"When I arrived, I kept my design a profound secret, as I knew, if it were spoken of, I should meet with opposition on every side, particularly from my own immediate family; as, to all appearances, they would suffer from it. My confessor was the only person I told of it; and as I could not appear in the affair, I sent my maid to get a good mistress, and to take in thirty poor girls. When the little school was settled, I used to steal there in the morning. My brother thought I was in the chapel. This passed on very well until, one day, a poor man came to him, to speak to me to take his child into my school; on which he came in to his wife and me, laughing at the conceit of a man who was mad and thought I was in the situation of a schoolmistress. Then I owned that I had set up a school; on which he fell into a violent passion, and said a vast deal on the bad consequences that may follow. His wife is very zealous, and so is he; but worldly interests blinded him at first. He was soon reconciled to it. He was not the person I most dreaded would be brought into trouble about it; it was my uncle Nagle, who is, I think, the most disliked by the Protestants of any Catholic in the kingdom. I expected a great deal from him. The best part of my fortune I have received from him. When he heard it, he was not at all angry at it; and in a little time they were so good as to contribute largely to support it. And I took in children by degrees, not to make any noise about it in the beginning. In about nine months I had about two hundred children. When the Catholics saw what service it did, they begged that, for the convenience of the children, I would set up schools for children at the other end of the town from where I was, to be under my care and direction; and they promised to contribute to the support of them. With this request I readily complied, and the same number of children that I had were taken in; and at the death of my uncle, I supported them all at my own expense. I did not intend to take boys, but my sister-in-law made it a point, and said she would not allow any of my family to contribute to them unless I did so; on which I got a master, and took in only forty boys. They are in a house by themselves, and have no communication with the others."
This letter, it will be observed, was written fifteen years after the first school was founded, and already there were in active operation, in various parts of the city, two schools for boys and five for girls, all under the supervision of Miss Nagle, and supported from her private purse, or by a contribution of one shilling per month, which she was in the habit of collecting from a few of the more wealthy of the citizens. In these nurseries of intelligence and morality—model schools, in fact—the children of both sexes were taught to read and write, to say their daily prayers, learn the catechism, and, in the case of the older girls, to acquire a familiarity with such useful work as befitted their condition. Those who were of sufficient age heard Mass every morning, went to confession monthly, and to communion as frequently as their confessor considered advisable.
In supervising so many schools, and constantly instructing hundreds of pupils, whose moral as well as mental culture had been neglected hitherto most wofully, this heroic woman's self-imposed labors, it may well be imagined, were of the most arduous description, and we are not surprised to find that her health began to show signs of giving way. "In the beginning," she says, "being obliged to speak for upwards of four hours, and my chest not being so strong as it had been, I spat blood, which I took care to conceal, for fear of being prevented from instructing the poor. It has not the least bad effect now. When I have done preparing them at each end of the town, I feel like an idler that has nothing to do, though I speak almost as much as when I prepare them for their first communion. I find not the least difficulty in it. I explain the catechism as well as I can in one school or other every day; and if every one thought as little of labor as I do, they would have little merit. I often think that my schools will never bring me to heaven, as I only take delight and pleasure in them. You see it has pleased the Almighty to make me succeed when I had everything, I may say, to fight against. I assure you I did not expect a farthing from any mortal towards the support of my schools; and I thought I should not have more than fifty or sixty girls until I got a fortune; nor did I think I should in Cork. I began in a poor, humble manner; and though it has pleased the divine will to give me severe trials in this foundation, yet it is to show that it is his work, and has not been effected by human means. I can assure you that my schools are beginning to be of service to a great many parts of the world. This is a place of great trade. They are heard of; and my views are not for one object alone." The fortune here so delicately alluded to was left her by her uncle Nagle, who, profoundly penetrated with a sense of her discretion and of her devotion to the friendless, bequeathed her the bulk of his property. It was a very considerable sum, and was unstintingly devoted by her to further the great objects she had ever in view.
As her schools multiplied, and the attendance on each increased, with a rapidity that astonished every one, Miss Nagle saw the absolute necessity of calling in other and, if possible, organized assistance, that thus, by making her system more perfect, she might perpetuate the good work already so auspiciously begun. She therefore resolved on a bold measure—one that could have entered only the mind of a dauntless spirit, fortified by implicit faith in the protection of Providence. She determined, in fact, despite the many inhuman and ingenious penal statutes against monastic institutions, to establish a convent in Cork.
For this purpose, some time previous to the date of the above letter, four young ladies, representing some of the best families in the neighborhood, were sent to the Ursuline Convent of S. Jacques, in Paris, to enter their novitiate, while Miss Nagle, with her usual generosity and prudence, set silently to work to build a suitable house for their reception on their return. That event took place in 1771, and marks a new era in the history of the church in Ireland and England. The young novices who thus not only abandoned the allurements of the world, home, friends, and future, to serve God, but braved the terrors of the penal laws and the sneers of the anti-Catholic rabble, deserve to have their names handed down for the admiration and homage of their sex in every age and clime. They were "Miss Fitzsimmons, the special friend and correspondent of the foundress; Miss Nagle, her relative; Miss Coppinger, of the Barryscourt family, and cousin of Marian, Duchess of Norfolk; and Miss Kavanagh, related to the noble house of Ormonde." They were accompanied by Mrs. Margaret Kelly, a professed sister of the Ursuline Convent of Dieppe, none of the sisters of S. Jacques being willing to undertake so hazardous an enterprise.
They arrived in May, and on the 18th of September following took formal possession of their convent, and from that day may be dated the reintroduction of the conventual order into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.[200]
Thus in the wise designs of God, while the Encyclopedists and the secret societies of the Continent were maturing their plans of attack on the church and her institutions, when monasteries, convents, colleges, and hospitals from one end of Europe to the other, already feeling the premonitory symptoms of that monstrous earthquake of immorality and infidelity which was soon to be felt throughout Christendom, were shaking to their very foundations, in an obscure little city in the South of Ireland were planted the seeds of religion and Christian instruction which have since grown up and produced such marvellous fruits. The incident becomes even more interesting when we consider that the five ladies who commenced this beneficent work were all educated in that country and city, which ere long were to furnish the deadliest enemies of Catholicity.
It is not to be supposed that so daring an act as that of the intrepid Nano could pass unnoticed. Though the sisters studied the greatest seclusion, it was at one time proposed by the local authorities to enforce the laws against them; but better counsels prevailed, and the humble community grew rapidly in popularity and usefulness. A few months after its establishment, a select school, with twelve young ladies as pupils, was founded, and this number was quickly augmented by children from the more wealthy Catholic families of the adjoining counties. There are now five houses of this order in Ireland.
At first Miss Nagle lived in the convent; but her impatient soul, her burning love for the children of the lowly, was not yet satisfied; for though the good Ursulines devoted all their available time to the instruction of the poor, while perfecting in the higher branches of education those destined in turn to become teachers, she felt that another and a more comprehensive organization was necessary to combat so vast an array of popular error, ignorance, and destitution. A society that would devote itself, as she had so long done, individually, exclusively, and gratuitously to the service of the impoverished and untrained masses was what she desired, and what she felt called upon to form and direct. With that indomitable energy which I ever characterized her, though enfeebled in health, reduced in fortune, and prematurely old from incessant labor, at the age of forty-four she retired from the companionship of her friends and protégés, the Ursulines, to a house adjacent to the convent, purchased by herself, and, gathering around her some pious women, formed a society that was to be known as "Of the Presentation of Our Blessed Lady in the Temple." The objects of this association were: "Going through the city, looking after poor girls; inducing them to attend school, and instructing them in their religion; and, further, visiting, relieving, and consoling the sick poor in their own homes and in the public hospitals—duties analogous to those now discharged by the Sisters of Charity and Sisters of Mercy."[201] Being approved by the bishop of the diocese, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Moylan, it began its pious labors on Christmas day, A.D. 1777, by entertaining at dinner fifty poor persons, the foundress being the presiding genius, or rather angel, of the entertainment. She also established, in connection with the home, an asylum for aged females.
This was the origin of what is now known as the Presentation Order, and was the last and crowning glory of Nano Nagle's remarkable career. Though of exclusively Irish origin, and notwithstanding that the original design of its foundress has been somewhat changed, and its field of labor circumscribed and partly occupied by other orders or congregations, the institution founded by her with such limited means and materials has, with God's blessing, flourished with amazing rapidity, and has spread its influence, not only over the native land of the foundress, but to Great Britain, the lower provinces of North America, and even to India and Australia. In Ireland alone there are at least fifty convents of the order, with poor schools, industrial schools, and asylums for the aged attached.[202]