MIDNIGHT MASS IN A CONVENT.
I have lately been reading some remarks on the curious association existing between certain tastes and odors and an involuntary exertion of the memory by which the recurrence of those tastes or odors recalls, with a vividness not otherwise to be obtained, a whole series of incidents of past life—incidents which, with their surrounding scenes, would otherwise be quite forgotten and buried out of sight by the successive overlaying of other events of greater interest or importance. Montaigne has some singular illustrations of this peculiar fact of consciousness, and there is a brief reference to the subject made in some recently republished recollections of William Hazlitt. Connected with this is the powerful influence known to be exercised in many well-authenticated cases upon the nervous sensibilities by the exhalation of particular perfumes or the scent of certain kinds of flowers harmless or agreeable to all other persons. There is a reciprocal motion of the mind which has also been noted, by which a particular train of thought recalls a certain taste or smell almost as if one received the impression from the existing action of the senses. An illustration is given in the discussion just noted, where a special association of ideas is stated to have brought back to the writer, with great vividness, the “smell of a baker’s shop in Bassorah.” Individual experiences could doubtless be accumulated to show that this mysterious short-hand mind-writing, so to term it, by means of which the memory records on its tablets, by the aid of a single sign imprinted upon a particular sense, the history of a long series of associated recollections, is not confined to the senses of taste and smell alone, but makes use of all.
The recollection of one of the happiest days of my life—a day of strong excitement and vivid pleasure, but not carried to the pitch of satiety—is inseparably associated with the warm, aromatic smell of a cigar which I lighted and puffed, walking alone down a country road. In this case the train of thought is followed by the impression on the sense. But in another instance within my experience the reciprocal action of thought and sense is reversed; the sight of a particular object in this latter case invariably bringing back to my mind, with amazing distinctness, a scene of altogether dissimilar import, lying far back in the memory. The circumstances are these:
’Tis now some years since I visited the seaport town of Shippington. It is, or was, one of those sleepy provincial cities which still retain an ante-Revolutionary odor about its dock-yard and ordnance wharves. A group of ragged urchins or a ruby-nosed man in greasy and much-frayed velveteen jacket might be seen any sunny morning diligently fishing for hours off the end of one of its deserted piers for a stray bite from a perch or a flounder. The arrival of the spring clipper-ship from Glasgow, bringing a renewal of stock for the iron merchants, or of a brig with fruit from the Mediterranean, used to set the whole wharf population astir. Great changes have taken place of late years. Railroads have been built. Instead of a single line of ocean steamships, whose fortnightly arrival was the event of the day, half a dozen foreign and domestic lines keep the port busy. Fashion, which was once very exclusive and confined to a few old families, has now asserted its sway over wider ranks, and the officers of her majesty’s gallant Onety-Oneth, and the heavy swells of Shippington society whose figures adorn the broad steps of the Shippington Club-House, have now the pleasure of criticising any fine morning a (thin) galaxy of female beauty and fashion sweeping by them, whose modes rival those of Beacon Street or Murray Hill.
But at the time of which I write—when I was a school-boy, a quarter of a century ago—it had not been much stirred by the march of these modern improvements. Her Britannic majesty was then young to the throne, and a great fervor of loyalty prevailed; and when the Royal Welsh Fusileers used to march down to the parade-ground for morning drill, with the martial drum-major and its great bearded Billy-Goat, presented by the queen, dividing the honors of the head of the regiment, it would be hard to exaggerate the enthusiasm that swelled the bosoms of the small boys and African damsels who stepped proudly along with the band. Those were grand days, quorum pars magna fui, when I too marched down the hill from the citadel, with a mind divided between awe and admiration of the drum-major—curling his mustache fiercely and twirling his staff with an air of majesty—and a latent terror of the bearded pet of the regiment, whom report declared to have destroyed three or four boys in Malta. But rare indeed were those holidays, for I was impounded most of the time in a college, where the study of the Latin Delectus gave little opportunity for the pursuit of those more attractive branches of a liberal education. About half a dozen of the boys, of whom I was one, were proficients at serving Mass. It was therefore with great joy at the distinction that we found ourselves named, one frosty Christmas Eve, to accompany Father W—— to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, about a mile distant, where he was to celebrate midnight Mass. Oh! how the snow crisped and rattled under our feet as we marched along, full of importance, after Father W——, each boy with his green bag, containing his surplice and soutane, swung over his arm! What a jolly night it was; and how the stars twinkled! We slapped our hands together, protected by our thick blue mitts, and stamped our feet like soldiers on the march to Moscow. It was after ten o’clock, and the streets were dark and nearly deserted. To us, long used to be sound asleep at that hour in our warm dormitory, each boy in his own little four-poster, with the moonlight streaming in through the windows on its white counterpane—and not daring, if we were awake, so much as to whisper to the boy next to us, under pain of condign punishment in the morning—there was something mysterious and almost ghostly in this midnight adventure. As we passed the guard-house near the general’s residence, the officer of the night, muffled in his cloak, came along on the “grand rounds.” The sentry, in his tall bear-skin hat, stops suddenly short in his walk.
“Who goes there?” he calls out in a loud, fierce voice, bringing down his bayonet to the charge.
We clung closer to Father W——’s skirts. “Rounds,” replies the officer in a voice of command, his sword rattling on the ground, iron-hard with the frost. “What rounds?” “Grand rounds!” “Advance, grand rounds, and give the countersign!” Then the sergeant of the guard, the alarm being given, rushes out into the street with his men, all with bayonets drawn and looking terrible in the moonlight. They form in line, and the officer advances. A whispered conversation takes place; the soldiers present arms and march back into the warm guard-house; and the officer passes silently on to the next guard.
While this scene was going on we stood half terrified and fascinated, hardly knowing whether to take to our heels or not. But the calm voice of Father W——, as he answered “A friend” to the sentry’s challenge, reassured us. Soon we reached the convent gate, and, entering the grounds, which were open for the occasion, found the convent all ablaze with lights. The parents and friends of the young lady pupils were permitted to attend the midnight Christmas Mass. The convent, and convent chapel which communicated with it, stood in the midst of winding walks and lawns very pretty in the summer; but the tall trees, now stripped of their leaves, swung their bare branches in the wind with a melancholy recollection of their faded beauty. Groups, in twos and threes, walked silently up the paths, muffled in cloaks and shawls, and disappeared within the chapel. We were received by the lady-superior, Mme. P——, whose kind voice and refined and gentle manners were sadly maligned by a formidable Roman nose, that struck our youthful minds with awe. What unprincipled whims does Nature sometimes take thus to impress upon the countenance the appearance of a character so alien to our true disposition! Nor is it less true that a beautiful face and a form that Heaven has endowed with all the charms of grace and fascinating beauty may hide a soul rank with vice and malice. The Becky Sharpes of the world are not all as ferret-featured as Thackeray’s heroine, whom, nevertheless, with much truth to art, he represents as attractive and alluring in her prime. But dear Mme. P——’s Roman nose was not, I have reason to believe, without its advantages; the fortuitous severity of its cast helping to maintain a degree of discipline among her young lady boarders, which a tendency to what Mr. Tennyson calls “the least little delicate curve” (vulgo, a pug), or even a purely classical Grecian, might have failed to inspire. Forgive me the treason if I venture even to hint that those young ladies in white and blue who floated in and out of Mme. P——’s parlors on reception-days, like angels cut out from the canvas on the walls, were ever less demure than their prototypes!
We altar-boys were marshalled into a long, narrow hall running parallel with the chapel. There we busied ourselves in putting on our red soutanes and white surplices, and preparing the altar for Mass. But we had a long time to wait, and while we stood there in whispering silence, and the chapel slowly filled, suddenly appeared Mme. P—— with a lay sister, carrying six little china plates full of red and white sugar-plums, and some cakes not bigger than a mouthful, to beguile our tedium. To this day the sight of one of those small plates, filled with that kind of sugar-plums, brings back to my mind with wonderful minuteness all the scenes I have described and those that followed. The long walk through the snow, the guard-house, the convent grounds, the figures of Mme. P—— and her lay sister advancing towards us, rise before me undimmed by time; and even now as I write the flavor of the sugared cassia-buds seems to be in my mouth, though it is over twenty years ago since I cracked them between my teeth with a school-boy’s relish for sweetmeats.
The feeling of distant respect engendered by the sight of Mme. P——’s nose gave way all at once to a profound sympathy and admiration for that estimable lady, as she handed us those dainties. Yet, as they disappeared before our juvenile appetites, sharpened by the frost, we could not help feeling all a boy’s contempt for the girls that could be satisfied with such stuff, instead of a good, solid piece of gingerbread that a fellow could get two or three bites at! We had no doubt that the convent girls had a congé that day, and that this was a part of the feast that had been provided for them.
We marched gravely into the sanctuary before Father W——, and took our places around the altar-steps while he ascended the altar. A deeper hush seemed to fall on the congregation kneeling with heads bowed down before the Saviour born on that blessed morning. The lights on the altar burned with a mystical halo at the midnight hour. The roses around the Crib of the infant Redeemer bloomed brighter than June. We heaped the incense into the burning censer, and the smoke rushed up in a cloud, and the odorous sweetness filled the air. Then along the vaulted roof of the chapel stole the first notes of the organ, now rising, now falling; and the murmuring voice of the priest was heard reading the Missal. Did my heart stand still when a boy—or is it touched by a memory later?—as, birdlike, the pure tones of the soprano rose, filling the church, and thrilling the whole congregation? Marvellous magic of music! Can we wonder to see an Arion borne by dolphins over the waves, and stilling the winds with his lyre? Poor Mme. L——! She had a voice of astonishing brilliancy and power. Her upper notes I have never heard excelled in flute-like clearness and sustained roundness of tone. When I heard her years later, with a more experienced ear, her voice, though a good deal worn, was still one to be singled out wherever it might be heard. She is since dead. She was a French lady of good family. Her voice had the tone of an exile. She sang the Adeste fideles on that Christmas morning with a soul-stirring pathos that impressed me so much as a boy that the same hymn, sung by celebrated singers and more pretentious choirs, has always appeared to me tame.
It would not serve my present purpose to pursue these recollections farther. Enough has been said to show how quickly the mind grasps at some one prominent point affected by sense, to group around it a tableau of associated recollections. That little china tea-plate with its blue and gilt edge, heaped over with sugar-plums, brings back to me scenes that seem to belong to another age, so radical is the change which time makes in the fortunes and even emotions of men.
When the lights were all out in the chapel, except those that burned around the Crib, and the congregation had silently departed, we wended our way back to the college with Father W—— in the chill morning air more slowly than when we started; sleepy, but our courage still unabated by reason of the great things we had shared in, and the still greater things separated from us by only one more, fast-coming dawn. We slept like tops all the morning, being excused from six o’clock Mass on account of our midnight excursion. When we joined the home circle on Christmas morning, you may be assured we had plenty to talk about. Nor was it until after dinner, and all the walnuts had been cracked, and our new pair of skates—our most prized Christmas gift—tried on and admired, that the recollection of our first Christmas Mass began to fade from our minds. Pure hearts and innocent joys of youth! How smooth the stream—nescius auræ fallacis—on which it sails its tiny craft! How rough the sea it drifts into!
S. LOUIS’ BELL.[212]
S. Louis’ bell!
How grandly swell
Its matin chime,
Its noonday peal,
Its vesper rhyme!
How deeply in my heart I feel
Their solemn cadence; they to me
Waft hymns of precious melody.
S. Louis’ bell!
What memories dwell
Enshrined among
Each lingering note
And tuneful tongue!
As on the quivering air they float,
Those sweet vibrations o’er and o’er
Bear tidings from a far-off shore.
S. Louis’ bell!
What clouds dispel,
What doubts and fears
Dissolve away,
What sorrowing tears,
Like mists before the rising day!
While on the waiting, listening air
Rings out S. Louis’ call to prayer.
S. Louis’ bell!
Ring on and tell
In matin chime,
And noonday peal,
And vesper rhyme,
And let thy joyful notes reveal
The story loved of mortals best—
Of Holy Child on Virgin’s breast,
While herald angels from above
Sang anthems of eternal love!
S. Louis’ bell!
When earth’s farewell
Upon my parting lips shall dwell,
And when I rise
On angel wing
To seek the gates of Paradise,
And stand before the Heavenly King,
Though in that realm of perfect peace
All other earthly sounds should cease,
Methinks ’twould be
A joy to me
Once more to hear,
With bended ear,
The music loved on earth so well—
The echoes of S. Louis’ bell!