Irish Jesuit Province

An Unpublished Letter of D'Arcy McGeeAuthor(s): D'Arcy McGeeSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 18, No. 204 (Jun., 1890), pp. 331-332Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20498064 .

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An Unpublished Letter of D'Arcy McGee. 331

The mother watcheth with many a praver,

Heart-broken, oh ! heart-broken; And her fingers play with the golden hair, And she kisses the lily hancd so fair For her life's young idol is lying there,

And the deeps in her heart are woken.

To watch all night and all day is long, And anguish oh ! hard to smother;

And idle to live when all looks wrong Just then, like th:e voice of a seraph's song, I heard her whisper: " Oh thou art strong,

Mother of God, 0 Mother! "

And a stir came over the trancelike rest, And a smile on the face, and another

And the cheeks grew red as the sunlit crest, And the mother cried out in accents blest, As she strained her child in joy to her breast

"Mother of God, 0 Mother! "

RICHARD O'KENNEDYt

AN UNPUBLISHED LETTER OF D'ARCY McGEE.

T HE first pages of ow seventeenth volume (1889) printed several interesting letters which Thomas D'Arey McGee

had written to the Rev. C. P. Meehan. We received them from Father Meehan himself; but this new letter, written to the same correspondent, we owe to the kindness of Count Plunkett, from whose private note we may take a few sentences about The Hibernian Magazine to which McGee refers:

"That Magazine underwent various changes, being at one time called Duffy's Hibernian -Si-penny Magazine; and at long intervals

McGee contributed verse and, I believe, prose to it, although (usually at least) without his name. * * * Perhaps you can tell

who ' Celticus' was. The name is very suggestive of the :Editor of The American Celt; 'and yet McGee could hardlly produce as fine work as 'The Mantle of Dunlaing,' a ballad with the above signature in the Number for April, 1862.

" McGee's letter, is, I think, timely-because addressed to one whom we have lost so lately by a great Irishman whose memory

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332 2e Irhi Monthly.

is being revived at this moment; because it deals with a question still urgent, the unsatisfied mental and moral hunger of our people in America (and also at home); because it shows our nationality and religion to be almost inseparable; and because it makes as strong a plea for rish brain-work at home as abroad.

"This letter was evidently written in feverish haste. It is not only worded carelessly, but scored and smudged. Its plain sim plicity raises a more practical question than has either of the clever papers that have lately appeared on Catholicity in America-the optimist paper in The Irish Ecclesiastical Record and the (may I say pessimist ?) paper in The Lyceum."

" Montreal,

",June 24th, 186G. "MrY DEAR FATHE= MxRANs,

" I have been so busy with law examinations (I am to be a Canadian Barrister next year) and other task work, that I have not yet had time to cast into shape one or two of the sketches which are already modelled for you in my own mind, I send you, just to put my initials in the new magazine from the start, a few verses

which I trust you will not thibn unfit for its pages: the sketches in a mail o- two, for certain.

"T e ballad of St. Kieran had hardly gone till I bethought me of that blunder. I wish our friend of the Nation had so altered it. If it ever reappears in Ireland, in your time, may I ask you to substitute the plain English ' the Porter stoop'd his load

I for the present solecism.

" The reason I am so interested for Mrs. Sadlier is that we have no other woman, and but few (oh, how few!) men, worldng for our myriad emigrants on this continent. There is absolute danger of their children forgetting they ever had a fatherland. Just as the writings of Vallancey, Theophilus O'Flanigan, &c., with all their errors, kept the lamp alight some fifty years ago, so do we poor bookmakers for the Irish in America-without public libraries, and without a public, in any organic or unorganic sense-strive to fill the bulb with something that will yield a fame, till better pens in better times may do the work more

worthily. Therefore be merciful in your judgments of what we do, remembering less what might have been done, as the best, than that the fear was everything of this kind would have been left undone till too late.

" I have not heard from Williams for long. I have no doubt, however, that any letter directed with his full name to New Orleans would find him. He was there, school-teaching, a year or two ago. There is, you will see, nearly as much land between him and me as there is sea between yourself and either of us.

" I grieve for X 'Carthy, and for poor old Curry, to whom I owe a long letter. Alas! that the storm should fall on such honoured heads as theirs! -

" I feel greatly encouraged to try my hand at other bits of our scenic history by what you tell me of O'Donovan's pleasure in my ' Four Masters.' It was from him I learned to know Teige an Sleibhe and the rest of those worthies. If the picture has any merit, it is due more to his instruction than to any art of mine.

" If not Sadlier, then Haverty of New York ought to be written to, to act as agent for the Hiberni an. All success attend you. I am not sure that I am known to Haverty; but, if so, will you be good enough to make him [sic] my very best regards?

"Most truly yours,

" T. D. MI'Gn.

"My wife was delighted at your remembrance of her. We are all on the qtgi vtie for ' No. 1, vol. 1.'

" My best regards to Mr. James Dufly and all your co-laborers.--T. D. M'G."

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