by George Moore
Gill laughed a little recklessly and contented himself with saying, Yes, it is very extraordinary ... if it be a fact.
But, Gill, why not consider this question in our walk?
I would sooner that the defence of Catholicism were taken by one more capable than myself.
Whom would you care to see undertake the task if not yourself? He spoke of Father Tom Finlay. But it was Father Tom that set me thinking on this very subject, for when I said that Irish Catholics had written very little, he concurred, saying that Maynooth, with all its education, had not produced even a theological work — his very words.
Did he say that? Gill asked, with the interest that all Catholics take in every word that comes from their priests.
But I would sooner hear what you, a layman, have to say.
Flattered by the invitation, Gill’s somewhat meagre mind began to put forth long weedy sentences, and from these I gathered that I was possibly right in saying that the Church had defined her doctrines at the Council of Trent, and therefore it might be said that the Catholic mind was less free in the twentieth century than in the Middle Ages.
All the same, the great period of French literature came after the Reformation.
You know French literature as well as I do, Gill, and we’ll just run through it. French literature in the sixteenth century is represented by Descartes, Rabelais, and Montaigne, all three Agnostics. In the seventeenth century French literature in the Court of Louis Quatorze, which you look upon as the Golden Age, began with Corneille and Racine, but the tragedies of Corneille and Racine do not attempt any criticism of life and the conduct of life, for their heroes and heroines were not Christians and their ideas could not come under the ban of the Church.
Fénelon?
A gentle light suited to weak eyes, but remember always that my contention is not that no Catholic ever wrote a book, but that ninety-five per cent of the world’s literature is written by Agnostics and Protestants.
Bossuet?
A very elaborate and erudite rhetorician, whom Louis XIV employed to unite all the Protestant sects in one Gallican Church. He set himself to this task, but before it was finished Louis XIV had settled his differences with the Pope.
The beauty of Pascal’s writing you will not deny, and his Catholicism —
Is more than doubtful, Gill. The Port Royal School has always been suspected of Protestantism, and you will not deny that Pascal’s repudiation of the Sacraments justified the suspicion. Naturellement même cela vous fera croire et vous abêtira. A difficult phrase to translate, Gill; the best that I can do at this moment is, Sacraments help you to believe, but they stupefy you. But you know French as well as I do. Gill protested against my interpretation.
Then why was the phrase suppressed in the Port Royal edition by the Jesuits? Cousin restored it after referring to the original manuscript. Now, in the eighteenth century we have Voltaire, the deist, the arch-mocker, the real briseur de fers; Rousseau, a Protestant, whose writings it is said brought about the French Revolution; Diderot and Montesquieu. The nineteenth century in France was all Agnostic.
Chateaubriand!
You can have him and welcome, for through him we shall escape the danger of proving too much, but —
But what?
I was thinking of his name, which is very like him. Upon my word, Gill, our names are our souls. A most suitable name for the author of Le Génie du Christianisme, a name to be incised on the sepulchre at St Malo among the rocks out at sea, but he ordered that none should be put upon the slab; a name for an ambassador, a diplomatist, a religious reformer, but not one for a poet, an artist; a pompous ridiculous name, a soft, unreal name, a grandiose name, a windly name, a spongy name, spongy as a brioche — Chateaubrioche. And looking into Gill’s face I read a gentle distress. His books were a means to an end instead of being an end in themselves. To criticise him in a phrase that he would have appreciated, I might say, Je ne trouve dans ses oeuvres que vapeur et tumulte.
Whatever you may think of his writings, you cannot deny his Catholicism, and one of these days when I’m feeling less tired —
He wrote Le Génie du Christianisme in his mistress’s house, reading her a chapter every night before they went to bed. It is true that Catholics must have mistresses, as well as Protestants, but you are an Irish Catholic, and would be loath to admit as much. Chateaubriand was content to regret Atala, but Edward burnt his early poems. Verlaine was a Catholic and he was a great poet, there is no question about that, Gill. You see I am dealing fairly with you, but like Chateaubriand, Verlaine’s Catholicism ne l’a nullement gêné dans sa vie. He wrote lovely poems in the French language, some were pious, some were indecent, and he spaced them out in Parallèlement. He did not look upon Catholicism as a means of government, he just liked the Liturgy. Mary and the saints were pleasing to him in stained glass, and when he came out of prison he was repentant and wrote Sagesse. Paul Verlaine! Since the Elizabethan days, was a poet ever dowered with a more beautiful name? And his verses correspond to his name. Où donc est l’âme de Verlaine? A refrain for a ballad! What shall we say? Out of hatred of the Voltairean grocer my old friend Huysmanns plunged into magic. The more ridiculous the miracle the more he believed in it; and the French ecclesiastics would be sorry to have about them many Catholics like him. Upon my word, Gill, my theory that Catholicism hasn’t produced a readable book since the Reformation stands on more legs than four.
Some carts were passing at the time, and when the rattle of their wheels died down, I asked Gill what he thought of my discovery, but, detecting or seeming to detect a certain petulance in his voice, I interrupted:
But, Gill, I don’t see why the discussion should annoy you. It isn’t as if I were asking you to reconsider your position regarding the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, of Transubstantiation and the Pope’s Infallibility. So far as I know there is no dogma declaring that Catholics are not intellectually inferior to Protestants and Agnostics. Your religion leaves you quite free to accept my theory; indeed, I think it encourages you to do so, for does not Catholicism always prefer the obedient and the poor in spirit to the courageous, the learned, and the wise? And I spoke of the Imitation of Christ till Gill became so petulant that I thought it would be well to desist, and began to speak instead on one of his favourite subjects — compromise. At once he held forth, disclaiming the ideologues of the French Revolution, who would remake the world according to their idea, without regard to the facts of human nature, and then, as if preoccupied by his intellectual relationship with Machiavelli, Gill entered upon a discussion regarding the duties of a statesman, saying that all great reforms had been effected by compromise, and it was by her genius for compromise that England had built up the Empire; and he continued in this strain until at last it was impossible for me to resist the temptation to ask him to explain to me the difference between trimming and compromise, which he did very well, inflicting defeat upon me. The trimmer, he said, compromises for his own advantage, irrespective of the welfare of the State, but the statesman who compromises is influenced by his sympathy for the needs of humanity, which should not be changed too quickly.
And this, the lag end of our argument, carried us pleasantly back over Baggot Street Bridge, but at the corner of Herbert Street, the street in which Gill lives, I could not resist a Parthian shot.
But, Gill, if compromise be so essential in human affairs, is it not a pity that the Irish haven’t followed the example of the English? Especially in religion, I said.
As Gill did not answer me at once I followed him to the door of his house.
It can’t be denied that Protestantism is a compromise? This Gill had to admit. But it is not one, I said, that you are likely to accept. He laughed and I returned to Ely Place, pleased by the rickety lodging-house appearance of Baggot Street against the evening sky, and, for the moment forgetful of the incompatibility of dogma and literature, my thoughts melted into a meditation, the subject of which was that the sun sets nowhere so
beautifully as it does at the end of Baggot Street.
As the clocks had not yet struck seven, I turned into Stephen’s Green and followed the sleek borders of the brimming lake, admiring the willow-trees in their first greenness and their reflections in the tranquil water. The old eighteenth-century brick, the slender balconies and the wide flights of steps seemed conscious that they had fallen into evil days; and horrified at the sight of a shop that had been run up at the corner of the Green, I cried, Other shops will follow it, and this beautiful city of Dublin will become in very few years as garish as London. To keep Dublin it might be well to allow it to slumber in its Catholicism.
And at these words my talk with Gill, which had already become a memory, rose up before me. He isn’t a stupid man, I said, but why does his intelligence differ from mine and from the intelligence of every Protestant and Agnostic? We are different. Catholics lack initiative, I suppose that that is it. The Catholic mind loses its edge quickly. Sex sharpens it for a little while, but when the Catholic marries and settles down he very soon becomes like an old carving-knife that carves nothing. The two whetstones are sex and religious discussion, and we must keep passing our intelligences up one and down the other.
The ducks climbed out of the water. And the gulls? There was not one in the air nor on the water; and, after wondering a while if they had returned to the sea, I decided for good and all that I owed the preservation of my own intelligence to my theological interests. Some readers may prefer, or think they prefer, my earlier books, but none will deny that my intelligence has sharpened, whereas Gill’s — My cook will grumble if I keep dinner waiting, and I returned to Ely Place to eat, and to meditate on the effect of dogma on literature.
XIII
THE GREAT FRENCH writers of the nineteenth century were Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Balzac, Gautier, Michelet, Renan, Taine, Sainte-Beuve, Gérard de Nerval, Mérimée, les Goncourts, George Sand, Flaubert, Zola. Maupassant, and all these were Agnostics; Guizot was a Protestant, his historical works have I suppose some value; John Eglinton will tell me about him, and glad of an excuse for a visit to the National Library, I went forth after dinner to talk literature again, arriving in Kildare Street about half past nine, when John Eglinton was writing the last of those mysterious slips of paper, cataloguing, I think he calls it. A visitor is welcome after half past nine, and in the sizzle of electric light we debate till ten. Then he comes back to smoke a cigar with me or I go home with him. He lacks the long, clear vision of AE, but when an idea is brought close to him he appreciates it shrewdly and it is the surety that he will understand, a little later, my idea better than I understand it myself, that makes his first embarrassment so attractive to me.
In the evening I am about to relate I found him a little more short-sighted than usual; his little face wrinkled up as he sought to grasp, to understand my discovery that Catholics had not produced a book worth reading since the Reformation, for John Eglinton only understands his own thoughts, and it is with difficulty that he is rolled out of them.
You mean that all English literature has been produced in the Protestant tradition, but I’m afraid that Protestants will think this is a somewhat too obvious truth. Of course, we all know that Chaucer is the only English Catholic poet —
My dear John Eglinton, you’ve not understood! A worried look came into his face, and in his desire to understand he seemed like getting cross with me. My belief is that Catholic countries haven’t produced a book.
John gasped.
But France?
We went into that question, and were talking of Pascal when the attendant came in to ask John for the keys; it was three minutes to ten.
Shall I ring the bell, sir?
John agreed that the bell might be rung, and we watched the odd mixture of men and women leave their books on the counter and go through the turnstiles. John had to wait till the last left, and the last was a little old gentleman about five feet high who has come to the library every night for the last thirty years to read Dickens and nothing but Dickens. He passed through the turnstile; we followed him; the fireman was consulted; and when all the lights were out John was free to go for a walk with me, and I think it was in Baggot Street that I succeeded in bringing home to him the importance of my discovery.
But Spain? he interjected. Don Quixote?
Spanish literature is contemporaneous with the Council of Trent when the Church defined her dogmas, and —
And Don Quixote is as unethical, he said, as David Copperfield.
Whatever merit Lope de Vega may have had in his day, he has none now; and we discussed for a while the interesting question whether the merits of books are permanent or temporary. Byron’s poetry conquered Europe, and today everybody knows it to be doggerel; and in our understanding Calderon’s plays are merely rows of little wooden figures moved hither and thither by a mind that seems gracious despite his conviction that the Inquisition was a kind and beneficent institution. All the same Shelley and Goethe admired Calderon; Shelley translated some pages, and John Eglinton agreed with me that these are the only pages of Shelley that we cannot read. He spoke of St Patrick’s Purgatory.
It passes beyond perception, and he laughed steadily.
Calderon, in spite of his piety, didn’t succeed in avoiding heresy, for in ecclesiastic zeal he seems to have identified himself with Antinomianism. Perhaps he was condemned. You quite understand that my point isn’t that a Catholic hasn’t written a book since the Reformation, but that ninety and nine per cent, well, ninety and five per cent of the literature of the world has been produced by Protestants and Agnostics.
I see what you mean now, and the dear little man of the puckered face listened on his doorstep to an exhortation to write a little more of that beautiful English which he so wastefully spends in his conversation. He listened, but unwillingly; he does not like my literary exhortations, and I pondered on his future as I walked home. He will sink deeper and deeper into his armchair, and into his own thoughts.
The closing of the public-houses told me that it must be near eleven, and the thought of dear Edward sitting behind his screen, smoking, led me to Leinster Street. The Sword Motive brought the candle-light glimmering down the stairs; the door opened, and two old cronies went upstairs to talk once more of painting and literature — two old cronies who had known each other in boyhood, who had talked all through our lives on the same subjects, Edward feeling things perhaps a little deeper than I have ever done. When the Master Builder has been played he walks from the theatre into the Green, and sits under the hawthorns in some secluded spot, his eyes filled with tears at the memory, as he would say it himself, of so much beauty. Was it Yeats described him as the sketch of a great man — the sketch, he said; l’ébauche better realises his idea of dear Edward; but Yeats does not know French; and while my eyes followed Edward about the room I wondered if it would be wise for me to exchange, were it possible, a wine-glass of intelligence for a rummer of temperament. We have gone through life together, myself charging windmills, Edward holding up his hands in amazement.
More culture and less common sense than the Spanish original, I said, and I watched him moving ponderously about his ungainly room, so like himself. There is something eternal about Edward, an entity come down through the ages, and myself another entity. Reciprocating entities, I said, glancing at some pictures of famous churches. (Edward pins photographic reproductions on the dusty wallpaper.) A beautiful church caught my eye, and, desiring Edward’s criticism of it, as one desires an old familiar tune, I asked him if the church were an ancient or a modern one; and, answering that it was one of Pugin’s churches, he lifted his glasses up on his nose and peered into the photograph, absorbed for some moments by the beauty which he perceived in it.
The church set us talking of Pugin’s genius, and whether the world would ever invent a new form of architecture, or whether the age of architecture was over and done like the Stone and the Bronze Ages. Edward’s churchwarden was now drawing famously, his glass of
grog was by his side, and the nights in the Temple, when he used to tell me that he would like to write his plays in Irish, rose up before me. All his prejudices are the same, I said, more intense, perhaps; he is a little older, a little more liable to catch cold, and he spoke to me of the necessity of a screen to protect him from the draught coming under the door.
Have a cigar. He pushed the box towards me and continued to smoke his pipe.
Although not a priest, there is something hierarchic about him, and I thought of Ancient Egypt and then of our friendship. It was drawing to a close mysteriously as a long summer evening. We shall not see much of each other at the end of our lives, I said, wondering how the separation was going to come about, not liking to tell him of my great discovery, fearing to pain him.
You’re very silent tonight, George, he jerked out, breaking the silence at last. Of what are you thinking?
Of a great discovery —
What, another! I thought you had come to the end of them. Your first was the naturalistic novel, your second impressionistic painting —
My third was your plays, Edward, and the Irish Renaissance which is but a bubble.
Oh, it’s only a bubble, is it? he said, his jolly great purple face shaking like a jelly.
You may laugh, I said, but it is no laughing matter for the Catholic Church if it can be shown that no Catholic has written a book since the Reformation. I wish you wouldn’t laugh like that.
At the end of the next fit of laughter he bit a piece off the end of his churchwarden, and, getting up from the sofa, he searched for another along the chimney-piece, and, when he had filled it, he said to me, who had been sitting quite silent:
Now, tell me about this new mare’s-nest.
I’ve told you already. There has been no Catholic literature since the Reformation, and very little before it. Boccaccio and Ariosto were pagans, Michael Angelo and Raphael —
