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HARRIETT JAY BOOK REVIEWS
2. The Priest’s Blessing (1881) to Two Men And A Maid (1881)
The Priest’s Blessing, or Poor Patrick’s Progress from this World to a Better (1881)
Evening Telegraph (Dublin) (25 June, 1881 - p.2)
A new story by the authoress of “The Queen of Connaught” is about to be published. It is entitled “The Priest’s Blessing,” and appears to be a wholesale onslaught on the Irish Catholic clergy. Judging from the offensive bigotry and gross misrepresentation of the previous tales published by this lady we may expect to find “The Priest’s Blessing” an exceedingly un-Irish story.
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The Newcastle Courant (1 July, 1881)
The authoress of “The Queen of Connaught” has just finished a new story on the Irish question, entitled the “Priest’s Blessing.” It is a kind of study of the life of an Irish peasant, from the cradle to the grave, and constitutes a formidable indictment against the Roman Catholic priesthood.
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The Era (30 July, 1881 - p.13)
THE PRIEST’S BLESSING. By HARRIET JAY, White and Co.—The authoress of “The Queen of Connaught” has produced a singular tale of Irish life, intended to illustrate the life of the Irish peasant from the cradle to the grave. In a dedication to the Right Hon. W. E. Forster, the authoress refers to the period of the Irish famine, when an English gentleman, wandering through the famished district, gained extraordinary sympathy from the people by his generosity to the distressed. This was Mr Forster, who thus gained his knowledge of the condition of the people, and, having become Chief Secretary, he has endeavoured to do justice to them. In dedicating the book to Mr Forster, the writer says:— “There may be points in this book with which you disagree, expressions which you would wish changed; but I inscribe it to you because you have the welfare of the Irish people at heart, and because I, with many others, sympathise with you, and despise your tormentors—knowing, as I do, that there is among all the so-called friends of Ireland, who have made their unhappy country a byword for folly, mendacity, and indiscriminate free fighting, not one who has a tithe of your philanthropy, your experience, or your wisdom. Accept, therefore, this little study of the Irish question from one who, like yourself, loves Ireland and the Irish peasant; but would warn both against false prophets and teachers, nationalists and time-serving misleaders. And believe me, with all sympathy, respect, and admiration.” The various incidents in the career of an Irish peasant are told with much pathos and power, and the volume will serve to give a good idea of the state of the impoverished people and the temptations they are subjected to through agitators on the one hand and poverty on the other.
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The Nation (Dublin) (6 August, 1881 - p.10)
Reviews.
AN INFAMOUS LIBEL.*
A FEW years since we had occasion to criticise with some severity an English-Irish novel to which was given the rather attractive title of “The Queen of Connaught.” The book was from a literary point of view a wretched performance, and in so far as it pretended to be a picture of Irish life it was a ridiculous libel. In England, however, where the reading public devours nothing so greedily as malignant and extravagant slanders on Ireland and its people, it seems to have been rather well received; and it is, no doubt, to the success thus achieved that the world is indebted for two or three other novels of, we believe, a somewhat similar character from the same pen. The latest—we hardly suppose it is to be the last—of this rare series of literary treasures now lies before us, and, unless we are greatly mistaken, it is likely to be the most “successful” of all—in England. It has all the artistic faults of the first in an accentuated form, but it has also what will in English eyes amply compensate for its literary defects—namely an embarras de richesses in the shape of a collection of the most vulgar and atrocious calumnies on the Irish Catholic people, and especially on the Irish Catholic clergy, which we have ever read. It has no plot, properly so called; it does not contain even one sentence which is notable for beauty of thought or of expression; it is not free even from grammatical inaccuracies; its characters are about as life-like as wax-work figures; and, finally, the genius of commonplace presides over every line from the first page to the last. But to balance such unmistakable evidences of intellectual dulness and utter incapacity for the writing of books of fiction the authoress manifests an anti-Irish and anti-Catholic spleen which is absolutely certain to take captive all the old women of both sexes who sit at the feet of Mr. Newdegate and assemble annually in Exeter Hall to denounce “the errors of Rome”; and than such a triumph what greater can be desired by such an artist? The authoress, in short, of the “story” entitled “The Priest’s Blessing” aims at winning the favour of the lowest and most debased class of English novel-readers, and she will undoubtedly succeed in that lofty undertaking.
When we mention that a landlord named O’Brien tries to civilize the tenants of his Patrickstown estate, that his philanthropic efforts meet with the deadly hostility of a debased people led on by two scoundrelly priests, that his Scotch agent is fired at and he himself murdered in return for his humane efforts, and that one of the tenants, who is not the real murderer, is hanged for the crime, we tell the essential points of this precious story. But the peculiar aroma of the tale only comes out when we examine into the details; and here we must say that practically this is a prolonged attack on the priests. The authoress’s peasants are evil-looking and of shambling gait, densely ignorant, superstitious to the last degree, irreconcilably opposed to improvements that conflict with the conditions of their own bestial existence, not utterly destitute of kindliness and generosity yet ready on the instigation of their leaders to commit any atrocity whatever, and given to lying and cheating the lords of the soil. There is no light and shade in the picture. It is all one dark, ugly blot. The peasantry, however, are, after all, harmless and almost lovable in comparison with their spiritual guides, of whom two—a parish priest and a curate—are painted full length, and are simply detestable ruffians. Let us first see what the curate is like. “Father Flannigan,” we read, “was a man of about five and twenty years of age, tall and thin, with very pale lips, and eyes which could not be made to look one straight in the face.” On one occasion he sat drinking with the Scotch agent, MacCollop, in the parlour of the latter’s house, when the conversation proceeded in this wise:—
“Of all the places on the earth,” said MacCollop, throwing back his head and thrusting his hands into his trouser pockets, “I never cam across one equal to this. Why, man, the folk are nae better than brute beasts!”
“Faith they’re by no manes perfect, sor!” said the curate, who spoke with a strong Irish brogue.
“And do you no think that they’re a disgrace to yoursel’, Mister Flannigan?”
The curate closed his eyes pathetically.
“’Tis not my mission, sor, to attend to the corporeal position of my flock; the abode of the spirit is eternal, and demands our sole thoughts. Will you hand over the bottle, sor?”
“Hoots, man, hoots!” exclaimed the agent, while the curate was preparing another glass, “isna it a man’s mission to see that a body goes aboot with a clean face on him, and doesna live altogether like a soo. And sae you believe in the confessional, Mister Flannigan?”
“I am a Roman Catholic Priest, sor,” retorted his companion with emphasis, “and if it’s plasing to you I would rather remain silent on the subject.”
“Please. yoursel’, please yoursel’,” said the host, pushing over the hot water for the curate to replenish his glass.
The carousal was kept up till midnight, when the agent and the curate went to bed. They slept in the same room. After a short time the curate got out of bed to search for something, and when detected in this act proceeded to leave the house, saying, as he “staggered across the room,” that it was not fitting for him to sleep “beneath the roof of an unbeliever.” He had hardly got outside, however, when he commenced knocking and shouting at the door, whereupon the following scene was enacted:—
Rising and throwing open the window, he beheld Flannigan standing in the moonlight wildly waving his hands.
“Well, Mister Flannigan!” he exclaimed, in an irritable tone, “what’s the matter noo? If you canna sleep like a decent body yoursel’, be good enough to let them that can!”
“I want my bottle!” exclaimed the curate; “you accursed and ungodly man!”
“Ceevil words, if you please, Mister Flannigan.”
“Give me my bottle,” continued the curate wildly, “or I’ll curse you from the altar of my chapel!”
“Your curse or your blessing are a’ one to me, man. Oot o’ this; I’ll no hae my nichts disturbed for half a dozen priests!”
“Give me my bottle, I say,” shrieked the curate, “or be jabers I’ll remain and curse ye till dawn!”
On another occasion “Father Flannigan” is represented rushing about drunk in public, and in that condition beating a family out of their house! In short, he is pictured as a rowdy of the worst description. But he is only a rowdy after all, whereas the parish priest is an utter villain. Of polished manners and cultivated mind, “Father Malloy” is nevertheless opposed to any attempt to improve the social condition of his flock, and is therefore jealous of the improving landlord, whose proceedings he regards as likely to undermine his own supremacy in the parish. He determines to put a stop to those proceedings per fas aut nefas, and, having failed to induce “Mr. O’Brien” by specious arguments to abandon his designs, he rouses the tenantry against him, and finally incites to his murder, if he is not himself an accessory before the fact. That we may not seem to exaggerate, we quote the following passage from the account of the conversation in the confessional between “Father Malloy” and one of his parishioners:—
“Humph,” he said at length, and as if communing with himself; “you have had a hard time of it, my poor fellow, and all through this man. Patrick,” he proceeded, after a solemn pause, “it is my duty to ask you a solemn question—Is your mind ever filled with revengeful thoughts?”
Patrick reflected for a moment before he replied:
“In troth, yer riv’rence, I can’t rightly say.”
“Does it ever strike you, for instance,” said the priest impressively, “that it would be right and just to put an end to a man whom you know to be so completely your enemy?”
Patrick stared aghast.
“Faith, yer riv’rence, it never did!”
A slight shadow flashed across the priest’s face; was it anger or disappointment? It had passed away before he spoke again.
“Are you quite sure, Patrick,” he continued impressively, “that it would never occur to you that it would be justifiable to kill one man if by doing so you could relieve your fellow-townsmen from a tyrant, and keep your own family from starvation—perhaps from death?”
“I am quite sure, yer riv’rence,” said Patrick innocently and honestly, “that it never did!”
“Very good; and even when this wretch threatened to turn you out and refused to give you bread, did it not cross your mind that if he were disposed of better times would come for you? Now answer honestly—have no secrets from me!”
Poor Patrick opened his eyes still wider than before.
“It did not, yer riv’rence—never, thank God!”
“That is well, Patrick,” said the priest approvingly; “by all means keep from such thoughts as these, for, though they are natural under the circumstances, and although the Church has forgiveness and absolution for every sin of the sort, they are, to a certain extent, sins against the good God, and should not enter a man’s mind.”
It surely is not wonderful if, after such an interview, murderous thoughts came, as we are told they did come, into “Patrick’s” mind. It is, we may add, “Patrick” who in the last chapter is executed for the murder of the landlord, and when, shortly before he died, he was said to the about to “turn Queen’s evidence,” we are told that the rumour “made the heart of the priest very faint with fear.” “Father Malloy,” however, passes for an excellent priest; he is appointed by his bishop to go to Dublin to report on the state of the diocese to “the two Cardinals,” and at “the yearly congress of priests” he acts as “Holy Father Confessor.” As to the priests at the “congress,” “most of them” have “faces characteristic of the tribe—the sunken cheeks, lanthorn jaws, cat-like eyes, and, worst of all, the oily tongue.”
Had we space, we should like to show how wonderfully the wax-work figures in this story conduct themselves—“staring,” as they do perpetually, and “glaring,” and “gazing,” and “stalking,” and “shuffling,” and “slinking.” But we are afraid that our readers will think we have already dealt with the book at too great length, and that we owe them an apology for having laid before them even so much of the literary blackguardism contained under the title of “The Priest’s Blessing.” Nor should we, indeed, have so run the risk of insulting them did we not desire by the most satisfactory evidence to prove to them that if there are any books which they ought themselves to taboo, and get their friends and acquaintances to taboo, “first amongst the first” in that category are those of the person who calls herself Harriett Jay. Such works ought not to be tolerated in any Irish home. Let us not, however, be misunderstood. We do not object to this “novel” as likely to work any harm in the minds of Irish readers. It contains no subtle poison; in fact, so far from doing so, it at once prejudices the ordinary mind against the writer by its utter disregard of truth, its wild, wanton, and glaring misrepresentations, its vulgar, brutal, and audacious ruffianism. No one, for instance, at least in Ireland, is ever likely to believe that there exists such a man as “Father Malloy” or “Father Flannigan,” or that, if there were in existence such a priest as the latter, he would be allowed to remain in the sacred ministry even for a day. Our sole object in advising our readers never to read a line of such infamous libels is that their authors may be made to see and feel that, though they may find readers amongst the enlightened old women of whom we have spoken above, Irish men and women are not utterly destitute of self-respect. We should mention, in conclusion, that Harriett Jay, appropriately dedicates this book to Mr. Forster, “Chief Secretary of Ireland,” whom she says she regards “with sympathy, respect, and admiration,” and whose “tormentors” she “despises.” This, as an American would say, is rough on Mr. Forster. That the author of the phrase “dissolute ruffians and village tyrants and blackguards” should be an object of sympathy to one whose profession seems to be to vilify the Irish race will not, indeed, cause most Irishmen any surprise; but we doubt if the Chief Secretary will altogether relish the delicate compliment.
* The Priest’s Blessing; or, Poor Patrick’s Progress from this World to a Better. By Harriett Jay, Authoress of “The Queen of Connaught,” &c. London: F. V. White & Co., 31 Southampton-street, Strand, W. C. 1881.
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The Nonconformist and Independent (11 August, 1881)
IRISH LIFE AND PRIESTS’ RULE.*
MISS JAY, who has already in several novels shown not only a close acquaintance with the details of Irish peasant life, but a thorough comprehension of Irish character, has here essayed to throw some light upon the present condition of things in the sister isle. The great point with her is the influence of the priest. In her very earliest story she drew a vigorous portrait of a reverend father who could carouse deeply, and also could calculate nicely, and who maintains over those about him an influence which might well cause him to be envied. In the present case she concentrates her powers on a more definite object than in any former story, and it is not without fitness that she has dedicated the volume to the present Secretary of State for Ireland, though some may not wholly go with her in the compliments she pays him. In her dedication she says:—
Many years ago, in the time of the Irish Famine, an English gentleman wandered through the famishing districts of Ireland, giving help to the needy, comforting the sorrowful, on a benign errand of mercy. Since then that gentleman’s name has, in many an Irish home, been the synonym of English philanthropy. When, a little time ago, the same individual, known to all the world as a noble-minded politician, became Her Majesty’s Chief Secretary for the sister-country, many Irishmen who loved and remembered him, said to themselves, “Justice will be done now, for Forster loves Ireland.” There may be points in this book with which you disagree, expressions which you could wish changed; but I inscribe it to you because you have the welfare of the Irish people at heart, and because I, with many others, sympathise with you, and despise your tormentors—knowing, as I do, that there is among all the so-called friends of Ireland who have made their unhappy country a byeword for folly, mendacity, and indiscriminate free fighting, not one who has a tithe of your philanthropy, your experience, or your wisdom. Accept, therefore, this little study of the Irish question from one who, like yourself, loves Ireland and the Irish peasant; but would warn both against false prophets and false teachers, nationalists and time-serving misleaders.
The book, in one aspect, is the complete working out of one motif in the “Queen of Connaught,” where, of course, it was merely subordinate to others. A Protestant landlord, Mr. O’Brien, with his daughter Kate, arrives on his property in Ireland with a firm determination to manage it for the good of his tenants, in the first place, and, as he hopes, for his own interest in the end. He endeavours to conciliate all, and earnestly tries to enlist the priest in his plans. Kate O’Brien shares her father’s sentiments, and is determined to do all in her power to aid him to realise his objects. Father Malloy soon sees that she is too devoted, and warns her.
“My dear young lady, if you allow an unusual care for your inferiors to mar the pleasures of your life, I fear your happy moments will be few indeed. Unfortunately the gifts of God are not equalised in this world; go where you will, wretchedness of some kind meets you, and poverty is not always its worse form.”
“But when we see such misery about us, I think it is our duty to relieve it,” said Kate.
“Of course,” returned the priest, “though few young ladies, I fear, would take the trouble to think about it at all.”
And then Mr. O’Brien begins to announce his plans, acknowledging that he believed it was as he had been told, that the eviction of half the tenants was the only move that would make the estate worth anything, which statement causes the priest to shrug his shoulders in a way that makes Mr. O’Brien set his teeth.
He wants to lift the people out of their moral wretchedness, and to elevate their minds, and, as the mind depends so much on the body, he resolves to begin by pulling down some of their wretched dwellings, and improving others, and compelling the farmers to turn the cattle into cowsheds. He also resolves to establish a school for the children, which speedily awakens the jealousy and hatred of the priest. He is ready to give them all aid; in fact, to sacrifice his own interests for their elevation. He proposes to forego for some years all rent, if they will only act in the way he wishes. A start is made, he begins to be hopeful, when suddenly the same old difficulties arise again. It will not do. He has erred at the very outset. His conception of “improvements” is not that of Irish tenants.
The intimation that their children must attend school was heeded but little; the schoolhouse was not even built, nor, judging from the former efforts in that direction, was it ever likely to be. But the question of the cattle was much more important, and required immediate consideration; one or two leading spirits suggested a meeting, but they afterwards thought better of it, and at first only offered a mild protest against the agent’s orders.
“In troth, yer honour,” said Shamus Moor, “’tis not yerself that would be so hard on poor boys like us. ’Tis the cattle that’s been accustomed to nice warm fires; and if we turned them out into sheds, they’d surely die; and the year is bad enough athout that, yer honour, since the praties is blighted, and we have little enough left for food?”
“And is it no easy enough for you to put fires in the sheds? You’re never charged a bawbee (halfpenny) for the peat,” urged MacCollop, the Scotch bailiff.
“But we have to draw it, yer honour!”
“And is it no better for you to be doing that than idling away your time from morn to night, as you do. You’re no fit to hae cattle at all if you canna mind them, and if they’re no weel oot o’ this before this day month you’ll suffer for it, mind that.”
And MacCollop turned his back indignantly upon the tenant, and picking his way through the heaps of filth which surrounded the door, hurried off on his duty.
O’Brien’s generosity does not bring its own, or, indeed, any reward. They refuse to act, become sullen, and, through the machinations of the priest, finally get secretly rebellious. He persists in his course; as they will not obey him he orders his bailiff to act with decision, and to enforce payment of rent by distraint. One man—the leading character among the tenants— Patrick O’Connor, he finds so reduced that it is of no use persisting in requiring payment from him. Instead he aids Patrick with charity. Yet this man, while eating his bounty, is, at the instigation of the priest, plotting against him. Things get from bad to worse. Mr. O’Brien is bold and fearless, and repeatedly checkmates would-be assassins by sheer coolness and nerve. Finally he is murdered while he is out on a mission of mercy—a fine bit of irony on Irish virtue and gratitude; and the irony derives additional force from the fact that the real murderers escape the penalty of the law, while Patrick O’Connor, poor wretch, is condemned, through plottings and perjuries of the most diabolical character. We can only hope, for the sake of human nature, if even Irish human nature, that this part is somewhat overdone.
Incidentally, of course, there are not a few passages of humour and many touches of pathos. In the passage where Master Flannigan, the curate, leaves the house of MacCollop, Mr. O’Brien’s land agent, because, as he urged, “’tis not fitting for a priest of God to sleep beneath the roof of an unbeliever,” and this after 'having very heartily partaken of Mr. MacCollop’s hospitality, and frequently requested the passage of the bottle the night before, we feel the fun of the narrative, emphasised, too, by the serious elements that accompany it. “MacCollop stared at his guest in silent wonder. He was amazed. He remembered that before he had fallen asleep his guest had wished him a hearty and friendly ‘Good night.’ He now saw that unless he remained silent a quarrel would ensue. So he held his tongue.” A scene with a great deal of suggestion and pathos is that where Kate O’Brien finds the dead body of her father in the snow, the work of wretches whom he had done so much to befriend. And we should not forget to add that, though the character of Kate O’Brien is not elaborated, we realise her personality thoroughly—a few touches make her real to us; and her love for her father, and her sweet, self-abnegating temper, which would have led her to do so much for the poor people amid whom her lot had been cast, combine to attract our best regards, and to make us wish that we had seen more of her. But then, exhaustive presentation of character was not here the end, but the means, and the means have been used to some purpose, with this end in view.
The good qualities of the Irish people—their generosity, their half-helpless desire to aid each other, and their unconcern for the future, are recognised; but the purpose of the author compels her to dwell rather on the dark side—on the fickleness, the revengefulness, the lack of forecast, the shiftlessness, and the duplicity which are so marked features in their character now. On several points Miss Jay’s representations might be a little qualified in the minds of practical men by the perusal of Mr. Boyd Kinnear’s remarkable pamphlet, “Ireland in 1881” (Smith, Elder, and Co.), which has just been published, and in which Mr. Kinnear skilfully communicates the result of a vast deal of observation and patient inquiry. Whether if in the past Governments had always been at once more firm and more sagacious and more conciliatory, any different effects had been realised to-day as respects Irish character, is a question on which political theorists may speculate; it is clear that the practical problem is made more inveterate by the sense of long-sustained and still existing wrong; and we have now to deal with the long gathered-up grudges and mouldering discontentments of ages. Any one who wishes to realise the mischief which may be done by the ceaseless plottings of the Catholic priests cannot do better than read “The Priest’s Blessing,” which is more a practical book than its outward form would lead one to fancy.
*The Priest’s Blessing; or, Poor Patrick’s Progress from This World to a Better. By Harriet Jay, Authoress of “The Queen of Connaught,” &c., &c. F. V. White and Co.
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The Academy (13 August, 1881)
Miss Jay’s new, short, and powerful story is somewhat spoiled by the fact that it has a purpose. In a dedication to the Chief Secretary for Ireland—the eulogistic character of which recalls Milton’s sonnet on Cromwell, a still more celebrated “pacificator” of that country, and “the cloud not of war only but detractions rude,” through which he proceeded on his “glorious way” to “peace and truth”—we are told that The Priest’s Blessing is “a little study of the Irish question, from one who loves Ireland and the Irish peasant, but would warn both against false prophets and teachers, Nationalists and time-serving misleaders.” Looked at from the “study” point of view, the story means that the shooting of landlords and agents in Ireland is really the work of priests. Even in fiction there have not appeared of late two such villains as Father Flannigan, the curate of Patrickstown, a drunken, hypocritical scamp, who, when in his cups, beats the members of his flock, and, when sober, regains his popularity by working on their superstitions; and Father Malloy, with his deeper and darker designs, and his resolute purpose of “expelling the Sassenachs from the soil” one by one. Poor Patrick O’Connor, whose pilgrimage from the cradle to the gallows—blessed at both ends by the priest—is the one powerfully drawn character in the book that will survive when “study” and “purpose” are forgotten. He is one of the beings to be found only in Ireland and in Miss Jay’s novels, whose lives are sodden misery long drawn out; who are a curse to those whom they would bless, and die martyrs by mistake. Most of the other characters, especially Mr. O’Brien, the fated Protestant landlord, are merely old Irish lay-figures. There is, indeed, individuality in the courageous Scotch agent, Sandy McCollop, but his “national dialect” is a compound of bad English and worse Irish. With his hatred of the people among whom his lines were cast, he would never, on being fired at, and when his dialect would have returned to him, even if he had lost it, have exclaimed, “You murdering scoundrel, you blethering, brutal thief o’ the world!” It is just as probable that David Hume—Scotch “canniness” writ large—muttered in his sleep, Je tiens J. J. Rousseau.
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The Graphic (10 September, 1881)
“THE PRIEST’S BLESSING : or, Poor Patrick’s Progress from this World to a Better,” by Harriet Jay, authoress of “The Queen of Connaught” (I vol. : F. V.White and Co.). This is the secret history of a case of landlord-murder in the West of Ireland. In telling it, Miss Jay has, with finished art, avoided every appearance of literary colouring, and has depended for effect upon an almost excessive simplicity. We are compelled to read it as uncritically as a private letter, and do not consciously realise its full power and pathos until we can look back upon it as a whole: and then every well- remembered stroke tells. Not all Miss Jay’s readers will agree with her that Irish troubles are due to no deeper cause than priestly influence, or indeed that such influence is anywhere near the root of the matter, and she makes the usual mistake of supposing that an Irish landlord is necessarily incapable of comprehending, at least as well as a novelist, the natures of the people with whom he has to deal. But, if this were so, landlords would learn much from the life-progress of Pat O’Connor of Patrickstown—how, from being a mere harmless victim of a large family and potato disease, he came to die on the gallows, a martyr to a blind sense of religion and honour. No word of conventional sentiment mars the effect of this powerful study of the heart and mind of a savage of our own time and nation, with his capacities for unconscious heroism under circumstances which would seem to make anything in such a shape impossible. We are not cheated into taking strong and bitter stuff by the formalities of a love story. Plot and style are strong and bitter enough—as much so as any story must be that deals with the extreme conditions of Irish peasant life as they are. Exception must, in justice, be taken to Miss Jay’s inaccurate treatment of legal matters in general and of criminal procedure in particular. It injures that effect of complete truth which, in other respects, her knowledge of the larger human nature which lies outside the law- courts ensures. Pat O’Connor himself represents a type which she obviously and thoroughly understands, and which all who are interested in the Ireland of to-day and to-morrow ought to understand also. The novel is certain to attract exceptional attention.
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The Pall Mall Gazette (15 September, 1881)
“The Priest’s Blessing.” By Harriett Jay. (F. V. White and Co.) No reader will think this equal to the author’s “Queen of Connaught.” And the reason of the inferiority is evident. A “purpose” is almost inevitably fatal to literary success; and Miss Jay has a very decided purpose, and, what is worse, a purpose closely connected with the burning questions of the Irish difficulty. The chief dramatis personæ are Mr. O’Brien, who purchases an estate at “Patrickstown;” Father Malloy, the parish priest of this same place; and Patrick O’Connor, a peasant, who represents the object for which these two rival powers contend. The new proprietor seeks to elevate the population; the priest opposes what will end with diminishing his own influence. Provoked by the resistance which he meets with, the reformer becomes harsh and even oppressive to his tenantry—O’Connor, whom he had specially sought to serve, being one of the chief sufferers. In the end Mr. O’Brien is murdered and O’Connor is executed for the crime, to which, indeed, he had been privy, but which he had not committed. He is about at the last to reveal the organization which had ordered and executed the murder, when the priest succeeds, by the use of spiritual terrors, in closing his mouth. We can quite understand how a writer, convinced that such things do happen, should see in fiction the only way of making her conviction known; but she has to deal with the difficulty that her subject is not suited for art. Her readers get a political pamphlet in the shape of a novel, and in all probability miss both instruction and amusement. Miss Jay has, we allow, written with no small force, but we cannot congratulate her on a success.
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The Greenock Telegraph and Clyde Shipping Gazette (19 September, 1881 - p.2)
HARRIETT JAY’S STUDY OF THE IRISH QUESTION.
In these days it becomes increasingly the custom to run almost every kind of instruction into the form of fiction. Even scientific men are writing sprightly novels instead of ponderous treatises; and the shrewd politician or social reformer who in former days would have penned a pamphlet now launches his theory through the more attractive medium of a tale. It may be open to debate whether the change is wholly an improvement; but there can be only one opinion as to the superiority of the new fashion in respect to the supply of agreeable entertainment. The most of us are thoroughly tired of the discussions on the Irish problem, the more especially as they seem to leave one as much in the dark as ever on the real merits of the subject; but it is a relief to come to the genuine illumination that is furnished by the distinguished lady novelist. Miss Harriett Jay, in “The Priest’s Blessing” (London: F. V. White & Co., 31 Southampton Street, Strand). By her “Queen of Connaught”, she proved her title to be received as an authority on Irish life and character. The favourable impression made by that striking work was deepened by her “Dark Colleen.” We have no hesitation in saying that it will be still further confirmed by her latest story, in which a flood of light is thrown on the burning question of the hour in the sister isle. She develops an aspect of the case about which politicians say nothing, and which is seldom named in the press, though it is in reality one of the most potent factors in the whole weary business. An Irish landlord, a Protestant, seeks to improve the condition of the people on his estate by giving their children education and by improving the dwellings of his tenantry, as well as in other ways, all suggested by a genuine, self-denying spirit of philanthropy. If he had only the people to deal with, perhaps he might have succeeded. But between him and the objects of his solicitude there came the parish priest, determined to retain his supreme control of the people, and in order to this end resolute in his opposition to all the educational schemes of the landlord. Two priests, indeed, figure in Miss Jay’s story; and they are both drawn with consummate ability. It is impossible to resist the conclusion that they are portraits from the life. The one is a dipsomaniac and scoundrel of the deepest die; but, after all, perhaps it is the sober priest who is the worse of the two. It makes the blood run cold to read of the cunning machinations by which the benevolent landowner is at last assassinated and poor Patrick O’Connor executed for a crime which he did not commit. The dramatic power displayed in the story is only one of its many merits. It sets forth stern facts which must be faced before it is possible to secure the pacification of Ireland. We ought to mention that a racy Scotsman, a sturdy agriculturist who acts as land-agent to the philanthropic Mr O’Brian, is introduced with considerable effect, and takes a leading part in working out the plot, imparting a pleasant element of rough humour to a story which, without some such relief, would be almost too sombre to be endurable. The volume is gracefully dedicated by Miss Jay to her friend Mr Forster, the Irish Secretary. “There may be points in this book,” she says, “with which you disagree, expressions which you would wish changed; but I inscribe it to you because you have the welfare of the Irish people at heart, and because I, with many others, sympathise with you, and despise your tormentors,—knowing, as I do, that there is among all the so-called friends of Ireland, who have made their unhappy country a byword for folly, mendacity, and indiscriminate free fighting, not one who has a tithe of your philanthropy, your experience, your wisdom.” Miss Jay therefore dedicates what she modestly styles her “little study of the Irish question” to Mr Forster, and she closes her dedication with the remark that she would warn Ireland and the Irish peasant “against false prophets and teachers, nationalists and time-serving misleaders.” The persons she was thinking of when she wrote these words have brought themselves into such discredit that the warning is happily not so much needed to-day as it was a few weeks ago. During the last few days we have seen them fighting with each other at Dublin like so many Kilkenny cats; and any little moral influence they once had is now utterly gone. We are pleased to think that one of the severest blows they received was administered the other day by the Chief Magistrate of this town in the quiet letter which so maddened that peripatetic virago, Miss Anna Parnell.
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The Morning Post (22 September, 1881 - p.6)
THE PRIEST’S BLESSING.*
Satire is an undeniably powerful weapon in the hands of a competent reformer, but it is also one which, used by the inexperienced, is only too liable to act after the well-known fashion of the Australian boomerang, and it will hardly be satisfactory to Miss Jay’s many admirers to witness the result of this attack upon the Irish religious system. Even granting that all the scenes of the action are founded upon fact, no unprejudiced person would affirm that a drunken reprobate like Flannigan or a hypocritical traitor like Malloy are to be accepted as fair types of the Roman clergy in the sister isle; and unless the objects attacked be such as are easy of recognition and appeal to the understanding by their fidelity to generally acknowledged originals in the world of fact satire becomes aimless, and has a decided tendency to be dull where it is not objectionable. It is also more than questionable whether the present is the most suitable time to present the English public with imaginary pictures of agrarian outrage, or whether the Irish priesthood is likely to be encouraged in promoting peace by such representations of their actions. Apart from these strictures on the motif of the book there is little to be said about it, except that the story is rather wanting in interest. It deals with the murder of a landed proprietor, Mr. O’Brien, for which dastardly crime the wrong man, Patrick O’Connor, is arrested, condemned, and hanged, dying in the real murderer’s place through the instigation of Father Malloy. Beyond this there is really very little in a narrative which was doubtless intended to give a faithful representation of Irish agrarian matters, but leaves no definite impression on the mind. Miss Jay has so justly earned a reputation as a clever, if not very profound, writer of fiction that the reading public is fairly entitled to look for something better when she takes up her pen; in fact, “The Priest’s Blessing” cannot even be wished a success which it is very unlikely to gain.
* The Priest’s Blessing; or, Poor Patrick’s Progress from this World to a Better. By Harriett Jay, author of “The Queen of Connaught,” &c. London: F. V. White and Co.
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The Belfast News-Letter (22 September, 1881 - p.7)
THE PRIEST’S BLESSING: OR POOR PATRICK’S PROGRESS FROM THIS WORLD TO A BETTER. By Harriett Jay, authoress of “The Queen of Connaught.” London: F. V. White & Co., Southampton Street, Strand.
MISS JAY’S last novelette may be read in a little over an hour, and this fact will cause it to commend itself to many of those library subscribers who formed unpleasant ideas of “The Queen of Connaught” series. Miss Jay has not yet got a grasp of Irish character, nor do we think that the likelihood of her receiving much assistance from her relative, Mr. Robert Buchanan, is great. Mr. Buchanan is doubtless responsible for the prologue in verse to which we are treated in the little volume before us, but we cannot say that it is a conspicuous addition to the merits of the story. Such a tale as she has is told by Miss Jay in simple and unaffected language. It is, unfortunately, by no means an uncommon one in the South—that is, up to a certain point. The story is of a typical Irishman of the class who show an insane desire to try whether a couple of acres of indifferent land will support a family of seven or eight souls. The usual result attends his experiment, and he applies for assistance to the landlord, by whom he is frequently relieved until a climax comes, when an eviction takes place, the landlord being justly incensed at being fired at by some of his tenants. It is unnecessary to add that the gentleman is at last brought down, when suspicion falls upon poor Patrick, the hero of the story, and, at the instigation of the priest, he allows himself to be put on trial for the crime—though he is well aware who is the real criminal—and to be hanged for the offence. Now, up to the point of the trial, we dare say that Miss Jay’s story will bear to be scrutinised, but in order to be accurate to the character of the people, she should have made the jury return a verdict of “Not guilty.” It is in this direction that the influence of the priests has been recently turned, and with a success that cannot be doubted by anyone reading the papers. There is a good deal of broad colouring in the book, but not much careful drawing. It is, however, an improvement in every way on “The Queen of Connaught” and “The Dark Colleen,” and we do not despair that the authoress may one day be able to write a good novel, but to do so she must keep clear of Ireland and the Irish.
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Evening Telegraph (Dublin) (1 October, 1881 - p.2)
OUR LONDON LETTER.
(FROM OUR LADY CORRESPONDENT.)
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London, Friday Evening.
THE CATHOLIC BISHOPS.
The rebuke given by the holy and reverend Roman Catholic Prelates of Ireland by their declaration in favour of the Land Act to the low malignity of the flatterers of the ignorant classes, who in their terror lest the benefit attained should wrest the power they possess as holders of the funds confided to their trust, has given a glad surprise to every right-thinking individual in England. The indecision and uncertainty in forming an opinion concerning the real state of the country manifested by Englishmen at this moment cannot be a matter of wonder. We have no method of ascertaining the truth save by the newspaper reports (which, as a matter of course, give us their own impressions as facts) and the works of authors who write upon Ireland with the view of influencing their readers by turning the bull’s-eye lantern upon the side of the question which suits their own interests. While Miss Harriet Jay declares in her novel of “The Priest’s Blessing” that all the guilt and misery must owing to the influence of the Roman Catholic priesthood, and shows the priest in the most odious light, the author of another novel, called “A Boycotted Family,” displays with great talent her impression that the present state of things is entirely due to the decreasing power of the priesthood over the peasantry. The country people, according to the last-named writer, are being led away by designing men who are instigated by foreign speculators to proclaim themselves what they really are, infidels and freethinkers, and point out to the poor bewildered mind of the labourer how little the priesthood has done for their material comfort while administering nothing but consolation for the want of it upon this earth by the promise of its ample enjoyment in heaven. Both works are well written, but Miss Jay, whose dislike to the Roman Catholic Church carries her into the most terrible exaggeration, overshoots the mark, especially when she represents the parish priest assisting at the last moments of the innocent man who is hung for a murder concerning which the reverend gentleman knows well every detail (inasmuch as it was instigated by himself), and listening to the confession of the victim of the foul and treacherous plot can only bid the wretched man take comfort and carry out the sacrifice for the love of Jesus. The author of the “Boycotted Household,” on the contrary, develops her story with the aim of displaying that the violence and murder are committed in spite of the priest. The pictures of boycotted life are touching in the extreme. The utter loneliness of the boycotted family, whose courage and trust in each other render it impossible that this loneliness should turn to helplessness, is beautifully described, and the mistake by which the heir of the family falls a victim to the vengeance directed against the father is well imagined. Meanwhile, fiction, which generally addresses itself to the cause that pays best, is sometimes far outdone by real facts which now and then are brought to our knowledge. For instance, no longer ago than yesterday, we met with a young lady who, accompanied only by a young groom lad, drove in a pony trap all though the most troubled parts of Sligo without meeting with the slightest annoyance or impediment to her progress. The news of the decision of the holy Catholic prelates at their meeting at Maynooth was received in London with the greatest satisfaction, and more than one staunch Protestant was heard to declare that he felt as if half the trouble had been overcome by the wisdom and firmness exhibited by the Catholic Church.
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The Daily News (10 November, 1881)
Miss Harriett Jay’s volume, “The Priest’s Blessing” (V. V. White and Co.), is less a story of Irish life, though it is thrown into that form, than a diatribe against the Irish priesthood. Patrick O’Connor, the ill-fated victim of priestly tyranny, intrigue, and ambition, is a poor, ignorant Irish peasant, trained under the influence of his clergyman into deceit and perjury, and finally expiating the crime of another on the gallows, still under the direction of his spiritual guide. This and other instances of extraordinary criminality are declared by the author to be drawn from actual life, and to be not singular “in wild out-lying villages such as that where the scene of this story is laid.” This may be so, nor would it be difficult to detect remarkable instances of villainy in any and every section of society were one to take the trouble to search for them. But attacks on a whole body of men founded on isolated cases of depravity are manifestly misleading, and we are fain to believe that Fathers Malloy and Flannigan of Miss Jay’s polemic are exceptional and rare individuals. Miss Jay’s cleverness and power of graphic writing are necessarily hampered in a story written to order, but they make themselves evident even under such adverse conditions.
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The Spectator (17 December, 1881 - p.26)
—Another story, more distinctively Irish, is The Priest’s Blessing. By Harriett Jay. (F. V. White).—“Poor Patrick,” the hero, is connected with a secret society. Mr. O’Brien, a stranger, who has bought land, and seeks to farm it on new principles, falls under the ban of this society, and is murdered. Patrick does not commit the actual crime, but he is privy to it; and the end of the tragedy is that he goes to his death with the “priest’s blessing,” sooner than give up the names of the guilty. Whatever individual priests may do, it is not true, we believe, to represent them as taking such a part as this. They hate the secret societies as much as the Castle hates Fenians.
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