, for aught he knew, the right to 
 bear arms. Who was he ? The son of a well- 
 to-do Manchester merchant : he knew no more 
 than that, knew not the name of his grandfather 
 or grandmother, not even the name of the place 
 where his father was born, nor whether he had 
 uncles or aunts, cousins or cousins-german. He 
 desired to know who he was : that was his hobby. 
 He desired to know, because he thought the 
 result would show him that he was entitled to 
 bear arms. The world has grown so snobbish 
 with the march of progress that it may scent 
 snobbishness in this. Fie upon the world, then,
 
 198 MY FATHER'S VENIAL FAULT 
 
 if it can ever think that odious thing in connection 
 with this delicate, this humble, this simple soul ! 
 My father ever loved Christ's despised poor above 
 all kings and emperors and nobles, and he valued 
 more highly the privilege of giving an alms to one 
 of them than a commenda in the Papal Order of 
 Christ itself. 
 
 Herald as he was to the very marrow, I sup- 
 pose that he never suffered such keen anguish in 
 his life as his inability to use arms. There were 
 no arms over the palace (which he subsequently 
 bought) except those of the Fortiguerra family ; 
 no arms on the fine bindings of his rare books 
 and codexes, save where they had formerly been 
 the property of armigerous gentlemen ; no arms 
 over the sanctuary of St. Agnes near Todi 
 (which had been bought by him at the Govern- 
 ment auction and saved for ever from modern 
 vandalism) ; no crest upon our simple solid plate, 
 but only my grandfather's tasteless monogram ; 
 and, worst blow of all perhaps, no arms by 
 which he might dignify his book-plate. A 
 scholarly gentleman without arms is a helpless 
 derelict, and my father was both scholar and 
 gentleman. As a Brother of the Third Order 
 of St. Francis he might have claimed (I
 
 A BOOK-PLATE 199 
 
 think) to impale the arms of the Order with 
 his own arms. Yielding to a momentary 
 temptation, he designed a book-plate in which 
 the arms of the Order were placed upon a large 
 Cross Tau, in memory of St. Francis' devotion 
 to this meanest form of the Cross, and circum- 
 scribed by the legend, " Ex Bibliotheca Fratris 
 Joannis Gulielmi Walshe de Assisio." But he 
 saw the hollowness and vanity of this endeavour 
 to cheat himself, and the five thousand impres- 
 sions which came home from the printer were all 
 destroyed. After that the book-plate took the 
 form of a simple inscription : 'tis a tribute to his 
 humility, in that it is a frank confession to the 
 non-armigerous condition of the owner of the 
 library. The inscription runs thus : 
 
 EX LIBRIS 
 JOANNIS GULIELMI WALSHE 
 
 ASSISII, die . . . mense . . . An. Sal . . . 
 
 Sit nomen Domini benedictwn. 
 
 Who was he ? The thought pressed upon my 
 father and troubled him. To look at him you 
 would have said : a high-born gentleman, perfect 
 in speech, perfect in manner, radiating refine-
 
 200 MY FATHER'S VENIAL FAULT 
 
 ment, and ennobled by the added lustre of sanc- 
 tity. And yet his father was engaged in the 
 Manchester trade, occupied above all things about 
 drills and twills, grey shirtings and bleached 
 domestics. And this same father of his : he 
 had been known for his fine bearing and dis- 
 tinguished manners, so much so that on the 
 Manchester Exchange they had come to nick- 
 name him " the Duke." Whence had he sprung, 
 then ? " Gentleman," and that most emphatically 
 in every extension of the every-day use of the 
 term, old John Walshe most certainly was. But 
 what is a gentleman ? Every gentleman thinks 
 he can detect another, even if he cannot define 
 that most elusive of terms. But the science of 
 heraldry is inexorable, and knows no doubt : only 
 he is a gentleman who has the right to bear arms, 
 and such a one is not only gentle, but noble. 
 The right implies pedigree, unless the grant be 
 personal : there was no question of a personal 
 grant in my grandfather's case, and there was 
 no pedigree forthcoming. 
 
 Yet my father had become blindly convinced 
 that John Walshe must have come of an armi- 
 gerous stock. How otherwise could he have 
 been allowed to wed Maria Bodley, whose family
 
 EVIDENCE OF NOBLE ORIGIN 201 
 
 coat dated back far beyond the first Heralds' 
 Visitation ? Why did he not use his arms ? 
 Why did he conceal his origin ? Here was a 
 mystery which aroused all my dear father's 
 keenest imagination. The mystery was great 
 and dazzling ; the solution could only be equally 
 great and dazzling : John Walshe was not only 
 gentle, he was titled ; not only was he entitled 
 to arms, but to supporters ; not only to a crest 
 which had shone resplendent at Agincourt, but 
 to an earl's coronet which had been conferred 
 by Edward IV. 
 
 You may remember that there were two titled 
 families of Walshe the Barons Walshe of Eccles- 
 dale, a new creation, so we could dismiss that, 
 and the Earls of Thornhaugh in Lancashire, 
 which title had become dormant in 1799; and 
 upon that we eagerly fixed as yielding most 
 certainly the solution of John Walshe's origin. 
 
 It is true that in matters hobbyhorsical, Dame 
 Logic deserts the most logical of her offspring, 
 but let me marshal our evidence, and it will at 
 once be seen how conclusive it was. 
 
 i. Manchester was in Lancashire and so was 
 Thornhaugh ; therefore my grandfather was a 
 Lancashire Walshe. That was already much.
 
 202 
 
 2. Walshe with an " e " did not exist in Lanca- 
 shire outside the Thornhaugh family ; therefore 
 my grandfather was one of the Thornhaugh 
 family. John (that most uncommon of names) 
 was a stock Thornhaugh name, and my grand- 
 father's name was John. 
 
 3. My grandfather once got into a towering 
 passion when questioned about his origin ; there- 
 fore his origin must be a subject of great 
 moment. 
 
 4. My grandfather was nicknamed " the Duke;" 
 therefore, a fortiori, he must have claims to a 
 mere earldom. 
 
 5. An old servant who had been in his employ 
 before the days of his marriage had been heard 
 to say that he was a " noble lord," and she could 
 not have invented such a statement 
 
 6. My grandmother, when interrogated on the 
 subject, had looked mysterious and tried to laugh 
 it off in her gossamer way, but had remained ob- 
 stinately uncommunicative ; therefore there must 
 be a great mystery behind it all if we have but 
 patience to unravel it. 
 
 But, seventhly and lastly, we had one little bit of 
 evidence that certainly was rather striking. The 
 fourth son of the tenth Earl of Thornhaugh, who
 
 A FRUITLESS SEARCH 203 
 
 died in 1 702, was called David. This David had 
 an only son called David, who in turn had a son 
 called David. Of this last David we know that 
 at the close of the eighteenth century he made 
 a runaway match with a yeoman's daughter, and 
 went to Lisbon, where all trace of him vanishes 
 into thin air. We have searched the old Eng- 
 lish cemetery there, grave by grave, lest the entry 
 of his burial should have been omitted from the 
 registers, but in vain. There is no trace of him 
 in the archives of the Legation or Consulate ; if 
 he had any children, they were not baptized by 
 the English chaplain. When my father went to 
 England after John Walshe's death, he brought 
 back a few trinkets to which he attached no 
 value, for he had not yet begun to ask who he 
 was and who was his grandfather. But one of 
 these trinkets is our prime piece of evidence. It 
 is a small plain round brooch filled with plaited 
 fair hair. There is something common about the 
 trinket. It is just such a brooch as a farmer might 
 have worn in his Sunday scarf; but to us it was 
 of priceless value, for on the back of it is inscribed 
 the mystic legend, " DAVID WALSH." What if 
 there be no " e " to the name ; that is the careless 
 engraver's mistake, a perfectly natural mistake,
 
 204 MY FATHER'S VENIAL FAULT 
 
 too, where so common a name as Walsh is con- 
 cerned. The brooch contains the hair of my 
 great-grandfather, David Walshe, who, if living 
 in 1799, was lawfully the fourteenth Earl of 
 Thornhaugh ; who, if dead, had left an infant, 
 John, my grandfather, to succeed to his rights. 
 It was all as plain as plain could be; my grand- 
 father was either fourteenth or fifteenth Earl of 
 Thornhaugh, seventeenth or eighteenth Viscount 
 Eldhurst, and twentieth or twenty-first Baron 
 Walshe of Thornhaugh. 
 
 I remember one day, soon after he had initiated 
 me into these mysteries, I held the precious 
 trinket in my hands, and was turning the ugly 
 little thing over and over, when I suddenly asked, 
 " Have you ever had it opened, Dad ? " Never 
 in his devout and recollected existence have I 
 seen him so shaken by human feeling. " No ! " 
 he cried in great excitement, " I have never even 
 thought of it." He paused and glanced at me 
 with obvious admiration and gratitude. "We 
 will go over to Perugia to-morrow," he continued, 
 " and have it taken to pieces by the best jeweller 
 in the place." The jeweller's examination re- 
 vealed a small folded piece of paper, with the 
 date " 1 6 Oct. 1798 " written in a clumsy hand,
 
 A PEDIGREE OF THE WALSHES 205 
 
 and " David's hair " scrawled below it. My 
 father's excitement knew no bounds. " This is 
 most important ! " he cried, " most important. 
 David did not survive the last Earl. Therefore 
 your grandfather was fourteenth Earl, seven- 
 teenth Viscount, and twentieth Baron." 
 
 A great deal of time was given to the study 
 of this subject, and some money was spent in 
 travelling and pedigree-hunting. We never 
 advanced a step further in the search, but my 
 father being clearly satisfied that he was the 
 head of the noble house of Walshe, began to 
 amass a quantity of material relating to their 
 family which would have astonished its dead 
 and gone members. I have before me as I 
 write a noble pedigree of the Walshes from 1211, 
 in which John Walshe, the Manchester merchant, 
 figures as the fourteenth Earl and himself as the 
 fifteenth Earl. My brother and I appear simply 
 under our Christian names bracketed as twins. 
 He has not assigned to either of us the courtesy 
 title of Viscount Eldhurst. And that, I suspect, 
 because, with his mediaeval mind and mediaeval 
 sympathies, he has not dared to say which of 
 us was the elder, although the law would have 
 allowed him to do so. To be logical, the elder
 
 206 MY FATHER'S VENIAL FAULT 
 
 of twins is not he who was first born, but he 
 who was first conceived, and who shall fathom 
 that unfathomable mystery ? Birth is of no 
 importance as compared with conception ; 'tis 
 but the cause of a cause, and our ancestors, from 
 a sense of logic and reverence, dated the Chris- 
 tian era from Our Lord's Conception on the 
 25th March, and not from His birth on the 25th 
 December. In this reverent notation of time, 
 Protestant England survived all Catholic Europe 
 for a long while. 
 
 I protest that my father was absolutely in- 
 different to titles and wealth ; that if he had 
 had titles or greater wealth, they would only 
 have been an inducement to him to be still 
 more humble and simple. He had merely got 
 it into his head that he must be armigerous, 
 and that the Thornhaugh peerage contained the 
 only likely clue to the mystery. That a herald like 
 himself should have no arms, that so consummate 
 a genealogist should be without pedigree, seemed 
 absurd and unnatural. Had his researches led 
 him to attach himself to the poorest of county 
 families, he would have been equally content, 
 for it would have meant arms. Nay, I go 
 further, and protest that had Heaven revealed
 
 THE DEATH OF A FOIBLE 207 
 
 to him that he came of but the humblest stock, 
 he would have bowed his head without a mur- 
 mur and cheerfully renounced the dream of 
 arms. 
 
 I freely admit that such a foible as his may 
 not be found amongst the acknowledged Saints ; 
 a great Saint would have seen the sin in it at 
 once and have strangled the enchanting monster 
 at its birth. But was my father ever conscious 
 of the sin in it? In the first few years I am 
 sure he was not (and that the Devil's Advocate 
 will say was a defect) ; as time went on, I think 
 he awoke to the vanity of his desires ; probably 
 he fought long and earnestly to justify them ; 
 but the vanity was doomed to death, and it 
 died a sudden death in 1885. From that day 
 all talk of the Thornhaugh peerage and the 
 Walshe coat-of-arms ceased, without a word 
 of repining on his part, and for the last fifteen 
 years of his life even the Devil's Advocate could 
 not have found the slightest flaw to cheat him of 
 his crown of Saint. 
 
 In 1896, when visiting Liverpool (I will con- 
 fess that I still believed in the romance and 
 continued to hunt on my own account), a sin- 
 gular chance brought the discovery that John
 
 208 MY FATHER'S VENIAL FAULT 
 
 Walshe had begun life as an office-boy in an 
 extremely well-known Liverpool house. Follow- 
 ing up the clue, I found that he was almost 
 beyond a doubt the son of a South Cumberland 
 farmer called David Walsh. This then ex- 
 plained the mystery of the brooch ; 'twas pro- 
 bably the only relic he had preserved of his 
 original surroundings. But how came my grand- 
 father by the "e" at the end of his name, and 
 more extraordinary still, how came he by his con- 
 spicuously gentlemanly bearing and speech ? The 
 " e " might have been tacked on to obscure his 
 origin, and in the matter of bearing and speech, 
 nature, as we know, occasionally perpetrates that 
 rare fluke the gentleman who is called after her. 
 I told my father all. He bowed his head without 
 a murmur. If he sorrowed at all, it was for 
 time wasted in hunting after this world's vanities, 
 and for having incited me to join in the chase. 
 Half believing it myself, and thinking to hearten 
 him, I started the theory that David Walshe, 
 heir-presumptive to the Earldom of Thornhaugh, 
 may have confided his son to David "Walsh," 
 the Cumberland farmer, for mysterions reasons 
 of state, as Prince Charles Edward is said to 
 have confided his son on the Tuscan shore
 
 VANITAS VANITATUM 209 
 
 to Admiral Allen. My father smiled and shook 
 his head : " Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas" 
 he said gently. That was the only time in the 
 last ten years of his life that we ever alluded to 
 our right to bear arms. 
 
 And as I write thus confidently, and when I 
 remember the exquisite charm of my father's 
 manner, the subtle refinement of his whole 
 being, I confess and do not deny it, that I am 
 secretly inclined, in the face of all the irrefragable 
 evidence, to believe in the theory of his noble 
 origin, and to write him down fifteenth Earl of 
 Thornhaugh, eighteenth Viscount Eldhurst, and 
 twenty-first Baron Walshe of Thornhaugh.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 MY FATHER'S SORROWS 
 
 MY father had two great sorrows in his life, both 
 of brief duration, and these two sorrows were 
 his two sons. My brother Frank, of whom 
 there has so far been no need to speak in this 
 history, was of an exceedingly vivacious dis- 
 position. He loved my father dearly, but the 
 quiet routine of our home life was irksome to 
 him. He could settle upon no profession, and 
 after trying six months in an engineer's shop at 
 Blackwall, and six months in a tea-broker's in 
 Mincing Lane, he suddenly returned home in a 
 highly restless and excitable condition, announc- 
 ing that he intended to go mining in South 
 Africa. It was one of my father's first principles 
 that young people should choose their profes- 
 sions and their wives, and he gave his consent, 
 however sorrowfully. 
 
 But Frank lingered on at home. Month after 
 month went by, and he continued to make 
 excuses delaying his departure. He developed
 
 MY BROTHER FRANK 211 
 
 a keen thirst for pleasure, and there is but little 
 worldly pleasure to be had at Assisi, so he 
 would be frequently over at Perugia to see the 
 play and the opera. He was an exceedingly 
 witty fellow and happy in his ready repartees. 
 Naturally hilarious, the restraints of Assisi made 
 him, by contrast, seem almost boisterous. The 
 common people adored him, for he was prodigal 
 of his bounty and genial as the sun at morning. 
 The urchins in particular were ever on the look- 
 out for the " Signorino Francesco." No man 
 yet had ever seen him out of temper ; he had 
 a ready word and a ready jest for all, and an 
 easy grand manner that fascinated the poor. 
 There are no feastings in modern Assisi, or, 
 like his great namesake, he would assuredly 
 have been acclaimed King of the Revels. All 
 this while, though he may have found religious 
 practices irksome, he fulfilled his actual duties 
 as a Catholic, and I do not think his faith was 
 ever troubled by the shadow of a doubt. And 
 although " scapegrace " was somehow written 
 across his handsome face -perhaps by contrast 
 with the religious tranquillity of the place and 
 the sobriety of our home existence I do not 
 think, nay, I know, that, in spite of many
 
 212 MY FATHER'S SORROWS 
 
 peccadilloes, he never fell into mortal sin. He 
 was simply a youth of the highest spirits who 
 had not yet found his vocation in life : that was 
 all that was the matter with him. But it was 
 a time of great sorrow and anxiety to my poor 
 father. 
 
 He was to find his real vocation at length, 
 and after a very tragic fashion. One evening 
 he came home, having been out since early 
 morning, as had too often been the case of late. 
 His face was flushed, his eyes danced brightly, 
 his whole demeanour betrayed a state of high 
 excitement and feverish exaltation. Presently 
 he announced with unnecessary defiance that he 
 was going to be married. Alas ! he had formed 
 a hot-headed passionate attachment for a girl of 
 
 the people in the neighbouring village of C , 
 
 and being in reality of a most innocent and 
 chivalrous disposition, he never had any other 
 thought than to take the girl to wife. I saw 
 her once : roguish, black-eyed, dimpling, with 
 a great mass of black crimpy hair, and dressed 
 with all the coquettish simplicity of a peasant 
 girl who knows herself to be a beauty. She 
 had made havoc in many a rustic heart, and it 
 was easy for me to understand how she had
 
 A DRAMA OF JEALOUSY 213 
 
 fascinated my brother Frank. My father 
 became very sorrowful and his apprehensions 
 increased. It was another of his innocent first 
 principles that young people should follow their 
 hearts where love and marriage were concerned. 
 This principle he now found put to a severe 
 strain. He gently counselled waiting, and my 
 brother as fiercely scouted all thought of waiting, 
 and resolutely claimed a portion which would 
 enable him to marry. So matters continued 
 for a month, and a very gloomy, anxious, un- 
 happy month it was. This was in the year 
 1885. 
 
 One wild March night, in the middle of a 
 Lent which he had been observing but indiffer- 
 ently, my brother was brought home on a litter, 
 unconscious, grievously wounded, and near 
 
 death's door. He had been over to C in 
 
 the afternoon, and had found the whole village 
 in a turmoil. The girl whom my brother loved 
 had been stabbed to death by a former lover, 
 whom she had jilted when this grand young 
 signorino came in her way. The murderer had 
 made off, and the carabineers had been sent for. 
 My poor brother, after raving like a madman, 
 fell into a kind of lethargy, and it was after
 
 214 MY FATHER'S SORROWS 
 
 dark when he roused himself to walk home. 
 Not far from the village the murderer fell upon 
 him and struck him dead, as he thought, then 
 walked back quietly to the village and gave 
 himself up to the carabineers. How often it 
 happens in Italy in these terrible crimes of 
 jealousy that the executioner of justice, as he 
 thinks himself, has not the slightest desire to 
 shirk the consequences of his act. As often as 
 not, he quietly and voluntarily surrenders himself 
 to justice. 
 
 My brother lingered between life and death 
 for a month. His was the vivacious consti- 
 tution which naturally clings to life ; he insisted 
 upon living, and he lived. But it was months 
 before he could be considered convalescent or 
 was allowed to move. We had two Sisters of 
 St. Vincent in the house all the time. How 
 changed he was, to be sure, poor fellow, so 
 pale and thin, so quiet and composed, so plucky 
 and uncomplaining. He did not talk much, 
 he did not read or care to be read to, he 
 simply lay there and dreamt, his fine eyes 
 looking far ahead, for his dream was of the 
 future. 
 
 Towards the middle of September he might
 
 A RETREAT 215 
 
 be called well again, and towards the end of 
 September he astonished us considerably by 
 announcing his intention of making a short 
 retreat. He had never made a retreat in his 
 life before, save at school. The quiet hermitage 
 of Greccio, so dear to St. Francis, so redolent 
 of the memories of him and his first com- 
 panions, was the place he chose for his retreat. 
 I accompanied him thither, and we had some 
 quiet happy talk together before I left him to 
 the peace of his narrow cell. 
 
 On the afternoon of the 3rd October he 
 returned home unannounced. We had almost 
 expected him, for the morrow was the greatest 
 day in the calendar of Assisi, the Feast of 
 our holy father St. Francis. On the evening 
 of that day we all three went down to the 
 Porziuncola to assist at the beautiful and touch- 
 ing service of the " Transitus." The Saint died 
 about one hour after sunset on Saturday the 
 3rd October I226, 1 and every 4th October 
 
 1 The mediaeval day did not begin with midnight, but with 
 sunset. Now sunset on the 3rd October occurs at about 6.15, 
 and St. Francis dying about an hour after this, would be con- 
 sidered to have died on the 4th, not on the 3rd October. It was 
 really our Saturday, but it was their Sunday. Brother Elias, 
 the Vicar-General, in his letter to the Minister Provincial of 
 France announcing the event, clearly fixes the time of death,
 
 216 MY FATHER'S SORROWS 
 
 his death is commemorated by the Frati of 
 the Porziuncola, gathered round the very spot 
 where Francis, a poor man and humble, entered 
 into Paradise, clothed with riches and greeted 
 by celestial songs. 1 After our evening prayers, 
 my brother, who I had noticed was labouring 
 under a strong feeling of pent-up emotion, went 
 over to Mr. Walshe very suddenly, and before 
 I rightly understood what had happened, he 
 was on his knees, shedding a great flood of 
 comfortable tears, pouring forth broken words of 
 self-accusation and disjointed petitions for for- 
 giveness. My father looked over towards me 
 with a look that I had never seen in his face 
 before ; it said as plain as look could say : 
 " Nay, 'tis I who accuse myself of never having 
 
 " Quarto Nonas Octobris, die Dominica, prima hora nocfis." 
 Now the first hour of the night is the first after sunset ( " un 
 ora della notte," they still call it in Italy), therefore St. Francis 
 died on our Saturday the 3rd, on their Sunday the 4th October. 
 See, if you would see something very interesting, the above-cited 
 letter in A.SS., torn, ii., Octobris, 649-652. My apologies are 
 due to scholars for explaining this very elementary matter of 
 chronology, but I hope that my friend's life of his sainted 
 father is going to reach the general reader, and it is not every 
 general reader who would know that a man might have died 
 on the 3rd October although his contemporaries averred that 
 he had died on the 4th. M. C. 
 
 1 " f". Franciscus pauper et humilis, coelum dives ingreditur. 
 
 ty. Hymnis coelestibus honoratur." 
 Verside and Responsory of the service of the " Transitus."
 
 A JESUIT NOVICE 217 
 
 understood this son of mine ; 'tis I who, blindly 
 wrapped in selfish pursuits, have driven him 
 into temptation ; 'tis I who now most humbly 
 ask his forgiveness." I went out of the room 
 hastily, and left these two to a devout over- 
 flowing of the affections and a sacred inter- 
 change of confidences. 
 
 My brother stayed with us till the New 
 Year of 1886. Then he started for the Jesuit 
 Novitiate of . He had learnt his voca- 
 tion at last. I may not, even by an initial 
 letter, hint where this Novitiate was, because 
 curious signs and wonders began to gather 
 about his life, and now that he is dead there 
 is a confused talk of introducing his cause for 
 beatification. His life has been written by his 
 Novice Master and Confessor : it is still in 
 MS., and is likely to remain so until time 
 mellows a little his extraordinary reputation for 
 sanctity. There are two things of which the 
 Church is always profoundly suspicious : a new 
 Saint, and a new wonder-working Sanctuary. 
 The Holy Office, with that chilly prudence 
 which characterises it, has shown itself more 
 than usually cold to the spontaneous local cult 
 which immediately sprang up round the young
 
 2i8 MY FATHER'S SORROWS 
 
 Jesuit's memory. There were cases in which 
 people had got hold of his photograph, and 
 had lighted candles before it and asked his 
 intercession. A local artist, taking the features 
 from the photograph, had represented him in 
 cassock and cotta, with lily and crucifix, some- 
 thing after the manner of St. Aloysius or St. 
 Stanislas Kostka ; a local lithographer had re- 
 produced the picture in the form of a santino. 
 The cult took striking local proportions, and 
 the picture was venerated in private oratories, 
 and above all in obscure attics. But the Jesuit 
 Fathers loyally seconded the Holy Office, 
 and these extravagances have died out. Every 
 now and again there is a recrudescence of the 
 devotion when the rumour gets about that 
 another miracle has been effected at the grave 
 of Brother Francis Walshe. Cures certainly 
 have been effected at my brother's grave ; they 
 may not be miraculous ; but what then ? Surely 
 if the ailment of even one incurable hysterical 
 village girl have been cured by devotion to a 
 holy soul, is it not reason to exalt all places 
 of pilgrimage, and to bless God in His angels 
 and in His saints? Brother Francis Walshe 
 died on the i5th June 1888, two years and
 
 MY FATHER'S SECOND SORROW 219 
 
 a half after he entered upon the Religious life. 
 His grievous wound continued to give him 
 serious trouble, and he never really overcame 
 its dire consequences. 
 
 My father's first great sorrow was therefore 
 turned into a great unlooked-for joy ; one of his 
 sons had become a Religious, and was even held 
 to be a Saint by Christ's poor, whom he so 
 greatly venerated. Would that I could be equally 
 sure that his second great sorrow had turned 
 into joy as great and abiding ! When my brother 
 Frank announced his intention of becoming a 
 Jesuit, I suppose it was the greatest surprise that 
 Mr. Walshe ever had in his life. Had he come 
 of a Catholic stock, or mixed more with common- 
 place Catholics, he would have known that it is 
 always the merry sons and daughters who become 
 priests and nuns ; only a cheerful disposition can 
 stand the strain of a self-denying life. But he 
 was by temperament inclined to think that the 
 graver the disposition, the greater the likelihood 
 of a religious vocation ; and because I was sedate 
 and addicted to books, he had early marked in 
 me all the signs of a promising ecclesiastic. It 
 would have been easy for me to show him that 
 there was far more selfishness, far more harmful
 
 220 MY FATHER'S SORROWS 
 
 pleasure, in my absorption in study, than in all 
 poor Frank's opera-going and love of entertain- 
 ment. That he soon came to know, alas ! but 
 for years, I am sure, when he would be gazing 
 at me in his gentle dreamy way, he was clothing 
 me now in the Benedictine, now in the Franciscan 
 habit, now tonsuring my head to the shape of the 
 Dominican, now to the Capuchin corona, now 
 vesting me in the rough cloak and tunic of the 
 Passionist, now in the antiquated cassock of the 
 Barnabite or the Oratorian, and, as a last resort, 
 even in the modern cassock of a secular priest. 
 This was his great dream, and, the dream being 
 for the most part passed in prayer, it became his 
 fixed idea. 
 
 Moved by my great love for him, influenced 
 perhaps by the mystic force of an idea that was 
 for ever welling up in a pious soul that was for 
 ever by my side, I did go to the English College 
 at Rome with a view to preparing myself for the 
 secular priesthood. 1 was twenty-three years of 
 age at the time, and his quiet happiness knew no 
 bounds. I struggled on there for a year, much 
 enjoying the studies, it is true, but at the end 
 of that time I came back home again, having 
 obviously, and especially in the opinion of my
 
 LITERARY ENGLAND 221 
 
 superiors, not a shred of a vocation for the priest- 
 hood. My father received me with open arms ; 
 in the simplicity of his soul he believed that I 
 had not flown high enough, and that I was in- 
 tended for a Cistercian, a Trappist, or perhaps 
 even a Carthusian ! 
 
 I settled down again happily to our quiet life 
 at home, becoming more sedate and studious 
 than ever, and becoming (I think) more than 
 ever useful to him. I used to go rather fre- 
 quently to England. My grandmother had died 
 in 1879, leaving the bulk of her fortune to her 
 son. My father was now, comparatively speaking, 
 a rich man, and he was ever most open-handed 
 in his allowances to us. I began to make friends 
 in England, and to mix with literary and scientific 
 men. That was a kind of intoxication to me. 
 They found me full of information that was new 
 to them, and talked to me willingly enough. To 
 be sure I thought them a strange set ; but if I 
 was astounded to find that the wisest of them 
 did not know the difference between a monk and 
 a friar, or a martyr and a confessor, or an amice 
 and an amess ; if not one of them could tell me 
 the distinction between in bend, on a bend, and 
 bendways ; if all of them thought that the United
 
 222 MY FATHER'S SORROWS 
 
 States flag contained thirteen stripes and not 
 six ; l if none of them knew who was the lawful 
 king of France or Portugal, nor what was the 
 constitution of the Republic of Andorra ; if not 
 one single one of them understood what Univer- 
 sals were, and all of them took substance to be 
 a solid and form to be a shape ; if nearly all were 
 innocent of a course of logic and none could have 
 passed an elementary examination in the Penny 
 Catechism yet I was, I confess, even more 
 astounded at my own abysmal ignorance of all 
 the questions that were agitating this strange big 
 modern world, from which I had been so long, 
 and, as I now think, so happily secluded. I was 
 in the position that no student likes I was out 
 in the cold. And so to warm myself I read a 
 host of books which destroy ; writers who give 
 
 1 An odd number of stripes or bars in heraldry is impossible, 
 and indeed "unthinkable." The United States flag has six white 
 stripes on a red ground ; its correct blason is gules, six bars argent. 
 I once explained this theory to a United States Consular Officer, 
 pointing out to him that by the error of a foreign painter the 
 shield over his official residence contained twelve stripes. " Then, 
 according to you," he answered with true Transatlantic acumen, 
 " if there had been one more stripe on that shield, there would 
 have been six less?" His reply was smart and witty, but he was 
 no herald, and to this day he remains obstinately convinced that 
 the true flag and shield of his country contain thirteen stripes. 
 'Tis an age in which people insist upon trying to think the un- 
 thinkable, Mr. Walshe would have said. M. C.
 
 I NEGLECT MY WORK 223 
 
 hope of future building out of the old materials 
 mixed with new ; writers who leave standing the 
 old buildings but rob them of all ornament ; 
 writers who would pull down all buildings and 
 have men return to the chill fastnesses of the 
 cave-dwellers. And I confess it, my soul began 
 to take a secret delight in these things. At least 
 I could speak with connaissance de cause at the 
 
 Club and at Mrs. 's famous Thursday 
 
 evenings. 
 
 At the end of 1888 I came to England for 
 my father. I was to collate five codexes for 
 him, four at the British Museum and one at 
 the Bodleian. Sticking to it closely, the work 
 would have taken me from three to four months. 
 It was work I loved, and I loved working at 
 the British Museum above all things. 
 
 But my work proceeded very slowly, and the 
 old delicious savour went out of it very soon. 
 Somehow or other I got a wonderful reception 
 in London. Somehow or other I seemed to 
 have got known. Yet they could not point me 
 out as a "great" writer or a "great" poet. (All 
 the writers and poets I met in those days were 
 "great.") I suppose I was a kind of curiosity 
 to them, the possessor of a new unknown tongue
 
 224 MY FATHER'S SORROWS 
 
 in that Babel of voices. Engagements and in- 
 vitations came in upon me thick and fast. If 
 I worked at the Museum from ten to twelve, 
 or from ten to one, it was as much as I could 
 get done. I began to take an interest in two 
 of their chief concerns different kinds of wine 
 and different kinds of food, and I wasted time 
 and my father's money in the giving of dinners 
 which were praised. I took ever so naturally 
 to late hours, and went to see "great" actors 
 at the theatre and " stars " at the palaces of song. 
 And such leisure as I could squeeze out of this 
 life at high pressure I devoted to reading the 
 "great" works of "great" men, and such aspira- 
 tions as were left me in this atmosphere of moral 
 suffocation, aimed at striving after the "great- 
 ness" acclaimed by the modern world. Nay, I 
 deliberately planned, and even commenced, a 
 modern realistic novel with an unsavoury founda- 
 tion, while my father's solid, wholesome, useful 
 work lay neglected in my portmanteau. 
 
 Small wonder, since I would have it so, that my 
 faith made shipwreck in the tempestuous tossing 
 of those turbulent waters. If a cork that dances 
 seawards in the hurly-burly of a foaming, whirling 
 stream were but endowed with consciousness,
 
 CONSTRUCTIVE PYRRHONISM 225 
 
 how delightful its sensations of varied motion, 
 how sweet the security of its lightness and im- 
 perviousness, how intoxicating the rush over a 
 roaring cataract! In some such fashion did I 
 dance down the giddy stream of the season's 
 pleasures, until the waters receded and some 
 wayward eddy carried me up high and dry upon 
 a rocky bed, lost to life and every useful purpose. 
 But if I lost the faith in which I had been 
 nurtured, no man can say that it was by a pro- 
 cess of calm reasoning. "A bad life and a 
 good religion," says Laurence Sterne, "are soon 
 parted," and the day came when I said to myself 
 and to others, " I am no longer a Catholic." All 
 that I can say in my defence is that I adopted no 
 known "ism." I started an "ism" of my own. 
 It has an old name and is called Pyrrhonism, 
 but it was, I think, a Pyrrhonism of my own. 
 
 I may call it constructive Pyrrhonism (and 
 that is not quite so paradoxical and topsy-turvey 
 as "constructive Anarchism," which I have heard 
 spoken of). I doubted the certainty of all 
 things, but I did not deny the possibility of 
 certainty. Shall I be understood when I say 
 that I professed to find the logical position 
 philosophically intolerable, and the philosophical
 
 226 MY FATHER'S SORROWS 
 
 logically impossible? He who denies, just as 
 he who affirms, ceases to be a genuine doubter. 
 I found myself defending the real existence of 
 phenomena on the ground that we cannot prove 
 with certainty their non-existence. I declined, 
 of course, to accept their existence as theoreti- 
 cally proved, but on the whole I behaved like 
 a reasonable being. I had more sympathy with 
 affirmation than with denial, because, as I con- 
 tended, so far as history went, affirmation was 
 older than denial, and though I could not admit 
 that the intellect had any sufficient criterion for 
 either, affirmation, I was ready to grant, was 
 the superior dream of the two. I also found 
 myself strenuously defending the Catholic Church 
 on this very ground that we have not sufficient 
 certainty to deny anything. My defence made 
 some impression. If I had spoken as a Catholic, 
 men would have called me partial and a bigot. 
 Not a soul of them would have listened to me. 
 Now, when I defended truth in the name of 
 doubt, I succeeded in removing many a false 
 impression. It was here that my Pyrrhonism 
 became constructive to some purpose. 
 
 A year passed, and I wrote and told my father 
 that I was no longer a Catholic. It was a cruel
 
 THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL 227 
 
 thing to do : my very Pyrrhonism would have 
 justified silence while I was at a distance from 
 him, and not called upon to deny my doubt by 
 any Catholic act of faith. But I was blinded by 
 the whirl of intellectual London, and, without 
 knowing it, my moral fibre had become relaxed 
 and weak. He wrote me a letter such a letter 
 as I cannot destroy, but please God no human 
 eye shall ever look upon. 1 It was the cry of a 
 heart about to break the cry of a heart suddenly 
 abandoned by God. The Pyrrhonist card-castle 
 came toppling about my ears, as I hastily made 
 ready to return to Assisi. I saw it even then ; I 
 saw it more clearly later on : this Pyrrhonism of 
 mine was but a sorry attempt to justify a bad 
 life by an intellectual process. 'Tis the commonest 
 of all snares. The educated sinner has a need of 
 putting an intellectual gloss upon his sin. I was 
 sincere in my denial of the faith, but what availed 
 sincerity if the denial had been brought about by 
 a gradual moral deterioration ? 
 
 1 I found among my friend's papers a sealed envelope bearing 
 this inscription : " I put it upon the conscience and honour of the 
 person finding this envelope after my death to burn it immediately 
 without having broken the seal." I do not doubt that the envelope 
 contained the letter above referred to. I watched the smoke of it 
 going up the great chimney of the study in Assisi, and fear the 
 world has been a great loser by its destruction. M. C.
 
 228 MY FATHER'S SORROWS 
 
 But let all that pass. I hastened home to undo 
 the evil I had done, and I found a pair of loving 
 arms stretched wide to receive me. I fell into 
 that dear embrace, and in the Latin which was 
 to him as the speech of heaven, I cried aloud : 
 Pater, peccavi in ccelum, et coram te, jam non sum 
 dignus vocari filius tuus. But he murmured in 
 my ear with the sound of laughter in his voice : 
 Adducite vitulum saginatum, et occidite, et man- 
 ducemus, et epulemur: quia hie filius meus mor- 
 tuus erat, et revixit ; perierat et inventus est. 
 
 From that day there was never a shadow of 
 division between us. He gave up all thought 
 that I was intended to be a Religious, and I 
 settled down again into the quiet life beside him. 
 He had become my vivifying principle, the light 
 of my understanding, the life of my life. But if 
 the life of my life be taken from me, what awaiteth 
 me but the relief of a speedy death ?
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 MY FATHER'S STUDIES OF SOME OF HIS THEORIES 
 
 I DO not propose in this brief memoir to say much 
 of Mr. Walshe's studies. To each of his works I 
 have prepared, or am preparing, an introductory 
 essay, in which his discoveries, the thoroughness of 
 his methods, his great patience, his high purpose 
 and indomitable perseverance, will, I hope, be 
 sufficiently manifest. He was overflowing with 
 imagination and full of sentiment ; but, thanks 
 perhaps to his logical training and bent, his 
 method was always severely critical. Indeed, the 
 desire of proof positive is a note almost too much 
 accentuated in his works, and in the interests of 
 art I could wish it were less pronounced. Only 
 in the Life of St. Clare has he given rein to his 
 devout fancy ; he has put his real imaginative self 
 into the work ; and the result is a little master- 
 piece. Really he was a great artist though he 
 would not see it, or was too timid to use his 
 wings. Be all this as it may, his works will 
 remain a perfect mine of fact, while his treatment
 
 230 MY FATHER'S STUDIES 
 
 will stand out as a fine model of the right uses of 
 reason and imagination. 
 
 His views on the sources of the Life of St. 
 Francis were common-sense and traditional, and 
 he believed that these views thoroughly stood 
 the test of modern criticism. He did not regard 
 the Legenda Trium Sociorum as a fragment, or 
 if a fragment, he did not think that any more of 
 it had ever been written. The Speculum Per- 
 fectionis he did not regard as the entire handi- 
 work of Fra Leone, nor as having been written 
 as early as 1227. But these and kindred matters 
 will be found fully treated in the volume on the 
 " Sources " appended to his Life of St. Francis. 
 
 Although a traditionalist, he was no blind, but 
 rather a most discriminating, follower of tradition. 
 When inexorable fact dooms a tradition to death, 
 what else is there for the honest man but to 
 accept inexorable fact? But Mr. Walshe cer- 
 tainly did deprecate, more especially on the part 
 of Catholics, any unseemly rejoicings round 
 the grave of a defunct tradition, claiming instead 
 Christian burial and a little decent mourning for 
 many an old friend who had never hurt a soul, and 
 had consoled a countless multitude. He was, in 
 his gentle way, genuinely grieved at the eager-
 
 THE PROPHECY OF ST. MALACHY 231 
 
 ness of some of his co-religionists to kill and 
 have done with the famous prophecy of St. 
 Malachy regarding the Popes. Of course he 
 bowed to inexorable fact : he was ready to 
 admit that the prophecy was a forgery or conceit. 
 But then he was able to soar into regions far 
 above the modern critical destroyer : in all his 
 reflections and deductions he never lost sight of 
 the fact that God was Almighty. With regard 
 to these prophecies, though originally a forgery, 
 he, with his devout imagination, believed that 
 God had made them come true as a reward for 
 the great faith of the people in them, and to take 
 away the reproach of His Elect among men. And 
 this surely is a soundly common-sense view. 
 Indeed, how can it be otherwise? Is it possible 
 to believe in mere coincidence when we have 
 " Pastor Peregrinus," for Pius VI., who was 
 chased from his throne and died in exile; " Aquila 
 Rapax," for Pius VII., who was despoiled and 
 carried away by the Napoleonic eagle; "Crux 
 de Cruce," for Pius IX., whose heaviest cross 
 came from the cross of Savoy ; " Lumen de 
 Ccelo," for Leo XIII., who has most con- 
 spicuously been a light to lighten them that sit 
 in darkness. The prophecy for the next Pope
 
 232 MY FATHER'S STUDIES 
 
 is " Ignis ardens," a burning fire. While daily 
 praying that the light from heaven might con- 
 tinue to shine upon the earth for many years to 
 come, Mr. Walshe's hope was that the burning 
 fire might scorch and dry up the ugly liberal 
 tares which some enemy, with an over-heavy 
 hand, had of late been sowing in the Lord's 
 vineyard. 
 
 One of his reasons for settling at Assisi was 
 that he might enjoy the use of the fine library of 
 the Friars Minor Conventuals in the great con- 
 vent of San Francesco. As early as the middle 
 of the fourteenth century the Friars had turned 
 a part of their rich store of codexes into a public 
 library for the use of students. The library con- 
 tinued to exist even after the heartless suppres- 
 sion of this historical convent in 1866. But the 
 convent being destined for a college for the 
 education of the sons of Italian teachers and 
 schoolmasters, the library was found to be in the 
 way, and the printed books were packed into 
 cases until a home could be found for them. 
 They remained in these cases for twenty-five 
 years, and it was not till 1900 that they were 
 placed upon shelves in the handsome Palazzo 
 Vallemani. And note further, and never forget,
 
 THE LIBRARY AT ASSISI 233 
 
 that the friars were despoiled of their property in 
 the name of the advancement of learning. For 
 very shame it was impossible to subject the rare 
 codexes, containing what in Mr. Walshe's day was 
 the only known codex of the second Life of Celano, 
 to the same treatment. These were placed upon 
 shelves in a dark and dusty little room of the 
 municipal palace, without any of the appurten- 
 ances of study, and the difficulty of consulting 
 them was only sweetened by the unfailing 
 courtesy and kindness of the librarian, Professor 
 Leto Alessandri (may his name live for ever I). 1 
 Even now the printed books are unprovided with 
 a properly referenced catalogue, and the pleasures 
 of study in the Communal Library are diminished 
 to men of conscience, at least by the trouble 
 to which they have to put the kindly librarian 
 in supplying their wants. I cannot pretend that 
 Mr. Walshe was seriously inconvenienced by his 
 inability to consult the printed books ; his own 
 library contained Franciscan rarities which did 
 not exist in any of the libraries of Umbria. I 
 
 1 M. Paul Sabatier has commented roundly on this state ot 
 things. " Meme avec la complaisance a toute dpreuve du con- 
 servateur M. Alessandri et la Municipalitd d'Assise, il est tres 
 difficile de profiler de ces tre'sors empile's dans une chambre 
 sombre sans une table pour ecrire." Vie de S. Francois, p. xxxviii.
 
 234 MY FATHER'S STUDIES 
 
 do but mention the fact to show that the spolia- 
 tion of the Religious Orders was not an unmixed 
 benefit to mankind and learning. 
 
 Although my father became more and more im- 
 mersed in Franciscan studies, he never narrowed 
 himself exclusively to this branch of historical 
 learning. In matters of heraldry, palaeography, 
 and bibliography he was thoroughly up to date, 
 and he kept abreast of the events of the time, 
 more especially of the daily palpitating events of 
 modern Church history. He was never deep in 
 science, but by his knowledge of logic he would 
 often hit upon a fallacy in the pet conclusions of 
 modern scientific men. Scientific men, he was 
 wont to allege with great truth, lost one half of 
 their influence for good, and wasted one half of 
 their energy, for want of a proper training in 
 logic. And logic, he would add, gave the ecclesi- 
 astic one half of his superiority in influence over 
 the scientific man. His only quarrel with science 
 was that its votaries, from Galileo downwards, 
 would not recognise that it was confined to a 
 mere province, but would for ever be introducing 
 themselves into provinces with which they had 
 no real concern. A great man of science, at all 
 events among the moderns, was, he would say,
 
 THE "DOCTOR SUBTILIS" 235 
 
 seldom a man of great science. Nay, had not 
 one of them even usurped the word "sermon" 
 to drive home his favourite conclusions ? It is 
 impossible for me to convey, in all its nice 
 ramifications, the confusion of mind he could see 
 and analyse in such a term as " Lay Sermons," 
 when used by a scientific man. If there was a 
 fallacy in his argument, that did not detract 
 from the deft neatness and completeness of its 
 structure. 
 
 In philosophy Mr. Walshe was, I will not say a 
 follower, but an intense admirer, of Duns Scotus. 
 The very title " Doctor Subtilis," enjoyed by the 
 great scholastic, was the highest of which my 
 father could conceive where the human intellect 
 was concerned ; the " Angelic " of St. Thomas, 
 the " Seraphic " of St. Bonaventure, seemed to 
 him rather to qualify matters which were above 
 the intellect, theology rather than philosophy ; 
 the " Irrefragable " of Alexander of Hales re- 
 ferred rather to a result than to a quality such as 
 the subtlety of Duns. But perhaps the secret of 
 his leaning to the founder of the Scotists was a 
 natural propensity which he had to believe in 
 Universals a parte rei> or the real existence of 
 Universals outside of the mind which reflected
 
 236 MY FATHER'S STUDIES 
 
 upon them. To establish the real existence of 
 Universals seemed to him the highest flight of 
 which the human intellect was capable, and he 
 realised all the importance of the theory. From 
 this theory he would prove, in the subtlest 
 fashion, a doctrine most important to Catholics, 
 namely, that there can be matter without exten- 
 sion. The appearance of Leo XIII.'s Encyclical 
 sEterni Patris in 1879 constituted for him, loyal 
 son of the Church as he was, a tacit condemna- 
 tion of the extreme Realism of the Scotists, and 
 he was never afterwards heard to advocate his 
 favourite theory. But he was too well versed in 
 scholastic philosophy to suppose that the exalta- 
 tion of St. Thomas meant the wholesale con- 
 demnation of the great Franciscan doctors. 
 
 As a consequence of his Realism, he had 
 developed a theory which, so far as I know, was 
 peculiar to himself: he was inclined to believe in 
 the real, and not the merely theoretical, existence 
 of mathematical lines and points. 
 
 " A point," says Euclid, "is that which has no 
 parts, or which has no magnitude." But if it 
 " is that which," it exists : therefore that which 
 has no parts or magnitude has real existence. 
 
 "A line," says Euclid, "is length without
 
 A NEW THEORY OF "FORM" 237 
 
 breadth." But if it zs, then it exists : therefore 
 length without breadth, though invisible, has a 
 real existence. 
 
 " The extremities of a line are points : " there- 
 fore the terminations of length without breadth 
 have neither parts nor magnitude. 
 
 "The extremities of a superficies are lines:" 
 therefore (and this is the most important of all, 
 for a superficies has an objective and visible 
 existence) a certain material body, called a super- 
 ficies, is bounded by invisible boundaries, which 
 are themselves terminated by that which has no 
 parts or magnitude. 
 
 Here we have the theory in a nutshell. It is 
 simply that every material substance is bounded, 
 and therefore shaped or formed, by invisible 
 lines having the real existence predicated by 
 Euclid. It is a new application of the scholastic 
 concept of " form " form not being the shape of 
 a thing, but the invisible power which gives it 
 one shape rather than another. But just as the 
 scholastics regarded " form " rather as a power 
 or essence interior to every object, so in Mr. 
 Walshe's theory "form" was an exterior power 
 (and, though exterior, yet as invisible as the 
 interior '* form " of the scholastics) ; nothing less,
 
 238 MY FATHER'S STUDIES 
 
 in fact, than invisible mathematical lines, acting 
 upon, compressing, and holding in their place 
 every material object. I have no skill in such 
 metaphysical matters, and do but lamely present 
 a theory which, whether true or false, is surely 
 not without sublimity. True or false, it out- 
 does the Subtle Doctor in subtlety. By it the 
 invisible, not the visible, is the all-important 
 factor in the universe, and the grossest material 
 object takes its shape from a force not seen. 
 Moreover, if true, it proves that there may be 
 matter without extension. Nay, by showing us 
 that our material existence is shaped and deter- 
 mined by that which has no parts or magnitude, 
 that there is magnitude which is invisible, may 
 we not arrive at some glimmerings of the pro- 
 foundest truths of the Athanasian Creed, at a 
 faint understanding of the astounding and in- 
 comprehensible doctrine of the Trinity of Three 
 Persons in One God ? l 
 
 1 Of course the point plays a more important part in this 
 system than the line. The line, if invisible, has at least the 
 material quality of length. The point determines where a line 
 shall begin and where leave off. Therefore that which has no 
 parts or magnitude controls that which has length. If invisible 
 lines having length give shape to all visible bodies, points without 
 magnitude determine the length of those lines ; therefore points 
 are more important than lines. P. JE. W.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 MY FATHER'S INNER LIFE 
 
 MY present task, which to many will hardly seem 
 begun, is drawing to a close. I come to the last 
 ten years of my father's life, about which much 
 might be said and the most, but about which 
 I shall say little and the least. It would need 
 the pen of the born hagiographer, humble, holy, 
 and ascetic as his subject, to draw the true 
 picture of these ten years of a saintly existence. 
 I have tried to sketch the life of John William 
 Walshe, the scholar ; I shrink from writing the 
 inner life of a venerable servant of God. And 
 yet something must be said, if only for his 
 honour and glory. 
 
 One night in May 1890 it was the feast of 
 St. Augustine, Apostle of England ; but, indeed, 
 the feast of St. Philip Neri had already begun, 
 for the great clock of San Francesco had 
 already struck the six strokes of midnight I 
 heard the faintest uncertain tinkling of a bell 
 
 outside my door. In our primitive old palazzo, 
 
 239
 
 240 MY FATHER'S INNER LIFE 
 
 the bedroom bells rang on the landing and not 
 down below stairs. My bedroom was at the 
 head of the stairs, and the bells were placed just 
 outside my door. This faint uncertain quivering 
 tinkle, for all the world as if caused by a gust of 
 wind down the passage, most assuredly came 
 from my father's bell. I stepped out into the 
 corridor with a candle and looked up at the bell. 
 The tongue of it was quivering and dancing at 
 a great rate, but the tinkling had ceased. My 
 first thought was that a bat might have become 
 entangled in the wires. I walked along the land- 
 ing peering upwards : the tinkling of the bell 
 began again even more decidedly, and I could 
 hear the wire that ran along the passage 
 quivering and creaking. A feeling of anxiety 
 came over me : there was a bright light coming 
 from my father's room, just as I had seen it when 
 I was a tiny boy. I hurried to the end of the 
 passage and gently knocked at the door. No 
 answer. I knocked again three times, the third 
 time very peremptorily. Still no answer. I 
 opened the door hastily and entered. 
 
 " Just God ! " I cried, " and dost Thou love 
 Thy servant so much as this ? " My feeling of 
 alarm had given way to feelings of veneration
 
 A RAPTURE 241 
 
 and deepest, consuming, awe-stricken rever- 
 ence. There I saw him, standing at the end 
 of the room, with arms wide outstretched. 
 The finger-tips of the right hand were 
 just, by chance, touching the bell -rope. His 
 face was towards me ; the eyes were upturned, 
 the lips just smiling, the whole expression and 
 bearing such as you have seen many a time in 
 pictures of the Saints, save that he was standing 
 and not kneeling. There could be no doubt 
 about it ; my father was in a rapture, caught out 
 of himself by the loving arms of God into 
 that seventh heaven of bliss which His Saints 
 alone are privileged to visit during this earthly 
 pilgrimage. I went over to him and reverently 
 took one of the outstretched hands in mine : he 
 neither moved nor stirred ; the arm was quite 
 rigid. I put my arms round him and looked up 
 into that dearest face ; his eyes, though fixed, 
 were soft and shone brightly. I then laid my 
 head upon his shoulder, and sought to join my 
 unworthy soul to his while he was so perfectly 
 conjoined to God. Now and again I would 
 whisper in his ear, calling him by endearing 
 names that I had used in imaginary conversa- 
 tions, but had never dared to utter to his face 
 
 Q
 
 242 MY FATHER'S INNER LIFE 
 
 because of the odd little barrier of shyness that 
 there was between us. And still he did not 
 move. I laid my head back upon his shoulder, 
 and I may have been in that position about three 
 minutes, when I heard him give a great sigh ; 
 the Holy Name escaped his lips ; I felt the 
 muscles of the body relax, and his hands were 
 upon my head gently stroking my hair. The 
 touch of those holy hands, new quickened with 
 celestial fire, seemed to infuse into my soul a 
 new felt peace and bliss. I was too happy to 
 raise my eyes to his, and that long embrace was 
 the sweetest savour of Paradise that I had ever 
 tasted in this valley of tears. 
 
 When I did look up, there was a gentle wonder 
 and perplexity in his face. " How came you here, 
 Phil ? " he asked. " But you've been crying, boy," 
 he went on with sudden concern; "you're in 
 trouble ! Tell me, what is it, what's the matter?" 
 
 " I am in no trouble, father," I answered. " I 
 never was so happy in my life. But I heard your 
 bell ringing " 
 
 "My bell!" 
 
 " And I knocked at your door three times, and 
 getting no answer, I came straight in, thinking 
 you might be ill. You were "
 
 A CONSPIRACY 243 
 
 He put his hand over my mouth involuntarily. 
 " Hush ! hush ! " he said beseechingly. 
 
 "You were praying, father. You were " 
 
 "Stop, stop!" he implored. But though his 
 humility was most touching, I did not stop. I 
 went on and told him all that I had seen, and 
 how I knew that he had been caught up out of 
 himself, after the manner of the Saints, into the 
 loving embrace of our dear Lord. The last thin 
 remnant of ice between us melted away utterly, 
 thawed by the flames of that divine and mys- 
 terious rapt in which I had found him. I went 
 on and told him more and more. I told him how 
 as a child I had watched at his door and seen him 
 scourge himself ; how I had seen him at prayer, 
 too (though, to be sure, his prayer at that time 
 was far removed from the ecstatic state), and how 
 I had early noted all his devices and ruses to 
 mortify himself unseen. Nay, I went further 
 and it was then that he pressed me very 
 close to him I went further and asked to 
 become a fellow-conspirator with him. I offered 
 to assist him to mortify himself; I said that 
 not a soul but I should know ; that we would 
 have no servants waiting at meals ; that I 
 would eat off two plates to ensure the pious
 
 244 MY FATHER'S INNER LIFE 
 
 deception, while he should dine off bread and 
 water. 
 
 While I was pleading thus earnestly, my eyes 
 happened to glance over at the bed. I leapt to 
 my feet in something like anguish. The mat- 
 tress had been taken off and put underneath the 
 bed, and there were now but bare boards for him 
 to lie upon. Human compassion got the better 
 of me ; I forgot my promises to aid and abet him 
 in his efforts to mortify himself unseen, and with 
 tears in my voice, and a filial bitterness born of 
 love, I reproached him for his cruelty to himself. 
 It was but a passing and natural feeling ; the 
 next moment I was lost in amazement and 
 admiration at the saintly father whom God had 
 given me. 
 
 My father was subject to ecstasies or rapts all 
 the rest of his life, but usually at night-time, when 
 he had gone up to his oratory for those pro- 
 longed night-watchings with God. The rapts 
 were slight as compared with such great ecstatics 
 as the Blessed ^Egidius or St. Michael of the 
 Saints ; usually they lasted but five or six minutes, 
 and seldom, that ever I saw, more than a quarter 
 of an hour. Now and again, if our talk had got 
 upon any particularly intimate aspect of holy
 
 THE STATE OF ECSTASY 245 
 
 things, such as the Sacred Heart, the Precious 
 Blood, the Holy Wounds, or the Sacramental 
 Life of Our Lord, he would suddenly go off 
 into a rapture in the study where we sat. He 
 struggled hard to prevent these ecstasies coming 
 down upon him, having the humblest dread that 
 people should discover the divine favours with 
 which Providence visited him : sometimes he 
 could succeed ; sometimes the force of this divine 
 ardour could in no way be repelled. During the 
 last ten years of his life we had a chapel and 
 daily Mass in the house ; it had become danger- 
 ous for him to go into a church ; there was no 
 saying that some word in a sermon, some phrase 
 in the Mass, some verse in the Divine Office, 
 might not superinduce a rapture. He now be- 
 came a daily communicant. The ecstasy would 
 frequently come upon him after communion, but 
 by that time the servants had already left the 
 chapel. Until the last year of his life no one 
 had ever seen him in a rapture except myself 
 and his spiritual director, a Benedictine monk, 
 who also said our morning Mass. In that last 
 year he went into an ecstasy one day that we 
 were paying a visit to St. Clare's Choir at St. 
 Damian's, and several of the Fathers and some
 
 246 MY FATHER'S INNER LIFE 
 
 peasants saw him. The same thing happened a 
 little later on down at the Porziuncola in the 
 chapel where St. Francis died. This, I think, 
 was his favourite shrine in all Christendom after 
 the Holy Sepulchre and the House of Loreto. I 
 ought to add that it was after he became subject 
 to ecstasies that he conceived and wrote his ex- 
 quisite little " Life of St. Clare." 
 
 Some day I may try to write the " Inner Life of 
 John William Walshe." For the present I would 
 gladly be spared saying anything more about it. 
 So greatly do I reverence the holy life of these last 
 ten years, that perhaps I should have dwelt upon 
 it almost exclusively if I had never known the 
 dread corrupting whirl of London life. I shudder 
 at the thought of laying bare to the public gaze 
 the hidden life of one who, in his last days, had 
 so completely embraced the folly of the Cross. 
 Ay, there's the rub folly ! Much of his life 
 would seem mere foolishness to the world, and I 
 confess, and do not deny it, that I shrink from a 
 delineation of this folly, although I know all the 
 while that it was a source of rejoicing among the 
 angels who are in heaven. But let all that pass. 
 My present concern is to make known to the 
 world an unknown scholar by giving some faint
 
 UNDER FILIAL DIRECTION 247 
 
 outline of his life : some day I may try to tell more 
 intimately the life of a nineteenth-century Saint. 
 
 From the day that I surprised my father in a 
 rapture I did aid and abet him in his mortifica- 
 tions, and his life became doubly austere. The 
 relations between us were at length of the most 
 familiarly affectionate nature. But I abused the 
 hold I had over him, and there were days when, 
 noticing with a pang at my heart that he was 
 more than usually worn with fasting and watch- 
 ing, I would sternly command him, just as if I 
 had been his spiritual director, to dip his bread 
 in the broth, or even to eat an ounce or two of 
 meat. When in his gentle way'rie tried to refuse 
 obedience to my commands, I would tyrannically 
 threaten to tell the world that I knew he lived on 
 bread and water and slept upon boards. In this 
 way I did sometimes succeed in mitigating a little 
 the severities of his life, but whether to the good 
 of his soul, Heaven alone knows. There are, and 
 Heaven knows that too, only too many natural 
 obstacles to mortification in these days. I may 
 have been wrong in resorting to the artificial 
 check that was so often found necessary in a 
 fervent past. The increase in the austerities of 
 my father's life only served to increase the sweet-
 
 248 MY FATHER'S INNER LIFE 
 
 ness of his disposition and his love of all man- 
 kind. Pertransiit benefaciendo : he went through 
 the world doing good, and relieving suffering, 
 upon the slightest hint, without inquiry. To 
 Christ's favoured, the poor, he ever had a most 
 tender devotion. He especially loved to help a 
 family that had come down in the world ; such 
 families, as a rule, had some pride, and did not 
 blazon their benefactor's kindness to the world. 
 There is many a pensioner of his scattered up 
 and down fair Umbria. He was, moreover, a 
 great benefactor to monasteries and convents, 
 not only in keeping starvation from their doors, 
 but also in helping them to re-form their libraries 
 after the law of spoliation. One of his dearest 
 desires was to buy back the great Convent of San 
 Francesco at Assisi and restore it to the Order. 
 This he could have done for .20,000, but that 
 he did not consider himself entitled to leave so 
 large a sum away from me. 
 
 Mr. Walshe had many pious practices of his 
 own which all belong to his inner life. I have 
 already mentioned that, as a Franciscan Ter- 
 tiary, he daily said the Office of the Church, 
 or rather of the Order. In addition to this he 
 read, on alternate Sundays, the whole Psalter
 
 PIOUS PRACTICES 249 
 
 or the Medulla Psalmodies Sacra of the 
 Abbot Blosius ; every Wednesday he said the 
 Office of the Dead ; every Saturday the Office 
 of Our Lady ; every Thursday an adaptation of 
 the Office of Corpus Christi in honour of the 
 Blessed Sacrament ; every Monday seven of 
 the principal litanies, always including the Lit- 
 any of the Saints ; every Tuesday the beloved 
 Blosius' Endokgu* ad Jesum ; and every Friday 
 he made the Stations of the Cross, either in 
 church at some unfrequented hour, or in the 
 chapel, or before a crucifix specially indulgenced 
 for that purpose and in the gift of Cardinal Mertel. 
 He never let a day pass without saying the whole 
 of the Rosary. He had, moreover, a special 
 Litany of the Saints of his own, in which he 
 delighted to do honour to the more recent Saints, 
 such as St. Leonard of Port Maurice, Su Paul 
 of the Cross, St. Alphonsus, St. Benedict Joseph 
 Labre (a particular favourite with him), the 
 Blessed Clement Hofbauer, the Blessed Leo- 
 poldo da Gaiche, the English Martyrs, the Ven. 
 Anna Maria Taigi, the Ven. Pallotti, the Ven. 
 Jean Baptiste Vianney, Cure of Ars, and so 
 forth. He had, in fact, instinctively, the greatest 
 devotion to all the Saints and Blessed who had
 
 250 MY FATHER'S INNER LIFE 
 
 lived more recently upon earth, seeing in their 
 formal elevation to the altars the most signal 
 proof of the Church's claim to be considered 
 " Holy." Here I may mention that he had 
 several times, when at Rome, seen Father Ber- 
 nardine of the Incarnation, perhaps the greatest 
 ecstatic of modern times, and had often been 
 to confession to him. After the holy Friar's 
 death, my father declared that his beatification 
 would only be a question of the time which 
 the strict discipline of the modern Church re- 
 quires should elapse ere a servant of God may 
 be publicly venerated by the faithful. Father 
 Bernardine came in for no mean share of infor- 
 mal honours, and his canonisation, outstripping 
 time, was proclaimed by the most infallible baro- 
 meter of sanctity in this world, the voice of 
 Christ's poor in Rome. . , > . . . . . . 
 
 Cetera desiderantur. 1 
 
 1 I regret to say that my friend has put his pen through the 
 remainder of this chapter, and I am bound to respect his wishes. 
 May I be allowed to add a word of my own about Father Ber- 
 nardine? The modern man of the world says that Saints no 
 longer exist because he has seen none, nay, heard of none. Is he 
 quite sure that he would know a Saint if he did see one ? Does 
 he move among the people who would be likely to hear of Saints ?
 
 BERNARDINO DELL' INCARNAZIONE 251 
 
 And does he know that he has to deal with a quality which by its 
 nature seeks to hide itself, and most frequently succeeds in the 
 endeavour ? Of the myriad tourists to Rome, of all the candid 
 readers of this memoir, I wonder how many there are who have 
 so much as heard of Padre Bernardino dell' Incarnazione? My 
 friend Philip Walshe refers to him as if all the world must know 
 him ; I know the world better than my friend, for all his worldli- 
 ness. Padre Bernardino was born at Terracina on the ist May 
 1819; his name in the world was Filippo Vicario. He entered 
 the Order of the " Crutched Friars " in 1835 and became priest in 
 1842. The greater part of his life was spent in the convent of San 
 Crisogono at Rome, the headquarters of the Order. He was the 
 apostle, the confessor, the preacher, the father, the friend of Rome's 
 dwellers in the slums ; that was his public life. In his private life 
 he was an ecstatic. I have myself spoken to several credible wit- 
 nesses who have seen him in the state of ecstasy, or, more properly 
 speaking, rapt or rapture (my friend has incorrectly used the two 
 terms as if they were synonymous). In his feeble old age he 
 could only creep along the cloisters by the help of the wall ; his 
 youth would suddenly be renewed like the eagle when the rapture 
 came down upon him. Padre Bernardino died so recently as the 
 1 2th September 1893, and his death was the occasion of a great 
 popular outburst of devotion. The poor broke down his confes- 
 sional, from which they had so often been sent away comforted 
 and refreshed, and tried to pull it into little bits for relics ; they 
 invoked his intercession ; they lighted candles before his picture. 
 (Fortunately some enterprising modern has taken a snapshot of 
 him while in a rapture.) But the Holy Office intervened, and all 
 these excesses have died away. Much material for his Life has been 
 accumulated, but the Life has not yet been published, and all the 
 printed matter I ever saw relating to so great a servant of God 
 consists of a couple of funeral sermons. M. C.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 MY FATHER'S DEATH AND BURIAL 
 
 I THINK my father died of the love of God. He 
 so loved God that he could not live without 
 Him ; the Summum Bonum simply drew the 
 spirit out of his body. The wings of his soul 
 were ever ready spread for a flight into the 
 celestial realms : he took his flight quite natur- 
 ally into what had become, to him, the natural 
 element. Certainly the doctor could give his 
 last brief illness no name, and spoke vaguely 
 of the heart. He was right enough, it was 
 the heart, and the ailment is called nostalgia, 
 and the home that he lay pining for was heaven. 
 To be sure he was physically very weak. I knew 
 the secret of that well enough ; his mortifications 
 and austerities had latterly told severely upon a 
 wasted frame. 
 
 On the eve of the feast of SS. Peter and Paul, 
 the 28th June 1900, but again it was past 
 midnight, his bell over my door rang out dis- 
 tinctly. There was no quivering or tinkling 
 
 252
 
 A CALL BY NIGHT 253 
 
 this time, but a distinct pull, a jerk, and yet, I 
 know not why, there was something unnatural 
 in the sound. For one thing, my father had 
 never once been known to ring his bell in the 
 night-time. I was in bed at the time, but I 
 hurried, just as I was, with bare feet, along the 
 marble corridor : the light which I knew so 
 well shone bright under his bedroom door. I 
 did not knock, but entered abruptly. He was 
 kneeling in his night-dress by the bed, kneeling 
 upon the end of the mattress which had been 
 half pulled on to the floor : this time he was in 
 no rapture, but in a faint. I realised at once 
 what had happened ; in trying to lift the heavy 
 mattress off the bed so that he might arrive 
 at his nightly couch of boards, his strength 
 had failed him and he had fainted. He was 
 far away enough from the bell, and most as- 
 suredly his hand had been nowhere near it. Be 
 that as it may. I lifted the slender motionless 
 body into a chair, hastily rearranged the bed 
 and put him in it ; and then I flew downstairs 
 with my bare feet to the dining-room and mixed 
 a little weak brandy and water. I poured it 
 down his throat, and the dose immediately re- 
 vived him. He opened his eyes and gazed at
 
 254 MY FATHER'S DEATH 
 
 me placidly for a long while ; the eyes were 
 still as hazel bright, still as big with wonder, 
 as clear with innocence, as childlike, as in Sir 
 William Boxall's portrait ; the thick auburn hair 
 had turned to a soft silky grey, the face was 
 as white as Castellina alabaster. Never had 
 I seen him so beautiful. There was no look 
 of death upon the face, but a look of departure, 
 of departure from the life which, through death, 
 leads to the life without end ; he was half an 
 angel already ; the cherub's wings were already 
 bursting through the chrysalis of the human 
 body. He stirred and took my hand in his. 
 
 <( How came you here, Phil ? " he asked, just 
 as he had asked on that night when I had sur- 
 prised him in a rapture. " What is the matter ? 
 Are you in trouble ? " 
 
 "I'm in no trouble, father," I answered. "But 
 I heard your bell ring." 
 
 "My bell!" 
 
 " I feared you might be ill. I came into the 
 room and found you kneeling by the bedside. 
 You had fainted. I lifted you into bed and 
 fetched you some brandy and water." 
 
 He pressed my hand affectionately. " Dear 
 father," I said, "you are ill?"
 
 A LOVING DUEL 255 
 
 "Nay, lad," he answered gently, "I'm not ill. 
 I am well . . . well . . . well." He mused 
 a long while again. " Phil," he went on pre- 
 sently, "my transitus is nigh at hand. I shall 
 never again see the Feast of St. Francis, nor 
 the Feast of Santa Chiara, not even the Octave 
 of this Feast of Blessed Peter. Next Monday 
 is the Visitation of Our Lady, and I think that 
 I too shall have a visitor on that day. By the 
 compassion which moved our Heavenly Mother 
 to visit her cousin St. Elizabeth, .may she too 
 accompany my visitor. Pray for me, Pippo boy ! " 
 
 I kissed his hand ; he had not the strength 
 to prevent me, but gently murmured his dis- 
 approval. 
 
 " There is but one favour I would ask of 
 you," he went on. " Forgive me, forgive me 
 all my shortcomings towards you. Say after 
 me, ' Father, I forgive you all the wrong you 
 ever did me ; I forgive your selfishness ; I for- 
 give your misunderstanding of me." 
 
 " Father ! " I cried choking, " I bless you ! May 
 God for ever bless you ! " 
 
 " Nay, lad," he answered with gentle im- 
 patience, " you do not say it aright. Say, 
 ' Father, you have never really been a father to
 
 256 MY FATHER'S DEATH 
 
 me, but I forgive you ; father, you have mis- 
 managed me, but I forgive you; father, when 
 I was a boy you neglected me, but I forgive 
 you ; father, you have been the cause of all 
 my sins, yet I forgive you, I forgive you, from 
 the bottom of my heart ! ' Say all that, Phil, I 
 beseech you ! " 
 
 " Dear father ! " I cried again, as well as I 
 was able, "I bless you! I bless you from the 
 bottom of my heart ! May God for ever bless 
 you ! May our dear Lady and all Saints and 
 Angels bless you ! May our holy father St. 
 Francis give you the seraphic benediction now 
 and in the hour of your death ! " 
 
 " Forgive me, Phil, forgive me ! " 
 
 " Dear Dad, God bless you, God bless you ! " 
 
 And in this loving duel we continued about 
 the space of a quarter of an hour, and as often 
 as he said " Forgive me," I answered " May God 
 bless you " and I was as powerless to say 
 " I forgive you," as was Frate Leone to speak 
 evil of Frate Francesco, even when commanded 
 to do so under holy obedience. 
 
 Presently he dozed a little and his mind 
 wandered. I think he must have been back 
 again in the apple-tree cradle or the Hoole
 
 THE PSALMS FROM COMPLINE 257 
 
 class-room, or the "laura" on the sandhills, for 
 once I heard snatches of the Psalms in English 
 fall from his lips, and more than once the pious 
 ejaculations which had sustained him in the 
 martyrdom of his childhood and boyhood. 
 
 He awoke suddenly and looked at me with, 
 as I thought, a tenderer love than ever in his 
 eyes. " Pippo, Pippo, boy," he said, "what are 
 you doing here ? Why aren't you in bed ? Go 
 to bed ! Go to bed ! " 
 
 " Not until you are asleep, Dad," I answered. 
 "How are you feeling?" 
 
 "Well, well, well!" 
 
 "Shall I read to you?" I asked. 
 
 "Do so!" he replied gratefully and eagerly. 
 " Or better still, if you will, put out the light, 
 come close to me, and say me a psalm or two." 
 
 I did as I was bid, and leaning over the bed 
 beside him and holding both his hands, I began 
 the Psalms from Compline, for I was sure of 
 knowing them by heart : Cum invocarem ex- 
 audivit me Deus justitice mece : in tribulatione 
 dilatasti mihi. 
 
 Before I could go on he had taken up the 
 
 R
 
 258 MY FATHER'S DEATH 
 
 second verse : Miserere mei : et exaudi ora- 
 tionem meam. 
 
 And so we went through all the four Psalms 
 of Compline together, and I vow that I had 
 never before drawn so much sweetness and 
 consolation from a religious exercise. When 
 we had done with the psalms, he went on 
 naturally with the rest of the Office and said 
 the hymn, Te lucis ante terminum, and the 
 chapter, Tu autem in nobis es Domine, et 
 nomen sanctum tuum invocatum est super nos : 
 ne derelinquas nos, Domine Deus Nosier^ But 
 when we began the Versicles and Responses, 
 " In manus tuas" he could go no further, but 
 kept repeating with every accent of loving desire, 
 "In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritism 
 meum . . . Redemisti me, Domine Deus veritatis 
 . . . Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto 
 . . . In manus tuas Domine commendo spiritum 
 meum. . . . In manus tuas . . . in manus tuas 
 . . . in manus . . . in manus" . . . until there 
 came down upon him, not ecstasy or rapture, 
 but gentle, sweet, refreshing sleep. I lay down 
 
 1 Jeremiah xiv. 9.
 
 THE OFFICE OF SS. PETER AND PAUL 259 
 
 on the bed beside him and myself slept most 
 peacefully, nor did either of us awake until 
 San Francesco struck one after sunrise, and that 
 means seven in the morning. 
 
 It was the feast of SS. Peter and Paul, as I 
 have said, and he wished to rise and go to 
 Mass. Never, now for more than thirty years, 
 had he missed Mass on a Sunday or holy day, 
 seldom, indeed, on a week day. I forbade it 
 resolutely and sent for the doctor, though that, 
 to be sure, was a mere form. He lay all day 
 propped up in bed tranquil and happy. With 
 his help I managed to say with him the Office 
 of the Feast in alternate verses. This caused 
 him the greatest content. " Why have we 
 never said Office together before, Phil ? " he 
 asked. Why indeed ? Is it not passing strange 
 that there should always be a certain undefin- 
 able shyness between relatives about things 
 spiritual ? 
 
 I had a bed made up in his room, and never 
 left him for an instant, save for useless con- 
 ferences with the doctor. On the morning of 
 the soth, having first made his confession, he
 
 2 6o MY FATHER'S DEATH 
 
 received the Blessed Sacrament with every mani- 
 festation of fervour, joy, and gratitude, and 
 remained a long while absorbed out of himself 
 in that paradise of interior delights in which 
 his soul had so often kept holiday. Again we 
 said the Office of the day together, the Office 
 of the Commemoration of St. Paul. It took 
 us some hours : he paused often and long as 
 if drinking in the very marrow of those glorious 
 psalms and noble antiphons. When we came 
 to the Chapter at Lauds, Bonum certamen cer- 
 tavi : cur sum consummavi, fidem servavi, he lay 
 back a long while in meditation and began to 
 reason with himself, sometimes aloud, " Fidem 
 servavi, yes, yes, I have kept the faith, but 
 bonum certamen certavi ? Ah, God forgive me 
 all my sins ! " I roused him at length by con- 
 tinuing with the hymn, Exultet Orbis gaudiis. 
 I had asked the doctor in the morning whether 
 Extreme Unction should be administered, but 
 he had shrugged his shoulders, being ignorant 
 of the symptoms of paradisaical nostalgia. In 
 the afternoon my father himself settled the point. 
 " Phil," he said, " I expect a visitor on Monday
 
 EXTREME UNCTION 261 
 
 as I told you. I must be prepared to receive 
 him or repel him whichever may be God's will. 
 Tell Don Feliciano I would wish to receive 
 Extreme Unction to-morrow morning." 
 
 In the morning he again confessed himself to 
 his spiritual director, and again received the 
 Lord into his bosom in a most familiar entertain- 
 ment. At ten o'clock old Don Feliciano, the parish 
 priest, arrived, bearing the holy oils and accom- 
 panied by a serving boy in cotta and cassock. 
 
 " W. Pax huic domui" said the old priest, in 
 the words of the rite, as he entered the room. 
 
 " Rj. Et omnibus habitantibus in ea" answered 
 my father. 
 
 My father followed the beautiful opening 
 prayers with every sign of attentive devotion, 
 now and again sighing with deep contentment, 
 as, for instance, at the words, adsint Angeli 
 pads. Then Don Feliciano anointed him with 
 the holy oils on the eyes, the ears, the nostrils, 
 the mouth, the hands, and the feet, accom- 
 panying each anointment with a prayer, and 
 absorbing the oil with a piece of cotton-wool. 
 Then he turned to me and said, " Is he too ill?
 
 262 MY FATHER'S DEATH 
 
 Can he bear it ? May I ? " But I knew not 
 what he meant. My father knew well enough, 
 and answered for me. " Nay, I am well . . . 
 well . . . well," he said. And so he was 
 anointed also on the loins. 1 Then we all said 
 the Penitential Psalms together, and the Litany 
 of the Saints. And afterwards, as if refreshed 
 by the Holy Sacrament, he passed the rest 
 of the day in an extraordinary peace and tran- 
 quillity. 
 
 Early on the morning of the 2nd July he 
 called me to his bedside and told me that his 
 visitor would come in the evening. For the 
 first time he talked to me of myself, of my 
 future, my prospects, my inheritance, and he 
 also gave me some very practical directions 
 about his MSS. Then he made a long general 
 confession, in which, I dare avouch, there was 
 no mention of mortal sin, and for the last time 
 upon earth tasted of the heavenly banquet. He 
 was visibly weaker. I read the Office of the 
 
 1 The rubric provides that this part of the rite shall be omitted 
 (for the Church is nothing if not practical) where it might be a 
 source of danger to the patient. And can it, I wonder, be neces- 
 sary to add that it applies to men only, and not to women ?
 
 THE PRAYERS FOR THE DYING 263 
 
 Visitation to him, but he took next to no part 
 in it, save to utter a world of sighs. At one 
 o'clock a telegram arrived from the Holy Father 
 giving him the Benediction in articulo mortis. 
 The blessing was a source of great joy to him, 
 and he kept repeating as if it were an article 
 of faith (which indeed it is) : " He is God's 
 Vicegerent, he is God's Vicegerent upon earth." 
 At four o'clock he asked that the prayers for 
 the dying might be said. A dear Franciscan 
 friend from the Porziuncola had come up ; another 
 dear friend from St. Damian's ; there were several 
 Fathers from San Francesco present ; and two 
 Capuchins from the close-lying Domus Orationis. 
 Altogether about ten ecclesiastics took part in 
 the touching and beautiful ceremony. I would 
 that they could have checked their sobs, but 
 Heaven gave me strength to maintain my com- 
 posure. When the prayers were over he asked 
 to be left alone with me, and after a while begged 
 me to read the Passion according to St. John, 
 but from cap. xiii. Ante diem festum Paschae, 
 which, you may remember, was the Gospel that 
 St. Francis asked might be read to him on his
 
 264 MY FATHER'S DEATH 
 
 bed of death. After that he had a slight shivering 
 fit, and I soothed him as well as I could. It was 
 obvious now, for the first time, that he was sinking 
 rapidly. About seven in the evening, his mind 
 evidently still full of the death of St. Francis, 
 he began the recitation of the 1413! Psalm, 1 
 Voce mea ad Dominum clamavi ; and when he 
 reached the last verse, Educ de custodia animam 
 meant ad confitendum nomini tuo, he sat upright 
 in bed, without any effort, as if his spirit were 
 poising for its last flight. I put my arms round 
 him, though he needed no support, and his own 
 arms went out as if to embrace some dearly 
 loved object just before him. " Ave dulcis Jesu ! " 
 he said softly; "ave! . . . avel Jesu carissime, 
 Jesu mellitissime, Jesu dilectissime, avel . . . 
 ave ! O Domine mi, adoro te, glorifico te ! Ave, 
 ave dulcis Jesu . . . ave / . . . ave ! " After 
 he had breathed this gentle salutation and 
 this was most strange his arms, which had 
 been stretched out in front of him, opened 
 wide and stiffened. At the moment of dying 
 
 1 I42nd in the Authorised Version. St. Francis died as he was 
 saying the last verse of this Psalm.
 
 "E LO SPIRITO SANTO!" 265 
 
 he had fallen into a rapture, and in that rapture 
 his soul passed away, drawn up by the loving 
 arms of God into His sweet everlasting embrace. 
 We dressed his body in the Franciscan habit, 
 which, as a Tertiary, it was his right to wear, 
 though he never wore it in life. Don Feliciano 
 placed a wooden crucifix in his hands, but erect, 
 with Our Lord looking straight down upon His 
 smiling servitor. The funeral took place upon 
 the afternoon of the 4th July. It was, by his 
 wish, of the simplest character. The Brothers 
 of the Archconfraternity of the Stigmata managed 
 every detail for me. May God bless them ! A 
 large concourse of people had assembled outside 
 the house. Just as the procession was about to 
 move off, one of our white pigeons, which had 
 been whirling overhead, flew down towards the 
 coffin and then up again, and then down till it 
 almost touched the hearse, and then up again, 
 no one saw whither. The Umbrians are an 
 imaginative people ; moreover, they have in 
 their midst some of the noblest examples of 
 Christian art. " 6 lo Spirito Santo ! " said a 
 voice, awe-struck, and the word quickly spread
 
 266 MY FATHER'S DEATH 
 
 along the crowd. "Did you see that dove ? 
 Twas the Holy Ghost ! I always told you he 
 was a saint ! " 
 
 My father lies buried in the little Campo 
 Santo at Assisi, within sight of the tomb of his 
 beloved Saint. He is, I believe, the only 
 Englishman buried there, but when it pleases 
 God, I am ready to lie down and sleep beside 
 him. What else have I to do now that he is 
 no more ? He was the life of my life upon 
 earth, my living pledge of the life to come, my 
 soul's desire, my heart's delight, my refuge and 
 my comfort, my rock and my sure haven, my 
 peace and my great content, and I would fain 
 have done with this life and be conjoined to 
 him for ever in Paradise. 
 
 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co. 
 Edinburgh 6* London
 
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