Down at Caxton's 12

Down at Caxton's 12

Mrs. Blake was born in Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, Ireland. In childhood

she was brought to Massachusetts. In 1865 she was married to Dr. J.

G. Blake, a leading physician of Boston. She has made that city her

home, and is highly esteemed in its literary and social circles. Among

her published books may be mentioned “Poems,” Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,

1882, dedicated to her husband; “On The Wing,” a pretty volume of

Californian sketches; “Rambling Talk,” a series of papers contributed

to the Boston journals.

 

Her sketches are the agreeable jottings of a highly cultivated woman;

seeing nature in the light of poetry rather than science, she has made

a series of charming pictures out of her wanderings. They are not free

from sentiment,—illusions if you will, but that is their greatest

charm. “The world of reality is a poor affair.” So many books of travel

are annually appearing,—books that have no excuse for being other than

to prove how widespread dulness and incapacity is, that a trip with a

guide like Mrs. Blake has but one failing,—its shortness. Neither in

her travels nor in her literary articles does Mrs. Blake body forth her

best prose utterance. These must be found in her earnest social papers,

where her woman’s heart, saddened by the miseries of its fellows, pours

out its streams of consolation and preaches (all earnest souls must be

preachers now-a-days) the only and all sufficient cure—the Church.

 

An extract from one of these papers will best show her power. She is

portraying the Church manifesting itself in the individual as well

as the family life, pleading for the central idea of her system.

“Jesus Christ is the complement of man,”—the restorer of the race. The

Catholic Church is the manifestation of Jesus Christ.

 

“There are, alas! too many weaknesses into which thoughtlessness and

opportunity lead one class as well as the other. But still there is

to be seen almost without exception, among practical Catholics, young

wives, content and happy, welcoming from the very outset of married

life the blessed company of the little ones who are to guard them

as do their angels in heaven; proud like Cornelia of their jewels;

gladly accepting comparative poverty and endless care; while their

sisters outside the Church buy the right to idleness and personal

adorning at the expense of the childless homes which are a disgrace and

menace to the nation. There is the honor and purity of the fireside

respected; the overpowering sweetness and strength of family ties

acknowledged; the reverential love that awaits upon the father and

mother shown. There are sensitive and refined women bearing sorrow

with resignation and hardship without rebellion; combating pain with

patience and fulfilling harsh duty without complaint. In a tremendous

over-proportion to those who attempt to live outside its helpfulness,

and in exact ratio to their practical devotion to the observances

of the Church, they find power of resisting temptation in spite of

poverty, and overcoming impulse by principle. Can the world afford to

ignore an agency by which so much is accomplished?

 

“So much for the practical side, which is the moral that particularly

needs pointing at this moment. Of the spiritual amplitude and

sustaining which the Church gives there is little need to speak. Only a

woman can know what Faith means in the existence of women. The uplift

which she needs in moments of great trial; the sustaining power to

bear the constant harassment of petty worries; the outlet for emotions

which otherwise choke the springs, the tonic of prayer and belief; the

assurance of a force sufficiently divine and eternal to satisfy the

cravings of human longing—what but this is to make life worth living

for her? And where else, in these days of scepticism, is she to find

such immortal dower? It is a commentary upon worldly wisdom, that

it has attempted to ignore this necessity, and left woman under the

increased pressure of her new obligations, to rely solely upon such

frail reeds as human respect and conventional morality. She needs the

inspiration of profound conviction and practical piety a hundredfold

more than ever before. The woman of the old time, secluded within

the limits of the household, surrounded by the material safeguard of

custom, might lead an untroubled existence even if devotion and faith

were not vital principles with her. The woman of to-day, harassed,

beset, tempted, driven by necessity, drawn this way and that by bad

advice and worse example, is attempting a hopeless task when she tries

the same experiment.”

 

The poetry of Mrs. Blake is rational and wholesome. She knows her gifts

and is content to use them at their best, giving us songs in a minor

key, that if they add little to human thought, yet make the world

better from their coming. In the poems of childhood she is particularly

happy. She knows children, their joys and sorrows, has caught their

ways. Her’s is a heart that has danced in the joy of motherhood and

been stricken when the “dead do not waken.” She is our only intelligent

writer of children’s poems. The assertion may be controverted. A

hundred Catholic poets for children may be cited writers “of genius

profound,” of “exquisite fancy,” “whose works should grace every parish

library.” I quote a stereotyped criticism, a constant __EXPRESSION__ with

Catholic reviewers. I laugh, in my hermitage, and blandly suggest, to

all whom it may concern, that insanity in jingles is not relished by

sane children. I speak from experience, having perpetrated a selection

from the one hundred on a class of bright boys and girls. Peaceful

sleep, and, let us hope, pleasant dreams, came to their aid. Shall I

ever, Comus, forget their faces in the transition moment from dulness

to delight? Let us cease cant and rapturous criticism. Catholic

literature, to survive the time that gave it birth, must be built on

other foundations. Hasty and unconscious productions must be branded

as such. We must have, as the French so well put it, a horror of

“pacotille” and “camelotte.” “If my works are good,” said the sculptor

Rude, “they will endure; if not, all the laudation in the world would

not save them from oblivion.” The same may well be written of Catholic

literature. Whether for children or grown-up men or women, as a

Catholic critic, whose only aim has been to gain an audience for my

fellow Catholic writers whose works can bear a favorable comparison

with the best contemporary thought, I ask that the best shall be

given, and that given, it shall be joyfully received; that trash shall

not fill the book-cases, lie on the parlor-tables, be puffed in our

weeklies, and genius and sacrifice be forgotten. I ask that the works

of Stoddard, Johnston, Egan, Roche, Azarias, Lathrop, Tabb, Miss

Repplier, Guiney, Katherine Conway, Mrs. Blake, find a welcome in each

Catholic household, and that the Catholic press make their delightful

personalities known to our rising generation. Of their best they have

given. Shall they die before we acknowledge it?

 

 

 

 

AGNES REPPLIER.

 

 

A friend of mine, a dweller in the city, a lover of red bricks, one to

whom the sound of the dray-cart merrily grinding on the pavement is

sweeter music than a burst of woodland song, has tardily conceded that

the Adirondacks, on a summer day, is pleasant. I value his testimony

and record it with pleasure. Let us be thankful for small favors when

cynics are the donors. For me these woods, lakes and crystal streams

hold an indescribable charm. They are the true abode of man. Here is

liberty, while the city is but a cage, with its thousands uttering the

plaintive cry of Sterne’s prisoned starling, “I cannot get out.” For

the hum of wheels we have the songs of birds, the music of waterfalls,

the purr of mountain brooks and the harmonies of the winds playing

through the thousand different species of trees, each one differing in

melody, but combining in one grand symphony. Orchestras are muffled

music when compared to nature’s lute. The pipes of Pan is but a poet’s

struggle to embody in speech such a symphony. For the city’s smells,

that not even a Ruskin could paint, albeit they are far from elusive,

we have the mountain air that has dallied with the streams and stolen

the fragrance of a thousand clover fields. Every man to his taste.

There is no disputing of this. Lamb loved bricks and Wordsworth such

scenes as ours; yet, Lamb would be as sadly missed from our libraries

as Wordsworth. Swing my hammock in the shade of yonder pines, good

Patsy. A robin is piping his sweetest notes to his brooding spouse,

the Salmon river runs at my feet, biting the sandy shore, laughing

loud when a saucy stone falls in its current. From over the hills

comes the scent of new-mown hay; bless me! this is pleasant. To add

to this enjoyment you have brought a book—something bright, you tell

me. I’ll soon see. And gliding into my hammock, I said my first good

morning to Agnes Repplier. It was a breezy good morning, one of those

where the hand unconsciously goes out as much as to say: Old fellow,

you don’t know how glad I am to see you. There was no friend with a

white cravat standing on the first page to introduce us, and tell us

that the authoress bore in her book a fecund message to struggling

humanity, and that the major part of that same humanity could not see

it; hence it was his duty to stand at the portal and solve the riddle.

There was no begging for recognition on the score of ancestors, fads

or isms. I am Agnes Repplier, said the book; how do you like me? A

few pages perused, and my own voice amusingly fell on my ears, saying

first class. Here was a woman who thought—not the trivial thought that

nauseates in the books of so many literary women—but virile aggressive

thought, that provokes, contradicts, and, like Hamlet’s ghost, will not

be downed. This thought is folded in a garment, whose many hues quicken

the curiosity and make her pages a continual feast of wit, droll irony,

and illuminative criticism all curiously and harmoniously blended. Her

pages are rich in suggestion, apt in quotation. You are constantly

aroused, put on your guard, laughingly disarmed, and that in a way

that Lamb would have loved. She has no awe in the presence of literary

gods. Lightly she trips up to them with her poniard, shows by a pass

that they are made of mud, and that the aureole that encircles them is

but the work of your crude imagination. Clearing away your shreds and

patches she puts the author in a plain suit before you, and, how you

wonder, that with all your boasted knowledge you have called for years

a jackdaw a peacock!

 

How delightful to watch this critic armed _cap-a-pie_, demolishing

some fad, that has masqueraded for years as genuine literature. Is

it little Lord Fauntleroy, a character sloppy, inane, impossible to

real life, yet hugged to the heart by the commonplace. Miss Repplier

keenly surveys her ground, as an artist would the statue of his rival,

notes the foibles, cant, false poses, and crazy-quilt jargon used to

deck pet characters. Experience has taught her that you cannot combat