by George Moore
It is disappointing that I cannot remember to whom to attribute. They have less hair-cloth about them and smell less cloisterly, yet they are only choristers. It sounds more like Boccaccio than Petrarch, and this placing of Dante above the Latin poets endears one to Landor, for he loved the Latin poets and understood them very well. He was the last of the Latinists, and we can imagine Horace reading Landor’s Latin verses with a certain appreciation, saying: If he had been born in Italy he might have been amongst us. Horace would relish Landor’s wisdom. But is it sure — is it certain that Landor’s wisdom would not seem oppressive at times? Wisdom estranges an author from his fellows, and in no writer does the intellect shine more clearly than in Landor. His intellect enabled him to admire all that Dante owed to the Renaissance — and to forget the hair shirt. As well as I remember, neither poet refers to Dante’s anti-clericalism; its importance was overlooked by Landor; but Boccaccio and Petrarch would not have overlooked it; either might have approved or disapproved, but one or the other would have mentioned it, and Petrarch might have had qualms for the faith of the next generation; he might have foreseen easily that the anti-clericalism of one generation would be followed by a pagan revival. And this is what happened. Borgia was on the throne, two hundred years later, and a reactionary priest was being told that everybody was prepared to admit in theory that Jesus was an interesting figure, but, for the moment, everybody was anxious to talk about a new torso that had been unearthed. But instead of running to see the Greek God, and contributing to the general enthusiasm by praise of the pectoral muscles, Savonarola gathered a few disciples about him and told the people that a much greater discovery would have been part of the tree on which the Saviour hung. Of course, Borgia did not like signing the order for the burning of Savonarola and his monks, but he could not allow the Renaissance to be stopped, and if he had not intervened, the Renaissance would have stopped at Fra Angelico; Pinturicchio might have been allowed to continue his little religious anecdotes, but Mantegna would have been told that his vases and draperies hark back to the heathen, before Christ was, and as likely as not Botticelli’s light-hearted women might have had tears painted into their eyes. The world had had enough of the Middle Ages, and the reaction was a Pope who loved his own daughter Lucretia, and ordered the murder of his own son. Or was it Caesar who planned this murder? A wonderful day it was when he pursued the Pope’s chamberlain into the Vatican and stabbed him to death in his father’s arms, for such a deed attests, perhaps better than any argument, that men’s thoughts had turned definitely from the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Earth had been swallowed up in theology for some eight or nine centuries, and it was the genius of the sixteenth century to disinter it, and to make merry in it without giving a thought to the super-man — the silly vanity of a Christian gone wrong. In this re-arisen kingdom were all the arts, sculpture, painting, literature, and music, and with the discovery of America the world seemed indefinitely enlarged. A hint was in the air that the world moved. Borgia sat on the Papal chair; Caesar his son might have succeeded him; and, with the genius of Italy, insurgent since 1265, behind him, it is not unlikely that he would have triumphed where Napoleon failed. Machiavelli tells us that Caesar’s plans were well laid and would not have miscarried, had it not been for a certain fatal accident, his eating of the poisoned meats at a banquet which Alexander had prepared for a dozen Cardinals, his enemies. Alexander ate, too, of these meats, and being an old man, succumbed to the poison; Caesar recovered partially and, when he staggered convalescent from his bed, he was told that his father had been a fortnight in the tomb, and that a new Pope, entirely out of sympathy with the Renaissance, had been elected. Caesar had to withdraw from Rome to Neppi, where he nearly died of a second attack — of what? Of Roman fever? — for I do not believe in the story of poisoned meats. The French were on foot for Naples and, having nowhere to lay his head, he begged permission to return to Rome.
My gardener’s rake ceased suddenly, and, opening my eyes, I saw him snail-hunting among the long blades of the irises.
It had been raining in the morning; he would get a good many; and my thoughts dropped back into a pleasant meditation regarding the nature of man and our lack of reverence for Caesar, who represented, more than any one who ever lived, the qualities that have enabled men to raise themselves above the lower animals. He was, I remember now, allowed to return to Rome; but no sooner was he there than it became plain to him that it would be useless to reassume the Cardinalate which he had abandoned. He had no chance of being elected to the Papacy, the late Pope having created many new Cardinals, all of whom were determined to oppose him. But Caesar had influence among the Spanish Cardinals, and he promised their votes to Julius in exchange for the office of Standard-Bearer to the Church. Julius agreed, but Caesar was deprived of the office, or perhaps it was never given to him. It seems a pity that Catholic history should be robbed of so picturesque an event as the accession of Caesar to the Papacy, but the next best thing happened: another Renaissance Pope was elected, Julius the Second — a warrior-Pope who entered Mirandola sword in hand, and gave Rome back to the paganism of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Del Sarto, Leonardo da Vinci, and Donatello.
These five great artists lived contemporaneously, and in a city called Florence, at that time not much bigger than Rathmines, every one of them as pagan as Caesar himself in their lives, and as Phidias in their art. Were Tonks here he would at once interrupt me, for he paints anecdotes; and, very anxious to defend his principles, he would say, Explain yourself, and if I know him, he would ask why the art of Michael Angelo is as pagan as that of Phidias. My answer would be that The Last Judgment is not an anecdote, but merely a pretext for drawing, and that Michael Angelo chose it for the same reason as Phidias chose Olympus — because it gave him an opportunity of exhibiting man in all his attributes and perfections. In The Holy Family Raphael discovered a like opportunity; and to make the Fornarina seem more beautiful he placed a child in her arms and another against her knees. Leonardo was not less a pagan than Raphael; it was pagan mysticism that inspired Our Lady of the Rocks and St Anne; and these pictures would certainly have been admired by the Apostate. Thou hast not conquered, Galilean, he would have cried out when he raised his eyes to the great temple that Michael Angelo was building for the glory of a Roman Emperor. He would have believed in Tetzel who went along the road shaking his money-box, crying, As your money falls into my till your soul will jump out of Hell; for he attached great importance to medals and amulets; but on meeting Luther he would have said, Why, this is Christianity over again; St Paul re-arisen. Julian hated St Paul and wrote confuting his doctrines, and he would have written against Luther who, ever since his visit to Rome, had been translating the Scriptures and praying that grace might be given to Rome to regain her lost Christianity — the very Christianity that Julian had striven against in the fourth century, a democratic Christianity, without a hierarchy, without external forms, in the heart, dear to Luther whose teaching was that, since Christ died on the Cross to save our souls, and left a Gospel for our guidance, it may be assumed that he left one that could be comprehended by everybody, otherwise he had died in vain. And everybody wondered why he had not understood before that Christianity is a personal thing given into every man’s own keeping, whereby he may save his own soul or lose it. The priest comes between me and Christ, was the universal cry in North Germany; England followed Germany, and the spirit of the Reformation swept through Sweden, Norway, Holland. France, the eldest daughter of the Church, nearly went over to Protestantism, Henry IV declaring that he would become a Catholic for the sake of Paris. The Papacy was in tragic times, two-thirds of Europe had slipped away from her, and to save the third that remained a Council assembled at Trent.
The shell has been cracked, and we are at the kernel of the argument, that hitherto everybody had gone his own way and thought very much as he pleased; but at Trent the Church drew a circle about faith and morals, forbidding speculation on the meaning of life and the con
duct of life, and arranging the Catholic’s journey from the cradle to the grave as carefully as any tour planned by that excellent firm, Messrs Cook and Sons. He who puts himself in the hands of this firm does not waste time inquiring out the departure and the arrival of trains and steamboats. Edward knows that if he goes to confession his sins will be forgiven him; that if he misses Mass he is guilty of mortal sin; if he loses his temper, of venial sin. If he didn’t believe these things he wouldn’t be a Catholic. So there we are, and all this is as simple as Columbia’s egg, but how strange that nobody should have seen before that Catholicism is an intellectual desert!
XII
IN MAYO, ALMOST in my own parish, was fought the most famous battle in Irish legend; from Mayo came Davitt, the Land League, and now a discovery which will re-create Ireland. The shepherds will fight hard, but the sword I found in my garden will prevail against the crozier, and by degrees the parish priest will pass away, like his ancestor the Druid.
I remembered the absurd review The Times published about the Descent of Man, and Matthew Arnold’s fine phrase about the difficulty of persuading men to rise out of the unclean straw of their intellectual habits — his very words, no doubt — and his wisest, for the human mind declines if not turned out occasionally; mental, like bodily, cleanliness is a habit; and when Papists have been persuaded to bring up their children Protestants the next generation may cross over to the Agnostic end of the quadrille. My co-religionists will not like to hear me say it, but I will say it all the same: Protestantism is but a stage in the human journey; and man will continue to follow his natural evolution despite the endless solemnity of Wolfgang Goethe, who captured the admiration of all the pundits when he said that it would have been better if Luther had never been born, meaning thereby that Luther saved perishing Christianity. Arnold, who is nearly as pompous as Goethe and more vindictive, saw that man likes to bide like a pig in a sty. But enough of Arnold; I must not lead my readers into thinking that a single striking phrase is sufficient condonation for his very Rugby prose, epitomised in that absurd line about seeing life steadily and seeing it whole, a line that led one generation gaping into the wilderness, John Eglinton heading it.... To John I shall have to go presently, but I shall have to tell AE the great news first. Today is Wednesday, Thursday, Friday — on Saturday night!
And on Saturday night I was out on my doorstep, looking down the street to see if AE were coming, trying to discover his appearance in that of every distant passer-by. He did not come, and dinner dragged itself slowly through its three courses, and vowing that I didn’t care a brass farthing whether he came or stayed, I rose up from the table and pitched myself into an armchair. All the same I was glad to hear his knock about nine. He came in sweeping a great mass of hair from his forehead and telling me that he had had to go to Foxrock to meet some man from Germany who had written a book about economics, and, having discussed rural banks all the afternoon, he was ready to talk to me about impressionist painting till midnight, and to read me an article which would have interested me if I had not been already absorbed by my idea.
AE, I’ve made a discovery that will revolutionise Ireland.
It seemed to me that he should start up from his chair and wave his hands; but he continued smoking his old pipe, looking at me from time to time, till at last there was nothing else for me to do but to throw myself upon his mercy, asking him if it weren’t very wonderful that nobody had noticed the fact that dogma and literature are incompatible. He seemed to think that everybody knew that this was so; and is there anything more discouraging than to find one’s daring definitions accepted as commonplace truths?
Then, my dear AE, you’ve been extraordinarily remiss. You should have gone down and preached in Bray, taking for your text, Dogma corrodes the intelligence. You weren’t stoned when you preached that —
The Catholics will not admit their intellectual inferiority.
But if the history of the world proves it?
All the same —
When I say no Catholic literature, of course I mean that ninety and five per cent of the world’s literature was written by Protestants and Agnostics.
Even so, AE answered, Catholics will continue to bring up their children in a faith that hasn’t produced a book worth reading since the Reformation.
Well, what’s to be done?
AE was dry, very dry. The German economist seemed to have taken all the sting out of him, and I began to see that in this new adventure he would be of little use to me. Rolleston has read every literature, but he had retired to Wicklow, his family having outgrown the house on Pembroke Road, and it was reported that he now was more interested in sheep than in books. Besides, he is a Protestant, and it would be more enlightening to hear a Catholic on the subject of my great discovery. A Catholic would have to put up some sort of defence, unless, indeed, he entrenched himself in theology, saying that it was no part of the business of Catholicism to consider whether dogma tended to encourage or repress literary activities. To this defence, the true one, I should have no answer.
Gill is my man, I said, as I got out of bed on Monday morning. He was educated at Trinity, and has lived in France. It will no doubt be disagreeable to him to listen to my proofs one after the other, but my business today is not to take Gill out for a pleasant walk, but to find out what defence an educated Catholic can put up.
Hullo, my dear Moore! Gill said, raising his eyes from his writing-table.
I’ve come to take you for a walk, Gill.
I’ll be ready in a few minutes.
And I watched my friend, who closed one eye curiously as he signed his letters, his secretary standing over him, handing them to him, one after the other, and answering questions until one of his lecturers came in, a man called Fletcher. The lecturer and Gill talked away, each answering the other as echoes do down a mountain-side, until at last I had to beg Fletcher to desist, and giving Gill his hat, I persuaded him out of the office down the stairs. Even when we were in the street he was undecided whether we should go along the square, wandering down Grafton street, or whether we should treat ourselves to the Pembroke Road. The hawthorns are in flower and thrushes are singing there. Gill agreed and we tripped along together, Gill yawning in the midst of his enjoyment, as is his wont — delightful little yawns. We yawn like dogs, a sudden gape and all is over; but Gill yawns like a cat, and a cat yawns as he eats, with gourmandise. We can read a cat’s yawn in his eyes long before it appears in his jaws. Tom settles himself and waits for the yawn, enjoying it in anticipation. His sensuality is expressed in his yawn; his moustaches go up just like a cat’s. His yawn is one of the sights of our town, and is on exhibition constantly at the Abbey Theatre. We do not go to the Abbey Theatre to watch it, but we watch it when we are at the Abbey, and we enjoy it oftener during a bad play than we do during a good one — The Play Boy distracts our attention from it, but when Deirdre is performed his yawns while our tedium away. His yawn is what is most real, most essential in him; it is himself; it inspires him; and out of his yawn wisdom comes. (Does this theory regarding the source of his wisdom conflict with an earlier theory?) He yawns in the middle of his own speeches, oftener, so I am assured, than any one of his auditors. He has been seen yawning in chapel, and it is said that he yawns even in those intimate moments of existence when — but I will not labour the point; we can have no exact knowledge on this subject whether or no Gill yawns when he — we will dismiss all the stories that have collected about these yawns as apocryphal, restricting our account to those yawns that happen — well, in our faces.
Gill and I leaned over Baggot Street Bridge, watching the canal-boat rising up in the lock, the opening of the gates to allow the boat to go through, and the hitching on of the rope to the cross-bar. The browsing-horse, roused by a cry, stuck his toes into the towing-path, and the strain began again all the way to the next lock, the boy flourishing a leafy bough, just pulled from the hedge. We continued our interrupted walk, glad that we had not been born canal-horses,
Gill’s step as airy as his thoughts, and, as we walked under flowering boughs, he began to talk to me about my volume of peasant stories. I was glad he did, for I had just found another translator, an Irish speaker, a Kerry man, and reckoned on this piece of news to interest him. But as soon as I mentioned that my friend was a Protestant and was going to take Orders, Gill spoke of Soupers, and on my asking him his reason for doing so, he said a man with so Irish a name, and coming from so Catholic a part of the country, could not have come from any but Catholic stock.
It has always seemed to me that if a man may modify his political attitude as Gill had done, the right to modify his spiritual can hardly be denied. But among Catholics the vert is regarded with detestation. With them religion is looked upon as a family inheritance, even more than politics. A damned irreligious lot, I thought, but did not speak my thought, for I wished the subject, dogma or literature, to arise naturally out of the conversation; I did not attempt to guide it, but just dropped a remark that even if the man in question came of Catholic stock and had separated himself from Roman formulas for worldly reasons, it did not seem to me that we should blame him, life being what it is, a tangle of motives. But it is difficult to stint oneself, and I was soon asking Gill for what reason would he have a man change his religion if pecuniary and sexual motives were excluded? No man ‘verts for theological, except Newman, I said. Do you know another? And during our walk all the reasons used for ‘verting were discussed. A new reason has just occurred to me, Gill — literature.
Rome was always the patron of the arts.
Pagan Rome, yes. Alexander VI saved the world from a revival of the Middle Ages by burning that disagreeable monk, Savonarola; and Julius II saved the Renaissance; but since the Council of Trent Catholics have almost ceased to write.
