Lesbia Newman (1889)/Chapter 23
CHAPTER XXIII.
Toward the Flaminian Gate.
A Quarter-past nine on the following Saturday evening found our heroine and her uncle at a supper tea in the Legate’s back drawing-room in Westminster. The conversation at table was light; Lesbia, who, as we have seen before, had a talent for mimicry, entertained her host, a man of the world, whose guests felt no géne, by reproducing the ludicrous parts of the Parliamentary debate at which she had been present since they last met. When they afterwards seated themselves in easy chairs in the larger room, another sort of debate began, the final results of which proved to be in no manner a screaming farce.
‘Well now, Mr Bristley,’ said the cardinal, ‘we are in private conclave at last, so there need be no more reserve about this mystery. What is it, then; out with it.’
‘It’s Madonna-worship,’ answered Lesbia promptly.
‘Indeed!’ said the cardinal. ‘But I thought there was question of a special mission of Rome?’
‘That is her special mission,’ said Mr Bristley, with brevity like that of his niece.
‘But surely—I was under the impression that non-catholics blamed us for exalting Our Lady too much,’ objected the cardinal.
‘They may,’ retorted Mr Bristley. ‘It is not my business to take up the heads of fools that pave hell. Excuse my warmth of expression, Cardinal Power, my point of view is remote from that of the non-catholics you speak of, remote, I fear, even from your own. Exalt Our Lady too much, say you? You cannot. My charge against you Catholics is, that you do not exalt Her nearly enough. I arraign you for being wilfully blind and deaf in the very visible presence of Deity itself to which you have been admitted, and if you were dumb also when in that presence, it would be better: there would be less sacrilege.’
Cardinal Power gazed at his new acquaintance for some seconds in unfeigned amazement.
‘Not worship Her enough!’ he at last repeated.
‘Not nearly enough,’ responded the other. ‘This people flatter me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.’ You come to Her with lachrymose hypocrisy, babbling about intercession. Intercession! Are you aware, Cardinal Power—you are not aware, or you would not do it—that to ask the Supreme Deity to intercede, is the very essence of blasphemy? Intercede with whom? It cannot be with those below Herself, for that would be nonsense. But who is above Her—who can be above the Supreme? That is why I said you Catholics were better dumb; because you could not blaspheme in that fashion.’
‘Your Eminence will excuse my uncle’s pithy language, I am sure,’ said Lesbia gently; ‘enthusiasts such as he are not Chrysostoms.’
‘That’s all right, Miss Newman,’ answered the cardinal, who cared nothing for useless ceremony. ‘But, Mr Bristley, is Our Lady, then, above the Trinity?’
‘Why, of course,’ he replied. ‘The Trinity is but a metaphysical analysis of humanity, Our Lady is its synthesis. The synthesis is the living person, the analysis is but its anatomy. You yourself theoretically admit as much in styling Her the Mother of God; yet when it comes to practical application, you manage to misunderstand and pervert your own words, and to lapse into the worse than heathen idolatry in which Protestant Christianity is sunk. Thus you miss, nay, you trample upon, your mission, which is to lead the world out of the old idolatry toward the new light.’
‘By throwing Christ and his religion overboard?’ asked the cardinal.
‘No, by interpreting them conformably to the light of nature,’ replied the other. ‘Your Church claims the right of interpretation: be it so. But why does she waste and throw away that right? or rather, why does she use it to league herself with devils and darkness?’
‘How does she so?’ asked the cardinal.
‘My uncle calls all spirits that are not spirits of woman-worship devils of darkness,’ explained Lesbia, with a smile.
‘But what exactly am I to understand by woman-worship?’ inquired the cardinal.
‘Woman-worship,’ answered Lesbia, ‘is at any rate the reverse of the man-worship which the religions of the world hitherto have set up.’
‘Yes,’ assented Mr Bristley, ‘it is that certainly, but it implies a good deal more beside. It implies that carnal affections and even passions are to be impressed into the service of religion, instead of being suppressed as though they were its enemies.’
‘I see,’ said the cardinal; ‘your religion of the future is to be based on hedonism—it is to be a religion of pleasure.’
‘Of pleasure that is in keeping with and belongs to Divine Order, yes. Not otherwise.’
‘Divine Order!’
‘Certainly. Divine Order is the spiritual subjection of the masculine to the feminine in humanity. It is the reversal of this order which constitutes the sin and causes the miseries in the world.’
‘Spiritual subjection; not temporal then?’
‘Yes, temporal too, in all things that relate to the spiritual, in all the direct and indirect concerns of religion.’
‘Is not that the doctrine of Comte the Positivist?’
‘He said, I believe,’ replied Mr Bristley, ‘that the time is coming when man shall no more bow the knee except to woman; but I do not gather that his idea was that of a deep spiritual religion, it was rather that of a materialistic gallantry, chivalry, or what you like to call it, superficial, unpractical, and, in this work-a-day world, impossible. We do not want to put women into a glass case to be stared at, we have simply to reverse the present relations of the sexes in all things religious, and to put women into the priestess’s place, which is now usurped by man. Along with this will go, of course, the establishment of her equal rights in things temporal. That is what I understand by Divine Order: is it clear to you?’
‘Clear enough,’ replied the cardinal. ‘But why is this great revolution to be the work of Rome, the least revolutionary of human—let us say human—institutions? Would not some new religious body undertake the work with freer hands? The ostensible character of our holy Church is to remain always the same; she changes not, or as little as possible. Built upon the foundation of Apostles and Prophets, our Lord himself being the chief corner-stone’— the prelate made as though he would cross himself or bow his head as he recited this, but concluded that it was not worth the trouble, which was just as well, since the effect would have been spoilt by an unmistakable wink which he directed at Lesbia—‘built upon that security, she changes as little as the moon, the faithful witness in heaven. Devout but infirm minds, troubled with doubt in these subversive days can turn to her as to a strong rock whereto they may always resort, a shield against aggressive Atheism, a tower of defence against all spiritual foes. Their responsibility is eased off their shoulders; they need not think; they have but to trust and obey. They receive the light yoke laid upon them by an infallible authority, and they need not fret themselves about its source. They repose in a palace of archaism, and can shut their eyes in comfort to what the infidel world calls the facts of science. A ready-made and regenerate conscience is supplied to them on easy terms. Why would you disturb this happy family?’
Both his visitors laughed at the undisguised irony which ran through this defence of catholicism.
‘Your Eminence reminds me of the Parliamentary debate we were talking about at tea,’ said Lesbia. ‘It would appear that the mission of the Church of Rome also is to be jolly herself and teach surrounding Churches to be jolly.’
‘Evidently it comes to that,’ said the cardinal, with such simplicity that the other two laughed again. ‘The more so,’ he resumed, ‘because there is another consideration. The happy and holy family is flourishing. Propagandism thrives; more pence jingle into Peter’s box; fine new churches, convents, and even monasteries are springing up; in short, the old thing pays. Why upset it?’
‘That is plausible, Cardinal Power,’ answered Mr Bristley, ‘plausible, but not sound. In the first place, it is not a question of upsetting catholicism, but of strengthening it,—raising it above competition. ‘Then you say it flourishes and extends; good, I am glad to hear it. But may not the same be said for every sect or church, for the Salvation Army, for the Jews themselves? The reason is not far to seek: this is an age of tolerance, and why should Roman Catholicism not be tolerated equally with other creeds? But it is not an age of tolerance merely, it is also an age of scepticism; and sects or schools of irreligion are free, equally with those of religion, to do their chosen work. The result, however, of that work is to stimulate the religious spirit, wherever it really exists; hence the prosperity of your creed (equally with that of other creeds) among the minority of baptised Catholics who are not sceptics. They see that unless they put their shoulder to the wheel their religion must decay and lapse; that is not their desire, therefore they show that zeal which strikes your imagination so much. But, after all said and done, you have shown me no more than this, Cardinal Power, that the religious body of which you are a dignitary, is as free as any other body to come and drink at the fountain among the crowd. You have not shown that you Catholics possess any special privilege in society; you have not shown that you are on the way to attain such; you have not even shown that you really care about it.’
The cardinal was listening attentively, and the urbane sneer which was his habitual expression had already faded from his countenance. As he made no move to reply, the other resumed:—
‘Or, if you do care about it, then I am afraid you are making the fatal mistake of setting down to fancied penitence and reaction on the part of the modern world, what is really the manifestation of its æstheticism conjoined with its liberality. You think people are deferring to you as of old, when in fact they are but patronising you. Get rid of such a delusion, Cardinal Power. You cannot stand a second Reformation like the Lutheran; it would shatter you to pieces; do not provoke it. You have a grand opportunity, and unless you are the most insensate of men, you will not let it slip. Consider well. Competition is pervading every branch of secular industry; is it likely to leave out of sight the motive power of religious sentiment? Assuredly not; therefore that religious body will be the most favoured, will become the richest in all things that make this life worth living or the life to come worth preparing for, which shall succeed in attaining to the greatest popularity, not to the greatest orthodoxy. Dogma is an intellectual quicksand, but hedonism appeals to our common instincts, and only upon that basis can any temple of worship endure, now that the old sacerdotalism has passed away. You possess that basis in the cult of Our Lady, it only needs developing: the devotion toward Her which already exists among Catholics is ample evidence of the fact. Is not, then, that fact a plain call to the rulers of our Church,—a voice in the wilderness crying to them, ‘Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Eternal is risen upon thee.’’
‘You are an enthusiast, Mr Bristley,’ said the cardinal, in a tremulous voice. For as he was about to reply, he looked up and his eyes met those of Lesbia.
Never before, not among the thousands of girls and women he was accustomed to meet in the exercise of his ministrations and in society, had he been transfixed by such a look as that. It penetrated to his inmost heart, as an illustration of the words, ‘The glory of the Eternal is risen upon thee;’ it was, in truth, looking out at and overwhelming him. But neither of the two spoke to the other, and the parson, who was too intent on his subject to notice the incident, was left to continue his attack.
‘Enthusiast! Yes I am, Cardinal Power, an enthusiast in this cause, and with good reason. I see the goal to which all human religion has been striving through these long ages of agony. I see that goal within reach, within your reach; why do you not press forward to it? Have you no lofty ambition, no aspirations, no sense of corporate dignity, none of that initiative and enterprise without which the great Church of which you are a pillar could never have been founded? After all that she has achieved and suffered through these semi-barbarous centuries, are you content at last to vegetate in the shade, existing upon sufferance, the sufferance of your inferiors, regarded with respectful pity by the vigorous, racy young sects springing up around you, and with pity the reverse of respectful by the rapidly-growing army of Freethinkers? To take a parallel case, it seems to me that there are few more lamentable sights than that of a person possessing some special gift which might be the means of conferring benefit and pleasure upon thousands, but who, not from stress of ill-health or penury or other adverse fortune, but solely from lack of courage, hides that talent away in a napkin, and allows it to be lost to the world. Then, if this be so where only an individual is concerned, how far more strongly does it apply to a venerable society whose avowed mission is to lead mankind to the light? What shall we say of such a body if it wilfully throw up its mission and slink into self-inflicted obscurity and impotence, and that too at a time when there is ample evidence that the mission promises to be successful, and needs only a determined effort to bring it to a glorious issue?’
Again the prelate, looking up, met Lesbia’s gaze, and again it shook him more than her uncle’s trenchant words. The latter resumed:—
‘What is the use of standing with folded hands, waiting for water to flow up hill or time to travel backwards? Your old priestly dominion is gone, you can no more recover it by dint of obstinacy than you can force us back into the pre-railway modes of life. The world is not what it was; it has cast off, for better or worse, its swaddling clothes, and that childish kind of faith which a claim to infallibility could sway is fading out of remembrance. You cannot resuscitate the past, but you can grasp the future; you can compel no one to come in to you, but you can allure the masses of mankind by a direct yet a religious appeal—religious in the highest sense of the word,—to the most universal and ineradicable of its affections and passions.’
‘A splendid dream, Mr Bristley,’ observed the cardinal, who by this time had recovered himself, ‘but can it ever be realised? Have the masses got it in them to be trained up to such a lofty view and use of their natural inclinations? Can they ever, think you, be brought to comprehend your Divine Order? Will they ever ennoble their loves and desires very far above the amours of the beasts of the field or the dogs of the street? I doubt it.’
‘Then to what purpose is religion—Catholic or other—professed and taught?’ rejoined the other. ‘Is it not altogether a gigantic waste of human time and energy? If religion cannot ennoble our passions, what can it do? It cumbers the earth. But whether it is to exist as an encumbrance or as a treasure, you may be sure of this, Cardinal Power, that if the rising generation accepts any religion at all, it will be one founded upon its desires and hopes, not upon its fears. Hell and purgatory are scouted; heaven may be believed in, if it is made attractive.’
‘A heaven of black-eyed houris, like the Mussulman’s,’ observed the cardinal, smiling.
‘No; because those do not keep Divine Order. But, anyhow, you must lead the rising generation how you can, not how you would like. It may be led; it will not be driven.’
‘Then Divine Order, as you read it, bids the Church face right about, and proclaim that the very propensities in mankind which heretofore she has most striven to combat, must henceforward be relied upon as her main resource.’
‘Subject to Divine Order, yes, Cardinal Power. You must do it, or your Church will perish, not by violence—we don’t do that nowadays—but by neglect and inanition.’
‘Then you simply throw up, reject, and scout the notion that there may be such things as eternal and immutable verities, of which the Catholic Church is the depositary, Mr Bristley?’ said the prelate, with a sneer on his face which plainly showed his own opinion of that convenient doctrine.
‘There is and can be but one such verity in the universe, Cardinal Power, and that is Divine Order. The Catholic Church the depositary of it, you say? That is just what we want to see her. However, I am not discussing verities with you, Cardinal Power, but expediency. You have to take the plunge, in order that your Church may live, not because it is the truth. Secular education of the masses is already overtaking you, it is close on your heels, shortly it will tread upon them, then it will grip you by the throat and hurl you to the ground. You must agree with it quickly while you are in the way; wrestle with it and conquer it you cannot. Be wise in time; listen to the counsels of impartial bystanders. I am an impartial bystander, because I know that woman-worship must triumph before the world is much older, whether it be your Church or some other that is destined to be its champion. My reason for urging you to take it up, is that I see the many advantages you possess over other competitors, and what a crying pity it would be that you should turn tail and leave your inferiors to carry off the prize. I have said enough at the outset, I think, to show you that the apparent hold which Catholicism is regaining here and in other non-Romish countries, is nothing more than the hold which all sects, old and new, are gaining through the spread of tolerance, and of the freethought which you miscall infidelity. Working on your present lines, then, all you can hope for is to remain one tolerated and respected sect among many; but even this hope may not be fulfilled, because there are points on which you are professedly opposed to tolerance, and which, sooner or later, must involve you in a struggle with it to which there can only be one ending. If your dream is to make England and English countries Catholic again, it must be by re-casting Catholicism in the mould shaped by the spirit of the age; for to attempt the opposite course, that of bringing the English-speaking peoples under the Papal yoke, is only to court certain and probably swift destruction.’
‘But I cherish no such illusions, Mr Bristley,’ answered the cardinal, with a more gloomy expression than before. ‘You are right, I must admit, in what you say about our hold on this country. I do not mind admitting it to such exceptional disputants as you two, although I should not say it from the pulpit; but it is unfortunately true that, after all our efforts, the bulk of the English people still look upon our doings and our ceremonial as if they were nothing but a money-making entertainment. Where we give them good music, they will come to our churches for that, and they look with a languid curiosity at what is going on at the high altar. A certain number of flies get caught in the paste on these occasions, no doubt’—his two listeners chuckled at hearing the chief priest thus express himself concerning the winning of souls to Christ’s Church—‘but the multitude gets further away every year from genuine belief in our religion or in any other. People patronise it, as you have said, according to their tastes, but none, except, perhaps, a few washy girls in their teens, bow their wills to it as of old.’
‘Then what do you propose to do, Cardinal Power?’ inquired Lesbia, looking’ steadfastly at him again with her serious, searching eyes. ‘To lie for ever stifled amid the rank heaps of tolerated creeds, one of a number of decaying sects destined to be shunted off and shot as rubbish by the secular board schools? How are the mighty fallen! Mark my words. Never in the religious history of mankind will so tremendous a blunder have been committed, such an opportunity thrown away, as you and your Church will have to answer for, if you deflect from your mission now that it has been set plainly before you, and not only that, but has even been in some degree begun to be realised by the actual devotion of members of your Church to Our Lady throughout the world.’
As the cardinal hesitated for an answer, Mr Bristley said,—
‘Now, Lesbie, I think we have trespassed long enough upon his Eminence’s good-nature: it is half-past eleven. He must be as tired of us as King Agrippa was of St Paul.’
‘Not at all,’ answered the cardinal, as they rose from their chairs. ‘Agrippa may have been tired of Paul, but I am not of this young prophetess; on the contrary, I feel inclined to say to her, Almost thou persuadest me to be a—well no, not a Christian, most decidedly.’
‘And I hope that it will be not almost, but altogether,’ she replied, holding his proffered hand. ‘I hope that you will come to see, Cardinal Power, how vast a work of beneficence your exalted position might be used to achieve. Good-night, and many thanks for your kindness.’
As they walked to the Underground Railway to catch the last train for Kensington, Mr Bristley said,—
‘We've done the best we could, eh, Lesbie? Time will show whether it has been to any purpose. The conservatism of Rome has always been a hard nut to crack by any fingers softer than General Cadorna’s in 1866.’
I think I have cast my seed,’ she replied, ‘but I do not look for any real movement, religious or social, until after—the crash.’
Her uncle did not reply, and little more was said between them until they got out at their station. The two elder ladies were sitting up for them, and were curious to hear, not about the subject of discussion, but about Cardinal Power personally. But Lesbia and her uncle were not up to further conversation, and in a few minutes all were in their bedrooms.
The short summer night turned into dawn, and the renewed rumble of a vehicle here and there, the chirp of town sparrows in the sooty trees, a street cry in the distance, as the grey glimmer grew on, showed that London was waking up to its stiff, dismal Sunday; still in his solitary drawing-room, with the gas burning faintly over his head, with his elbows resting upon the table and his face buried in his hands, sat the Roman Catholic prelate, lost in thought. For three hours he had hardly changed his attitude; at last he rose and moved slowly to the door, muttering,—‘Madness, madness! the idea of getting bewitched like this by a visionary young girl!’
But that did not end the matter.