Cardinal Gibbons and the South Seas

How a Gift from the Prelate was Exchanged for a Life of Wandering Adventure

FREDERICK O'BRIEN

Author of "White Shadows in the South Seas"

THE death of Cardinal Gibbons is a personal sorrow, as the events of his being elevated to the cardinalate were for me a birthtime of adventurous determination, and a starting point of definite aims in life. He anointed my childish head with the chrism of confirmation; he often, by precept, guided my boyish will, and it was I who handed him the message from Rome which first informed him definitely that he had been made a member of the sacred college that advises the Pope, and was raised in rank above any living priest of the Catholic church of the United States.

But vivid as is my remembrance of the day of my bearing him the announcement that he was a senator of the Church, and of his gracious and affecting words and actions towards me, I think of the incident mostly for its indirect effect on my young imagination, and the marking by it of the long road I was to travel by land and sea in search of the Tir n'an oge, the Celtic myth of romance, the following of the westering sun towards the Fair and Unknown.

With me books have ever been a driving force. I have been in most parts of the world, and almost always made a journey because a book pointed the way. I suppose everybody has read The Coral Island, by Oliver Optic. If not, I envy you. I was six when an uncle, a clergyman, changed the course of my life by bringing The Coral Island to my father's house. My father in merry moods hurt me by saying that I was to be a ladies' shoemaker. I had come to despise that honourable trade as a patriot should a profiteer; but I really was not sure what I wanted to be, and so had no defense.

Pirates in an Attic

ONE hectic night in the garret by the light of a blessed candle—which I had no right to burn for such literature—all doubt passed from me. I was to fight pirates; to aid in clearing the Spanish Main of those scoundrels who abducted boys and made them unwilling accomplices of their villainy in the raiding of villages, the stealing of simple blacks to sell them into slavery, and who used bad language in an evil cause.

There was a passage in The Coral Island that tortured me into action. One of the brave boys marooned on the atoll by the swarthy scoundrel of the Black Flag, could not swim. To escape seizure by the pirate, they must hide in a cave, the sole entrance into which was under water. The older boy had discovered it in his playful meanderings beneath the surface of the sea. There was no alternative; into that fearful pit of terrors, unknown but guessed at, Peterkin must go or risk not only his own life but the lives of the others, for the Marauder of the Ocean will force at least a negative confession, if one of them is found. Honour would permit no lie, nor much evasion.

Now, to Peterkin the putting his head under water meant horrors beyond any other conceivable to him. In a fight he had no fears even against awful odds. But he could not swim, and that suffocating feeling when one's breath ceases, and the weight of the water presses one seemingly to death, was more frightful to him than engaging four men in combat with a broken cutlass.

There wereminutes of tension which made the very type on the page appear alive to me.

And then, the courageous lad, folded his arms, and dived. Oh, days of childhood! My heart stood still for a paragraph. But he reached the cave in safety, and settled for me one habit or outlet of energy, which to a degree affected my whole career.

I could not swim; the water scared me into shrieks. I could not overcome my timidity, and had contemplated sorrowfully three score and ten, or even a hundred years, without breasting the waves.

I let the book slip to the floor, and stood up. There in the family garret I consecrated myself to natation, to diving, to becoming a merman; people in the not distant future should say, "Gee whizz! there's a wonder!" He stays under water longer than any human in the world."

That night, after selling my electric battery for the price of a ticket to a public tank, I leaped proudly from a height of twelve feet into seven feet of water, and was rescued, after near-drowning, by anxious attendants who forced me to dress instantly, and drove me from the building with opprobrious threats of a severe spanking if I returned. Since then I have swum in the seven seas, in Brazil and Java, in Siberia and Tahiti, and diving is an intoxicating lure which often has gotten me into as ticklish situations as in the tank at six.

The Lure of the Sea

AT sixteen I fell on Two Years Before the Mast, by the immortal Dana. I was knee deep in Latin and Greek, making many parasangs a day with Captain Xenophon, but my soul was arrested afresh. Dana made the sea a fearful element. He pictured his sufferings, the bad food, the hard and dangerous tasks, the brutal officers, and the lack of leisure; but over all, he painted the glamour of youth fighting and conquering, grinning and bearing, "standing the gaff," and excelling in the job to do: becoming as the officers in knowledge and strength, but remaining clean, tender and romantic.

It was the bark Julia Rollins for me. She was a clipper that carried flour and lard to the Brazils, and loaded coffee there for America. She had skysails and was rigged for stu'n'sails.

"Well, ah, fare you well, we can stay no more with you, my love,

Down, set down your liquor and the girl from off your knee,

For the wind has come to say 'You must take me while you may,

If you'd go to Mother Carey!'

(Walk her down to Mother Carey!)

Oh, we're bound for Mother Carey where she feeds her chicks at sea!"

I had never tasted liquor, and my mother's knee was the only one I knew; but I sang such a song about the capstan as we drew up her mudhook to the cathead, and passed down the Chesapeake bound for Rio and the River Plate.

Oh days of youth!

A year and more of wanderings in Brazil, Venezuela and the West Indies, and a love of the sea on which I have spent scores of months since, came from that wondrous book of the Boston scholar with weak eyes, who made himself a man in his battles on the dancing fo'c's'le around the Stormy Cape.

Then law books. What juice there was in Coke and Littleton, Blackstone and Venable, and the other doctors, what joy there was in university companionship, I extracted. But the law is a jealous mistress, said Blackstone, and I wanted no mistress but adventure.

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Back in Baltimore, my father, a lawyer, called me one day and said, "Fred, I have a very important mission for you. Here is a cablegram from Count Eduardo at Rome. Read it, and then take it immediately to Archbishop Gibbons. It is the first certain information he will have."

I took the slip of paper and read it, perplexedly:

"Gibbons red hat."

That and no more. I walked up Baltimore street holding it in my hand. Its meaning had become as clear as sunlight, before I turned up the hill of Charles street.

The distinguished prelate, born in Baltimore, who administered the archdiocese of Maryland, had been raised by the Pope to be a prince of the Church. The poor boy who had struggled for an education, and whose life since had been one of humble service, as he saw it, was to rank with the Cardinals of the Vatican; perhaps, later, to sit in the chair of Peter and to wear the Triple tiara.

I was in the stars, singing, when I rang the bell of the plain diocesan house next to the massive, old cathedral. I asked for the Archbishop, and met the Chancellor.

"I must see the Archbishop."

"Can't I do it? What is it, my son?"

I waved the cablegram, and shot him a look of intense earnestness. I would be on my way. Andy Rowan, who hunted up Garcia through bosque and swamp, had nothing on me. I, too, had a message.

The Chancellor smiled, glanced swiftly at the back of the slip, and said, "You know His Grace's room."

I did, and I took the stairs in bounds, using the bannister to hoist myself fiercely along. I reached the door and knocked. A voice said, "Come in!"

Archbishop Gibbons was in his study, which, with a bedroom, was his separate habitation. Tall, slender, ascetic, benign, his shrewd, kindly face was buried in his breviary where he stood by a window.

He looked up after a moment, and welcomed me. I had the message hidden behind my hip, and waited until he said, "Well, my child, what can I do for you?"

Cardinal Gibbons

THEN, dramatically, as, perhaps, Garcia got his word of Uncle Sam's intention to help him, I handed the Archbishop the fateful paper. He took it, read it, started, read it again, and then, without a word, went to a kneeling bench under a crucifix, and for five minutes bowed his head silently. I had not reached the age of contemplation, my mind was full of the worldly meaning of the message, the princeliness of his rank, the possible suite in the Vatican, but yet something of his solemn meditation communicated itself to me.

When he arose he came over smiling, and extended his hand.

"It is a great day," he said. "May God aid me! You know what this means, my child?"

"Yes, Your Eminence," I replied, proudly, as had Peterkin to the august pirate, and thus for the first time he received the title that had been bestowed on him by the Successor of the Fisherman.

He smiled again, and patted my cotony head.

"I must give you some remembrance of this day, and your bringing me the message," said the Cardinal. "Have you yet chosen your vocation?"

I shuddered. Me, who was to walk the quarterdeck, to command hard men, and make them walk a chalk line of duty, to make them be good to dogs and horses, to children and women, me in a monastery, or hearing the confessions of the wicked, except as their conqueror and master!

I choked, as I replied in a low, intense voice, "No, Your Eminence."

I wished I could have said right out, "Do you know, Cardinal, whom you are addressing? Do you know that I have been before the mast, have gone up the Orinoco river, have trod the pitch lake of Trinidad? You see before you a humble law student, but one who has swung on the dizzy royal yardarm when great guns blew. Gee whizz! Your Eminence, use your eyes!"

The Cardinal was examining his shelves, and looking from time to time at a book, and then at me. Finally, he seemed to give up the idea of correlating me with a particular volume, and taking down a ponderous tome, he wrote on its flyleaf:

To my Beloved Son in Christ

Frederic O'Brien

from

James, Cardinal Gibbons.

He handed the book to me, and I read the inscription with awe. I think, now, that it was The Rights of the Clergy Defended, by Montalembert. I thanked him, and he patted my head, and said a prayer for me.

I started to my home on Eutaw Place, carrying the weighty work under my arm, and shifting it as it grew irksome. I went up Madison to Howard street, and there stopped at the window of Smith's bookstore. Smith was a bearded man, much like the worst-looking pirate I had known in any story, and he corrupted youth by affording a ready mart, no questions asked, for any book. A Greek grammar, a geography, or a yellowback novel, were all the same to him. He was a gross profiteer, but did all the literary business of boys .and girls for a mile around.

In his window Smith displayed no schoolbooks, although they were his principal wares. He knew that youth had to buy them, but he had an artful assemblage of lighter vein, such as the Seaside Library, Old Electricity, The Lightning Detective, Velvetfoot, The Silent Wizard of Crimes: Monsieur Lecoq, and the Little Old Man of the Batignolles.

In a corner of the window was a book, the very title of which drew me as an orange blossom a honey bee. It was, Rarahu, or the Marriage of Loti. On its cover was a drawing of a South Sea island.

I looked and longed. I was fascinated. I entered the musty store and in a voice of attempted insouciance I asked Smith to let me "see that little, old paper-covered thing in the comer of the window."

Smith got it and handed it to me, and at the same time took from under my arm the ponderous volume of polemics which defended the ecclesiastical estate. He had a large clientele of religious grown-ups, and he inspected the book closely.

Enter Pierre Loti

I WAS already deep in Rarahu. It was about Tahiti, an island that lay thousands of miles from any mainland, far in the South Pacific, and had a queen, and a court, at which a youth, Loti, the writer, was a figure of prominence. Dusky beauties danced, or swam in the azure lagoon; a mysterious gift of heaven, called breadfruit, furnished ready-made breakfast food; and fish of a dozen hues invited the angle. The very language, "Ia ora na, Loti, aroha nui oe," enchanted me. In a word, I was transported to the South Seas, and Smith and the Cardinal were forgotten. I was in chapter two when I was brought back to Baltimore by Smith's saying:

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"Well, what do you want for this truck?"

He held out my huge book. He was cunning, that man. He had permitted me to become netted by that idyl of the tropics before he poured the poison of suggestion into my dull ears.

I looked at Smith stupidly, and he seemed a bad angel — and to be smudging me. But I turned another page, and read a description of the beautiful waterfall of Fautaua. I grew weak, and meanwhile Smith had seen the inscription with the autograph of the new Cardinal. I know now that his little eyes glistened, and that he determined to obtain the dear gift of the prelate to me.

He went to a shelf and returned with two more books, The Mysterious Island and Madam Chrysanthemum. He handed them to me, and said, "I'll trade you even—this bum, old thing for these three crackerjacks."

I resisted. I was all but hurling them at him, and the face of the good and venerable Cardinal rose to rebuke me. But I was now gazinz at the Chrysanthemum, which was laid in Japan. I saw some lovely queer girls in curious clothes, with sweet, slanting eyes.

I closed my mouth firmly, but Smith handed me a half dollar, to boot, and I wheeled and rushed out of the store, with the trio of marvels, and leaving the tempter with the memorable gift.

I have not seen it again, nor did I for long years tell any one of its existence, and I never told the Cardinal.

For the seeing of Japan, for the treading every path that Loti trod in Nagasaki, I waited years, and for the vale of Fautaua, for those bizarre, maddening South Seas, more years. But I did go to them, and I stayed long in them, ana I took with me to them the urge and the image evoked by the printed page I had read among the shelves of that unconscious Provoker of Romance, the heartless Smith.

The Cardinal's gift had sped me far. Oh, days of manhood! And, oh! for tales that make adventure real.