ARCHBISHOP ULLATHORNE'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.* 4 ‘ DID I wish," wrote Cardinal Newman,
in The Apologia, "to point out a straightforward Englishman, I should instance the Bishop who has, to our great benefit, for so many years pre- sided over this diocese." This Bishop was Dr. William Ullathorne, who bore successively the titles of Vicar-Apostolic of the Western District, Bishop of Birmingham, and titular Archbishop of Clabasa. Not only in the quality of straight- forwardness, but in the whole cast of his mind and character, William Ullathorne was a typical Englishman ; but his was also an original and striking personality, whose influence was marked and lasting in the Roman Catholic Church, both in Australia and England. The son of a grocer, who became in succession a cabin-boy, a monk, a Government chaplain to convicts, a parish priest, a Vicar-Apostolic, and a Bishop, it was evident that his life was in great part the result of his -character, and that his was one of those strong individuali- ties which make circumstances. So far, he may be ranked among self-made men ; but the striking point in the story is that this self was made by being sacrificed, or rather ignored, and that his success, though it undoubtedly gave him pleasure, was due greatly to the entire absence of ambition. The mass of his countrymen may not be interested in his having founded the Roman Catholic Com- munion in Australia, or in his having been chiefly instru- mental, together with Cardinal Wiseman, in bringing about the erection of the Roman Hierarchy in England; but his extraordinary work among the convicts of Norfolk Island, and the picture of a very remarkable character, are sufficient to make this little Autobiography, in spite of certain literary defects, a book of unusual interest.
The son of a Poeklington grocer, Dr. Ullathorne was yet of gentle blood on his mother's side, and a lineal descendant of Sir Thomas More. He speaks of himself as a heavy, clumsy urchin, with "large blobbing eyes," silent unless questioned as to his constant reading, falling in love with a statue in a deserted garden, overwhelmed by a sense of religion at the sight of York Minster, learning from Robinson Crusoe a passion for the sea,
* Autobiography of Archbishop ITIlathorno. London : Burns and Oates.— Letters of Archbishop Utiatitorne, Edited by A.. T. Drano, London: Burns and Oates, 1802.
yet, though imaginative, very obstinate, and entirely defiant of the rod freely administered by the cynical old schoolmaster. After many vain attempts to interest William in the grocery business, he was allowed, when he was thirteen, to go to sea. He set out, obstinately refusing to go to confession and communion before starting. Young Ullathorne's life under a brutal cap- tain, his smuggled visits to Covent Garden from the docks, the many hardships he suffered, and his dogged refusal to go home, are all vividly told, and bring us at length to the crisis of his life, his last voyage to Memel. On the ship in which he sailed to Memel, still a cabin-boy, there was a Catholic mate, who, on landing, persuaded him to go to Mass. A neglected" Garden of the Soul" was fished up from the bottom of his sea-chest, and they walked across the little Lutheran town to the Catholic chapel :—
" I vividly remember the broad figure of the venerable priest and his large tonsure, which made me think him a Franciscan, The men knelt on the right side, the women on the left, all dressed very plainly and much alike. With their hands united and their eyes recollected, they were singing the Litany of Loretto to two or three simple notes, accompanied by an instrument like the sound of small bolls. The moment I entered I was struck by the simple fervour of the scene ; it throw me into a cold shiver, my heart was turned inward upon itself. I saw the claims of God upon me, and felt a deep reproach within my soul. When we came out, I was again struck by the affectionate way in which the people saluted each other, as if they were all one family. Whatever money I had with me went into the poor-box, and when we got on board I asked Craythorne what religious books he had with him. He produced an English trans- lation of Massillon's life of St. Jane Chantal and Gobi/let's In- struction of Youth, which I read as leisure served."
On these books he lived in a "rapture of imagination" until he reached London. He then gave up his sea-life, and after a short time spent at his father's business, he joined the Benedictines at Downside. He was nearly seventeen years old, but he had not yet made his first Communion, nor had he been confirmed. He had never been present at the Bene- diction of the Sacrament nor heard the Litany sung, except at Memel. Entirely ignorant of Latin, utterly unaccustomed to prayer or religious exercises, so rapid was the progress of the ex-cabin-boy that he was allowed to receive the religious habit little more than a year after he had joined the school. Those who wish to understand the man's character and the way in which it became possessed by the supernatural, should dwell upon his account of the years of preparation for the priesthood that followed; and though this was not an eventful time, it will not be among the least interesting to the reader. Without understanding the aspirations which made him wish to become a Trappist, or the longing for spiritual wisdom which made him such a student of the Fathers, the extraordinary influence he soon afterwards developed would be absolutely puzzling.
About a year after his reception of the priesthood, Father Ullathorne was appointed Vicar-General to Australia, and was the first priest sent out as a Government chaplain. He was eventually sent to Norfolk Island, together with a clergyman, to prepare a large number of convicts for execution after a revolt against the authorities. They were the first ministers of any religion who landed on the island. So terri-
ble were the sufferings and the isolation of the convicts at this time, that men had been known to murder their comrades from no motive of to the victim, but in order to get to the
mainland to be tried. Father Ullathorne was allowed to be the first to tell the prisoners which of them had been condemned
to death. It was the most heartrending scene be had ever witnessed. Without one exception, the reprieved wept bitterly, but each man who heard of his condemnation went down on his knees, and with dry eyes thanked God. The account of the week which followed, spent amidst the beauties of Nature and the most terrible sorrows of outcast men, of the work of grace among the off-scouring of humanity, of the moral heroism which made the lowest of criminals accept death as a penance, is a picture so bright and so dark, so terri- ble as to the possibilities of suffering in this fair world, and so hopeful as to spiritual possibilities for men apparently the most outcast, that once read it is not easily forgotten :—
"I had six of my men put together in one cell and five in the other, one of which parties was executed each day, and executed in one group, whilst the Protestants were executed in another. My men asked as a special favour to he allowed some tobacco, as with that they could watch and pray all night. This indulgence was granted. . . . When the irons were struck-off and the death- warrant read, they knelt down to receive it as the will of Goa;
and next, by a spontaneous act, they humbly kissed the feet of him who brought them peace. After the executioner had pinioned their arms, they thanked the jailers for all their kindness, and ascended the ladders with light steps, being almost excitedly cheerful. I had a method of preparing men for their last moments by asso- ciating all that I wished them to think and feel with the prayer, Into Thy hands I commend my spirit; Lord Jesus receive my soul.' I advised them when on the scaffold to think of nothing else. The Catholics had a practice of sewing large black crosses on their white caps and shirts. These men had done so. As soon as they were on the scaffold, to my surprise, they all repeated the prayer I had taught them in a kind of chorus together, until the ropes stopped their voices for ever. This made a great im- pression on all present, and was much talked of afterwards. As I returned from this awful scene, wending my way between the masses of convicts and the military, all in dead silence, I barely caught a glance of their suspended bodies, I could not bring myself to look at them. Poor fellows ! They had given me their whole hearts, and were fervently penitent. They had known little of good or of their souls before that time. Yet all of them had either fathers or mothers, sisters or brothers, to whom they bad last words and affections to send, which had been dictated to me the day before. The second day was but a repeti- tion of the first. The Protestant convicts were executed after the Catholics. The Anglican clergyman had three to attend to each day. Then came the funerals, the Catholics at a separate time from the Protestants. A selected number of the convicts followed each coffin to the most beautiful cemetery that the eye of man could possibly contemplate. Churchyard Gully is at some dis- tance from the settlement, in a ravine that opens upon the sea, being encircled on the land side with dark thickets of machined, backed by the bright-leaved forest trees, among which lemon and guava trees were intermingled. Beyond this, the ravine ascended, and was clasped in by the swelling hills, covered with wild vines and grapes. Above all was a crown of beautiful trees, beyond which arose Mount Pitt to a height of 8,000 ft., covered with majestic pines of the kind peculiar to Norfolk Island. Arrived at the graves, I mounted a little eminence, with the coffins before me and the convicts around me; and, being extraordinarily moved, I poured out the most awful, mixed with the most tender, conjurations to these unfortunate men to think of their immortal souls, and the God above them, Who waited their repentance. Then followed the funeral rites. So healthful was the climate, that all who lay in the cemetery had* been executed, except one child. After the return of the procession, it was found that the men who composed it were sore and annoyed. The executioner had followed the coffins as though chief mourner, at which they were indignant. Yet the man did it in simplicity, and had a friend among the dead. He was a man whom Sir Walter Scott would have liked to have made a sketch of. A broad-chested, sturdy-limbed figure, broad-faced and bull-necked; who had won his freedom by taking two bushrangers, single-handed, at Port Maquarie. But in the struggle he had received a cut from a hanger across the mouth, that opened it to the ears and left a scar over his face that was alternately red and blue. Yet he had good-natured eyes. Whilst pinioning the arms of one of the men, he suddenly recognised him, and exclaimed : 'Why, Jack, is that you P' 'Why, Bill,' was the answer, is that you?' Ire then shook his old friend by the hand, and said : Well, my dear fellow, it can't be helped.'" It would take too long to describe Father Ullathorne's work among the other convicts; stffice it to say that, though he was only a week in the island, he found, on returning fifteen months later, that not one Catholic had been brought before the Commandant, who himself told him of the great decrease in crime in the island.
Looking for a moment to the narrative as a whole, as we cannot pursue it further in detail, it seems to us that the genial, open-air, matter-of-course manner of it makes the supernatural element the more striking from its simplicity and its contrast with much of the natural character. That mind and character—as revealed both in the autobiography and in the letters with which the editor has supplemented it—while typically English, belonged to what, in. France, would be called the bourgeois class. Archbishop Ullathorne's virtues are those of that class at its best,—the love of fair play, the firmness, the strong sense of facts and capacity for business, the shrewd knowledge of character, the power of roughing it, the impatience of unmanliness, and the tenderness for the weak. What is stirprising is that such a practical British, and as it might seem at first sight somewhat rough-and-ready, individual was possessed, as we have seen, of a vivid imagina- tion, which fell in love first with the beauty of the natural world, and then with the beauty of the supernatural. From the time of that "rapture of imagination" on the voyage back frora Memel, the spiritual in William Uflathorne must have developed with astonishing rapidity. Far more surprising
than the knowledge of the Fathers and of theology in one of his upbringing, was his spiritual influence. Here was a man of, in many ways, not the m • most delicate perceptions, who was far from being perfectly tactful, but endowed with a power that could move the most hardened convict, or become the greatest possible earthly help to contemplative, intellectual women. We feel as we road that had we met him at a Colonial official dinner in Australia, we should not have been at- tracted; but see him in the condemned criminal's cell, or on the scaffold, or, again, preaching to nuns or priests, or giving individual counsels as a confessor, and he was evidently almost irresistible. This is well known to those who had to deal with him, and we felt some curiosity as to how far it would be described by himself. After reading this narrative, we are convinced that this strong light which was shed from him wag not realised by himself. There is something visible of a simple satisfaction in his own career and history. He can speak with pleasure of his influence with the Government, of his work in building churches, of the hardships of his journeys, and of his endless controversial pamphlets; but the rea humility which he had sought after prevented his seeing hia own chief gift,—his spiritual insight and influence. He will sometimes tell an anecdote as to his treatment of a peculiarly hardened convict with some glee at his own cleverness and perception of character, but without any of the air of spiritual unction which must have been betrayed if he had been con- scious that it was his single-minded devotion to the man's soul which produced the result, rather than any amount of cleverness.
To the end of his life, Dr. Ullathorne remained in one sense an uneducated man, and his peculiarities were often jested at; but all those who came into contact with him knew that he could read the heart. His books are long and tedious reading, yet one is obliged to acknowledge that they have caught the secret of sweetness and light from the Fathers of the Church. Whether this is, on the whole, a winning character as portrayed by himself, or not, nobody could deny that it is a strong and powerful one. It seems to us to belong to a type that is, unfortunately for our country, getting rarer,—the type of which Bright and Cobden were notable examples, uniting the matter-of-fact, practical British character with enthusiasm for ideals and principles; only, whereas their ideals were ultimately practical, and held to the visible order of things, Ullathorne's were concentrated on the spiritual and unseen.
Previous page
