J. Arthur Thomson - "The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4)"

Henry David Thoreau - "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"

Benjamin Disraeli - "Ixion In Heaven"

Virgil and Voltaire - "The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

My New Curate

P >> P.A. Sheehan >> My New Curate




I admit that Hannah's scorn for my scanty belongings was well bestowed.
The sofa, which appeared to affect her aesthetic sense most keenly, was
certainly a dilapidated article. Having but three legs, it leaned in a
loafing way against the wall, and its rags of horsehair and protruding
springs gave it a most trampish and disreputable appearance. The chairs
were solid, for the smith had bound them in iron clamps. And the
carpet?--Well, I pitied it. It was threadbare and transparent. Yet,
when I looked around, I felt no feminine scorn. They all appealed to me
and said:--

"We have been forty years in your service. We have seen good things and
evil things. Our faces are familiar to you. We have spent ourselves in
your service."

And I vowed that, even under the coming exigencies, when I should have
to put on an appearance of grace and dignity,--exigencies which I
clearly foresaw the moment my curate made his appearance, these old
veterans should never be set aside or cast as lumber, when their
aristocratic friends would make their appearance. And my books looked at
me as much as to say:--

"You're not ashamed of us?"

No, dear silent friends, I should be the meanest, most ungrateful of
mortals if I could be ashamed of you. For forty years you have been my
companions in solitude; to you I owe whatever inspirations I have ever
felt; from you have descended in copious streams the ideas that raised
my poor life above the commonplace, and the sentiments that have
animated every good thing and every holy purpose that I have
accomplished. Friends that never obtruded on my loneliness by idle
chatter and gossip, but always spoke wise, inspiriting things when most
I needed them; friends that never replied in irritation to my own
disturbed imaginings, but always uttered your calm wisdom like voices
from eternity, to soothe, to control, or to elevate; friends that never
tired and never complained; that went back to your recesses without a
murmur; and never resented by stubborn silence my neglect,--treasures of
thought and fountains of inspiration, you are the last things on earth
on which my eyes shall rest in love, and like the orphans of my flock
your future shall be my care. True, like your authors, you look
sometimes disreputable enough. Your clothes, more to my shame, hang
loose and tattered around you, and some of your faces are ink-stained or
thumb-worn from contact with the years and my own carelessness. I would
dress you in purple and fine linen if I may, yet you would reproach me
and think I was weary of your homely faces. Like the beggar-maid you
would entreat to be allowed to go back from queenly glory and pomp to
the tatters and contentment of your years. So shall it be! but between
you and me there must be no divorce, so long as time shall last for me.
Other friends will come and go, but nothing shall dissolve our union
based upon gratitude and such love as man's heart may have for the ideal
and insensible.

When there had been time for perfecting all his arrangements, I strolled
down to pay a formal visit to Father Letheby. The atmosphere of absolute
primness and neatness struck my senses when I entered. Waxed floors,
dainty rugs, shining brasses, coquettish little mirrors here and there,
a choice selection of daintily bound volumes, and on a writing desk a
large pile of virgin manuscript, spoke the scholar and the gentleman. My
heart sank, as I thought how sick of all this he will be in a few weeks,
when the days draw in, and the skies scowl, and the windows are washed,
and the house rocked under the fierce sou'westers that sweep up the
floor of the Atlantic, and throw all its dripping deluges on the little
hamlet of Kilronan. But I said:--

"You have made a cosey little nest for yourself, Father Letheby; may you
long enjoy it."

"Yes," he said, as if answering my horrible scepticism, "God has been
very good to send me here."

Now what can you do with an optimist like that?

"There is just one drawback," I said, with a faint attempt at humor, "to
all this aestheticism." I pointed to a window against which four very
dirty noses were flattened, and four pairs of delighted eyes were
wandering over this fairy-land, and a dirty finger occasionally pointed
out some particularly attractive object.

"Poor little things," he said, "it gives them pleasure, and does me no
harm."

"Then, why not bring them in?" I said.

"Oh, no," he replied, with a little laugh, "I draw the line there." He
pointed to the shining waxed floors. "Besides, it would destroy their
heaven. To touch and handle the ideal, brings it toppling down about our
ears."

We spoke long and earnestly about a lot of things. Then, looking a
little nervously at me, he made a great leap of thought.

"Would you mind my saying a serious word to you, sir?" said he.

"Certainly not," I replied, "go ahead."

"It seems to me, then," he said, deliberately, "that we are not making
all that we might out of the magnificent possibilities that lie at our
disposal. There is no doubt things are pretty backward in Ireland. Yet,
we have an intelligent people, splendid natural advantages,--an
infernally bad government, it is true,--but can we not share the blame
with the government in allowing things to remain as they are? Now, I am
not an advocate for great political designs: I go in for
decentralization, by which I mean that each of us should do his very
best exactly in that place where Providence has placed him. To be
precise, what is there to prevent us from improving the material
condition of these poor people? There is a pier to be built. I am told
shoals of fish whiten the sea in the summer, and there are no appliances
to help our fishermen to catch them and sell them at a vast profit.
There is an old mill lying idle down near the creek. Why not furnish it
up, and get work for our young girls there? We have but a poor water
supply; and, I am told, there is a periodical recurrence of fever.
Pardon me, sir," he continued, "if I seem to be finding fault with the
ministry of the priests here, but I am sure you do not misunderstand
me?"

"Certainly not," said I, "go on."

And he went on with his airy optimism, drawing wonderful castles with
the light pencils of his young fancy, and I seemed to hear my own voice
echoing back from thirty years long passed by, when the very same words
were on my lips and the same ideas throbbed through my brain. But would
it be kind to leave him undeceived? I decided not.

"Your first step," I said, "is to see the landlord, who owns the sloping
fields and the foreshore."

"Certainly," he said, "that's quite easy. What's his address?" He took
up his note-book.

"I am not quite sure," I replied. "He is probably this moment staking
half his property on the red at Monte Carlo, or trying to peep into a
harem at Stamboul, or dining off bison steak in some canon in the
Sierras."

He looked shocked.

"But his agent,--his representative?"

"Oh! he's quite available. He will be very polite, and tell you in well
chosen words that he can do--nothing."

"But the Governmental Office,--the Board of Works?"

"Quite so. You'll write a polite letter. It will be answered in four
weeks to the day: 'We beg to acknowledge receipt of your communication,
which shall have our earliest attention.' You'll write again. Reply in
four weeks: 'We beg to acknowledge receipt of your communication, which
we have placed before the Board.' You'll hear no more on the matter. But
don't let me depress you!"

"But is there no redress? What about Parliament?"

"Oh, to be sure! A question will be asked in the House of Commons. The
Chief Secretary will reply: 'The matter is under the deliberation of the
Board of Works, with whose counsels we do not wish to interfere.'"

He was silent.

"About the factory," I continued. "You know there is a large shirt
factory in Loughboro, six miles away. If you apply to have a branch
factory established here, the manager will come down, look at the store,
turn up his nose, ask you where are you to find funds to put the
building in proper order, and do you propose to make the store also a
fish-curing establishment; and then he will probably write what a
high-born lady said of the first Napoleon: 'Il salissait tout ce qu'il
touchait.'"

"It's a damned lie," said Father Letheby, springing up, and, I regret to
say, demolishing sundry little Japanese gimcracks, "our people are the
cleanest, purest, sweetest people in the world in their own personal
habits, whatever be said of their wretched cabins. But you are not
serious, sir?"

He bent his glowing eyes upon me. I liked his anger. And I liked very
much that explosive expletive. How often, during my ministry, did I
yearn to be able to utter that emphatic word! Mind, it is not a
cuss-word. It is only an innocent adjective--condemned. But what
eloquence and emphasis there is in it! How often I could have flung it
at the head of a confirmed toper, as he knelt at my feet to take the
pledge. How often I could have shot it at the virago, who was disturbing
the peace of the village; and on whom my vituperation, which fell like a
shot without powder, made no impression! It sounded honest. I like a
good fit of anger, honest anger, and such a gleam of lightning through
it.

"I am," I said, "quite serious. You want to create a Utopia. You forget
your Greek."

He smiled.

"I am reserving the worst," I said.

"What is it?" he cried. "Let me know the worst."

"Well," I said slowly, "the people won't thank you even in the
impossible hypothesis that you succeed."

He looked incredulous.

"What! that they won't be glad to lift themselves from all this squalor
and misery, and be raised into a newer and sweeter life?"

"Precisely. They are happy. Leave them so. They have not the higher
pleasures. Neither have they the higher perils. 'They sow not, neither
do they spin.' But neither do they envy Solomon in all his glory. Jack
Haslem and Dave Olden sleep all day in their coracles. They put down
their lobster pots at night. Next day, they have caught enough of these
ugly brutes to pay for a glorious drunk. Then sleep again. How can you
add to such happiness? By building a schooner, and sending them out on
the high seas, exposed to all the dangers of the deep; and they have to
face hunger and cold and death, for what? A little more money, and a
little more drink; and your sentence: Why didn't he leave us alone?
Weren't we just as well off as we were? which is the everlasting song
of your respected predecessor, only he put it in Latin: _Cui bono?_"

He pondered deeply for a long time. Then he said: "It sounds sensible;
but there is some vile fallacy at the bottom of it. Anyhow, I'll try.
Father, give me your blessing!"

"There again," I said, "see how innocent you are. You don't know the
vernacular."

He looked surprised.

"When you know us better," I answered, in reply to his looks, "you will
understand that by that formula you ask for a drink. And as I don't
happen to be under my own roof just now--"

His glorious laugh stopped me. It was like the ringing of a peal of
bells.

"No matter," he said. "I may go on?"

"Certainly," I replied. "You'll have a few gray hairs in your raven
locks in twelve months time,--that's all."

"What a hare," I thought as I went home, "is madness, the youth, to leap
over the meshes of good counsel, the cripple." Which is not mine, but
that philosopher, Will Shakespeare; or is it Francis Bacon?




CHAPTER V

A SLIGHT MISUNDERSTANDING


Father Letheby commenced sooner than I had expected.

I think it was about nine or ten days after his formal instalment in his
new house, just as I was reading after breakfast the _Freeman's Journal_
of two days past, the door of my parlor was suddenly flung open, a bunch
of keys was thrown angrily on the table, and a voice (which I recognized
as that of Mrs. Darcy, the chapel woman), strained to the highest
tension of indignation, shouted:--

"There! and may there be no child to pray over my grave if ever I touch
them again! Wisha! where in the world did you get him? or where did he
come from, at all, at all? The son of a jook! the son of a draper over
there at Kilkeel. Didn't Mrs. Morarty tell me how she sowld socks to
his ould father? An' he comes here complaining of dacent people! 'Dirt,'
sez he. 'Where?' sez I. 'There,' sez he. 'Where?' sez I. I came of as
dacent people as him. Wondher _you_ never complained. But you're too
aisy. You always allow these galivanters of curates to crow over you.
But I tell you I won't stand it. If I had to beg my bread from house to
house, I won't stand being told I'm dirty. Why, the ladies of the
Great House said they could see their faces in the candlesticks; and
didn't the Bishop say 't was the natest vestry in the diocese? And this
new cojutor with his gran' accent, which no one can understand, and his
gran' furniture, and his whipster of a servant, begor, no one can stand
him. We must all clear out. And, after me eighteen years, scrubbing, and
washing, and ironing, wid me two little orphans, which that blackguard,
Jem Darcy (the Lord have mercy on his sowl!) left me, must go to
foreign countries to airn me bread, because I'm not good enough for his
reverence. Well, 't is you'll be sorry. But, if you wint down on your
two binded knees and said: 'Mrs. Darcy, I deplore you to take up them
kays and go back to your juties,' I wouldn't! No! Get some whipster
that will suit his reverence. Mary Darcy isn't good enough."

[Illustration: "My door was suddenly flung open, and a bunch of keys was
thrown angrily on the table."]

She left the room, only to return. She spoke with forced calmness.

"De thrifle of money you owe me, yer reverence, ye can sind it down to
the house before I start for America. And dere's two glasses of althar
wine in the bottle, and half a pound of candles."

She went out again, but returned immediately.

"The surplus is over at Nell O'Brien's washing, and the black vestment
is over at Tom Carmody's since the last station. The kay of the safe is
under the door of the linny[1] to de left, and the chalice is in the
basket, wrapped in the handkercher. And, if you don't mind giving me a
charackter, perhaps, Hannah will take it down in the evening."

She went out again; but kept her hand on the door.

"Good by, your reverence, and God bless you! Sure, thin, you never said
a hard word to a poor woman." Then there was the sound of falling
tears.

To all this tremendous philippic I never replied. I never do reply to a
woman until I have my hand on the door handle and my finger on the key.
I looked steadily at the column of stocks and shares on the paper,
though I never read a word.

"This is rather a bad mess," said I. "He is coming out too strong."

The minute particulars I had from Hannah soon after. Hannah and Mrs.
Darcy are not friends. Two such village potentates could not be friends
any more than two poets, or two critics, or two philosophers. As a rule,
Hannah rather looked down on the chapel woman, and generally addressed
her with studied politeness. "How are you _to-day_, Mrs. Darcy?" or more
frequently, "Good _morning_, Mrs. Darcy." On the other hand, Mary Darcy,
as arbitress at stations, wakes, and weddings, had a wide influence in
the parish, and I fear used to speak contemptuously sometimes of my
housekeeper. But now there was what the newspapers call a Dual Alliance
against the newcomers, and a stern determination that any attempt at
superiority should be repressed with a firm hand, and to Mrs. Darcy's
lot it fell to bear the martyrdom of high principle and to fire the
first shot, that should be also the final one. And so it was, but not in
the way Mrs. Darcy anticipated.

It would appear, then, that Father Letheby had visited the sacristy, and
taken a most minute inventory of its treasures, and had, with all the
zeal of a new reformer, found matters in a very bad state. Now, he was
not one to smile benignantly at such irregularities and then throw the
burden of correcting them on his pastor. He was outspoken and honest. He
tore open drawers, and drew out their slimy, mildewed contents, sniffed
ominously at the stuffy atmosphere, flung aside with gestures of
contempt some of Mrs. Darcy's dearest treasures, such as a magnificent
reredos of blue paper with gold stars; held up gingerly, and with curled
lip, corporals and purificators, and wound up the awful inspection with
the sentence:--

"I never saw such abominable filth in my life."

Now, you may accuse us in Ireland of anything you please from coining to
parricide, but if you don't want to see blazing eyes and hear vigorous
language don't say, Dirt. Mrs. Darcy bore the fierce scrutiny of her
menage without shrinking, but when he mentioned the ugly word, all her
fury shot forth, and it was all the more terrible, because veiled under
a show of studied politeness.

"Dirt!" she said. "I'd be plazed to see your reverence show one speck of
dirt in the place."

"Good heavens, woman!" he said, "what do you mean? There is dirt
everywhere, in the air, under my feet, in the grate, on the altar. It
would take the Atlantic to purify the place."

"You're the first gentleman that ever complained of the place," said
Mrs. Darcy. "Of coorse, there aren't carpets, and bearskins, and
cowhides, which are now the fashion, I believe. An' dere isn't a
looking-glass, nor a pianney; but would your reverence again show me the
dirt. A poor woman's charackter is all she has."

"I didn't mean to impute anything to your character," he said, mildly,
"but if you can't see that this place is frightfully dirty, I suppose I
can't prove it. Look at that!"

He pointed to a grewsome heap of cinders, half-burnt papers, brown
ashes, etc., that choked up the grate.

"Yerra. Glory be to God!" said Mrs. Darcy, appealing to an imaginary
audience, "he calls the sweepings of the altar, and the clane ashes,
dirt. Yerra, what next?"

"This next," he said, determinedly; "come here." He took her out and
pointed to the altar cloth. It was wrinkled and grimy, God forgive me!
and there were stars of all sizes and colors darkening it.

"Isn't that a disgrace to the Church?" he said, sternly.

"I see no disgrace in it," said Mrs. Darcy. "It was washed and made up
last Christmas, and is as clane to-day as the day it came from the
mangle."

"Do you call that clean?" he shouted, pointing to the drippings of the
candles.

"Yerra, what harm is that," said she, "a bit of blessed wax that fell
from the candles? Sure, 't is of that they make the Agnus Deis."

"You're perfectly incorrigible," he said. "I'll report the whole
wretched business to the parish priest, and let him deal with you."

[Illustration: "Do you call that clean?"]

"Begor you may," said she, "but I'll have my story first."

And so she had. Father Letheby gave me his version afterwards. He did so
with the utmost delicacy, for it was all an indirect indictment of my
own slovenliness and sinful carelessness. I listened with shamed face
and bent head? And determined to let him have his way. I knew that Mrs.
Darcy would not leave for America just yet.

But what was my surprise on the following Sunday, when, on entering the
sacristy to prepare for Mass, I slid along a polished floor, and but for
the wall would probably have left a vacancy at Kilronan to some
expectant curate. The floor glinted and shone with wax; and there were
dainty bits of fibre matting here and there. The grate was black-leaded,
and there was a wonderful firescreen with an Alpine landscape. The clock
was clicking steadily, as if Time had not stood still for us all for
many years: and there were my little altar boys in snowy surplices as
neat as the acolytes that proffered soap and water to the Archbishop of
Rheims, when he called for bell and book in the famous legend.

But oh! my anguish when I drew a stiff white amice over my head, instead
of the dear old limp and wrinkled one I was used to; and when I feebly
tried to push my hands through the lace meshes of an alb, that would
stand with stiffness and pride, if I placed it on the floor. I would
gladly have called for my old garment; but I knew that I too had to
undergo the process of the new reformation; and, with much agony, I
desisted. But I drew the line at a biretta which cut my temples with its
angles, and I called out:--

"Mrs. Darcy."

A young woman, with her hair all tidied up, and with a white apron,
laced at the edges, and pinned to her breast, came out from a recess.
She was smiling bashfully, and appeared as if she would like to run away
and hide somewhere.

"Mrs. Darcy," I called again.

The young woman smiled more deeply, and said with a kind of smirk:--

"Here I am, your reverence!"

It is fortunate for me that I have acquired, after long practice, the
virtue of silence; for when I recognized the voice of my old friend, I
was thunderstruck. I'm sure I would have said something very emphatic,
but my habits restrained me. But I regret to say it was all a source of
distraction to me in the celebration of the Divine Mysteries, and during
the day. What had occurred? I was dying to know; but it would not be
consistent with the dignity of my position to ask. To this day, I
congratulate myself on my reticence; for, who could help asking how?
when face to face with a miracle. It was some days before I discovered
the secret of the magical transformation.

[Illustration: "Here I am, your Reverence!" (p. 56.)]

It would appear, then, that the late lamented Jem Darcy, when he
departed to his reward, left his poor widow two charges in the shape of
children. What do I say? Charges? No. She would scornfully repudiate the
word. For was not Patsey, the baby of eighteen months, "the apple of
her eye," and Jemmy, the little hunchback of six summers, "the core of
her heart"? For them she labored and toiled, and "moiled," as she used
to say; and worked herself into oil to get them bread, and a pink ribbon
for the baby's shoulder knot, and a navy cap, with "Hero" in gold
letters for Jemmy. And across her troubled life, full of cares and
apprehensions, poor soul! was there any gleam of sunshine, except that
which was reflected in the iris of her baby's eyes; or that which
dappled the mud floor of her cabin, when Jemmy lay there and played hide
and seek with the gossamer threads that shone through the chink in the
half-door! Ah me! it is easy to lecture the poor, and complain of their
horrid ways; but the love such as no man hath gilds and enamels most of
the crooked and grimy things that disfigure their poor lives in the eyes
of the fastidious; and perhaps makes the angels of Him, before whose
Face the stars are not spotless, turn from the cold perfection of the
mansion and the castle to gaze lovingly on the squalid lowliness of the
hamlet and the cabin. Well. On the morning that Mrs. Darcy gave me
formal notice of her relinquishment of the solemn office she held, she
bent her steps homeward with a heavy heart. She had done her duty, like
all the other great people who have done disagreeable things; but it
brought no consolation. And she had flung behind her her little cabin,
and all the sweet associations connected therewith, and the pomp and
pride of power, when she officiated at the public offices of the Church,
and every one knew her to be indispensable. For who could tell the name
of a defaulter at the station, but Mrs. Darcy? And who arranged the
screaming baby in the clumsy arms of a young godmother, but Mrs. Darcy?
And who could lay out a corpse like Mrs. Darcy? And who but Mrs. Darcy
found the ring when the confused and blushing bridegroom fumbled in
every pocket at the altar, and the priest looked angry, and the bride
ashamed?

And then her pride in the Church! How wonderful were her designs in
holly and ivy at Christmas! What fantasies she wove out of a rather
limited imagination! What art fancies, that would shame William Morris,
poet and socialist, did she conceive and execute in the month of May for
the Lady Altar! Didn't Miss Campion say that she was a genius, but
undeveloped? Didn't Miss Campion's friend from Dublin declare that
there was nothing like it in Gardiner Street? And when her time would be
spent, and she was old and rheumatized, would not little Jemmy, the
hunchback, who was a born pre-Raphaelite, take her place, and have a
home, for he could not face the rough world? Ah me! and it was all gone;
cast behind her through a righteous feeling of pride and duty. She moved
through the village with a heavy heart; and her check apron went to her
eyes.

She had an amiable habit of never entering her cabin without playing
"Peek-a-boo!" through the window with the baby. For this purpose, the
cradle was always drawn so that the baby faced the window; and when it
saw the round face, which it knew so well, peeping over the speck
blossoms of the mignonette, well--there were developments. On this
particular morning, Mrs. Darcy was in no humor for playacting; but the
force of habit is strong, and she peered through the little window with
reddened eyes. And these eyes, as she afterwards described it, "sprod in
her head" at what she saw. For, on the floor, in his favorite attitude,
his head propped between his hands, was the hunchback, Jemmy, studying
with all the intense appreciation of an Edison, how to construct an airy
castle out of certain painted wood-blocks, which strewed the floor; and
there, his back turned towards the window, was her arch-enemy, Father
Letheby, his right hand raised aloft and dangling an india-rubber baby;
whilst Patsey, his eyes dilated with excitement, made frantic attempts
to seize the prize, and crowed and chuckled in the exuberance of his
delight. Mrs. Darcy drew back hastily, then peeped again. No doubt of
it. It was no phantasm of the imagination. She looked again. Then
whispered something softly to herself, and, with a great lump in her
throat, sped swiftly through the village and up to the "Great House."
The result of her interview with Miss Campion we have seen. Father
Letheby has scored again. There were heavy bets of fifteen to one in
half-gallons of porter, laid by desperate gamblers, that Father Letheby
would make Mrs. Darcy wash her face. It was supposed to be a wild plunge
in a hopeless speculation. I am told now, that the betting has gone up
at the forge, and is now fifty to one that, before a month, she'll have
a lace cap and "sthramers" like the maids at the "Great House."

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