Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886

Tracadie and the Trappists

The flourishing village of Tracadie, in the county of Antigonish, Eastern Nova Scotia, well sustains for its French inhabitants, the prestige, as industrious husbandmen, which their ancestors' contemporaries established in Western Nova Scotia—the land sung of by Longfellow in his "Evangeline;" and the much-vaunted superiority of the Anglo-Saxon, reads like a melancholy sarcasm, in the face of the fact that the lands from which the inoffensive Acadians were mercilessly hunted, are, to-day, far, very far, removed from the teeming fertility, which charmed the land-pirates in the last century. Simple-minded folks are wont to say, that the lands of the dispersed Acadians, languish under a curse, nor need we, of necessity, dissent from this theory, if we consider the manifestation of the curse to be shown, in a lack of skill, or industry—or mayhap both—in the descendants of those who profited by that infamous transaction. Certain it is, that these lands are now much less fertile than of yore.

Arriving at Tracadie, as we drive from the Eastern Extension Railway Station, we notice as a curious coincidence of alliteration, the sign,—

HALF-WAY HOUSEH. H. HARRINGTON

and remark that with the super-addition of "Halt Here," the signboard would be an unique curiosity.

Leaving the hospitable farmhouse of Mr. DeLorey, on a bright October Sunday, after hearing Mass in the neat and commodious parish church dedicated to St. Peter, a pleasant drive of three miles, bring us to the Trappist Monastery of Our Lady of Petit Clairvaux, the buildings of which are of brick, and form a quadrangle, of which one side has yet to be erected.

Ringing the porter's bell we are admitted and handed over to Brother Richard, the genial and amiable guest master, who is most assiduous in his attentions to us.

The monastery was founded as a Priory, early in the present century by Father Vincent, a native of France, and was raised to the dignity of an abbey nine years ago, when the present Abbot, Father Dominic, was consecrated. The community at present number thirty-seven, of whom sixteen are priests and choir-religious, the remaining twenty-one being lay brothers; the monks being chiefly Belgians, with a few from Montreal, and a few from this vicinity.

The abbey is surrounded by four hundred acres of land, tolerably fertile, though rough in part, and has excellent limestone quarries—the monks burning as much as one hundred barrels of lime at once in their kiln; they also manufacture all the bricks required for the multifarious works which are incessantly in progress. Their domain is well watered by a stream upon which the indefatigable monks have had a mill erected. At the date of our visit, they had just finished a new dam composed of immense blocks of limestone, and had almost completed a new and larger mill—to supersede the old one—and which in addition to the ordinary grist grinding will also be utilized, simultaneously, for carding, sawing boards, and sawing shingles. The new mill has dimensions of 150 x 40 ft., and the main barn 220 x 40 ft. The latter building now accommodates fifty heads of horned cattle, including some Jersey thoroughbreds and Durhams and six horses. We were also shown some Berkshire thoroughbred pigs, enormous, unwieldy brutes, one rather youthful porker being estimated to weigh nearly six hundred pounds.

The monks make a large quantity of butter, all the year round, the sale of which forms an important item of their revenue. The abbey has made its repute all through the surrounding country, and it is scarcely possible to over-estimate the benefit of this model farm to the inhabitants of adjacent lands; combining as it does the latest improvements in agriculture with the untiring industry of the Trappist Monk. For several years, their grist-mill was the only one for a great distance, and even now wheat is brought in, for grinding, from a radius of fifteen miles.

The monks contain among themselves all the trades necessary to their well-ordered community, ex-gr two blacksmiths, two tailors, two millers, a baker, shoemaker, and doctor, not forgetting the wonderful Brother Benedict, who is at once architect, carpenter, mason and clockmaker. In the last-mentioned capacity his ingenuity is shown by a clock which has four faces; one visible from the road approaching the abbey, the second from the chapel, the third from the infirmary, and the fourth from the refectory, where the modest table service of tin plates and wooden spoons and forks, offer but few attractions to those who overlooking the final end of all created things, look at life from the animal point of view.

We are also taken to the dormitory, and look into the narrow compartments, where the good brothers sleep, with easy consciences, upon their hard beds; and are also shown the discipline, which, though no doubt a wholesome instrument of penance, does not in any way resemble the article of torture under which guise it masquerades in the average anti-Jesuit novel.

Descending again we are taken to the neat cemetery where the brothers are deposited in peace after life's course is run, covered only by their coarse serge habits, and without coffins. Every grave has painted in white letters, on the black ground of a plain, wooden cross, the name in religion once borne by him, whose mortal remains rest below.

In the centre of this final resting-place stands a tall cross, and near by we observe a bare skull, whose mute lips powerfully preach the folly of worldliness, and like an accusing spirit warns all beholders of the dread day when every wasted minute, as well as every useless word, must be strictly accounted for.

The costume of the monks, in its coarseness and simplicity, would not commend itself to our modern dudes; but, then, life is a terrible reality to these brothers, who, hearing the voice of God, have hastened to follow his call, fully realizing, that without the one thing necessary, all else is vanity.

These reflections are interrupted by the abbey bell, calling us to Vespers, which are chanted by the monks (the music being supplied by the organist Father Bernard), upon the conclusion of which, we take our departure, deeply and favorably impressed with our visit to this monastery, which stands alone, in the Maritime Provinces of the Canadian Dominion, and sincerely grateful, for being enabled to see with our own eyes the works of those much-abused monks, who in general are so frequently defamed by the thoughtless boys who write for the secular press, and by the equally empty-headed old women—of both sexes—who write for that class of periodical which by a curious misnomer is designated religious. These are the people, who, it is to be feared, shut their eyes to the truth, lest they should be compelled to acknowledge it.

In the face of so much prejudice, it is pleasant to be able to record that quite recently some Protestant clergymen visited the monastery, and did not refrain from expressing their honest and undisguised admiration for what they beheld.

J. W. O'Ryan.

Gladstone at Emmet's Grave

HOW THE UNMARKED TOMBSTONE OF THE MARTYR LOOKED

The day Mr. Gladstone went to Dublin to receive the freedom of the city, which the town council had unanimously agreed to confer upon him, he spent a day in the docks and courts and in visiting St. Michael's Church—a place full of historical interest. On the vestry table lie two casts of the heads of the brothers Shears, who were beheaded in the rebellion of 1798. Such are the properties of the soil in the cemetery that the bodies of those are as perfect as the day on which they were hanged.

The church itself is eight hundred years old, having been built by a Danish bishop during the ascendency of his race.

Mr. Gladstone examined the communion plate, some of which came out of the spoils of the Spanish Armada.

But these were light trivialities! The grave of Robert Emmet is here. "Let no man mark my tomb," said he, "until my country takes her place among the nations of the earth."

Mr. Gladstone stood beside the rough granite, unchiselled, unlettered, silent slab. No name, no date, no word of sorrow, of hope. The sides are clipped and hacked, for emigrants have come from afar to take to their home in the new world bits of the tomb of Robert Emmet. How he comes to lie here is simply said. When his head was cut off in Thomas Street, his body was taken to Bully's Acre,—what a name!—and buried.

Rev. Mr. Dobbyn, a sympathizer in the cause, was then Rector of St. Michael's; he ordered the body to be disinterred that night, and he placed it secretly in St. Michael's church-yard. A nephew of Robert Emmet, a New York judge, corroborated this statement some years ago. But Emmet is not the only rebel that lies here in peace.

Oliver Boyd sleeps here, with God's noblest work, "an honest man," written on his tombstone. Here, too, is the grave of the hero, William Jackson, who was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. While the judge was still pronouncing the awful doom, the man grew faint and in a few minutes fell down dead. He had swallowed poison on hearing the verdict from the jury. In this vault, over which Mr. Gladstone peers anxiously, you can see a group of heads, all of 1798 men and there on one of them, is the hangman's crape as it stuck in the wounded neck since the day on which it and its owner parted company. Mr. Gladstone is silent as he sees all this and at last mournfully moves away.

Is there ever a tragedy in which clown is wholly absent? As he steps over the graves, up comes a man as drunk as a goat, and cries out, "Ah! Mr. Gladstone will you take the duty off the whiskey?" Upon which he of Hawarden Castle turns him round and says slowly—"My friend, the duty does not seem to stand much in your way."

John W. Monahan.

Gerald Griffin

That part of Limerick formerly known as Englishtown, and at present localized in city ordinances and surveying maps as King's Island, consists of a knot of antique houses crowding thick around a venerable cathedral. An ancient castle, its dismantled tower within easy bow-shot, overrun with weeds and ivy, overlooks the noble river, whose expansive sweep of waters is at this point of passage spanned by an old, but still substantial bridge. In the shadow of the cathedral and within hearing of the river, Gerald Griffin, dramatist, poet and novelist, was born on the 12th of December, 1803. His father, who had succeeded to a goodly estate, a considerable fortune and an honored name, sold the fee simple of his landed inheritance, and removed to Limerick, that his children might enjoy all the advantages of a good education, which at that period were best obtainable in large towns and great cities. He established himself in the business of a brewer; and, as in every speculative walk of life where personal energy is not well supplemented by judicious management and long experience, time alone was needed to diminish his capital by rewarding his unremitting industry with profitless returns. The natural disposition of this good man presented a medley of those attractive qualities which secure for their fortunate possessor an immediate share of the sympathetic good-will alike of the friend and the stranger. He had a kind heart and a winning manner. He could enjoy and exchange a good joke, and to the end of his life was a sterling and an uncompromising patriot. Yet his admiration for valor and virtue was circumscribed by no political limits, by no narrow-minded prejudices. An ultra-volunteer in '82, and an O'Connellite in '29, he was enthusiastic over the victory at Waterloo, and wept at the melancholy fate of Sir Samuel Romilly. Gerald's mother was a gentle and accomplished lady, whose affection for her child was tempered and regulated by the treasures of a refined and cultured mind, and by a sensitively religious disposition. When he was in his third year, Mrs. Griffin, with her family, removed to a country district, which, from local association with the escapades of lepracauns and phookas, had inherited the significative title of Fairy Lawn. The new home was romantically situated amid the umbrageous woods and pastoral meadow-lands through which the Shannon flows at its confluence with the little Ovaan River. His infancy thus cradled in a landscape rich in the diversified picturesqueness of storied ruin and historic tradition, what wonder that Gerald at a very early age should feel the inspiration of his poetic surroundings as he looked towards the winding river, the green fields, the islands mirrored in the tributary Fergus, and the solemn shade and cloistered loneliness of ruined abbeys and gray cathedrals. To the careful training of his good mother he was indebted for the exquisite taste and truthfulness with which he interpreted nature; for the nice sense of honor which distinguished him through life, and which often rose to a weakness; for the delicate reserve which made absence from home a self-imposed hermitage; and for the deep, devotional feeling and healthy habit of moral reflection which ever shaped and inwove the pure current of his thoughts and writings.

A visiting tutor gave Gerald an elementary knowledge of English until the year 1814, when he was sent to Limerick. He remained in the city attending a classical school till he had acquired a familiarity with the works of the great Latin authors. At an age when it is scarcely customary to emancipate children from the prim decorum and polite restraint of the nursery, young Griffin was pouring with unmixed delight over the pages of Horace, Ovid and Virgil. Of the three, he preferred the sweet pastoral of the gentle poet of Mantua, and to the end of his life retained this partiality. Inspiration caught from so pure a source wrought itself into innumerable songs and sonnets, which Gerald managed to write clandestinely, when some new frolic drew away the attention of his brothers and sisters, and left him in the enjoyment of a peaceful hour and a quiet corner. During these intervals of busy writing he was insensibly acquiring that light and graceful style, by the gentle charm of which the most sober strain of serious thought became the most acceptable kind of agreeable reading. Though still young, he could well realize how indispensable a good style is for literary success. He lived at a time when books were comparatively scarce, in a district remote from easy access to well-filled libraries; when the cost of transportation often equalled the advertised price for the newest canto of "Childe Harold," or the latest novel by the "Great Unknown." But what would have been disadvantages to many a beginner proved to have been of incalculable benefit to Gerald Griffin. His knowledge of books and authors was limited to the extent of his mother's library, and it contained, among other choice works, the writings of the inimitable author to whose graceful allurement Washington Irving owed half his fame and all the classic sweetness of his fascinating style. He copied out whole chapters of the "Vicar of Wakefield," and rarely went out of doors without bringing for a companion a copy of the "Animated Nature."

In the boy, pensive and serious beyond his years, might be traced the different characteristics of mind and heart which eventually made up the texture of his later manhood, the yearning desire for retirement, the habit of sober reflection, the trait of gentle sadness, and the passionate love for home and country. The years of his childhood passed unattended by a single sorrow. Time, however, brought a change, which broke rudely in upon the even tenor of his happy life. The pretty homestead on the banks of the Shannon was to be broken up, old poetic haunts had to be forsaken, and the sheep of the little fold were to be dispersed.

In the year 1820 his father suffered such heavy losses that a slender competency was all that remained at his disposal to resume, if he had been willing, a business which had hitherto been productive of only disappointments and regrets. The family, not wishing to run further risks, set sail for America, and settled in another Fairy Lawn, in Susquehanna County, Pa., leaving Gerald and two younger sisters to remain with their brother, a physician, who was at that time living in the town of Adare. Here Gerald remained for two years, pounding drugs and manipulating pills, ostensibly to study medicine, but in reality to devise plots for projected dramas, and to sketch character and incident for tales in prose and poetry. The pathway of his future career had already been carefully mapped out. He had long pined in secret for a literary career, and years only whetted his eagerness to put his unspoken wish into practical execution. Like poor Kirke White, he felt the irresistible influence of an unmistakable destiny drawing him, as he fancied, from lowly walks to ways of loftier prospect and more uncertain enterprise. In the prophetic fervor of anticipated triumph, he foresaw himself the lion of the literary coterie, the courted favorite at titled levees and fashionable dinner parties. He occasionally contributed short essays and fugitive poems to the Limerick Reporter, a sheet of news on which were wont to be chronicled the gossip of the city, critiques of provincial dramas, statistics of the Baldoyle steeplechases, or the latest speech by the Liberator. Sometimes he ran into the city to have a chat with a young man, who had begun to be recognized in the circuit of provincial journalism as a literary star of rising magnitude. The young man was John Banim, whose noble services under trying circumstances Gerald had reason some years later to experience and appreciate. During the two years immediately preceding his departure for London, he devoted his attention almost exclusively to dramatic composition. Banim's "Damon and Pythias" appeared in 1821, and the success which had at once raised its obscure author into prominence, must have had no slight influence in confirming the resolution which Gerald had already made. A religious motive, too, entered into the spirit and outlined the object and policy of his work. His plays, when they should be produced, were not to terminate with uproarious applause and calls for the "gifted author" at the fall of the curtain. The spirit of the drama had at this time wofully departed from the sphere of its legitimate function received from historic tradition. The design of the great dramatic master had been in his own words to hold the "mirror up to nature." The interest of London stage-managers led them to pander to public taste, and crowd the boards with sensational makeshifts and spectacular unrealities. Otway's "Venice Preserved" and Heman's "Vespers of Palermo" could not attract a pit full; while scenes introducing battlefields, burning forests, and cataracts of real water crowded the houses to overflowing. It was at this juncture that Griffin hoped to bring about his dramatic revolution. It was with this object in view that he composed a tragedy and read it for his brother, who, seeing that it contained much that was excellent and much that gave evidence of future success, no longer withheld his permission for Gerald to try his future in the heart of the English metropolis.

One cold morning, in the autumn of the year 1823, Gerald Griffin found himself a bewildered stranger in the streets of London. The sense of utter loneliness, the feeling of timid embarrassment, which overpowered him in the bustle and uproar, amid the winding streets and smoky labyrinths of the densely populated Babel, had been experienced by many another aspiring adventurer, whom the glitter of a great name and the hope of literary preferment had drawn from happy retirements to battle through adversity to fame and fortune. His first object on his arrival in town was to seek the shelter of respectable lodgings; his next, to introduce himself, to explain his projects and to submit his tragedy to the manager of a London theatre. The manuscript was returned after some months delay, with the intimation that it was too poetic and too didactic, and would require extensive revision before it could be brought upon the stage. Accident, rather than good luck, threw Banim across his path, and he proved to be a valuable and a faithful friend. In the little sanctum at the rear of No 7 Amelia Place, Brompton, where Curran had written his speeches and Banim had composed his tragedies, Gerald sat down to reinspect the returned work, and at the suggestion of his friend to omit whole scenes, to substitute others, to lop off epithets which were too glaringly poetic, and to abbreviate speeches which were too discursively long. But despite all the author's revision and Banim's abler experience "Aquire" was fated never to occupy the boards. No amount of labor could redeem the fault of a drama which conveyed moral precepts in the classic solemnity of select and studied periods. Despairing, at length, of ever having it produced, Gerald withdrew it in disgust; but what he did with the manuscript, whether it was purposely destroyed, or accidentally lost, we are unable to say. "Aquire," however, must have contained many excellencies, judging from other poetical work of the author written at the same time, and from the testimony of his accomplished brother, whose excellent literary taste made him a competent judge. "Gisippus," a tragedy written at this period, was produced with great success two years after the author's death, Macready sustaining the title rôle. A series of continued failures to satisfy the wants of exacting stage managers, slightly altered the plan, though not the purpose, of the work which Griffin had set himself to accomplish. He was compelled to give up writing tragedies, and write for a livelihood; but London was overcrowded with impecunious journalists, and he received the merest pittance in return for the most arduous species of literary drudgery. The author of "Irene," on his arrival in London, was not more incontestably the literary helot at the mercy of Cave, Millar, and Osborne, than was Gerald Griffin the typical booksellers' hack amid shuffling reviewers and extorting publishers. Johnson at the outset of his literary career received but five guineas for a quarto English translation of "Lobos Voyage to Abyssinia." Griffin, after working for weeks received two guineas for a translation of a volume and a half of Prevot's works. But he was not to be easily dismayed by first reverses of fortune. He had long ago made himself familiar with the catalogue of miseries in the literary martyrology beginning with Nash and Otway, and ending with his friend Banim. Early intimacy with distress and disappointment would but stimulate him the better to conquer both. He would sacrifice everything, consistent with a stainless name and an honorable career, in the attainment of his cherished end—the society of friends, the little luxuries of a frugal table, the modest though comfortable room in which he had hitherto lived and toiled. Poor Gerald! he had yet to learn when his most ambitious yearnings had been fully realized, that worldly honors do not satisfy the cravings of a Christian heart, that the most imperishable coronal of true success is woven of deeds little, lowly, and seemingly contemptible, and that labor spent in purely secular pursuits is labor spent in vain. But the nobler promptings of his nature were as yet unheard amid the discord in which he lived.

He now removed to a miserable garret in a lonely corner of a lonely street in the loneliest part of London. The forlorn solitude of his dreary room was, however, somewhat cheered by the thought, that in such dizzy eeries, amid the eccentric gables and rheumatic chimney pots of great capitals, works were often composed which were destined eventually to confer lasting honors on their obscure authors. Goldsmith had written his "Vicar of Wakefield" in the memorable, dingy eminence at the head of Breakneck Steps. Pope, walking with Harte in the Haymarket, entered an old house, where mounting three pair of creaking stairs he pointed to an open door and said: "In this garret Addison wrote his 'Campaign.'" Gerald Griffin, however, had yet to experience all the hardships which were endured by Goldsmith before his landlady threatened eviction, and by Addison before he received the fortuitous visit of Henry Boyle, Lord Chancellor of the Exchequer. He wrote prose and poetry for which he was often glad to get sufficient money wherewith to purchase a cup of coffee and a crust of bread. He studied Spanish, and when he had so mastered the language as to be able to translate fluently, his publisher said that on second consideration he would prefer to receive original contributions. And now commenced a period in Griffin's life, which, for exceptional want and misery, might claim a certain pre-eminence in the long list of hapless victims, who made up the literary hecatomb of the Johnsonian era. Without the grosser elements, which enter into their methods of living and disfigure their character, the abject squalor of vulgar surroundings, the love for pot-houses and low companionships, the utter disregard for personal respect, he otherwise underwent all the pain, the want and uncertainty of their impoverished condition. But the roughness of the road was unthought of in the anticipation of a rich reward at the end of his journey. He would redouble his efforts to ensure its nearer approach. He abandoned old companionships; invitations to dinners and literary soirées, which came from his friends Banim and McGinn, were politely declined. He locked himself in his lonely room and wrote through the hours of an unbroken day. Only at night when the lamps were lit, and the crowds had left the street, would he venture out of doors, and then merely to take a ten minutes' walk to ease his aching head, and to rest his wearied eyes. Once he remained three whole days without tasting food, till a friend accidently came to see him and found him pale and faint but still writing. Yet in all the sunless gloom of this dreadful time his letters home were most cheerful. The want of actual nourishment he felt, the evil influences by which he was surrounded, the chances of certain success which awaited him if he would but do violence to a certain portion of his scrupulous orthodoxy, counted for nothing with one whose good sense could see no grave inconsistency between temporary poverty and the first efforts of struggling genius. Nor is poverty so fatal to the efforts of genius as a superficial thinker would suppose it to be. To a noble nature it presents no feature of degradation or terror. Its supposed evils are, for the most part, begotten of the pride of those who are its victims.