by George Moore
Even if what you say be true, it seems to me that the small languages should be preserved. You were in favour of the movement till —
There’s no using going over the whole argument again. You’ve tried to bring up your children Irish speakers, and have failed.
The Colonel laughed, for he could not deny that he had failed in this respect.
They must have professions.
You would like other people to sacrifice their children’s chances of life for the sake of the Irish language, but you are not prepared to go as far as you would like others to go. You will only go half-way.
How is that?
You bring them up Catholics. The younger is in a convent school, and the elder is now with the Jesuits. I don’t think that our father would have approved of the narrow, bigoted education which they are receiving.
I cannot see why. He never disapproved of the religious orders.
You must feel that the atmosphere of a convent isn’t manly, and will rob the mind of something, warp or bias it in a direction —
Of which you don’t approve?
It seems to me that the mind of the child should be allowed to grow up more naturally.
You can’t let a boy grow up naturally. He must be brought up in some theory of what is right and what is wrong. Now, I ask why my children should be taught your right and wrong rather than mine?
I admit that they must be taught something.
Once you admit that, it seems to me that the parent is the proper person.
It all depends on what you mean by teaching. The Jesuit says: Give me the boy till he is fourteen and I don’t care who gets him after. And his words mean that the mind shall be so crushed that he will for ever remain dependent. I don’t know if you remember a story ... our mother used to tell of a beggar woman who went about Ireland with four or five blind children, their eyes resembling the eyes of those who are born blind so closely that every oculist was deceived. But one day a child’s crying attracted attention, but it was discovered that the mother had tied walnut-shells over his eyes, and in each shell was a beetle; the scratching of the beetle on the eyeball produced the appearance of natural blindness — an ingenious method, part, no doubt, of the common folklore of Europe, come down to us from the Middle Ages when the Courts of Kings had to be kept supplied with dwarfs, eunuchs, buffoons; amusing disfigurements were the fashion, and high prices were paid for them. We are too sensitive to hear even how a permanent leer may be put on a child’s face, but we are very much interested in the crushing, I should say the moulding, of children’s minds, and all over Europe the Jesuits are busy preparing monstrosities for the Courts of Heaven.
My dear George, St Francis of Assisi and St Teresa, whom you admire so much, were prepared for Heaven in the Catholic religion, and there are others. St John of the Cross is one to whom I am sure you will graciously extend your admiration.
To them, certainly, much rather than to the inevitable Aquinas; but those you mention belong to the Middle Ages.
Not St Teresa.
The Middle Ages existed in Spain long after St Teresa, for the burning of heretics went on till the end of the eighteenth century. Religions! The world is littered with religions; they grow, flourish, and die, and if you can’t see that Christianity is dying —
The Colonel spoke of revivals.
After each revival, I said, it grows fainter, and would be dead long ago if it hadn’t been that children are taken young and their minds crushed. The Jesuits have admitted that that is so. Give me the child, they cry.
Toby has learnt nothing from the nuns except a shocking accent, and Rory is learning very little, and dislikes the Jesuits. I’m thinking of sending him to the Benedictines.
Monks or priests, it’s all the same. You know how worthless the education was which we received at Oscott.
There was none. I admit that priests don’t seem to be very good educationalists.
Then why have your sons educated by priests? Priests are in all the Catholic schools, but there are excellent Protestant schools —
And bring them up Protestants?
Why not?
You, an Agnostic!
Protestantism is harmless, as I have often pointed out to you. It leaves the mind free, or very nearly.
I can understand that you, who seem constitutionally incapable of seeing anything in life but art, should prefer Agnosticism, but I don’t understand your proposing a Christian dogma for my children that you yourself don’t believe in.
Don’t you? Would you like to hear?
Very much.
I’ll give you three excellent reasons. I look upon Protestantism as a sort of safeguard —
A sort of vaccine?
Just so. If the Agnostic catches the smallpox he generally catches it in an acute form; and ninety-five per cent remain in the religion they are brought up in. Isn’t that so?
Well, let us hear your second reason.
Protestantism supplies a book out of which the child can learn. I think it is John Eglinton who says in one of his essays that, however beautifully a book may be written, it will not be read by the multitude for the sake of its style. Shakespeare is read in England, for England produced Shakespeare; and the Bible is read in England, for the Bible produced Protestantism. And Protestantism produced the Irish Bible, the one beautiful book you have. Catholics are forbidden to read it.
A stupid prohibition, for the difference between the Catholic and the Protestant version is so slight that not one reader in ten thousand would be able to trace it.
Yes, isn’t it stupid? But what is to be done? I can think of nothing — can you? We learnt no English at Oscott; any English I know I learnt in Sussex out of the Prayer-book, and gossiping with the labourers, bailiffs, and especially with gamekeepers; gamekeepers speak the best English. I can’t tell why, but it is so.
A new reason for preserving the game laws. A sally at which we both laughed.
But I was going to give you a third reason for my preference for Protestantism. Protestantism engenders religious discussion. You’ll admit that?
Indeed I will, and can imagine nothing more useless or tedious.
Useless it may be for the Catholic, who goes from the cradle to the grave with every point of interest settled for him. How, then, can Catholics be intelligent? We know they’re not. But what is much more interesting is the fact that they know themselves they are not intelligent. They admit it freely. At dinner the other day I met a Catholic and spoke to him on this subject. He answered me that the Catholic religion absorbs a man’s mind so completely that no energy is left for literary activities, only enough for the practical business of life.
I hate Catholics who speak like that. They’re worse than Protestants. There are Uriah Heeps, I admit, and plenty of them, in our Church.
Servant-maids and working-folk are quite free from hypocrisy, and often I’ve heard them say, It’s strange we don’t get on as well as Protestants. Once I heard a beggar in Galway saying, There must be something in Protestants since they get on so well in the world. A wiser man than you, my dear friend, or shall I say a less prejudiced one? You remember I told you there was no Catholic literature when you were last in Dublin, but I only half stated my case; the discussion wandered into an argument about Newman.
And what have you discovered since then?
That Russian literature is against you, Scandinavian, too, and, worst of all, North and South America.
The mention of North and South America roused the Colonel, and he did not hesitate to say that it always astonished him that North America had produced so little literature.
I believe that South America can show some records of missionary work done among the Indians.
The Colonel replied that South America was colonised much later than North America — an answer which angered me, for I knew that the Colonel was relying on my ignorance of history.
The first colonisations were made in Peru and Brazil, you know that very well. But what c
an it profit you to insist that Catholics have written books since the Reformation? What can it profit you to deny facts? Of course there is a book or two — one per cent, two per cent of the world’s literature — but if you were to tell me that there is no negro literature, you would think me very stupid if I were to answer, Yes, there is. I can produce a good many songs from Hayti, and I once knew a negro who had written a novel. Catholic literature has declined steadily since the Reformation, and today it is one degree better than Sambo.
No sooner had the words passed my lips than I saw I had, as the phrase goes, given myself away, for the negroes are nearly all Methodists or Wesleyans, and I mentioned the fact to the Colonel, feeling sure that if I did not do so he would mention it himself, but he refused to accept my suggestion, saying that he had once believed that religion was race and climate, but he thought so no longer. He has sunk deeper into Catholicism than I thought, for he believes now in a universal truth; for him there is no hope, but I cannot allow his children to perish without saying a word in their favour, and I spoke of Rory and Toby again.
My children will have as good a chance of making their way as I have had. I was brought up a Catholic.
Why shouldn’t your children have a better chance?
The only way, said the impassible Colonel, that children may be educated is either by abolishing religious education in the schools, and nobody is in favour of that, or by sending them to schools in which they will be taught the religion of their parents.
But what you call bringing up children in the religion of their parents is estranging them from every other influence, until they become incapable of thinking for themselves. Give me the child till he’s fourteen, and I don’t care who gets him afterwards. There is no question of religious truth; there is no such thing, we know that; what concerns me is that your truth is being forced upon your boys to the exclusion of every other. You keep them from me lest they should hear mine.
I hope you will never say anything in the presence of my children that would be likely to destroy their faith. I rely on your honour.
It is no part of my honour to withhold the truth, or what I believe to be the truth, from any human being. The fact that you happen to be their father doesn’t give you the right over their minds to deform and mutilate them as you please, any more than it gives you the right to mutilate their bodies. Gelding and splaying — You don’t claim such rights, do you?
And do you claim the right to seek my children out and destroy their faith?
Can you define the difference between faith and superstition? The right I claim is that of every human being, to speak what he believes to be the truth to whomever he may meet on his way. Brotherhood doesn’t forfeit me that right.
Then I am to understand that you will seek my children out?
Seek them out, no. But do you keep them out of my way. But, if you think like this, you’d have done better not to have married a Protestant. I suppose your children believe their mother will go to hell; and if you love Ireland as well as you profess to, why did you go into the English army?
It’s impossible for me to continue this argument any longer, your intention being to say what you think will wound me most. What you have just said I know to have been said with a view to wounding my feelings.
No, but to express my mind. So they’re not to get a chance? Well, it’s a shame. Why shouldn’t their mother have as much voice as you have in their education? Why shouldn’t I have a voice?
In the education of my children!
We haven’t an idea in common. We are as much separated as though we came from the ends of the earth; yet we were brought up together in the same house, we learnt the same lessons.
The Colonel walked out of the room suddenly, and I heard him take his hat from the table in the hall and go out of the house. The door closed behind him, and I sat in the silence, alarmed by his sudden departure. It seemed to me that I could see him walking, hardly conscious of the street he was passing through, absorbed by the horrible quarrel that had been thrust upon us, a quarrel that might never.... And I began to quake at the thought that we might never be friends again.
The argument had been conducted in quite a friendly spirit, here and there a little heated, but no more, till words had been put into my mouth that wounded him to the quick, sending him out of the house. He would come back, and forgive me, no doubt. But was it sure that he would? And even if he did, the quarrel would begin again the next time we met; the discussion had never ceased since the day he had unsuspectingly come up from Mayo to argue against me that literature and dogma are not incompatible. No matter what the subject of our conversation might be, it drifted sooner or later into religious argument, into something about Protestants and Catholics, and a moment after we were angry, hostile, alienated. Since boyhood our lives had been lived apart, but we had been united by mutual love and remembrances, and as the years went by we had begun to dream that the end of our lives should be lived out together. He had written from South Africa that there was no one he would care to live with as much as with me, and no words that I can call upon can tell the eagerness with which I awaited his return from the Boer War. He was coming home on six months’ leave; and three of these he spent with me in Ely Place — delightful months in which we seemed to realise the dearest wishes of our hearts. Our common love of Ireland brought us closer together than we had hoped was possible ... and then? Bitterness, strife, disunion. He had been an idol in my eyes, and my idol lay broken in pieces about me — broken, and by whom? God knows; not by me ... I swear it. That he would not write a book about camp-life in South Africa was a disappointment to me; his dilatoriness in getting grandfather’s manuscript in order was another; and now his sticking to Catholicism, despite the proofs that I had laid before him of its inherent illiteracy, had estranged us completely.
An endless whirl of thoughts, and a sudden pause on a recollection of the words I had used: If you hate Protestantism, why did you marry a Protestant? There could be no great harm in saying that. A man who has been married for fifteen years generally knows his wife’s religion. Nor in the remark that followed it, that notwithstanding his love of Ireland he had gone into the English army; for a man does not go into the English army and remain in it for thirty years without knowing that he is in it; and I began to wonder if he had gone into the army because he was afraid he could not make his living in any other way? Or was there behind his mind, far back in it, some little flickering thought that if Ireland rose against English dominion he would be able to bring to the services of his country the tactics he had learnt in the enemy’s ranks? A sentiment of that kind would be very like him, and I fell to thinking of him, following his life from the beginning of his manhood up to the present time. All his dreams had been of the Irish race, of its literature, of its traditions, and his clinging to Catholicism can be accounted for by his love of Ireland. Or was it that his mind lacked elasticity, and that he failed at the right moment to twist himself out of the theological snare? It must have been so, for one day, while playing at Red Indians in the woods of Moore Hall, during a rest under the lilac-bush that grows at the turn of the drive, I had asked him if he intended to continue to believe in all the priest said about his Sacraments and about God. A look came into his face, and he answered that he couldn’t do without it — meaning religion. But why that religion? I asked. The idea of changing his religion seemed to frighten him even more than dropping religion altogether, and he has persisted in that faith, trying to believe all it enjoins, his thoughts and his deeds going down parallel lines — a true Irishman, his dreams always in conflict with reality....
It seemed to me that some time had passed, for when I awoke from my reverie I was thinking of Balzac, thinking that I had read somewhere that it is not ideas which divide us, but le choc des caractères. Balzac must have written very casually when he wrote that, for surely the very opposite is the case. Men are drawn together by their ideas; temperament counts for nothing, or for very little. But it i
s temperament, I said, that creates our ideas, and my mind reverted to the Colonel, and he stood up in my mind, Ireland in essence, the refined melancholy of her mountains and lakes, and her old castles crumbling among the last echoes of a dying language. In his face, so refined and melancholy, I could trace a constant conflict between dreams and reality, and it is this conflict that makes Ireland so unsuccessful. But I stop, perceiving that I am falling into the stuff one writes in the newspapers. Why judge anybody? Analyse, state the case; that is interesting, but pass no judgments, for all judgments are superficial and transitory. The Colonel has always been a sentimentalist. Something seemed to break in my mind. Yes, a sentimentalist he has always been. Now I understand him, and I thought for a long while, understanding not only my brother, but human nature much better than I had done at the beginning of the evening. It was like looking under the waves, seeing down to the depths where strange vegetation moves and lives. The waves flowed on and on, and I peered, and I dreamed, and I thought, awaking suddenly with this cry upon my lips: Freed from the artificial life of the army he is free to follow an idea, and the Gael loves to follow an idea rather than a thing, and the more shadowy and elusive the idea the greater the enchantment it lends, and he follows the ghost of his language now with outstretched arms. But how little feeling there is in me! I cried, starting up from my chair. My brother all this while walking the streets, his heart rent, and I sitting, meditating, dissecting him, arguing with myself.
Now, the question to be settled was whether I should go to bed or wait for him to come in. To go to bed would be wiser, and speak to him in the morning. But I should lie awake all night, thinking. It seemed impossible to go to sleep until some understanding had been arrived at.
XVII
THERE SEEMED A little strain in his voice, and I wondered what thoughts had passed through his mind last night about me, and if his affection for me had really changed.
If you leave like this it will never be the same again, and I begged of him not to go away. You thought that I spoke with the express intention of wounding your feelings, but you are wrong.
