Down at Caxton's 10

Down at Caxton's 10

Only have ideas, that is, write meaningless platitudes, grandiose

nothings, something that neither man, the angels above nor the demons

down under the sea, may decipher, and this illusive verbiage will

make you famous. A school of critics will herald your work with such

adjectives as “noble, lofty, absorbing, soul-inspiring;” nay, more,

a pious missionary friend may be found to to translate the verbiage

into Syriac, as a present for converts. Borne on the tide of such

criticism, not a few women writers have mistaken the plaudits of

notoriety, that passing show, for fame. It was a saying of De Musset’s

that fame was a tardy plant, a lover of the soil. Be this as it may,

it is safe to assert that its coming is not proclaimed by far-fetched

similes, frantic metaphors, sensuous images, ranting style, ignorance

of metre, want of grammar; the dishes are not of the voluptuous, morbid

or the monstrous kind. Its thirst is not slaked at sewers of dulness

spiced with immorality. These symptoms savor of one disease known

to all pathologists as notoriety. In an age of this dreaded disease

it is surely refreshing to meet with works that breathe gentleness

and repose,—a beautiful trust in religion, and a warm, natural heart

for humanity. These traits will the reader find in abundance in the

pages of Katherine Conway. “What kills a poet,” says Aldrich, “is

self-conceit.” Of all the forms self-conceit may assume none is more

foolish or detrimental, especially to a woman-poet, than the pluming

of oneself as the harbinger of some renovating gospel, some panacea

for human infirmities. What is the burden of your message? says the

critic to the young poet. Straightway the poet evolves a message,

and as messages of this kind ought to be mysterious, the poet wraps

them in a jargon as unintelligible as Garner’s monkey dialect. Thus

in America has risen a school of woman poetry, deluded by false

criticism, calling itself a message to humanity, dubbed rightly the

school of passion, and one might add, of pain. This school may ask, “Am

I to be debarred from treating of the passions on the score of sex.”

By no means; the passions are legitimate subjects. Love, one of them,

is your most attractive theme, but as Lilly has it, love is not to you

what it is to the physiologist, a mere animal impulse which man has

in common with moths and molluscs. Your task is to extract from human

life, even in its commonest aspects, its most vulgar realities, what it

contains of secret beauty; to lift it the level of art, not to degrade

art to its level. Few American writers more fully realized these

great artistic truths than the master under whose fatherly tuition

Miss Conway had long been placed. Boyle O’Reilly was a Grecian in his

love for nature. As such it was his aim to seek the beautiful in its

commonest aspects, its most vulgar realities. No amount of claptrap or

fine writing could make him mistake a daub for a Turner. In the bottom

of his soul he detested the little bardlings who had passed nature by,

without knowing her, who wove into the warp and woof of their dulness

the putridity of Zola and morbidity of Marie Bashkirtseff. Under such

a guide, the poetic ideal set before Miss Conway has been of the

highest, and the highest is only worth working for. This ideal must

be held unswervingly, even if one sees that books that are originally

vicious are “placarded in the booksellers’ windows; sold on the street

corners; hawked through the railroad trains; yea, given away, with

packages of tea or toilet soap, in place of the chromo, mercifully

put on the superannuated list.” These books are but foam upon the

current of time, flecking its surface for a moment, and passing away

into oblivion, while what Miss Conway happily calls the literature of

moral loveliness, or what might as aptly be called the literature of

all time, remains our contribution to posterity. Its foundations, to

follow the thought of Azarias, are deeply laid in human nature, and

its structure withstands the storms of adversity and the eddies of

events. For such a literature O’Reilly made a life struggle; his pupil

has closely followed his footsteps in the charming, simple, melodious

volume that lies before me, “A Dream of Lilies.” Rarely has a Catholic

book had a more artistic setting, and one might add, rarely has a

volume of Catholic verse deserved it more. Here the poetess touches

her highest point, and proves that years of silence have been years of

study and conscientious workmanship. In her poem “Success” may be found

the key to this volume;

 

“Ah! know what true success is; young hearts dream,

Dream nobly and plan loftily, nor deem

That length of years is length of living. See

A whole life’s labor in an hour is done;

Not by world-tests the heavenly crown is won,

To God the man is what he means to be.”

 

“Dream nobly and plan loftily” has been the guiding spirit of this

volume. It is a book of religious verse in the true sense, not in the

general acceptance of modern religious verse, which is generally dull

twaddle, egotism, mawkishness, blind gropings and haunting fears. The

gentle spirit of Christ breathes through it, making an atmosphere of

peace and repose. There is no bigotry to jar, no narrowness to chafe

us, but the broad upland of Christian charity and truth. Nor has our

author forgotten that even truth if cast in awkward mould may be passed

over. To her poems she has given a dainty setting without sacrificing

a jot of their strength. After reading such a book a judicious bit of

Miss Conway’s prose comes to my mind. “And as that Catholic light, the

only true vision, brightens about us, we realize more and more that

literary genius, take it all and all, has done more to attract men

to good than to seduce men to evil; that the best literature is also

the most fascinating, and even by its very abundance is more than a

match for the bad; that time is its best ally; that it is hard, if

not impossible, to corrupt the once formed pure literary taste; and,

finally, that as makers of literature or critics or disseminators

of it, it is our duty to believe in the best, hope in the best, and

steadfastly appeal to the best in human nature; for we needs must love

the highest when we see it.”

 

Katherine Eleanor Conway was born of Irish parents, in Rochester, on

the 6th of Sept., 1853. Her early studies were made in the convent

schools of her native city. From an early age she had whisperings of

the muse. These whisperings at the age of fifteen convinced her that

her true sphere of action was literature. In 1875 she commenced the

publication of a modest little Catholic monthly, contributing poems and

moral tales, under the _nom-de-plume_ of “Mercedes,” to other Catholic

journals, in the spare hours left from editing her little venture and

teaching in the convent. In 1878 she became attached to the Buffalo

_Union and Times_. To this journal she contributed the most of the

poems to be found in her maiden volume,—“On the Sunrise Slope,”—a

volume whose rich promise has been amply fulfilled in the “Dream of

Lilies.” Her health failing, she sought a needful rest in Boston. Her

fame had preceded her, and the gifted editor of the _Pilot_, ever on

the lookout for a hopeful literary aspirant of his race, held out a

willing hand to the shy stranger. “Come to us,” he said, in a voice

that knew no guile, “and help us in the good fight.” That fight—the

crowning glory of O’Reilly’s noble life—was to gain an adequate

position for his race and religion from the puritanism of New England.

How that race and religion were held before his coming, may be best

told in the language of Miss Conway, taken from a heart-sketch of her

dead master and minstrel:—

 

“Notwithstanding Matignon and Cheverus, and the Protestant Governor

Sullivan, Catholic and Irish were, from the outset, simply

interchangeable terms—and terms of odium both—in the popular New

England mind; in vain the bond of a common language, in vain the

Irishman’s prompt and affectionate acceptance of the duties of American

citizenship. To but slight softening of prejudice even his sacrifice of

blood and life on every battle-field in the Civil War, in proof of the

sincerity of his political profession of faith. He and his were still

hounded as a class inferior and apart. They were almost unknown in the

social and literary life of New England. Their pathetic sacrifices

for their kin beyond the sea, their interest in the political

fortunes of the old land, were jests and by-words. Their religion was

the superstition of the ignorant, vulgar and pusillanimous; or, at

best, motive for jealous suspicion of divided political allegiance

and threatened “foreign” domination. Their children suffered petty

persecutions in the public schools. The stage and the press faithfully

reflected the ruling popular sentiment in their caricatures of the

Catholic Irishman.”

 

She accepted O’Reilly’s call and stood by his side with Roche, Guiney,

Blake, until the hard fought battle against the prejudice to Irishism

and Catholicism, planted in New England by the bigoted literature of

Old England, was abated, if not destroyed; until its shadows, if cast

now, are cast by the lower rather than the higher orders in the world

of intellect and refinement. “And the shortening of the shadow is proof

that the sun is rising,” proof that her work has been far from vain.

And when from the grey dawn of prejudice will come forth the white

morrow of charity and truth, the singer and her songs will not be

forgotten.

 

 

 

 

LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY.

 

 

In speaking with the author of a “Dream of Lilies,” I casually

mentioned the name of another Boston poetess, “one of the _Pilot_

poets,” as the gifted Carpenter was wont to speak of those whose genius

was nursed by Boyle O’Reilly. For a few years previous to my coming,

little waif poems, suggestive of talent and refinement, had seen light

in the columns of that brilliant journal. They had about them that

something which makes the reader hazard a bet that the youngster when

fully fledged would some day leave the lowlands of minor minstrelsy

for a height on Parnassus. From this singer Miss Conway had that

morning received a notelet. It was none of the ordinary kind, a little

anarchistic, if one might judge from the awkward pen-sketch of a

hideous grinning skeleton-skull held by cross-bones which served as an

illustration to the bantering text that followed, in a rather cramped

girlish hand. The notelet was signed Louise Imogen Guiney.

 

“Are you not afraid, Miss Conway,” said I, “to receive such warning

notes?” “It is from the best girl in America,” was the frank reply;

“read it.” A perusal of the few dashing lines was enough, and my

generous host, reading my eyes, gave me the coveted notelet. That

notelet begot an interest in the writer; an interest fully repaid

by the strong, careful work put forth under her name. Louise Imogen

Guiney, poet, essayist, dramatist, was born in Boston, that city of

“sweetness and light,” in January, 1862. Her parents were Irish. Her

father, Patrick Guiney, came from the hamlet of Parkstown, County

Tipperary, at an early age. He was a man of the most blameless and

noble character. During the civil war, as Col. Guiney of the Irish

Ninth Massachusetts Volunteers, his heroism on behalf of his adopted

country won him the grateful admiration of all lovers of freedom. This

admiration at the close of the war was substantially shown by his

election as Judge of Probate. Constant suffering from an old wound,

received at the battle of the Wilderness, gave the old soldier but few

years to enjoy honors from his fellow-citizens. His death was mourned

by all who loved virtue and honor. Of him a Boston poet sang:

 

“Large heart and brave! Tried soul and true!

How thickly in thy life’s short span,

All strong sweet virtues throve and grew,

As friend, as hero, and as man.

Unmoved by thought of blame or praise,

Unbought by gifts of power and pride,

Thy feet still trod Time’s devious ways

With Duty as thy law and guide.”

 

Good blood, you will say, from whence our poet came, and blood counts

even in poetry. I have no anecdotes to relate of Miss Guiney’s early

years. I am not sure that there were any. Anecdotes are usually

manufactured in later life, if the subject happens to become famous.

Her education was carefully planned, and intelligently carried out.

She was not held in the dull routine of the school-room, but was

allowed to emancipate herself in the works of the poets. What joy must

have been her’s, scampering home after the study of _de omni scibili_,

the ordinary curriculum of any American school, to a quiet nook and

the dream of her poets. Amid these dreams came the siren whisperings

of the muse, telling her of the poet within struggling for life and

__EXPRESSION__. These struggles begot a tiny little volume happily named

“Songs at the Start.” The great American reviewer, who, ordinarily,

 

“Bolts every book that comes out of the press,

Without the least question of larger or less,”