Literary Hearthstones of Dixie Part 9

The fact is, General, it would give me great pleasure to bury the whole lot of you."

Butler lay back in his arm-chair and roared with laughter. "You've got ahead of me, Father," he said. "You may go. Good morning, Father."

One of the incidents of which Father Ryan told me occurred when smallpox was raging in a State prison. The official chaplain had fled and no one could be found to take his place. One day a prisoner asked for a minister to pray for him, and Father Ryan, whose parish was not far away, was sent for. He was in the prison before the messenger had returned and, having been exposed to contagion, was not permitted to leave. He remained in the prison ministering to the sick until the epidemic had pa.s.sed.

Immediately after the war he was stationed in New Orleans where he edited _The Star_, a Roman Catholic weekly. Afterward he was in Nashville, Clarksville, and Knoxville, and from there went to Augusta, Georgia, where he founded and edited the "_Banner of the South_,"

which was permanently furled after having waved for a few years.

Unlike most Southern poets, Father Ryan did not take his themes from Nature, and when her phenomena enters into his verse it is usually as a setting for the expression of some ethic or emotional sentiment. He has been called "the historian of a human soul," and it was in the crises of life that his feeling claimed poetical expression. When he heard of Lee's surrender "The Conquered Banner" drooped its mournful folds over the heart-broken South. In his memorial address at Fredericksburg when the Southern soldiers were buried, he first read "March of the Deathless Dead," closing with the lines:

And the dead thus meet the dead, While the living' o'er them weep; And the men by Lee and Stonewall led, And the hearts that once together bled, Together still shall sleep.

June 28, 1883, I was in Lexington and saw the unveiling of Valentine's rec.u.mbent statue of General Lee in Washington and Lee University. At the conclusion of Senator Daniel's eloquent oration Father Ryan recited his poem, "The Sword of Lee," the first time that it had been heard.

In Lexington I was at a dinner where Father Ryan was a guest. He told a story of a reprobate Irishman, for whom he had stood G.o.dfather. Upon one occasion the man took too much liquor and, under its influence, killed a man, for which he was sentenced to a term in the penitentiary. Through the efforts of the Father he was, after a time, pardoned and employment secured for him. One evening he came to the priest's house intoxicated and asked permission to sleep in the barn.

"No," said the Father, "go sleep in the gutter." "Ah, Father, sure an'

I've shlept in the gutter till me bones is all racked with the rheumatism." "I can't help that; I can't let you sleep in the barn; you will smoke, you drunken beast, and set the barn on fire and maybe burn the house, and they belong to the parish." "Ah, Father, forgive me! I've been bad, very bad; I've murdered an' kilt an' shtole an'

been dhrunk, an' I've done a heap of low things besides, but low as I'm afther gettin', Father, I never got low enough to shmoke." The man slept in the barn and the parish suffered no loss.

One evening at a supper at Governor Letcher's we were responding to the sentiment, "Life." I gave some verses which, in Father Ryan's view, were not serious enough for a subject so solemn. He looked at me through his wonderfully speaking eyes and answered me in his melodious voice:

Life is a duty--dare it, Life is a burden--bear it, Life is a thorn-crown--wear it; Though it break your heart in twain Seal your lips and hush your pain; Life is G.o.d--all else is vain.

"Yes, Father," I said, and there was silence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. MARY'S CHURCH, MOBILE.

FATHER RYAN'S LATE RESIDENCE ADJOINING By courtesy of P.J. Kenedy & Sons]

Always a wanderer, our Poet-Priest found his first real home, since his childhood, when pastor of St. Mary's Church in Mobile. To that home he pays a tribute in verse.

It was an enchanting solitude for the "restless heart,"--the plain little church with its cross pointing the way upward, the front half-hidden by trees through which its window-eyes look out to the street. A short distance from the church and farther back was the priest's house, set in a bewilderment of trees and vines and shrubbery from which window, chimney, roof, and cornice peep out as if with inquisitive desire to see what manner of world lies beyond the forest.

Up into the silent skies Where the sunbeams veil the star, Up,--beyond the clouds afar, Where no discords ever mar, Where rests peace that never dies.

Here, amid the "songs and silences," he wrote "just when the mood came, with little of study and less of art," as he said, his thoughts leaping spontaneously into rhymes and rhythms which he called verses, objecting to the habit of his friends of giving them "the higher t.i.tle of poems," never dreaming of "taking even lowest place in the rank of authors."

I sing with a voice too low To be heard beyond to-day, In minor keys of my people's woe, But my songs will pa.s.s away.

To-morrow hears them not-- To-morrow belongs to fame-- My songs, like the birds', will be forgot, And forgotten shall be my name.

But a touch of prophecy adds the thought:

And yet who knows? Betimes The grandest songs depart, While the gentle, humble, and low-toned rhymes Will echo from heart to heart.

So the "low-toned rhymes" of him to whom "souls were always more than songs," written "at random--off and on, here, there, anywhere," touch the heart and linger like remembered music in a long-gone twilight.

In 1872 Father Ryan travelled in Europe, visited Rome and had an audience with the Pope, of whom he wrote:

I saw his face to-day; he looks a chief Who fears nor human rage, nor human guile; Upon his cheeks the twilight of a grief, But in that grief the starlight of a smile.

In 1883 he began an extended lecture tour in support of a charity of deep interest in the South, but his failing health brought his effort to an early close.

The fiery soul of Father Ryan soon burned out its frail setting. In his forty-eighth year he retired to a Franciscan Monastery in Louisville, intending to make the annual retreat and at its close to finish his "Life of Christ," begun some time before. He arrived at the Convent of St. Bonifacius March 23, 1886. The environment of the old Monastery, the first German Catholic establishment in Louisville, built in 1838, is not attractive. The building is on a narrow side street filled with small houses and shops crowded up to the sidewalk.

But the interior offered a peaceful home for which the world-weary heart of the Poet-Priest was grateful. From a balcony where he would sit, breathing in the cool air and resting his soul in the unbroken silence, he looked across the courtyard shaded by beautiful trees, filled with flowers and trellised vines, his heart revelling in the riot of color, the wilderness of greenery, all bathed in golden floods of sunshine and canopied with an ever-changing and ever-glorious stretch of azure sky.

Father Ryan was never again to go out from this peaceful harbor into the tumultuous billows of world-life. He had been there but a short time when his physician told him that he must prepare for death.

"Why," he said, "I did that long years ago." The time of rest for which he had prayed in years gone by was near at hand.

My feet are wearied and my hands are tired, My soul oppressed-- And I desire, what I have long desired-- Rest--only rest.

The burden of my days is hard to bear, But G.o.d knows best; And I have prayed--but vain has been my prayer For rest--sweet rest.

In his last days his mind was filled with reminiscences of the war and he would arouse the monastery and tell the priests and brothers, "Go out into the city and tell the people that trouble is at hand. War is coming with pestilence and famine and they must prepare to meet the invader."

On Thursday of Holy Week, April 22, 1886, the weary life drifted out upon the calm sea of Eternal Peace.

"BACON AND GREENS"

DR. GEORGE WILLIAM BAGBY

We, the general and I, were the first to be informed of the supernal qualities of bacon and greens. All Virginians were aware of the prime importance of this necessary feature of an Old Dominion dinner, but that "a Virginian could not be a Virginian without bacon and greens"

was unknown to us until the discoverer of that ethnological fact. Dr.

George William Bagby, read us his lecture on these cheerful comestibles. We were the first to see the frost that "lies heavy on the palings and tips with silver the tops of the b.u.t.ter-bean poles, where the sere and yellow pods are chattering in the chilly breeze."

In the early days after the war Dr. Bagby had a pleasant habit of dropping into our rooms at the Exchange Hotel in Richmond, and as soon as the ink was dry on that combination of humor and pathos and wisdom to which he gave the cla.s.sic t.i.tle of "Bacon and Greens" he brought it and read it to us. I can still follow the pleasant ramble on which he took us in fancy through a plantation road, the innumerable delights along the way never to be appreciated to their full extent by any but a real Virginian brought up on bacon and greens, and the arrival at the end of the journey, where we were taken possession of as if we "were the Prodigal Son or the last number of the _Richmond Enquirer_."

My eyes were the first to fill with tears over the picture of the poor old man at the last, sitting by the dying fire in the empty house, while the storm raged outside.

Though so thoroughly approving of "bacon and greens," there was another feature of Virginia life, as well as of Southern life generally, that met with Dr. Bagby's stern opposition--the duel. I once had opportunity to note his earnestness in trying to prevent a meeting of this kind. Two young men of whom General Pickett was very fond, Page McCarty, a writer for the press and an idol of Richmond society, and a brilliant young lawyer named Mordecai became involved in a quarrel which led to a challenge. The innocent cause of the dispute was the golden-haired, blue-eyed beauty, Mary Triplett, the belle of Richmond, who had long been the object of Page McCarty's devotion but had shown a preference for another adorer. Page wrote some satiric verses which, though no name was given, were known by all Richmond to be leveled at Miss Triplett. Mr. Mordecai resented the verses and the dispute which followed resulted in a challenge. Dr.

Bagby came to our rooms when Page McCarty was there and made an unavailing effort to secure peace. Both he and the general were unsuccessful in their pacific attempts, the duel took place and Page McCarty, who bore a name that had in former times become famous in the duelling annals of Virginia, killed his antagonist at first shot.

Though so strongly opposed to the practice, Dr. Bagby twice came near taking a princ.i.p.al part in a duel. Soon after the close of the war he wrote an editorial on prisoners of war, in which he took the ground that more Southern soldiers died in Northern prisons than Northerners in Southern prisons, giving figures in support of his statement. A Northern officer in Richmond answered the article, questioning its veracity. The doctor promptly sent a challenge to combat which the officer declined, saying that he had fought hard enough for the prisoners in war-time, he did not intend to fight for them now that hostilities were over.

The second time that our genial humorist came near the serious reality of a duel he was the party challenged. The cause of the misunderstanding that promised to result so tragically was a magazine article in which the doctor caricatured a peculiar kind of Virginia Editor. The essay was a source of amus.e.m.e.nt to all its readers except one editor, who imagined himself insulted. Urged on by misguided friends, he challenged the author of the offending paper who, notwithstanding his opposition to the code, accepted. A meeting was arranged and the belligerents had arrived at historic Bladensburg with blood-thirsty intent, when one of those sunny souls, possessed of a universality of mind which rendered him a friend to all parties, arrived on the scene and a disastrous outcome was averted.

Dr. Bagby has been called "a Virginia realist." To him, receiving his first views of life from the foot of the Blue Ridge, one realism of the external world was too beautiful to admit of his finding in the ideal anything that could more nearly meet his fancy-picture of loveliness than the scenes which opened daily before his eyes. Years later a memory of his early home returns to him in the dawn:

Suddenly there came from thicket or copse of the distant forest, I could not tell where, a "wood-note wild" of some bird I had not heard for half a century nearly, and in an instant the beauty, the mystery, the holiness of nature came back to me just as it came in childhood when sometimes my playmates left me alone in the great orchard of my home in c.u.mberland.

He avows himself

--a pagan and a worshipper of Pan, loving the woods and waters, and preferring to go to them (when my heart was stirred thereto by that mysterious power which, as I conceive, cares little for worship made stately and to order on certain recurring calendar days) rather than to most of the brick and mortar pens that are supposed to hold in some way that which the visible universe no more contains than the works of his hands contain the sculptor who makes them; for I take it that the glittering show revealed by the mightiest telescope, or by the hope mightier even than the imagination of the highest mind, is but as a parcel of motes shining in a single thin beam of the great sun unseen and hidden behind shutters never to be wide opened.

Our "Virginia Realist" needed not to call upon his imagination for personalities with which to fill his free-hand sketches of nature, for there was in his kindly humor and geniality a charm which drew forth from all he met just the qualities necessary to fill in his world with the characters he desired. A wide and deep sympathy enabled him to make that world so real and true that his readers entered it at once and found therein such entertaining companionship that they were fain to abide there ever after.