The Catholic World Volume I Part 65

After breakfast, an hour or two were devoted to General Swetchine, who liked her to read to him. During the {462} last fifteen years of his life, and his death only preceded hers seven years, he had become so deaf as to enjoy general society but little; but he would not allow her to give up her receptions on that account, as she wished to do.

The rest of the morning was employed in study with strictly closed doors, only opened to cases of misfortune, and these Madame Swetchine never considered as intrusions. Her confidential servant knew it well, and did not scruple to disturb her when real want or sorrow begged for admittance. Her persevering love of study is well ill.u.s.trated by her own a.s.surance, but a few months before her death, that even then she never sat down to her writing-table without "feeling her heart beat with joy." She advised Mrs. Craven always to reserve a few morning hours for study, saying the quality of time was different at that period of day.

Several hours in the evening were again spent with the general. At midnight, when all visitors departed, Madame Swetchine retired to rest; but her repose never lasted much beyond two in the morning.

Painful infirmities made her suffer all day long, and at night debarred her from sleep. Motion alone brought comparative ease, and therefore it was that, with intimate friends, she carried on conversation walking up and down her rooms. At night, suffocation increased, as also a nervous kind of excitement. It was at these hours, during the intervals s.n.a.t.c.hed from pain, that she mostly composed the writings which M. de Falloux has given to the world. No wonder that they bear the impress of the cross; nor can we marvel that she speaks feelingly and scientifically of resignation, for good need had she to practise that. Such were usually her twenty-four hours in Paris.

If we look back to the past, religion had not always been the guiding principle with Madame Swetchine. Her father, M. Soymonof, was a disciple of Voltaire, and he brought her up without any pious training. She never even repeated morning or evening prayers; simply attended the imperial chapel as a matter of course. But Voltaire did not excite her admiration; his infidelity was too cold, his immorality too coa.r.s.e; it was Rousseau who charmed her. His pa.s.sionate language pleased her imagination, and the pages of _La Nouvelle Heloise_ were almost entirely transcribed, to be again and again dwelt on. She could not detect the sophistry beneath. But the first deep sorrow of her youth taught her prayer, and brought her to the feet of G.o.d, never to abandon him. M. Soymonof was suddenly s.n.a.t.c.hed from his children by death, and Madame Swetchine, the anguish of this bereavement, turned to heaven for help and consolation. Another sorrow, the nature of which we ignore, overtook her at this period; and, to use her own expression, she "threw herself then into the arms of G.o.d with such enthusiasm as naught else ever awakened."

The first effect was to render her a fervent adherent of Russian orthodoxy; but her mind was too philosophic to rest long satisfied with half conclusions. She was struck with the piety of French Catholics at St. Petersburg; especially the modest merit of the Chevalier d'Augard won her highest esteem. Finally, after much voluminous study, and despite the resistance her rebellious spirit loved to oppose to what she at first called M. de Maistre's "dogmatic absolutism," she entered the Catholic Church.

The absurd idea that religion renders the heart cold has been too often refuted to need any comment here. But it may be said that Madame Swetchine affords another example of how much devotion, by purifying human feeling, intensifies it also. G.o.d had given her a loving nature; and as her piety deepens with years, so does her tender affection for family ties, for friends, country, and finally for all the poor, suffering, helpless ones of earth. Her first great attachment was for her father, and so her first great sorrow was at his loss; for thus intimately {463} are love and pain ever conjoined in this world.

Another deep affection of childhood and early youth, extending through life, was for her sister. Madame Swetchine was quite a mother to this child, ten years her junior. When she married, she still kept her with her; and when the young sister also married, becoming the wife of Prince Gagarin, Madame Swetchine became a mother also to the five boys who were successively brought into the world. "They are all my nephews," would she say; "but the two eldest are especially my children." And well did they respond to the feelings of their aunt, scarcely separating her from their own parent. When she shut herself up for study, it was their amus.e.m.e.nt to try and get her out to play with them; if she remained deaf to entreaties, the little boys would besiege her door, making deafening noises with their playthings, until she mostly yielded and let them in. A very short time before her death, when Madame Swetchine could hardly sit or speak, she a.s.sembled a large family party of young nephews and nieces, with their preceptors and governesses, to dine at her house, and was greatly diverted with their innocent mirth.

There is something disappointing in Madame Swetchine's marriage. The favor enjoyed by Monsieur Soymonof at court, her own position as maid-of-honor to the Empress Marie, her birth, fortune, extreme youth, and many individual qualifications, all alike rendered her a fitting match for any man in the empire. She certainly could have chosen.

Several asked her hand. Amongst them was Count Strogonof, young, rich, n.o.ble, and talented. But Monsieur Soymonof preferred his own friend General Swetchine; and Sophie, we are told, accepted with affectionate deference her father's choice. The general was twenty-five years her senior, and though a fine military-looking man, with n.o.ble soldier-like feelings, scrupulously honorable, and with much to win esteem, yet he does not appear the sort of person suited to her ardent enthusiastic temperament. He possessed qualities fitted to command the respect of a young wife; but not exactly those that win her to admiration and love. Wherever honor was not concerned, he lapsed into his natural apathy: neither intellect nor imagination were by any means on a par with hers. And the girl of seventeen who prematurely linked her fate with his was full of romance: nurtured as she had been by a fond ill-judging father, with Rousseau to guide her opening thought, her early dreams probably had fed on some chivalrous St.

Preux with whom to course the stream of life. Perhaps she was dreaming of wedding some stern military personification of the same. What an awakening there must have been! Was this the second deep sorrow that clouded her nineteenth summer? Was there a struggle then? Then did she "fling herself into the arms of G.o.d" victorious.

There is no clue to trace aught of this save that which guides to the usual windings of the human heart. Madame Swetchine was far too nice in her sense of duty, and far too delicate in feeling, to allow any such admissions to escape.

The devotion of a life-time was given unreservedly to General Swetchine. She never knew the happiness of becoming a mother, the tie that would of all others have been dearest to her heart. But the general had bestowed paternal affection on a young girl called Nadine Staeline, and Madame Swetchine also generously insisted on adopting her. Nadine, welcomed to their roof, was treated by Madame Swetchine like her own child.

Her attentions to the general continued unremitting. When he quitted Russia, she accompanied him to Paris; when he was summoned to return, though condemned to banishment from St. Petersburg and Moscow, she profited by the respite gained to go alone in her old age and infirmity to plead his cause herself with the emperor. Nor did she complain of the illness in Russia that followed such fatigue, for {464} her suit was granted. Still less did she regret the yet more serious malady that overtook her on returning to Paris with the glad tidings that brought such relief to his declining years. He lived to the age of ninety-two, and her grief at his loss was intense. Then indeed it was the long companion of a life-time that was taken from her; and we all know the tender attachment that strengthens with years between two persons who pa.s.s them together, and mutually esteem each other.

The general, on his part, always showed Madame Swetchine affection that had gradually become mixed up with a species of veneration.

Though he never thwarted her religious views, he did not himself embrace them; he liked to see her Catholic friends, even priests, and especially Pere de Ravignan; but remained satisfied with the Greek Church. Beside her duties as a wife, we have seen Madame Swetchine embrace those of a mother toward young Nadine. She never slackened in them until Nadine by her marriage ceased to require their exercise.

Then she contrived to gratify her maternal instincts by undertaking the charge of Helene de Nesselrode, the daughter of her friend, just aged fourteen, and whose health demanded a warmer climate than that of Russia. Nor did she give her up till Helene married.

Faithful to all the sentiments she experienced, and warm in her friendships, Madame Swetchine's most enthusiastic attachment appears to have been for Mademoiselle Stourdja. It dated from her early married life, and continued through the whole of existence. At first it well-nigh provokes a smile to see how, scarcely parted for a few hours from her friend, she rushes to her pen, that it may express the pangs of separation. But girlhood has not pa.s.sed over, ere thought, reason, duty, figure largely in the letters of Madame Swetchine. Her correspondence was extensive, and portrays herself just as she appeared in daily life--a wise, gentle, and affectionate friend or counsellor, as circ.u.mstances might dictate. Nowhere does this show her to greater advantage than in the letters--too few, unfortunately--that we possess from Madame Swetchine to Pere Lacordaire. The difference between the two minds is striking. Her good sense and exquisite judgment contrast with his fiery impetuosity of thought and feeling; it is evident that her soul moves in the serene atmosphere of near union with G.o.d; while he, the religious of already some years'

standing, is yet battling with strong human torrents. How gently she calls him up a higher path, never forgetting her womanhood nor his priestly character. His tone becomes much more religious; with rare candor and simplicity he sees and owns past imperfections.

Patriotism was one of her ardent sentiments, and she considered the feeling as a duty inc.u.mbent on women no less than men: of course, conduct was to be in accordance. Like many Russians, love of country centred for her in devotion to the sovereign; and of this her letters afford curious exemplification. She calls Alexander "the hero of humanity," and, after enumerating his many perfections, rejoices that this young sage is our emperor! When her husband was harshly summoned back to Russia, that the disgrace of exile from court might be inflicted, she exclaims: "G.o.d knows that I have never uttered a word of complaint against my sovereigns, nor so much as blamed them in heart!" Strange loyalty this to our modern western notions!

Her tender charity toward the poor began to show itself at an early age. At twenty-five in St. Petersburg she was already the soul of all good works there: nor did she content herself with merely giving alms, nor even with seeking to promote moral improvement; her ingenious kindness displayed itself also in endeavouring to procure pleasure or innocent amus.e.m.e.nts. She took flowers to those she visited, or tried to adorn their rooms with pictures. The {465} friendless deaf-and-dumb girl whom she had adopted became her constant attendant; and Madame Swetchine bore with her violence of temper until the defect was partly overcome.

She undertook the charge of a poor boy at Vichy, because his many maladies and their repulsive nature rendered him an object almost of disgust. Each summer that she returned there, he was among the first to greet her, sure of the kindest welcome. For years all his wants were supplied at her expense; and when he died, she said he had now become her benefactor.

To know Madame Swetchine thoroughly, her writings must be read. They were never meant for publication, but are either self-communings, or thoughts poured out before G.o.d. Some of her aphorisms are touchingly delicate in sentiment.

"Loving hearts are like paupers; they live on what is given them."

"Our alms form our sole riches, and what we withhold const.i.tutes our real poverty."

Her prayers and meditations may be used with advantage for spiritual reading. Her unfinished treatise on Old Age is very beautiful; but more exquisite still is that more complete one on Resignation. Any pa.s.sage chosen at random would show elevated thought.

"The first degree of submission produces respectful acquiescence to G.o.d's will; then this sentiment becomes transformed into a pious and sincere acceptation full of confidence; until confidence itself gradually acquires a filial character."

"Faith," she says, "makes resignation reasonable, and hope renders it easy."

"The love of G.o.d draws us away from our long love of self."

"Patience is so near to resignation, that it often seems one and the same thing."

She acknowledges that the hardest trials of resignation are found in those misfortunes irreparable here on earth. Such are death, old age, physical infirmity, loss of worldly honor, final impenitence. But the death of those we love, she says, may be deeply mourned in the midst of resignation; and our own certain death affords not only a counterbalance to such affliction, but also to the other evils of life. Old age is a halt between the world overcome, and eternity about to begin. Physical infirmities make us live in the atmosphere of the gospel beat.i.tudes; we are then truly the poor ones of Christ, or rather poverty itself. The world sometimes forgets, but never pardons; what matters, provided virtue remain unscathed, or that it be restored through repentance?

"Suffering teaches us how to suffer; suffering teaches us how to live; suffering teaches us how to die."

And here we take our leave of this remarkable woman, who offers such a bright example to our generation.

{466}

From The Dublin Review.

RECENT IRISH POETRY.

_Lays of the Western Gael and other Poems_. By SAMUEL FERGUSON.

London: Bell & Daldy. 1865.

_Poems_. By SPERANZA (LADY WILDE). Dublin: Duffy. 1864.

_Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland_. A modern Poem. By WILLIAM ALLINGHAM.

London: Macmillan &Co. 1864.

_Inisfail, a Lyrical Chronicle of Ireland_. By AUBREY DE VERE. Dublin: Duffy. 1864.

In the palmy days of Young Ireland, its writers and speakers were particularly p.r.o.ne to the quotation of that strange saying of Fletcher of Saltoun: "If a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a country." It has been the destiny of Young Ireland to make and to administer the laws of other countries than that for which its hot youth hoped to legislate. But it has certainly left Ireland a legacy of excellent ballads. A glance at the fortunes of some of the more prominent members of this brilliant but ill-fated party, as they present themselves to view at this moment, suggests curious contrasts and strange reflections. Mr. Gavan Duffy, who was a.s.suredly the source of its n.o.blest and wisest inspirations, after having within ten years occupied high office in three Victorian ministries, and laid the impress of his organizing genius deep on the const.i.tutional foundations of that most rising of the Australian states, is on his way home from Melbourne for a brief European vacation. Mr. John Mitchel, [Footnote 96] who represented the more violent and revolutionary section of Young Ireland, was, before the American war commenced, editor of the _Richmond Enquirer_, one of the most extreme organs of secession, and afterward visited Paris with the hope of inducing the Emperor Napoleon to invade Ireland; but since the war was declared, he has resumed his post at Richmond--sometimes writing articles that are supposed more particularly to forecast President Davis's policy; sometimes serving in the ranks of General Lee's army as the driver of an ambulance wagon. His eldest son fired the first shot that struck Fort Sumter, and afterward was himself struck at the heart in its command by a northern bullet. Mitchel's favorite lieutenant, Devin Reilly, on the other hand, died in office at Washington, and his illness was attributed at the time to over-fatigue in one of the earliest of those great electioneering contests in which the supremacy of Mr. Lincoln finally came to be established over Mr. Stephen Douglas, "the little giant of the west," and the only man, in Mr. Reilly's ardent conviction, who could have saved the American Union. Mr. D'Arcy McGee, whose character bore to that of Devin Reilly about the same relation as Mr. Duffy's did to that of Mr. Mitchel, is at present a leading member of the executive council of Canada, and (the Duke of Newcastle was of opinion) the ablest statesman of British America; in proof of which it may suffice to say, that the project of the Canadian confederation was in a great degree originated and elaborated by him.

The handsome young orator, whose fiery eloquence surpa.s.sed in its influence on an Irish audience in the Rotunda even the most brilliant effects of Sheil at the old Catholic a.s.sociation, is now to be recognized in a bronzed and war-worn soldier, under {467} the style and t.i.tle of Major-General Thomas Francis Meagher, of the United States army, commanding a division, which, after Sherman commenced his marvellous march on Savannah, was sent forward to hold the southern section of Tennessee, and was last heard of in camp at Chattanooga.

One of this orator's favorite disciples, Eugene O'Reilly, holds an equivalent rank; but his line of service has lain not in America, but in Asia--his allegiance is not to the President Abraham Lincoln, but to the Sultan Abdul Aziz; he is known to all true believers under the style of O'Reilly Bey, one of the earliest of the Christian officers who took rank under the Hatti Hamayoun; and his sword's avenging justice was freely felt among the Mohammedan mob who horrified Christendom five years ago by the ma.s.sacres of Syria. What region of the earth is not full of the labors of this party, sect, and school of all the Irish talents, of whom may well be sung the antique Milesian elegy, to which their prophet and guide gave words that complain "they have left but few heirs of their company?" [Footnote 97] The rabid violence and the underbred vulgarity of style which belong to so many of the Irish Nationalist party of the present day, are all unlike even the errors of Young Ireland. That party, though it tragically failed in fulfilling its hopes at home, has at all events justified its ambition abroad; and it was always and everywhere singularly true to its ideas. Scattered as it is, broken, and often apparently divided against itself, its members have not failed to yield loyal, valiant, and signal service to whatever cause they espoused or country they adopted. Its poets have had a princ.i.p.al hand in framing the const.i.tutions of states manifestly destined to future greatness. Its orators have led forlorn hopes against fearful odds; and, whether in the marshes of the Chickahominy or in Syrian defiles, have not known how to show their backs to the enemy. It would be easy to trace over a far wider range the fortunes of its members since the great emigration that scattered them in the years that followed their catastrophe in '48. It is possible any day to find a Young Irelander, who at a more or less brief period after Ballingarry _abiit, evasit, erupit_, in the red baggy breeches of the Zouave, or in judicial crimson and ermine at the antipodes; in the black robe of a Pa.s.sionist father or the silk gown of a queen's counsel; surveying a railroad in Dakotah, or organizing brigands in Sicily; helping in some subordinate way the Emperor Maximilian to found the Mexican empire, or on the high road to make himself a Yellow b.u.t.ton at Peking. As for American generals north and south, and colonial law-givers east and west, their names are legion and the legion's name very much begins with Mac or O'. May they make war and law to good advantage! It was not given to them to make either for Ireland; but, if Fletcher of Saltoun was a wise man in his generation, they in theirs have left their country a far more precious heritage.

[Footnote 96: Our American readers need hardly be reminded that some of the biographical statements which follow are very wide of the truth.--Ed. C. W.]

[Footnote 97: _As truagh gan oidir 'n-a bh-farradk_--literally, "What a pity that there is no heir of their company." See the "Lament for the Milesians," in "The Poems of Thomas Davis." Dublin: Duffy.]

Irish poetry certainly existed before Young Ireland, and was even considered, like oratory, to be a quality naturally and easily indigenous to the Irish genius. Moore had not unworthily sustained the reputation of his country in an age of great poets; and it was Moore's own avowed belief that his "Irish Melodies" were the very flowering of his inspiration, and were indeed alone warranted to preserve his fame to future ages. But neither Moore, nor any other poet of Irish birth, had attempted to give to the Irish that poetry "racy of the soil,"

wherein every image and syllable smacks of their own native nationality, which Burns and Scott, and a host of minor poets, had created for the Scotch. This is the work which Young Ireland deliberately and avowedly attempted, and in which it has a.s.suredly succeeded. When the effort was first made, it is {468} told that several of the writers who afterward wrote what, in its order of ballad poetry, is unexcelled in the language--and notably Mr. Davis-- were quite unaware of any possession of the poetic faculty, and took to the task as a boy takes to his tale of Latin spondees and dactyls at college. But the stream was in the rock, and when the rock was tapped the stream flowed. In the course of less than a year "The Spirit of the _Nation_" was published, in which, with much undeniable rubbish, there appeared a number of ballads and songs that won the admiration of all good critics; and to which the far more important testimony of their popular acceptance is still given in the form of continuously recurring and increasing editions. A Scotch publisher-- Mr. Griffin, of Glasgow--ten years ago had heard such accounts of this curious flood-tide of Irish verse, that he thought it might be a safe speculation to try whether, despite its politics, it might not make its way in the British market. The edition was very soon exhausted, and the book is now, we believe, out of print. These facts are of even more value than the high opinion which so experienced and accomplished a critic as Lord Jeffrey expressed about the same time of the poetic gifts of Davis and Duffy; for by universal consent the test of sale loses all its vulgarity when applied to that most ethereal compound of the human intellect, poetry. The poet is born, and not made, according to Horace; but in so far as he is made anything by man, it is by process of universal suffrage over the counter. Gradual, growing, general recognition, testified by many editions, at last, in the course of thirty years, establishes the irrefragable position of a Tennyson; against which a Tupper, long struggling, in the end finds his level, and lines trunks.

Much of the poetry of this time was, consciously or unconsciously, mimetic--mainly of Sir Walter Scott and of Lord Macaulay, whose "Lays of Ancient Rome" had recently been published. Scott, indeed, more distinctly suggested the elements out of which the Young Ireland poetry grew. Burns wrote in a peculiar provincial dialect, and with the exception of a few glorious lyrics, which will occur to every reader's recollection, he wrote for a district and for a cla.s.s. But in Scott's mind all the elements of the Scottish nationality were equally confluent and h.o.m.ogeneous--the Highlander, the Lowlander, and the Islander; the Celt, the Saxon, and the Dane; the laird, the presbyter, and the peasant; and his imagination equally vivified all times--from those of the Varangians at Constantinople to those of the Jacobites at Culloden. But in Ireland there was no formed dialect like the Lowland Scotch, with a settled vocabulary and a concrete form. The language of the peasantry in many parts of the country was the same sort of base English that a foreigner speaks--scanty in its range of words, ill-articulated and aspirated, loose in the use of the liquid letters, formed according to alien idioms, and flavored with alien expletives.

The language of the best of the ballads of the peasantry was that of a period in which the people still thought in Irish, and expressed themselves in broken English, uttered with the deep and somewhat guttural tones of the Celt, and garnished now and then with the more racy epithets, or endearments, or shibboleths, of their native speech.

For a time the example of Lord Macaulay's ballad poetry prevailed, with its long rolling metre, its picturesque nomenclature, its contrasts rather rhetorical than poetical. It was possible to describe that decisive charge of the Irish brigade at Fontenoy, which Mr.

Carlyle treats as a mere myth, in strains which instantly suggest those of the "Battle of Ivry." And so did Davis in a very memorable ballad; but the likeness was mainly in the measure, and Lord Macaulay had no copyright in lines of fourteen feet. The poem itself was Irish to the manor born; and, it might be pleaded, was only as like the verse of Lord Macaulay as the prose of Lord Macaulay is like the prose of Edmund Burke. {469} Beyond this task-work, however, which, although very ingeniously and fluently done, was still as much task-work as college themes, there arose a difficulty and a hope. Was it possible to transfuse the peculiar spirit of the Irish native poetry into the English tongue? The researches of the Archaeological Society were at this time rapidly disentombing the long-hidden historical and poetical treasures of the Irish language. Many of these had been translated by Clarence Mangan, in a style which did not pretend to be literally faithful, but which so expanded, ill.u.s.trated, and harmonized the original that the poem, while losing none of its idiosyncrasy, gained in every quality of grace, freedom, and force. The rich, the sometimes redundant array of epithets, the mobile, pa.s.sionate transitions, the tender and melancholy spirit of veneration for a vanishing civilization, for perishing houses, scattering clans, and a persecuted Church--some even of the more graceful of the idioms and more musical of the metres--might surely be naturalized in the English language; and so an Irish poetical dialect be absolutely invented in the middle of the nineteenth century. It was known how an Irish peasant spoke broken English, and put it into rhyme that did not want a strange wild melody, that was to more finished and scholarly verse as the flavor of _poteen_ is to the flavor of Burgundy. But how would an Irish bard, drawing his inspiration from the primeval Ossianic sources, and thinking in the true ecstatic spirit of the Irish muse, speak, if he were condemned to speak, in the speech of the Saxon? This was the bold conception; and no one who is familiar with the poetry of Ireland during the last twenty years, will deny that it has been in great part fulfilled.

The poet to whom its execution is especially due can hardly be called a Young Irelander in the political sense of the word. But Young Ireland was a literary school as well as a political sect; and any one who remembers, or may read, Mr. Ferguson's wonderful "Lament for Thomas Davis," which it is to be greatly regretted he has not included in the present edition of his poems, will recognize the strong elective affinities which attached him to their action and influence.

As it is, this volume is by far the most remarkable recent contribution of the Irish poetical genius to English literature. Mr.

Ferguson has accomplished the problem of conveying the absolute spirit of Irish poetry into English verse, and he has done so under the most difficult conceivable conditions--for he prefers a certain simple and unluxuriant structure in the plan of his poems, and he uses in their composition the most strictly Saxon words he can find. But all the accessories and figures, and still more a certain weird melody in the rhythm that reminds the ear of the wild grace of the native music, indicate at every turn what Mr. Froude has half-reproachfully called "the subtle spell of the Irish mind." It is not surprising to find even careful and accomplished English critics unable to reach to the essential meaning of this poetry, which, to many, evidently appears as bald as the style of Burns first seemed to southron eyes when he became the fashion at Edinburgh eighty years ago. And yet to master the dialect of Burns is at least as difficult as to master the dialect of Chaucer, while Mr. Ferguson rarely uses a word that would not be pa.s.sed by Swift or Defoe. Before one of the most beautiful, simple, and graceful of his later poems a recent critic paused, evidently dismayed by the introduction, of which, however, not willing to dispute the beauty, he quoted a few lines. It was an old Irish legend, versified with surpa.s.sing grace and spirit, of which this is the argument. Fergus MacRoy, king of Ulster in the old pagan times, was a very good king of his kind. He loved his people and they loved him. He was handsome, and strong, and tall. He bore himself well in war and in the chase. He drank with discretion. {470} Nevertheless his life had two troubles. He did not love the law; and he did love a widow. To listen as chief justiciary to the causes, of which a constant crop sprang up at Emania, tares and corn thickly set together, troubled him sorely. To make verses to the widow, on the other hand, came as easy as sipping usquebaugh or metheglin. He proposed, and though a king was refused; but not discouraged, pressed his suit again and again. And at last Nessa the fair yielded, but she made a condition that her son Conor should sit on the judgment-seat daily by his stepfather's side..