my link with robespierre

Irish Jesuit Province

My Link with RobespierreAuthor(s): John HannonSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 35, No. 406 (Apr., 1907), pp. 214-224Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20501134 .

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[ 214 3

MY LINK WITH ROBESPIERRE

I HAVE spoken as a child to an aged French nun, who had spoken with Robespierre, " the sea-green Incorruptible." Sceur Eug6nie, as she was doubtless entered on the

convent books, was plain " Sisther Eugene," in the mas culine, to the Irish dwellers in our English village. We our selves saw little of her, for we lived amid the orchards nearly a mile from her convent, and she was feeble with years even when I first remember her. Also we were not quite so poor as those to whom she ministered, up and down the crooked street which leads from the convent gates. Thus she only came for a chat

with my mother when duty-calls gave her leisure, or to bring her big basket for wild herbs and roots which my father got for her in a low-lying field " at the back of the haggard."

It was the day Sister came for the marsh-mallows that she told us of her word with Robespierre. She was a great maker of tisanes for her " poor peoples." Now, when Sister Eugene talked tisane there was no stopping her. Moreover, there was no telling whither tisane as a text might lead, for she was the

most deliciously inconsequent of gossips. This particular golden afternoon of a summer's day, with the great chestnut fronting the open door by which we sat one blaze of bloom,

marsh-mallow tea took us back to the Terror, with a little colla boration from the chickens scratching on the gravel before us

Sister began by imparting the whole art and mystery of the making of tisane de guimauves. Then came a pious anecdote of a death-bed, which really I cannot connect now, and could not then, with the soft green leaves that lolled on the lid of her basket. In a trice we were back at tisane again. Had I coughs ? No, thank God. Sister seemed to think this rather a pity; tisane de guimauves was so good for them. My mother spoke a word in praise of cod-liver oil. Sister agreed, but upheld an admixture of honey with " ze juice of ze citron " in prefer ence. " In my country-for ze children--always," she added lucidly. Thus early was I made to feel that " they do these things better in France." In the Ireland I had never seen, the " rude forefathers of the hanmlet " clove to an infusion of senna leaves, " for ze children-always," and my parents had imported this, with nobler traditions.

Just then the chickens scurried across the doorway to the stables, where someone was shaking corn for them. Siste r



MY LINK WITH ROBESPIERRE 215"

looked grave, and shook her head sagely many times up and down.

" In my father's house," she said, " I remember two times three times so many chickens kill' for Robespierre. I was little girl, ver' small. But I remember as yesterday. So many mans in ze house. Great-fierce-ogly bad mans with guns. And oh! " -(Sister's perorations were always in anti-climax)-" they ate bacon and chicken."

Then came a long story in broken English, with casual mention of the fact that Robespierre-who was in authority among the " bad mans " vith guns-had asked her how old she was. In precis, Sister's narrative is simple enough. Some party of provincial Sans-Culottes-perhaps a section of the

Marseillais themselves-had reached Pads, and were being billeted out by Robespierre in person. Sister's home was a substantial farmstead outside the old fortifications, with barns and lofts for lodging, and poultry for board, and little more need be said. The appetites of the " Sovereign People" were ex cellent; the bacon reserved for home use was consumed as well as that intended for market; chickens were slain in scores; no

money changed hands, and it was a " drr-readful time, oh, dreadful." " They leave us nothing to eat for nex' day ! " This was pointed out by Sister as a possibly surprising conclusion, which you might not have deduced for yourself.

The latest cure at the shrine of Lourdes followed, with sub sequent mention of the deaths of sisters, father and brothers in

Napoleon's first conscription. She took her leave with a final word on marsh-mallows.

So that my " link," so far as French history is concerned, would not afford the minutest footnote of value to the most prolix account of the Revolution. It is rather as a bond with the emigrant of the '48-'50 that I cherish the memory of " Sisther Eugene."

One of the oddities of our village was old Tim Regan. " Old Tim" like Yellow Dan (whom I trust some readers remember), was a Bandon fisherman, blown by the famine-storm from his native seas to the troubled waters of Babylon. He soon sent home for his elderly sweetheart, Joanie, who was in sore trouble in Ireland, and married her in the village. This quaint pair, the story of whose wooing and wedding must be held over for a fuller sketch, were known to the neighbours as " Old Tim and

Old Joanie." Old in years they both were, even in the fateful 'Forty-eight.

In all else they were a pair of grown-up, grey-haired children.



2I6 THE IRISH MONTHLY

They had a hard battle in England at first, for they spoke no word of English when they severally landed. As time went on, they were " coached " by English-speaking Gaels, and ended by mastering a jerky, fairly intelligible, English patois,

which, however, was more like the wild " Hieland" talk in Rob Roy than any " brogue " I have heard.

Sister Eugene was in very similar case. Her France of the '48 had no Famine, but it had a Revolution which sent her to

England, to help, with a few other nuns of her Order under an Irish Reverend Mother of hallowed memory, in the foundation of perhaps the most flourishing convent in all the long valley of the Thames.

Pioneer days were hard for Sister. They were anxious enough for the little band--a mere handful-toiling and praying

within the gaunt walls of the old mansion they had secured. Luckily it had wooded grounds, and was girt with a high wall to screen them from a No-Popery, anti-Wiseman world.

But Sister had no English, and was thus unavailable for her turn as portress. A splendid judge of provisions, she could not bargain, for the same reason. She was of but small service as surveillante of the Irish children for whom that splendid Reverend

Mother opened a poor school the moment money permitted. She certainly administered the whackings when they were called for; girls came in more for the rod in the 'fifties and 'sixties than in what have been called the 'nineties and " naughties." I am assured that she followed Solomon's advice with vim in cases of real naughtiness, but these were rare.* Rheumatism,

*An old pupil of the Convent's day-school for poor girls writes:?MIn

my time there was really only one of us regularly whipped by Sister Eugene, poor Nell-, a wild thing. She used to lie on the flagging of the passage leading to the outer gate, and kick and bite at Sister's ankles ! We children could hear Sister saying, in her funny French accent : ? Do you scream ? Vill

you scream ? Now.* At each ' Now ' down came the cane, and you never

heard such bawling as there was from Nell. One day a Protestant gentleman rang furiously at the bell, and asked who was being murdered in the Convent ! Sister went on before him with her ' Vill you scream ? Now,1 and the gentle man went away satisfied. But after that Nell used to be taken right away to the nun's wash-house across the yard, and we were so disappointed, we

enjoyed her screams in the passage so, knowing they were half play-acting, half temper. She hardly cried in the wash-house. Another day a Protestant

gentleman rang the bell, and said he had heard a lot about convents, but had never seen the inside of one, and would like to, very much. Reverend Mother was told, and sent two of the Mothers to take him all over the house and

grounds. The last place the gentleman visited was St. Joseph's little chapel, and there was a tin money-box before his statue where the yonng ladies [i.e., the boarders of the Convent pension"] could put pennies for the poor and for candles. The gentleman took something out of his pocket-book and put it into this. Then he came out with the two Mothers, and stood for a while to admire the piggery, where there was a poor Sister doing her work. She was



MY LINK WITH ROBESPIERRE 217

that scourge of the peasant woman, forbade her the heavy house-work in which the Mothers who taught as well as the few lay-sisters then had to take part. Poor Sister Eugene could but pray,and look on in distress-leaning on her walking-stick and carrying a little bottle of holy water in her disengaged hand, they tell me. At last the cloud was lifted. Out of the riches of her poverty, Reverend Mother appointed Sister her almoner to the hungry exiles flocking faster and faster into the village, seeking work in the gradens. Acta, non verba. Sister could achieve the first, a well-loaded basket saving need of the second.

It was thus that Soeur Eugenie became " Sisther Eugene," and even " Sisther Eujane " with the broader-spoken folks of our race, for nearly forty years, till she was called to a world where food and firing, flannels and beef-tea and boots for many children,

with the attendant worries of their distribution to touchy recipients, " can touch her not, nor torture her again." She

was almost a hundred when she went to her reward beside Dorcas, and St. Martha, and so many millions of holy housewives.

Now, when Old Tim and Joanie and Sister Eugene had severally managed to master something of the English idiom, they became great cronies, like the three great simple children they were. Old Joanie had been skilled in the dairy before her

bad times; so had Sister Eugene before hers. Old Tim knew nothing of the Lives of the Saints; Sister filled him full with

miracle and legend, till Tim would have passed for a Bollandist in Bandon. This leads me to my father's favourite story of

Sister, Old Tim, and St. Joseph. There was a terrible winter in the 'fifties, when all the market

gardeners' men were thrown out of work. Old Tim and my father went daily in quest of some task of indoor labour to keep the wolf from the door and a fire in the grate. But it was useless; the heavy snow brought other trades than that of " Goodman

Adam " to a standstill. There was no railway to London then, and goods could not be carted along the snow-bound turnpike roads, with their perilous drifts in places. Work was not to be had, seek as they would.

very ugly, and a great saint. The Sister looked hard at him?a way she had with everybody?and said afterwards that she prayed for him, because he had a good face. Then he thanked the Mother, and said how pleased he was with everything, and went away. When the nuns opened St. Joseph's box,

they found a bank-note?I don't know how much for, but we children were

always told it was just the amount dear Reverend Mother was short of that

day, and had been praying hard to St. Joseph for. The gentleman called once

again, long afterwards, to say he had become a Catholic. The nuns always put his conversion down to the prayers of the poor Sister who fed the pigs."



2I 8 THE IRISH, MON THLY

Remember, too, the open hostility-over and above bad seasons, and the fluctuations of what is called the " labour

market "-that Irishmen of the Exodus had to face in England. " No Irish Need Apply " confronted every man of them who could read a placard or decipher a newspaper; the rest had the cruel words shouted at them by masters and foremen, and by the British Working Man himself. They were bidden to leave

Old England, and go back to their bogs, in the counties. In the cities the rabble yelled " Ahoo, Pat! " when they saw the Irish with their poor bundles, and street-urchins followed the sorrow-stricken bands, chanting " Ahoo, Pat, which way does the bull run ? "-whatever that meant.

" The very parrots in their cages cried' Ahoo, Pat! 'after us," said my mother in after years, and others have assured me that this significant statement is literally true. Many-one

might say most-of the Cork and Limerick wanderers, by the way, now met with these interesting birds for the first time in their lives, and many and amusing were the misunderstandings

which arose when young Irishwomen entered service in a family where a talkative parrot was kept.

From parrots to peers, the cry was the same. All honour to the English nobleman, Lord Petre, who painted across his park gates at Woburn: " Harvest Hands Wanted. NONE BUT IRISH NEED APPLY." Christian-and Catholic-in its source, the legend was also a fine human taunt to the time-serving squires of Surrey.

Old Tim and my father, after begging for work one day, met Sister in the snow by the riverside path, begging from door to door at the big houses.

They saluted her, and made to pass on, but she held them in talk about their prospects. She had done well-Sister showed a bulging basket with pride. How had they got on ?

Sister Eugene, I believe, would have gossiped with the headsman at her own execution, if he made a remark that pleased her.

" There iss no hope of work, Sissther," said Old Tim, whose sibilants were as powerful as all the rest of his consonants. "We haft tried efferywhere, haff we not, Chonnie ? "

"Johnnie "-then twenty-five years of age-assented. " There iss no chance, Sissther. We cannot get a chob from

any chentleman." "Then," said good Sister, with an air of finality, " you

mus' go to Saint Joseph, and he is sure to give you vork at vonce."



MY LINK WITH ROBESPIERRE 2I9

"Where duss he liff, Sissther ? " said Old Tim. "Tell us at which house duss he liff. We will go to St. Choseph, Chonnie, and ask him for a chob ! "

Sister sighed over Tim's simplicity, and went her way silently, pour faire sa quCte.

When the black-robed, broad little figure was out of ear shot, my father was surprised to see Tim winking most know ingly and grinning with much satisfaction.

" Ho, ho! Chonnie! " said Old Tim, digging an elbow into my father's ribs, " did not I say well at Sissther ? Where duss he

lig 2 Where is St. Joseph's house ? Did not I say well at Sissther, Chonnie ? " And old Tim laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks.

Tim's joke has always struck me as a good example of a peculiar form of humour at his superior's expense in which the seemingly artless Irish labourer is a past master, as Carleton is careful both to point out, and to establish by well-selected instances. The demure naivete, the solemn ignorantia afectata of a clever and whimsical peasantry have ever imposed upon the Saxon mind, so that to this day an " Irish way" of saying things is synonymous with a stupid way in England, at any rate in lower middle-class households.

Old Tim knew from his mother, probably before the Act of Union was passed, where the Holy Family " lived." But it is a dark hour that men like him cannot enliven with jest or illumine with prayer. How sad for modern France that faith and fun-real fun-so seldom dwell together in the typical ouvrier's head! It is a deep French proverb which says: " Les gens qui prient sont aussi les gens qui se battent." For our people the phrase might run: " Les gens qui prient sont aussi les gens qui rient," without reference to fighting qualities which have never been impugned.

" Did not I say well at Sissther?" Yes, Old Tim, I think it was a fine joke for you to make on a hungry stomach. And

St. Joseph can't possibly have minded, for my father assured me that both of them got work, most unexpectedly, before that week was ended.

Another story of that cruel frost, which lasted so long that the villagers could have an ox and two sheep roasted whole for them upon the frozen waters of the Thames-a tidal river. Parsons were " blacker agin the Irish," the old neighbours have told me, in those days of the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy than many of them are now, and saw to it that none of the ill-cooked flesh went into a Papist pot. So Sister Eugene



220 THE IRISH MONTHLY

continued to beg from house to house for her " poor peoples;" mostly, however, for money, clothing, and bedding. As regards food, the Reverend Mother kept the convent cauldrons bubbling

merrily in the kitchen throughout that winter-and other hard winters in the after years. One of the poor women whom she had thus tided over a second, and English, famine, got me, as a child, to detach one petal from a bunch of lilies upon her bed where she lay awaiting burial. All Ireland in the village thronged the little chapelle ardente where she rested, as yet un coffined, and beautiful in death. I took a petal, unchidden by the weeping nuns beside whom we were kneeling, and the poor

woman kissed it, and placed it in a tiny receptacle-seemingly made for relics-at the back of an old brass crucifix, of good workmanship, which she drew from her breast, where it hung by a plaited brown cord. At the hour of her own death, this grate ful soul begged her family to destroy reverently both the hollow crucifix and its contents, by fire, for fear they should some day -however unintentionally-be profaned. But when the end came, they left them still about her neck, to remain in the tomb as emblems of her love of the Crucified, and of one of His virgins,

who, having followed Him in His poor and needy upon earth, shall assuredly follow Him " whithersoever He goeth" in Heaven.

Good Sister Eugene, then, went her beneficent rounds during all this said time, in spite of daily increasing rheumatic pains, and the gentle expostulations of her sister-nuns. And one day, far out on the lonely road between Kingston and Esher, she tumbled into a snow-drift.

It was not a very deep one, and she could breathe; but she could not get up. She lay wedged on her back in the deep furrow made by her fall, her half-crippled feet rather higher than her head. It was again snowing fast, and there was not a soul to be seen.

We always thought her rescue providential, and possibly miraculous in the strictest sense. Maybe a miracle did take place, but Sister really never could be got to end up a story concerning herself satisfyingly. The denouement would come in such a casual way,

" I lie on my back," she told us in after years, " an' I pray to Got. I say ' Got, 0 my Got, you mus' get me out of zis hole to go and beg for my peoples. What vill they do ? What vill they do ? 0 my Got . . . please get me up quick ! "

As Sister continued to lie thus helpless till the snowflakes had covered her black habit with a thick white fall, her Irish




hearers might be pardoned for inquisitiveness concerning the manner of her deliverance. All they got for the asking was a

tantalising obiter dictum: " So I got up, an' go to the first big house, an' there they give me so much money that I beg no more that day, but go straight home to ze Convent. An' I go to bed."

Sister's tales always thrilled till the crisis, and then dtis appointed. There is an ill-smelling rookery in our village called Daly's Alley. It resembles the vanished " Hundred" of Dr. Joseph's parish in architecture, but in nought besides. The less said of its present inhabitants the better, but in Sister's earliest days good people and true dwelt " up the alley," and among them (but hardly of them) a virago of our race who, was always charging Sister with favouritism in a certain annual Christmas distribution.

This was the charity known locally as " Lord K -'s Gifts." The Earl of K was an eccentric Protestant Irish peer, who gave Sister every midwinter many pairs of excellent blankets to be distributed by her among " her peoples." They were

woven of the highest grade wool in the market; but were dyed of so forbidding a colour that no pawnbroker in his senses wvould dream of taking them in pledge. Some said the old Earl was crazed; if so, there was method in his madness. He had dyed his " gifts " before the Famine, when they went to the English poor alone, and dyed they remained when the village flanked by his riverside seat was colonized from Munster.

One winter, the termagant of Daly's Alley did not receive her " gift." Perhaps the omission was an oversight; perhaps for some sufficient reason it was intentional. In either case there was bound to be trouble. Sister told us of it afterwards, in tragic tones: " I go down de alley de nex' day," she said, " an' dat ter-rrible woman, she run after me wis a frr-rying-pan in her hand. 'I kill you, I kill you,' she say. An' she lift ze frying-pan in ze air, over my head . . . an' her eyes, zey flash like fire! An' I say to her: 'Vill you be quiet if you please ?'

An' she was quiet." This, " An' she was quiet," may serve as a final example of

Sister's countless anti-climaxes. " Poor Mrs. H -" said my mother, talking over the incident later, " she wouldn't have hurt a hair of Sister Eugene's head, if she had been twice as drunk and disappointed."

Old Mr. Howe, the doyen of Sir Henry Irving's Lyceum Company, was a great crony of Sister's. A fine Shakespearean actor of the olden school, cast mostly for serious roles, he could turn comedian in private life, and take roguish pleasure in

discussing the Sunday Benediction sermon with Sister, whose



222 THE IRISH MONTHLY

years sent her fast asleep the moment the text was delivered. Sister's priedieu, on Sundays, was at the back of the side-chapel or " tribune" to which the public-mostly consisting of her " poor peoples "-were admitted by the nuns. Mr. Howe also sat at the back of the tribune, and could thus observe the precise moment at which Sister dozed off. The rest of us were

made aware of her slumbers at varying intervals a little later on by her-well, sonorous breathing!

After Benediction, we used to take out time to leave the convent, especially on pleasant summer afternoons. Those who reached the lodge first, would wait for the rest, without sum moning the sister portress to let them out till all were assembled. Sister and Mr. Howe were generally the last to reach the gate. The old actor's instinct seldom failed him when he saw an appreciative " audience" before him. " Sister," he would say, " didn't Monsignor Weld speak beautifully on so-and-so ? " " Yes, yes, indeed," poor Sister would say, manifestly flustered. " Oh, beautifully! ' "But, Sister, I couldn't follow the next part of the sermon; I'm not a Catholic, as you know. Do tell me what it was about." Sister would plunge into devout generalities, sometimes making good shots, for her hearing was marvellously keen to the end, and there were occasionally wakeful intervals that Mr. Howe had not observed. At other times-for it was a standing joke-poor Sister was all at sea, and the decorous comedy (sustained by the old actor with the

most delicate courtesy of speech and expression) would continue till the portress jangled her keys with a smile, and let us out into a world where there is but too little innocent fun. "Well, good-afternoon, Sister," Mr. Howe would say. " But really, really, you were asleep, Sister, you were asleep! " Sister

Eugene would throw up her hands. " Measter Howe, can you say such a ting ? " she would say. For neatness of unmendacity, her reply should commend itself to moral theologians.

Poor "Daddy" Howe! He was born and bred a Quaker and the "Friends" have ever been the kindliest of sectarians. I saw him play splendidly in the " Merchant of Venice " soon before his last tour in America-or elsewhere. He died in the States, and very meagre news of the veteran's death was cabled home. Thus I do not know if he entered the Church at the end, but in the silence of the newspapers there is at least room for hope that he did-at any rate in desire.

As I have said, Sister Eugene's quick hearing remained un impaired to the day of her death. The day before, she detected a sound of hammering within the building as readily as the Sisters nursing her.




"Vat noise is .dat ? " said Sister Eugene, looking up quickly. "Vat change do dey make now ?"

It was now the reign of a new Reverend Mother, who reaped with holy joy what her predecessor had sown, not without tears. The convent was prospering exceedingly, improvements were being effected within and without, and the workmen, at the

moment, were in the main hall below. "Vat change do dey make now ? " said Sister.

They told her that a statue of our Lady, with its low, oddly placed shrine of painted wood, was being removed from the hearth of the big eighteenth century fire-place to make room for heating apparatus.

" Oh, dat mus' not be," cried Sister Eugene in distress, "Reverend Mother mus' never take Our Lady away from dere.

Ask her to come to me, if you please." Reverend Mother came at once, and listened with interest

to Sister's agitated flow of speech. This, of course, I cannot pretend to transcribe, but I know its substance well.

One night soon after the pioneer nuns had come to live in the then bleak old house, a terrible thunderstorm burst over the lower valley of the Thames. The handful of nuns in the great building were sadly unnerved, good souls, and assembled in the dimly-lit hall for company and prayer. As they prayed, a couple of tall trees without were struck by a blinding flash, and came with a great noise to the ground.( Upon this the Reverend Mother rose from her knees, and, with help, removed the large statue of Our Lady before which they were praying, from its place on the wall, and placed it in the open hearth place, down which the dazzling gleam of the lightning played. " Saints," Father Faber observes somewhere, " appear to people of smaller faith superstitious in little things and pre sumptuous in great."

A pair of candles were then lit before the statue, and the good Reverend Mother called upon her nuns to beg Our Lady to guard them and the house, with all confidence. They were of better cheer, and prayed with a good heart. And when the storm had passed away, leaving terrible traces of its presence in the whole parish, no further scathe had been done to the convent. The statue was left where it stood, in its unlikeliest of resting-places. In time a simple shrine was made to support it. All this occurred in a past that was dim to the younger nuns, but was far more vivid than yesterday to Sister.

" An' so Our Lady mus' not be taken from ze fire-place, Reverend Mother." This was the " order," spoken with cen tenarian lips to her young Superioress.



."I will havvthe statiue put back: 'ate 'once, Sister," said the Reverend 'Mother. And she went -herself to .the wrkmen, stopped the work in hand, and bade them make. good what --demolition had been effected.

All was weH, then, for all ended well. Anid Sister Eugene's life, too, ended well, and in great peace, on the following day,

after a course of all but one hundred years.

There was a beautiful young exiled Princess of the royal house of Orleans receiving her education thirty-six years, ago, under the same roof with Sister Eugene. She is now her Catholic

Majesty of Portugal, in truth, as in title. 'The babies of- the Irish poor were her particular pets. She

was never so happy as when permitted to carry one of them in her arms up and down the convent garden.: This, honour on one ;-occasion fell to the lot of the writer of these lines, who, -I am finforimed, demeaned himself on t-he occasion with an unevenness

of temper that 'has unhappily pursued him through life. So that I have a double link-" with Robespierre, for the man

who slew Sister's chickens also shore off the heads of the Pri-n cess's forebears.

But it is little of them, and less of Robespierre that I think when memories of Sister Eugene arise. She is rather my link withl lowlier folks, like Old Tim and Joanie, with whom I hope to be one day frited, very near to the dear "iSaint Choseph,"J in the House where he "duss if."

Sceur Euginie, priez Pour les pauvres gens-" ze poor peoples."

JOHN HAN-NON.

TESSELL4AE:

0 Mary my Mother, my own, my own! .Even me a poor sinner you will not disown

But will smile on me lovingly down from your throne. ;0::~~~ ~~ wn om ourthrone. - : -

Gieat loving Saint, to whom the Keys were given, Oh a may'st thou ope for me the gate of Heaven.



my link with robespierre

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