Chapter XIII: The Clergy

From Kilrush, on the coast of Clare, an excellent service of steamers goes up the estuary of the Shannon to Foynes, where one takes the train to Limerick. It is a charming excursion, undertaken by all tourists. The Shannon here is of great breadth and majesty, flowing in an immense sheet of water, recalling the aspect of the great rivers of America. At the back you have the stormy ocean; in front, on the right, on the left, green hills dotted with snowy villas. Few trees or none, as is the rule in Ireland, but a light haze that softens all the outlines of the ground, magnifies the least shrubs, and lends to all the view a melting aspect of striking loveliness.

The boats are few in number, though the depth of the channel would allow ships of the heaviest tonnage to go up to within five miles of Limerick. I notice hardly two or three sailing boats at anchor on this four hours’ journey. What an admirable harbour for an active commerce would be that broad estuary, opening directly opposite to America, on the extreme point of the European continent. It is the natural point of arrival and departure for the Transatlantic steamers, which would reach New York in five days from there. Engineers have dreamed of this possibility. But to justify a maritime movement, and legitimise such enterprise, a great commerce, an industry that Ireland lacks, would be wanted. Gentlemen of an engineering turn, come back again in a century or two.

* * * * *

At Tarbert, where we stop to take passengers, a fort opens its loop-holes, armed with guns, on the river. Redcoats are encamping at the foot of the fortress, and the morning breeze carries to us the rough voice of a non-commissioned officer drilling his men. One might imagine him addressing the _Invincibles_ across the ocean somewhat after this guise:

“Here we are, keeping watch: If ever this alluring bay tempt you to come over, you shall find us ready to receive you!”...

The helm trembles; the boat goes on its course, and soon Tarbert melts behind us in the sunny haze.

On board, the travellers resemble those seen in summer on all great rivers—merchants bent on a pleasure trip; judges and barristers, having taken leave of briefs; professors enjoying their holidays, with wives, daughters, sons, goods, and chattels—all have the sun-burnt complexion and the satisfied look one brings back from the seaside. They have been staying on the beautiful shores of the County Clare, and are returning home with a provision of health for one year. La Fontaine has already noticed that, travelling, one is sure to see “the monk poring over his breviary.” Here the proportion is far greater than in the ancient coach; it is not one priest we have on board, but a dozen, all sleek, fat, and prosperous, dressed in good stout broadcloth, as smooth as their rubicund faces, and provided with gold chains resting on comfortable abdomens.

One remark, by the way. When you meet an Irish peasant on the road, he stops, wishes you good-day, and adds, “Please, sir, what is the time?” Not that he cares much to know. He is perfectly well able to read the time on the great clock of the heavens. But it is his own manner of saying, “I can see, sir, that you are a man of substance—one of the great ones of this earth—_since you have a watch_. My sincere congratulations!”

Well, all those travelling priests possess chronometers—we are obliged to notice it, since it appears to be a sign of easy circumstances in Ireland—and the rest of their attire fully carries out that symptom. Under the undefinable cut that at once betrays a clerical garment, their black coat has all the softness of first quality cloth; their travelling bag is of good bright leather; their very umbrella has a look of smartness, and does not affect the lamentable droop that with us is always associated with the idea of a clerical umbrella. Some of them wear the Roman hat and collar, with a square-cut waistcoat and the ordinary trousers of the laity, and stockings of all the hues of the rainbow. A young curate sports violet-coloured ones, which he exhibits with some complacency. I ventured to ask him, in the course of conversation, whether he belonged to the Pope’s household. He answered with a blush of modesty that he had not that honour, and wore violet hose because he was fond of that colour.

That is a matter of taste; but I have a right to suppose, young Levite, that the mitre and episcopal rochet—perhaps even the cardinal purple—hover at night over your ingenuous dreams.

* * * * *

LIMERICK.

Limerick is a big town of 40,000 inhabitants, celebrated for its hams, lace, and gloves. The objects of interest are an important linen factory, and another for military equipments, besides a stone mounted on a pedestal, and which served as a table for signing the famous treaty of 1691—soon violated like all treaties, however. Opposite that historic stone, on the other side of the Shannon, the ancient castle of King John rears its proud head; it has a grim and gloomy look, with its seven towers, its thick walls and iron-bound gates.

At the large hotel of the place I meet again three of my ecclesiastical fellow-travellers. They evidently know what is good for them, and would on no account stop at second-rate inns. One cannot blame them for it. But this is a sign of prosperity, added to all the others; a hotel at fifteen shillings a day, without counting the wine, seems at first sight suited to prelates rather than to humble clergymen. Yet these are only village and parish priests, as I gather from the book on which I sign my name after theirs. At dinner, where we sit side by side, I am compelled to see that the appetite of the reverend fathers is excellent, and that the _carte_ of the wines is a familiar object with them. They each have their favourite claret: one likes Léoville, another Château Margaux, while the third prefers Chambertin; and they drain the cup to the last drop. After dessert they remain last in the dining-room, in company with a bottle of port.

At ten o’clock that night, entering it to get a cup of tea, I find the three seated round glasses of smoking toddy.

* * * * *

These memorable events are not consigned here, it need hardly be said, for the vain satisfaction of recording that on a certain evening three Irish priests were tippling freely. They certainly had a perfect right to do so, if such was their bent. It is the most cherished privilege of a British subject; and of all capital sins proscribed by the Church, drunkenness is certainly the most innocent. But this remark, made without prejudice, during a chance meeting at an inn, carries out the general impression left by the Irish clergy—that of a corporation greatly enamoured of its comforts, endowed with good incomes, and whose sleekness forms a striking contrast with the general emaciation of their parishioners.

Everywhere, in visiting this island, one meets with this typical pair of abbots, well dressed and well “groomed,” travelling comfortably together, and, to use a popular expression, “la coulant douce.” It is startling in this realm of poverty, the more startling because the Catholic clergy have no official means of existence, no salary paid them by the State. They owe all the money they spend to the private contributions of their admirers. Was there ever, they doubtlessly think, a more legitimate way of making money? That is probably why they make so little mystery of it, and disdain to hide when they exchange part of their income against a bottle of Chambertin. In other places, priests think that a certain reserve is expected of them; they prefer being securely shut in privacy before they carve a partridge or plentifully moisten a synod dinner. Here they are so secure in their position that they recoil from no profane glance.

Their lives are, I am told, of exemplary purity. I have no difficulty in believing it, both because purity is a marked characteristic of the race, and because their faith has seemed to me simple as that of the Breton priests. There must be exceptions, and some were pointed out to me; but assuredly those exceptions are few in number. By many signs which do not deceive those who have some experience of life, one can see that the Irish priest has not the vices of the Italian or Spanish priest. He is a gormandizer to be sure, but he is chaste—perhaps for the very reason that he is so devoted to the pleasures of the table. His simplicity of heart is wonderful sometimes, and makes one think of those Mount Athos monks, nursed in the cloister from the tenderest age, and who know literally nothing of the exterior world. I heard two of them, old men both, who were quietly chatting in a corner of the railway carriage. Both had small, bald birds’ heads, shaven chins, and a quaint, old-fashioned look.

“_I am next door to an idiot!_” one of them was saying, with curious complacency.

“So am I,” answered the other; “so was I always, and I thank Almighty God for it!... for have you not noticed that all those grand, clever people often lose the faith?...”

* * * * *

Where does their income come from? That is a question doubly interesting to us Frenchmen, who every year pay out two million sterling for the budget of public worship. A placard seen everywhere in Limerick, and presenting a marked resemblance to the advertisement for a theatre, will help to tell us. This placard is to the effect that on the day after to-morrow a general ordination of young priests will take place in the Cathedral of St. John, by the hands of the Right Reverend X. O’Dyer, archbishop of the town (the name and quality in conspicuous characters), assisted by several other prelates and dignitaries. It proceeds to state that excursion trains have been established for the occasion, and that tickets for the ceremony may be procured, at the price of half-a-crown and one shilling, at No. 98, George Street.

This is a booking-office, exactly like those we have in theatres. Plenty of placards, the plan of the church showing the number and position of each seat, a table of prices, and behind a little grated window a bearded old woman for the tickets,—nothing is wanting. One has only to choose one’s place, to pay the price down, and to take away the ticket. About twenty persons perform these various acts before my eyes. Evidently the receipt will be good. The cathedral of St. John, that proudly raises its brand-new spire above all the others, must be able to accommodate at least three or four thousand spectators. At 1_s._ 9_d._ per head on an average, that gives already a total of two or three hundred pounds. To this must be added the product of the collections and that of the wooden money-boxes, that open everywhere to receive the outcome of the generosity of the faithful; the total, we may be sure, cannot be otherwise than respectable. It is true that an ordination is not an every-day event, and that it must be an expensive affair to put on the stage. We must therefore suppose the ordinary income to be raised by way of semestrial and direct contribution.

* * * * *

This is how the thing is done: each parish priest has two Sundays in the year devoted to the taking his _dues_, as he calls it. On these days, instead of preaching, he exhibits a manuscript list upon which are inscribed by name all his tributaries, that is to say, all his parishioners, with the sums they have paid into his hands; this he reads publicly. As a rule he adds a running commentary to each name, either to praise the generosity of the donor, or, on the contrary, to complain of his stinginess. In the country, especially, the scene is not wanting in humour.

“_Daniel MacCarthy_, four shillings and six-pence,” says the priest. “That’s not much for a farmer who keeps three cows and sold two calves this year. I will hope for him that he only meant that as a preliminary gift.... _Simon Redmond_, seven shillings and six-pence; he might have given ten shillings, as he did last year. He is not what we should call a progressive man.... _George Roehe_, two shillings and three-pence. _Richard MacKenna_, one shilling and three-pence. _Denis Twoney_, one shilling and nine-pence. Against those who do their best I have nothing to say. _Michael Murphy_, fifteen shillings. Now, I ask, could not he have made it a pound? The pity of it! _John Coleman_, five shillings. _Daniel Clune_, five shillings. _Cornelius Nagle_, five shillings. One would think they had agreed to do it.... _Henry Townsend_, Esq., of Townsend Manor, three pounds sterling. That’s what I call a subscriber! And he is a Protestant. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves to let a Protestant be more generous to your own church than you are.... _Harriet O’Connor_, one shilling and nine-pence. I will be bound she liked buying a new bonnet better than doing her duty. That is between her and her conscience. But I am afraid that at the Day of Judgment she won’t find it such a good investment.... _Mary Ann Cunningham_, twelve shillings and nine-pence. If everybody knew how to spare and how to use what they spare in the same way as this good lady, things would go better in this world and in the next, take my word for it.... _Colonel Lewis_, of Knockamore Villa, five pounds sterling. Another Protestant! Positively one might think one lived in a parish of heathens when one sees that the heretics alone seem to have some regard for the church!...”

The reading goes on in this guise, adorned with reflections more or less pungent, and interrupted now and then by a repartee coming from the far end of the audience, and torn from the patient by the malignity of the attack; a general hilarity is then provoked without impairing in the least the reverence of the congregation for their priest or their church. This semestrial subscription, added to the weekly collections, the daily masses, the baptisms, weddings and burials, is amply sufficient to keep the church, the priest, and the priest’s house in a good state of repair. Most of the parish priests besides, have the habit of “binage,” that is to say they often say two or three masses a day, at different points of their sometimes very wide parish.

* * * * *

They are generally addressed by their christian name, prefaced by the name of _Father_: _Father James_, _Father Henry_, etc., and this title well describes the terms of filial familiarity of the flocks with their pastor,—a familiarity not unfrequently manifested by sound boxes on the ear for children, and good blows with the stick on the shoulders of his grown-up parishioners, but which does not preclude respect. In the streets one always sees the parish priest respectfully greeted by the passers by; many women kneel down to kiss his hand as in Italy or Spain.

His authority is that of a patriarch, who not only wields spiritual power, but also, to a great extent, social and political power. He incarnates at once in himself the native faith so long proscribed in the country, resistance to the oppressor, heavenly hopes and compensation for human trials. As a consequence, his influence is great, for good as for ill.

The faith of the Irish peasant is entire, unquestioning, absolute as that of a thirteenth century’s serf. One must see on Sundays those churches crowded to overflowing, and too narrow for the congregation who remain, silent and kneeling, on the steps and even outside the doors. One must see those ragged people, forming a chain by holding on to each other’s tatters, one behind the other, at a distance of 50 to 60 feet from the altar, a patch of dim light up there in the darkness of the church; or else they must be seen at some pilgrimage round a miraculous well or stream, like the Lough Derg, wallowing indiscriminately in the pond, washing therein their moral and physical uncleanliness, drinking the sacred water by the pailful, intoxicated with enthusiasm and hope.

The devotees of Our Lady del Pilar, and of San Gennaro, are less expansive and less ardent. The Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Rosary, St. Philip of Neri, all the mystical armoury of the modern church have innumerable votaries in Ireland. One would perhaps experience some difficulty in finding there ten born Catholics not wearing next to their skin some amulet made of cloth or ivory, and invested in their eyes with supernatural powers. If I do not greatly err, St. Peter’s pence must find its more generous contributors amidst those poverty-stricken populations. To those imaginations of starved and half hysterical people the Roman pontiff appears in the far distance, all in white, in a halo of gold, like a superhuman vision of Justice and Pity in this world where they found neither the one nor the other.

An Irish servant in London once asked my advice about the investment of her savings, some thirty pounds which she had scraped together at the Post Office Savings Bank. I congratulated her on her thrift, when the poor girl told me, her eyes bright with unshed tears:

“It is for our Holy Father, that they keep in prison up there in Rome.... I mean to bring him fifty pounds as soon as ever I get them.”

* * * * *

Those things may tend to explain why the only prosperous trade in Ireland is the clerical trade. Every year the number of priests increases, though the population is decreasing. In 1871 they numbered 3,136; in 1881 they were 3,363, or an increase of 227, under the guidance of four archbishops and twenty-four bishops. The Catholic population is of three million persons; that gives one priest for about 900 inhabitants.

It is generally admitted that each of these priests, with his church and his house, cannot cost much under £300 or £400 a year. That would give about £1,200,000 coming annually from the pockets of those labourers and servant girls. The tithe was never so heavy.

This clergy is chiefly recruited from the class of small farmers and peasantry (by the reason that the other classes are for the majority Protestants); as a consequence the clergy share all the passions of their class. The agrarian revolution has no agents more active. Almost everywhere the parish priest is the president of the local Land League Board. In the stormiest meetings is always to be found a village Peter the Hermit, preaching the new crusade and denouncing the landlords with fiery eloquence; not to speak of the Sunday preaching, which is only another meeting closed against the police, and where landlords are handled with extraordinary freedom of language. One has seen Irish priests openly declare a shot to be an unimportant trifle, so long as it was sent after a landed proprietor. A few months ago a Dublin paper mentioned a parish in Donegal, where the priest, they asserted, had gone so far as to put the properties of the landlords in lottery, by tickets of ten shillings each. The verification of this fact would by no means be easy. But, given the state of mind of the Irish priest, the ardour he brings into the struggle, the boundless indulgence he displays towards agrarian outrages, the tale is by no means improbable; our Leaguers have done even worse. However surprising may be in our Continental eyes the spectacle of a whole clergy taking part against the lords in a social war, under the paternal eyes of their episcopate, we must remember that here everything tends to bring about this result:—religious passions, hereditary instinct, and personal interest.

* * * * *

A priest who had the unlucky idea of pronouncing himself against the League would soon see his subsidies stopped. His flock would besides lose all confidence in him, and all respect for his person. I am told of a characteristic example of the kind of practical jokes indulged in such a case by the peasantry against the dissident pastor. A priest of the county Clare, seized by sudden scruples, took it into his head to abuse the League at the Sunday preaching, instead of sounding the usual praise in its honour. At once they sent him from the lower end of the church an old woman who begged to be heard directly in confession, before she could approach Holy Communion. The worthy man, grumbling a little at such an untimely fit of devotion, nevertheless acceded to her request with antique simplicity, and seated himself inside the confessional.

“Father,” said the old woman in aloud voice, “I accuse myself of having this moment thought that you were a wicked bad man, who betrays his flock to take the part of their natural enemies....”

“Amen!” answered all the congregation in a chorus.

Without waiting for absolution the old woman had got up to go. The priest tried to imitate her. Impossible. They had placed on his seat a huge lump of pitch which glued him, attached him indissolubly to his place. To get him free they were obliged to go for help outside, to call strangers to the rescue. The whole village meanwhile were shaking with laughter, and thought the joke in the best possible taste.

The Irish clergy go with the League, both because their temperament inclines them that way, and also because it is an imperious necessity of their situation; their case is rather similar to that of the _Home Rule_ members, who were compelled to enter the movement, whether they approved of it or not. However strong their hold on the mass of the rural population, their influence would vanish in a week if they tried to pull against the irresistible stream. Such sacrifices have never been a habit of the Roman Church.

Indeed it is permitted to smile, when one sees the Tory Ministry soliciting the intervention of the Pope in the Irish crisis, and obtaining from him the sending of a special legate entrusted with the mission of bringing the Episcopate of Ireland back to less subversive ideas. It is well understood that the Pope of course sends his legate, and derives from his diplomatic compliance all the advantages it entails. But he is better aware than any one that unless he personally gave away one million sterling a year to the parish priests of Ireland, he would have little reasonable hope of success in asking them to shift their policy.

Is it necessary to add that the Irish priest himself knows on occasion how to bring into his mundane relations the traditional suppleness and prudence of his order? A priest of Wexford, actively mixed up with the agrarian movement, was dining a few years ago at the house of Mr. C⸺, proprietor of a large landed estate in the county. Conversation turned upon the League, and no good was said of it. The priest listened in silence, without giving his sentiment either for or against the League. All of a sudden, with a look of assumed simplicity, he turned to his host—

“Look here, Mr. C⸺,” he said, “Will you believe me? _Me impresshun is that there is no Land League._”

The saintly man had for the last three months been vice-president of the board of the Land League in his district.