USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The story of the Irish in Boston, together with biographical sketches of representative men and noted women > Part 22
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Massachusetts
..
Massachusetts
24,976
60
76
50,977
Massachusetts
..
Ireland
3,323
Ireland
Massachusetts
5,185
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THE IRISH IN BOSTON.
THE STATE.
Children.
Place of Birth.
Males.
Females.
Both Sexes.
Father.
Mother.
Native.
Foreign.
Native.
Foreign.
Ireland.
Ireland
127,187
112,496
131,452
518,931
Massachusetts
..
Massachusetts ..
217,500
268
131,452 231,058
314
449,141
"It is not necessary to discuss probabilities of a growth of these ratios, nor comment upon the right of class representation, yet, in view of the rapid increase of the 'foreign element,' I have thought that it might not be unwise for our friends who are marshalling their anti-Irish forces to look philosophically at the facts, and, having reviewed the Constitution and Bill of Rights, to suggest the follow- ing as a fitting topic for a Sunday lesson in Tremont Temple : 1 -
" All religious sects and denominations demeaning themselves peaceably and as good citizens of the Commonwealth shall be equal under the protection of the law, and no subordination of any one sect or denomination to another shall ever be established by law."
HENRY BERNARD CARPENTER.
The brilliant and many-gifted man whose name we have just written is, first of all, a typical Celt. He has the sensitive, poetic temperament; the fervor of eloquence; the generosity, enthusiasm, and kindly expansiveness, and the natural religiousness, to coin a word, which are racial traits. But in this man, and individualizing him, there is, over the poetic instinct, the poet's creative gift; and behind the natural orator, the scholar steeped in old classic lore, and abreast of all modern intellectual progress. In religion a Unitarian, and a clergyman of that communion as well, yet is he singularly drawn by the spiritual and material beauty of the Catholic church,
1 An anti-Catholic demonstration was held at Tremont Temple at this time.
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
whom he loves to call "The Mother-Church," and to whom he has paid tribute of almost filial love in poem and oration. He is a dreamer, who would find his most congenial environment far enough either from battle-field or forum; and yet, withal, a man of militant spirit, natural champion of the oppressed. He is intensely proud of his Irish birth, and has testified in helpful ways his devotion to the cause of Irish Home Rule.
Henry Bernard Carpenter was born in Dublin, Ire., in 1840. His father and mother were each members of very old and honorable Irish families ; the one of Kilkenny, the other of Derry. On neither side is there any intermixture of English blood. The father was a clergyman of the then Established (Protestant) Church of Ireland, in whose principles, as well as in the high Tory and Orange tenets of his mother's family, the Boyds of Derry, young Carpenter was brought up. His father was his first teacher, and grounded him well in the Greek and Latin classics.
In his eighteenth year he entered Oxford University, and made his course with most distinguishing success. He won prizes and a scholarship in Greek and Latin classical studies, and here first began to manifest his poetic gift. His brilliant University course is the more to be noted as it was made under difficulties. He suffered much then, as he has since, from a malformation of the eyes and weak sight, and often had to depend on readers.
He graduated and left Oxford in 1862, and received the ap- pointment, under the Royal Commissioners of Education for Ireland, of Assistant Master in Classics and English Literature at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, well called "the Eden of Ireland." William and Oscar Wilde, sons of Sir William Wilde, and other boys who have since become prominent men, were pupils of Mr. Carpenter at Portora. The ode written by Mr. Carpenter for the vice-regal visit of the Earl of Carlisle attracted attention, not alone from the man who was honored in being the subject of it, but from many others, who noted how gracefully his muse could move even in the fettering lines of the poem of an occasion. He was ordained afterwards as chaplain to the school, and later became chaplain to an Earl and
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his tenantry, near Enniskillen. His first ventures in the lecture field were made at this time, and with great success.
We have touched on the stern Tory and Protestant influences under which Mr. Carpenter was brought up. Little by little, and yielding every point only in deference to irresistible conviction, the young man departed from the old landlord and aristocratic ideas of his heritage and training, and in 1870 allied himself with the Irish Home Rule movement. His religious, as well as his political, sen- timents underwent a radical change.
In 1874 he came to New England. Here he found congenial occupation, first as lecturer and contributor to the magazines and journals, later as pastor of congregations in Yarmouth and Bridge- ton, Me. In 1878, in response to repeated and urgent overtures, he accepted the pastorate of the Hollis-st. Unitarian Church, Boston. Mr. Carpenter greatly endeared himself to his congregation, and became also a favorite in Boston's social and literary circles.
Mr. Carpenter published his first volume, "Liber Amoris," in 1887, with the Messrs. Ticknor & Co., of Boston. It is a medieval romance in blank verse, divided into four books, each with an ex- quisite lyrical prelude. The story itself is lovely; instinct with the spirit of the chivalric ages, which were also the Ages of Faith. The key-note of it all is Love perfected by Sacrifice. The expression is well-nigh perfect; like the thought, full of serious beauty, both rising sometimes into grandeur. How beautiful this invocation to Sleep !
" Sleep, Sleep, sweet Sleep, father of Life and Death, Thy twin-born children ; source and end of all ; Heaven's porter, who, with bright, smooth key of gold, Warm from the breast of God's dumb daughter, Peace, Openest, through darkness, for world-wearied man, A door to fields of light and starry streams, Where he may greet his dead whom he deems lost, And in one minute taste eternity ; -
Sweet Sleep, dear, easeful nurse of toil and woe, Who gatherest all thy children one by one, Whether in earth or sky or soundless sea,
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In thy warm folds of painless lullabies, And layest them soft upon the knees of God, Yet comest never near God's hands or eyes. For God, he only, slumbers not nor sleeps : Dear Sleep, upon whose heart, the home of dreams, Life wakes and wonders, weeps and sinks to rest."
Here is another typical passage : -
" - If the love within thee,
However holy, live for its own sake, More than for those it loves, oh, then, farewell Love's triumph over Death, farewell Love's last Fidelity made mightier by despair ; Farewell the faith that follows its lost star Down through Hell's whirlpools and great gulfs of night ! Love, living for himself, is but a dead, Kingdomless god, shorn of his deity."
"Liber Amoris" proved not only a poem for the poets, but a poem for the people as well. It has passed through several editions.
Of Mr. Carpenter's shorter poems, few have been more ad- mired than the " Vive Valeque," written after the departure of another beloved poet, the late Dr. Robert Dwyer Joyce, on his unhappily fruitless quest for health in his native land. These stanzas may fitly be given to the honor of the two poets: -
" Oh, saddest of all the sea's daughters, Ierne, sweet mother isle, Say, how canst thou heal at thy waters the son whom we lend thee awhile? When the gathering cries implore thee to help and to heal thy kind, When the dying are strewn before thee, thy living ones crouch behind ; When about thee thy perishing children cling, crying, 'Thou only art fair !' We have seen through Life's mazes bewildering how the earth-gods never spare. And the wolves, blood-ripe with slaughter, gnaw at thee with fangs of steel, Thou, Niobe-land of the water, hast many children to heal. Yet heal him, Ierne, dear mother, thy days with his days shall increase ; At the song of this Delphic brother, nigh half of thy pangs shall cease.
" Nor art thou, sweet friend, in a far land - all places are near on the globe ; Our greeting wear for thy garland, our love for thy festival robe, While we keep through glory and gloom two altar-candles for thee,
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Thy ' Blanid' of deathless doom, and thy dead but undying ' Deirdre.' And may He who builds in His patience the houses which death reveals, Round whom the fair constellations are dust from His chariot wheels ; Who showers His coin without scorning, each day as He issues it bright, The sun as His gold in the morning, the stars as His silver at night, The love which feedeth the sparrow and watcheth the little leaf, Which guideth the death-laden arrow and counteth each grain of grief, Change thy life-chant from its minor, and spread thy spirit serene, As gold before the refiner whose face is reflected therein."
Mr. Carpenter went abroad in the fall of 1887, and spent nearly a year in Greece and Italy. He gave to delighted Boston audiences during the season of 1888-89 the fruit of his loving study of the sacred places of poetry and art, in a series of lectures which have never been equalled here in intrinsic interest, literary merit, and eloquent delivery since the days of Wendell Phillips.
Mr. Carpenter retired from the pastorate of the Hollis-street church on its union with the Shawmut-avenue Unitarian church, in 1887. He has now charge of a large Unitarian congregation, which has its services in Steinert Hall, Boston.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
OF
NOTED WOMEN.
SKETCHES OF NOTED WOMEN.
-
LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY.
A BOUT eight years ago there appeared in the Boston "Pilot" a little narrative poem of quite notable freshness and vigor, entitled " Charondas." The story of the old Greek soldier and law- giver was presented sympathetically, and with the even strength of a practised writer; yet there was more than a suggestion of high- minded, college-bred young manhood about it. " A bright Harvard boy," we said, and smiled at the ineffective disguise of the flippant initials " P. O. L." appended to the poem. The same day a letter from a friend enclosed one of her notes from a late pupil, of whose literary promise much had been said. Two lines of this especial note, however, arrested attention: " I am contributing verses to the ' Pilot' over a string of bogus initials, 'P. O. L.' and the signature 'Louise Imogen Guiney.'" Here was the Harvard boy - a graduate of the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Providence.
Born in Roxbury, Mass., Jan. 7, 1861, she passed through a course of studies at the Notre Dame Academy of Roxbury, the Everett Grammar School, Boston, and latterly at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, "Elmhurst," Providence, R.I., where she graduated in 1879. She is one of the youngest and brightest writers engaged in current literary work, and possessing great intellectual ability and uncommon scholarship, gives promise of high literary achievements and extended popularity.
Her first book -" Songs at the Start "- was published in Boston in 1884, and has been followed by " Goose-Quill Papers," 1885 ; " The White Sail," 1887; and "Brownies and Bogies," 1888.
Much of her earlier work appeared in the "Pilot; " for John Boyle O'Reilly was among the first to recognize her budding talent,
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and was the most sedulous in fostering it. In literature, at least, one cannot separate the artist from the man or woman; for God's truth is in the saying, that whatever one incidentally writes, he in- evitably writes himself. Miss Guiney comes naturally by her aptitude for grasping and voicing the heroic, and this is the dominant char- acteristic in her poetry. Her father, Gen. Patrick R. Guiney, -him- self a man of marked literary tastes, which, in a more leisurely life might have developed into talents, - enlisted at the first call to arms in the late Civil War, and was active in raising the famous Ninth Regiment of Massachusetts. He participated in thirty-six fierce engagements, but was wounded and incapacitated for further service in the Battle of the Wilderness. He survived the war some years, always a sufferer, but a brave and uncomplaining one; and died in the flower of his age, from disease engendered by the wounds re- ceived in his last battle. There is a thought of him and of the grandfather who fought in the Irish uprising of '98, in the sonnet on the flags in the Massachusetts State House, in the little volume " Songs at the Start," already referred to: -
" Dear witnesses, all luminous, eloquent, Stacked thickly on the tessellated floor! The soldier-blood stirs in me as of yore In sire and grandsire who to battle went ; I seem to know the shaded valley-tent, The armed and bearded men, the thrill of war, Horses that prance to hear the cannon roar, Shrill bugle-calls and camp-fire merriment."
She did, indeed, know something of " the camp-fire merriment" by actual experience; for, when a toddling child, she went with her mother to Virginia, where the Army of the Potomac was encamped. In a delightful sketch, " A Child in Camp," - the sketch, indeed, which gives her little volume of prose essays, "Goose-Quill Papers," brought out by Roberts Brothers in 1885, its best reason for being, - she records her morning twilight impressions of a portentous era in American history.
The heroism which appeals to our poet is of what may be called
LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY
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the objective order. This is as is natural for a strong, self-reliant, self-centred life, that has budded and bloomed out-of-doors, like the lithe young willow of her native New England, which her straight, slender, supple form suggests. She is not a laureate of the out-of- sight heroism of which so many women poets have sung bravely and sweetly, if sometimes monotonously. A mood like that voiced in Rosa Mulholland's famous little poem, "Failure," would meet scant sympa- thy from this sunny young Greek. Indeed, her poetry shows a ten- dency to look on the loves and losses of ordinary humanity in a calm, judicial way, as if they concerned the dwellers in another planet, and were quite unlikely ever to cast a shadow upon her own morning path. A tendency, only, we say; for there is a queer, wistful, pathetic touch, which is not altogether human, in some of the poems in her second volume, "The White Sail; " notably in the legend of " The Wooing Pine," in the "Last Faun," "Youth," and " The Atoning Yesterday," as if a wood-nymph of the golden Hel- lenic age, called to take on the earthly risks and the immortal guerdons of humanity, should shrink and waver, half doubting that the new life held full compensation for the groves and grottoes and fountains, and the blithe, irresponsible play-fellows of her passing natural beatitude.
" The White Sail," with which her latest volume of poems opens, is the old classic story of Theseus freeing Athens from the yearly maiden-tribute to the Minotaur of Crete; and of his fatal forgetful- ness to hoist the promised white sail on his triumphant return to his father, Ægeus. It is in blank verse, which is almost invariably smooth and melodious, with here and there a grand Tennysonian line. Though the poem nowhere rises to the dramatic force and fire which permeate the legend of "Tarpeia,"-by all odds the best thing in the book, -yet it abounds in strong passages. A fine, foreshadowing touch is this incident of the childhood of Theseus, when he sees his pet turtle-pigeon dead through his neglect: -
" Then the child Bewailed his darling, lying stiff and mute. And Æthra held his innocent han dand hers
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With solemn lessoning; for she foresaw Remorse, and irremediable ache, And ruin, following him whose manhood swerves To the eased by-ways of forgetfulness. She, his hot brow caressing, so besought The weeping Prince : 'If thou, O little son! Wilt lay hereafter duties on thyself, Stand mindful of them, all thy vows observe. Be a trust broken but a small, small thing, Its possible shadow slaves this world in woe.'"
There is a touch of grim humor in the recounting of the pun- ishments which Theseus, in later years, meted out to the monsters who oppressed the " realms distressed," through which he passed to find his father :-
" He harsh Procrustes bedded; limb from limb Rent the Pine-bender on recoiling boughs ; And him that thrust the lavers of his feet Headlong in chasms, Theseus likewise served By dint of hospitable precedent."
Take it all in all, we are glad of "The White Sail," were it only for this delicious lyric, with which our poet makes Alcamenes soothe the last vigil of Ægeus : -
" Thy voice is like the moon, revealed by stealthy paces, Thy silver margined voice like the ample moon and free ; Ah, beautiful ! ah, mighty! the stars fall on their faces, The warring world is silent, for love and awe of thee.
My soul is but a sailor, to whom thy wonder-singing Is anchorage, and haven, and unimagined day ! And who, in angry ocean, to thine enchantment clinging, Forgets the helm for rapture, and drifts to doom away."
" Tarpeia" is the story, told first by Livy, of the Roman girl, daughter of the aged keeper of the Citadel, who, straying outside the gates into the camp of the besieging Sabines, is tempted by the jewels of the chief :-
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" The armlets he wore were thrice royal and wondrous to see : Exquisite artifice, whorls of barbaric design, Frost's fixed mimicry ; orbic imaginings fine
In sevenfold coils : and in orient glimmer from them, The variform voluble swinging of gem upon gem.
And the glory thereof sent fever and fire to her eye. ' I had never such trinkets,' she sighed, - like a lute was her sigh."
She offers, if he will but give them to her, to unbar the city gates for him and his host. He promises, and his followers likewise promise her their all; but when the act was done, the poor little traitor ---
" Repulsed where they passed her, half tearful for wounded belief, ' The bracelets !' she pleaded. Then faced her the leonine chief,
And answered her: 'Even as I promised, maid-merchant, I do.' Down from his dark shoulder the baubles he sullenly drew.
' This left arm shall nothing begrudge thee. Accept. Find it sweet. Give, too, O my brothers !' The jewels he flung at her feet.
The jewels hard, heavy; she stooped to them, flushing with dread, But the shield he flung after : it clanged on her beautiful head.
Like the Apennine bells when the villagers' warnings begin, Athwart the first lull broke the ominous din upon din ;
With a 'Hail benefactress !' upon her they heaped in their zeal Death : agate and iron; death ; chrysoprase, beryl, and steel. . · A mountain of shields ! and the gemmy bright tangle in links, A torrent-like gush, pouring out on the grass from the chinks,
Pyramidal gold ! the sumptuous monument won By the deed they had loved her for, doing, and loathed her for, done."
These magnificent lines speak for themselves. The highest tribute to the poet's skill in handling the terrible story is that one
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turns from Tarpeia with pity and horror, rather than with contempt. Freedom, strength, and simplicity mark every line of this noble poem.
" Moustache" ought to go into school-readers with Father Prout's " Dog of the Three Days," and Campbell's patriotic " Spanish Parrot." The historical ballads of " Chaluz Castle " and " A Chouan" are in the martial vein she loves. In the appended poem, she touches high-water mark of the heroic. It proves that she has a heart for her heritage of patriot-blood, and on its sole strength she wins a high place among the poets of America. Whittier might have owned it with pride; and it would have been heard, had he lived, on the eloquent lips of Wendell Phillips.
JOHN BROWN: A PARADOX.
Compassionate eyes had our brave John Brown, And a craggy, stern forehead, a militant frown; He, the storm-bow of peace. Give him volley on volley, The fool who redeemed us once of our folly, And the smiter that healed us, our right John Brown!
Too vehement, verily, was John Brown! For waiting is statesmanlike; his the renown Of the holy rash arm, the equipper and starter Of freedom ; aye, call him fanatic and martyr ; He can carry both halos, our plain John Brown.
A scandalous stumbling-block was John Brown, And a jeer; but, ah! soon from the terrified town, In his bleeding track made over hilltop and hollow, Wise armies and councils were eager to follow, And the children's lips chanted our lost John Brown.
Star-led for us stumbled and groped John Brown, - Star-led in the awful morasses to drown ; And the trumpet that rang for a nation's upheaval, From the thought that was just, thro' the deed that was evil, Was blown with the breath of this dumb John Brown!
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
Bared heads and a pledge unto mad John Brown! Now the curse is allayed, now the dragon is down, Now we see, clear enough, looking back at the onset, Christianity's flood-tide and Chivalry's sunset
In the old broken heart of our hanged John Brown.
We have touched on the out-of-door life of our poet. It has enabled her to embody the bracing breath, the music, and the deli- cate colors of the New England spring in many a charming poem. The critical Richard Watson Gilder gave unstinted praise to a tiny spring-time lyric in her earlier volume ; and her " Gloucester Harbor," which has an unwonted note of human pathos, too, has won promi- nence among poems of places. Her eyes for the shyer beauties of woodland or riverside are keener now, and her touch is surer. What a lovely picture is this : -
" As a shy brook wheels from jutting boughs, And in a sidelong glimmer sobs away."
"Down Stream" is exquisite, and so is "Garden Chidings ; " and as much must be said for "Temptation," where the sight of a gypsy camp sets our poet wishing to
" Break the lens and the plane, To burn the pen and the brush,"
that she might be
" Abroad with the rain, And at home with the forest hush, With the crag, and the flower-urn."
Her verse is nearly always notably musical; but "The Knights of Weather " is one of the best examples we have ever noted of a poem which sings itself.
"The White Sail" is dedicated to the memory of Keats; and we find frequent traces of his influence, notably in "Cyclamen." How Keatsish, but how beautiful, are these lines : -
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" To thee my carol now! albeit no lark Hath for thy praise a throat too exquisite. Oh would that song might fit These harsh north slopes for thine inhabiting, Or shelter lend thy loveliest laggard wing,
Thou undefiled estray of earth's o'ervanished Spring !"
And then from another poem, " On Some Old Music " : -
" How, like an angel, it effaced the crime, The moil and heat of our tempestuous time, And brought from dewier air, to us who waited, The breath of peace, the healing breath sublime ! As falls, at midnight's chime To an old pilgrim, plodding on belated.
The thought of Love's remote sunshining prime."
Our poet is uncompanioned among the singers of our day - except by Edith Thomas -in this, that she sings no love songs. There is a suggestion, though, of latent capabilities in that direction in the lyric from "The White Sail," already quoted. She differs from other woman poets, too, in that she almost never writes a dis- tinctively religious poem. " Ranieri " and " Frédéric Ozanam " are the nearest approaches; unless, indeed, we take "Saint Cadoc's Bell," which is as weird in its way as Mrs. Browning's "Lay of the Brown Rosary."
We miss from this collection the noble Grant Memorial poem which Miss Guiney wrote, by invitation of the city of Boston, for the Grant Eulogy, Oct. 22, 1885; and "Sergeant Jasper," written a few months later, and which was widely republished at the time of the unveiling of the monument to the hero of Fort Moultrie, in Savannah, Feb. 22, 1888.
Miss Guiney's latest volume is " Brownies and Bogies," D. Lo- throp & Co., Boston, 1888. It is a veritable compendium of the fairy-tales and folk-lore of all times and peoples. She is a con- tributor to the "Atlantic Monthly," " Harpers' Magazine," the " Catholic World," the "Century," " Scribner's," "Wide Awake," " The Critic," the New York " Independent," etc. A fascinating
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sketch of hers, " Dr. Johnson's Favorites," was published anony- mously, a few months ago, in " Macmillan's Magazine," London, England, and attracted much favorable comment in literary circles on both sides of the water.
Miss Guiney is versed in English literature far beyond the wont even of professed literary people. She is a good Latin scholar, fluent in French and Italian, an accomplished musician. She has just set out on a visit to Europe, which will probably be pro- longed over two years. With youth, energy, and industry, a noble character and an attractive personality, with an honorable place achieved in letters, while her resources are still but half developed, it is not rash to predict that within the next decade Louise Imogen Guiney will make for herself a great and enduring name in English literature. K. E. C.
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