J’ai lu avec grand plaisir votre article “Le Prêtre au Bagne,” oui! c’est au Bagne que’l on devrait envoyer les Prêtres seulement dans un pays ou tant de personne sont Catholiques, je crains que les jurys sentimentales de votre pays aquitterait honteusement ces hommes néfastes.
J’espère que je ne blesse pas votre Cœur de Catholique en disant cela.[84] Nos Catholiques ici ne sont pas si mauvais que nos Catholiques là-bas. Beaucoup des notres sont de très bonnes familles, mais en Irlande l’ignorance et terrible, et on veut le faire plus grand avec une Université!
En éspérant que la France redeviendra son vrai même[85] ce que je crains être impossible, je reste, mon cher ami (et Monsieur) votre ami sincère, agriez mes vœux pressés, tout-à-toi.
Josue Lambkin.
XVI.
Interview with Mr. Lambkin.
A representative of The J. C. R. had, but a short while before his death, the privilege of an interview with Mr. Lambkin on those numerous questions of the day which the enterprise of the Press puts before its readers. The meeting has a most pathetic interest! Here was the old man full and portly, much alive to current questions, and to the last a true representative of his class. Within a week the fatal Gaudy had passed and he was no more! Though the words here given are reported by another, they bear the full, fresh impress of his personality and I treasure them as the last authentic expression of that great mind.
“Ringing the bell” (writes our representative) “at a neat villa in the Banbury Road, the door was answered by a trim serving-maid in a chintz gown and with a white cap on her head. The whole aspect of Mr. Lambkin’s household without and within breathes repose and decent merriment. I was ushered into a well-ordered study, and noticed upon the walls a few handsome prints, chosen in perfect taste and solidly mounted in fine frames, ‘The meeting of Wellington and Blucher at Waterloo,’ ‘John Knox preaching before Mary Queen of Scots,’ ‘The trial of Lord William Russell,’ and two charming pictures of a child and a dog: ‘Can ’oo talk?’ and ‘Me too!’ completed the little gallery. I noticed also a fine photograph of the Marquis of Llanidloes, whose legal attainments and philological studies had formed a close bond between him and Mr. Lambkin. A faded daguerreotype of Mr. Lambkin’s mother and a pencil sketch of his father’s country seat possessed a pathetic interest.
“Mr. Lambkin came cheerily into the room, and I plunged at once ‘in medias res.’
“‘Pray Mr. Lambkin what do you think of the present position of parties?’”