CHAPTER IV.

Death Of Father Dominic.

We group the incidents of this chapter around this sad event: some of them were the last these two bosom friends did together, and the others were occasioned by their separation.

Early in January, 1849, Father Ignatius went, at the invitation of Mr. John Smith, of Button, to see a spot of ground upon which that worthy man intended building a church and house for a community of Passionists. Father Ignatius did not like the situation; but as soon as he spoke to Father Dominic about it, they both came to St. Helen's Junction to see if two heads might not be wiser than one. Father Dominic landed on the platform a little before Father Ignatius, who had been delayed somewhere on the way. He went immediately to look for the great benefactor. A fine-looking, open, plain man saluted him, and he thought this must be a Catholic, and likely he knows the person I am looking for. "Do you know where lives a certain Mr. Smith?" asked Father Dominic. "I should think I did," answered his new friend, and after a few minutes' conversation the father was satisfied, for he was no other than Mr. Smith himself. They both walked over a considerable extent of ground, within which Mr. Smith told the good father to make his choice of a site. He had selected that whereon St. Anne's Retreat now stands, when Father Ignatius arrived. Father Ignatius hesitated a little before giving his consent, and it was only when Father Dominic said emphatically, "The house that is to be built here will yet be the largest and best we shall have in England," that he fully agreed. That prophecy is noted in a {375} journal Father Ignatius kept at the time, and he wondered afterwards how the church and monastery that arose on that dreary spot verified it to the letter. It is the best and largest we have in England at the present moment, and Father Dominic never saw a stone of its foundations laid.

Fathers Dominic, Ignatius, and Vincent, give a mission in Romney Terrace, Westminster, in March. Shortly after they give another in High Street, Dublin. At this mission they introduced the Italian ceremonies, such as peacemakers (persons appointed to reconcile those at variance), special sermons for different classes of people, bell for the five _paters_, and public asking of pardon by the missionaries. It fell to Father Ignatius to be spokesman in this latter ceremony, and sore straitened was he to find out in what particular the fathers had offended, that he might therefrom draw the apology for their act. He searched and searched, and at last remembered his own proneness to nod asleep when too long in the confessional. This was the plea he made, and we must say it was a very poor one: it gives, however, a good idea of his candour, and want of unreality. These demonstrations were found to be unsuited to the genius of the people, and have been suffered to fall into desuetude ever since.

Father Ignatius goes next on a begging tour through Manchester, Sheffield, and the north of England. He called at Carstairs House, on his way to Glasgow and Edinburgh, to visit his friend Mr. Monteith. Mr. Monteith was received into the Church by Dr. Wiseman, when Father Ignatius lived in Oscott. Father Ignatius was his god-father. A friendship then began between them which never cooled; they kept up a correspondence from which many important hints have been borrowed for this book, and it was from Mr. Monteith's place the soul of Father Ignatius took its departure for a better world. Mr. Monteith extended the friendship he had for Father Ignatius to his other religious brethren, and time after time has he given them substantial proofs of its depth and generosity.

Father Ignatius and he had been for some time in correspondence about founding a house of Passionists {376} somewhere near Lanark or Carstairs; but circumstances over which they had no control prevented them coming to a conclusion. The Vincentians have well and worthily taken the place, and the first house of our order founded in Scotland was St. Mungo's, Glasgow, a few months after Father Ignatius's death. It was he who opened Mr. Monteith's domestic chapel, and said the first mass in it. And it was in the same chapel the first mass was said for his own soul in presence of the body.

He says in the Journal:--

"Tuesday, Aug. 14.--Went to London with Father Dominic. We had a fine talk with Dr. Wiseman. We dined at 12½ in King William Street with Faber and the Oratorians.

"Wednesday, Aug. 15.--Sung mass at 10 and preached, Prepared in a hurry for my journey. Went off at 3½ for the Continent."

He never saw Father Dominic in the flesh again.

On the 27th of August, 1849, Father Dominic and a brother priest were travelling by railway to Aston. In the morning, before leaving London, the companion asked Father Dominic to bring him with him; he had just arrived from Australia, and wished to see some of his old companions at Aston Hall. Father Dominic thought this was not reason enough for incurring the expense of the journey; he demurred, but at length assented. It was fortunate he did. When they came as far as Reading, Father Dominic became suddenly ill. He was taken out on the platform, and as the people were afraid of an epidemic, no one would admit the patient into his house. There lay the worn-out missionary, who had prayed and toiled so long for the conversion of England, on that bleak desolate-looking platform, abandoned by all for whose salvation he thirsted, with only a companion kneeling by his side to prepare him for eternity. But the coldness and want of hospitality of the people gave him no concern: other thoughts engrossed him. A few minutes he suffered, and in those few he made his preparation. He made arrangements for the government of our houses, he gave his last instructions to his companion, he invoked a blessing upon England, and then placidly {377} closed his eyes for ever upon this wicked world, to open them in a brighter one. He died abandoned, and almost alone, but he died in the poverty he had practised, and the solitude he loved.

Father Ignatius was in Holland at the time. On his arrival at our house in Tournay he heard a rumour of Father Dominic's death. He gave no credit to it at first; a letter written to him about it went astray; and it was not until about a fortnight after it happened that he saw a paragraph in a newspaper, giving the full particulars. He hastened home at once to England, and the first thing he heard from Dr. Wiseman was that Father Dominic had nominated him his successor.

Father Ignatius, when his provisional appointment had been confirmed in Rome, could only look forward to trials and difficulties such as he had never to get through before. We had then three houses of the order in England, and one in Belgium, which were united under one Superior, acting as Provincial. The houses were not yet constituted into a canonical province. The fewness of the members, and their ignorance of the customs and ways of a strange country, increased the difficulties. That year, indeed, four excellent priests, who have since worked hard on the English mission, came from Rome; but they could as yet only say mass, on account of their imperfect acquaintance with the English language.

Then, the existence of each house was so precarious that the smallest gust of opposition seemed sufficient to unpeople them. Aston Hall was struggling to build a church, in which undertaking that mission was destined to exhaust all the life it had; for it eked out but a dying existence from the time the church was opened, until it was given up in a few years. The retreat at Woodchester seemed to have lacked any spirit of vitality from the absence of the cross in its foundation. The generosity of a convert made everything smooth and convenient in the beginning, but the difficulties that led at length to our leaving it were already threatening to rise. The house in London was doomed to be transplanted to the wilderness of The Hyde, even before {378} the death of Father Dominic, and St. Anne's, Sutton, was not yet begun.

This was the material position of the Passionists when Father Ignatius became Superior, or _quasi_ Provincial. To add to this, the fathers were not first-rate men of business. They could pray well, preach and hear confessions, but they gave people of the world credit for being better than they were. Some of their worldly affairs became, therefore, complicated, and Father Ignatius, unfortunately, was not the man to rectify matters and put them straight. He was a sage in spirituals, but the very reverse in temporals.

Many of the religious became disheartened at the prospect. Some lost their vocations. Many fought manfully with contending difficulties, weathered all the storms, and, tempered and taught by those days of trouble, look with smiling placidity on what we should think serious crosses in these days. Such is the beginning of every religious institute; it grows and thrives by contradiction and persecution. Human foresight prophesied our destruction then, and could not believe that in sixteen years we should have seven houses in this province, with an average of about twenty religious for each. The ways of God are wonderful.

This kind of confession was necessary, in order that readers might have an idea of Father Ignatius's position after the death of Father Dominic.

He set to work at once, first carrying out Father Dominic's intentions, and then trying some special work of his own. The new church at Woodchester was consecrated by Dr. Hendren and Dr. Ullathorne, and Dr. Wiseman preached at the opening. The new church of St. Michael's, Aston Hall, was opened in the same year. On the 7th of November the community of Poplar House, two priests and a lay brother, move to The Hyde.

Father Ignatius, with Fathers Vincent and Gaudentius, give a mission in Westminster, and they venture out in their habits through the streets of London. This mission brought out some of Father Ignatius's peculiarities. In the instruction upon the sanctification of holy days, which it was his duty to give, he proposed that the Irish should make {379} "a general strike, not for wages, but for mass on festivals." He went to visit Father Faber, who was ill at the time; they became engrossed in conversation, when Father Ignatius looked at his watch and said he should get away to prepare his sermon or instruction. Father Faber said this was a very human proceeding, and was of opinion that missionaries should be able to preach like the Apostles, without preparation. Father Ignatius turned the matter over in his mind, reasoned it out with himself, and thenceforward never delivered what might be called an elaborate discourse.

It may be remarked, before closing the chapter, that Father Dominic, at Father Ignatius's suggestion, ordered, in the beginning of 1849, three Hail Marys to be said by us after Complin for the conversion of England. The practice is still continued, and has been extended to our houses on the Continent and in America.

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