He says in the Journal:—
"Tuesday, Aug. 14.— Went to London with Father Dominic. We had a fine talk with Dr. Wiseman. We dined at 12½ in King William Street with Faber and the Oratorians.
"Wednesday, Aug. 15.— Sung mass at 10 and preached, Prepared in a hurry for my journey. Went off at 3½ for the Continent."
He never saw Father Dominic in the flesh again.
On the 27th of August, 1849, Father Dominic and a brother priest were travelling by railway to Aston. In the morning, before leaving London, the companion asked Father Dominic to bring him with him; he had just arrived from Australia, and wished to see some of his old companions at Aston Hall. Father Dominic thought this was not reason enough for incurring the expense of the journey; he demurred, but at length assented. It was fortunate he did. When they came as far as Reading, Father Dominic became suddenly ill. He was taken out on the platform, and as the people were afraid of an epidemic, no one would admit the patient into his house. There lay the worn-out missionary, who had prayed and toiled so long for the conversion of England, on that bleak desolate-looking platform, abandoned by all for whose salvation he thirsted, with only a companion kneeling by his side to prepare him for eternity. But the coldness and want of hospitality of the people gave him no concern: other thoughts engrossed him. A few minutes he suffered, and in those few he made his preparation. He made arrangements for the government of our houses, he gave his last instructions to his companion, he invoked a blessing upon England, and then placidly closed his eyes for ever upon this wicked world, to open them in a brighter one. He died abandoned, and almost alone, but he died in the poverty he had practised, and the solitude he loved.
Father Ignatius was in Holland at the time. On his arrival at our house in Tournay he heard a rumour of Father Dominic's death. He gave no credit to it at first; a letter written to him about it went astray; and it was not until about a fortnight after it happened that he saw a paragraph in a newspaper, giving the full particulars. He hastened home at once to England, and the first thing he heard from Dr. Wiseman was that Father Dominic had nominated him his successor.
Father Ignatius, when his provisional appointment had been confirmed in Rome, could only look forward to trials and difficulties such as he had never to get through before. We had then three houses of the order in England, and one in Belgium, which were united under one Superior, acting as Provincial. The houses were not yet constituted into a canonical province. The fewness of the members, and their ignorance of the customs and ways of a strange country, increased the difficulties. That year, indeed, four excellent priests, who have since worked hard on the English mission, came from Rome; but they could as yet only say mass, on account of their imperfect acquaintance with the English language.
Then, the existence of each house was so precarious that the smallest gust of opposition seemed sufficient to unpeople them. Aston Hall was struggling to build a church, in which undertaking that mission was destined to exhaust all the life it had; for it eked out but a dying existence from the time the church was opened, until it was given up in a few years. The retreat at Woodchester seemed to have lacked any spirit of vitality from the absence of the cross in its foundation. The generosity of a convert made everything smooth and convenient in the beginning, but the difficulties that led at length to our leaving it were already threatening to rise. The house in London was doomed to be transplanted to the wilderness of The Hyde, even before the death of Father Dominic, and St. Anne's, Sutton, was not yet begun.
This was the material position of the Passionists when Father Ignatius became Superior, or quasi Provincial. To add to this, the fathers were not first-rate men of business. They could pray well, preach and hear confessions, but they gave people of the world credit for being better than they were. Some of their worldly affairs became, therefore, complicated, and Father Ignatius, unfortunately, was not the man to rectify matters and put them straight. He was a sage in spirituals, but the very reverse in temporals.
Many of the religious became disheartened at the prospect. Some lost their vocations. Many fought manfully with contending difficulties, weathered all the storms, and, tempered and taught by those days of trouble, look with smiling placidity on what we should think serious crosses in these days. Such is the beginning of every religious institute; it grows and thrives by contradiction and persecution. Human foresight prophesied our destruction then, and could not believe that in sixteen years we should have seven houses in this province, with an average of about twenty religious for each. The ways of God are wonderful.