Two years before Hilaire Belloc's death on 16 July 1953, on the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel—and it was so fitting that he died on a feast day of Our Lady, whom he so deeply cherished— the Duckworth Publishing House brought out a little book which is itself so revelatory of the challenge of the Faith, Belloc's own most inward yearnings, and his fears. That representative anthology is entitled Songs of the South Country: Selected from the Poems of H. Belloc.[1]
This selection contains, among other
coruscating gems, Belloc's modest verse entitled “Courtesy,” which he
first gave as a little gift to the Prior of the Sussex Norbertine Monastery he
was visiting afoot, on 17 May 1908. It was even called the Priory of Our Lady
of England, which was then being maintained and sustained by the French Canons
Regular of Prémontré. In his verse he gratefully responded to their own
gracious hospitality, itself so aptly summed up in the long-traditional
Benedictine aphorism, “Hospes venit, Christus venit.” That is to say,
when a guest comes, it is as if (should be as if) Christ Himself comes.
As we ourselves gratefully remember Hilaire Belloc this year,
especially on the 60th Anniversary of his death, let us first
consider this brief and evocatively allusive poem of seven short, rhymed
stanzas (six four-line ones, and a final three-line stanza). For, it shows a
special aspect of Belloc's own humble answering heart: indeed the intimate
bond he perceived between attentive courtesy and charity. We shall then
also better be able to consider how he later met and expressed the challenge of
the Faith: given the Faith's inherent tests, or trials, and its unmistakable
adventures, hence risks.
In the first stanza of “Courtesy,” it
beginning (perhaps unexpectedly) with a small preposition “Of,” he sets forth
his theme:
Of Courtesy, it is much less
Than Courage
of Heart or Holiness,
Yet in my
Walks it seems to me
That the Grace of God is in
Courtesy.
He then presents the religious
setting for his comparative comment and refreshing insight, to include the
prompt hospitable reception by his hosts, which thus further enhances his
attentive perceptions: especially the sequence of sudden glimpses of Our Lady
in artful images of beauty:
On Monks I did in Storrington fall,
They took me
straight into their Hall;
I saw Three
Pictures on the wall,
And Courtesy was in them all.
We are
then introduced to three of the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary, with a gracious
variation in the third one, and hence a new nuance of meaning:
The first the Annunciation;
The second the
Visitation;
The third the
Consolation,
Of God that was
Our Lady's Son.
Then
our Belloc presents different figures and gestures of politeness, as seen in
the paintings:
The first was of Saint Gabriel;
On Wings a-flame
from Heaven he fell;
And as he went
upon one knee
He shone with
Heavenly Courtesy.
And as to the Second Mystery, he noted:
Our Lady out of Nazareth rode—
It was her month
of heavy load;
Yet was Her face
both great and kind,
For Courtesy was in Her mind.
Then we glimpse the Third Mystery, what he earlier called the
Consolation of God; and in Belloc's affectionate diminutives he also conveys
the Humility of God:
The third it was our Little Lord,
Whom all the
kings in arms adored;
He was so small
you could not see
His large intent
of Courtesy.
With somewhat compressed syntax, he
concludes his courteous verse on Courtesy with a specifically individuated
benediction, and in a rhyming triplet:
Our Lord, that was Our Lady's Son,
God bless you,
People, one by one;
My Rhyme is written, my work is
done.
Then we may imagine his repose in
the hospitable monastery, after perhaps imbibing some red wine in the refectory
with the welcoming monks, who also may not that evening have been averse to
song! Or, can we not hear Hilaire Belloc reciting among them his own “Heroic
Poem in Praise of Wine”—and
especially its concluding, partly elegiac, but also humbly hopeful, lines:
When from the waste of such long labour done *
I too must leave the grape ennnobling sun
And like the
vineyard worker take my way
Down the long
shadows of declining day,
Bend on the
sombre plain my clouded sight
And leave the
mountain to the advancing night,
Come to the term
of all that was mine own,
With nothingness
before me, and alone;
Then to what
hope of answer shall I turn?
Comrade-Commander
whom I dared not earn,
What said You
then to trembling friends and few?
“A moment, and I
drink with you new:
But in my
Father's Kingdom.” So, my Friend,
Let not Your cup
desert me in the end.
But when the
hour of mine adventure's near
Just and
benignant, let my youth appear
Bearing a
Chalice, open, golden, wide,
With benediction
graven on its side.
So touch my
dying lip: so bridge that deep,
So pledge my
waking from the gift of sleep,
And,
sacramental, raise me the Divine:
Strong brother in
God and last companion, Wine.
[“Tantus Labor not sit Cassus”—from the Dies Irae]
Only the precious accidents will
remain, however—to include the taste and fragrance—after that Chalice's final
Consecration and the benediction of its Viaticum.
The last four lines of Belloc's
initial Dedication of his Sonnets and Verse to his friend, the
Classicist, John Swinnerton Phillimore, will now mean even more to us,
especially in this context of his concluding allusions and evocations in the
“Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine.” For, the second part of that Dedication
characteristically alludes to the soul of childhood:
Do you [Phillimore] that have the child's diviner part—
The dear content
a love familiar brings—
Take these
imperfect toys [verses], till in your heart
They too attain
the form of perfect things.
Hence, too, the changed Substantial
Form of the contents of the newly consecrated Chalice, with only the
perceptible accidents of the Wine remaining.
With reference to Our Lady and her
Son, Belloc's “Ballade of Illegal Ornaments” also ends with a comparably
unforgettable Envoi, which will take us unexpectedly back anew to the
words of the traditional prayer, the Salve, Regina. But, that trenchant
Envoi will be much better understood, if we first see what Belloc himself says,
by way of introduction and Epigraph, where he mentions the recurrent allure and
effective enactment of an Iconoclastic Fury, inasmuch as “...the controversy
was ended by His Lordship, who wrote to the Incumbent ordering him to remove
from the Church all Illegal Ornaments at once, and especially a Female Figure
with a Child.”
After this Imperious and
Iconoclastic Command by “His Lordship,” we may better grasp Belloc's own
heartfelt petition in his Envoi, and also thereby suddenly see some specific
words of the “Salve! Regina” afresh:
Prince Jesus, in
mine Agony,
Permit me, broken and defiled,
Through blurred
and glazing eyes to see
A Female Figure with a Child.
(And the
traditional prayer to Our Lady we may also now, in part, recall: “Et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis
post hoc exilium ostende”!)
As it is to be especially seen in his varied verse, Hilaire Belloc
often humbly expressed a fear that he would not make it to Vita Aeterna (or
Beatitude) after all, in the end. But it was a fear fittingly corresponding to
the Donum Timoris—the Holy Ghost's infused Gift of Fear—which is itself
a guardian, a protection, against sinful Presumption, one of the two sins
against Hope, as well as a form of sinful Pride. For example, amidst his gracious
verse, “The South Country,” he suddenly says:
A lost thing could I never find,
Nor a broken thing mend:
And I fear I
shall be all alone
When I get towards the end.
Who will be
there to comfort me
Or who will be my friend?
But, as Belloc also resiliently
says at the end of his poem “The Winged Horse”:
For you [Oxford?] that took the all-in-all the things you left were three.
A loud voice for
singing and keen eyes to see.
And a
spouting well of joy within that never yet was dried!
Belloc also had the gift of joy and radiated it often, as well; and
this we must likewise not forget. Yet, in his
poem, “Prophet Lost in the Hills at Evening,” some of the same fears return,
although he always hopes in Our Lady, as if she were indeed a Mediatrix of the
most precious and finally blessed Gifts.
For, when she seems not to be immediately present, Belloc is usually more
afraid. In the “Prophet Lost in the Hills at Evening,” for example, he even
fearsomely says:
Strong God which made the topmost stars...
Remember me; whom all the bars
Of sense and dreadful fate enforce....
I hunger and I
have no bread.
My gourd is empty of the wine.
Surely the
footsteps of the dead
Are shuffling softly close to mine!
It darkens. I
have lost the ford.
There is a change in all things made.
The rocks have
evil faces, Lord,
And I am awfully afraid.
Remember me: The Voids of Hell
Expand enormous all around.
Strong friend of
souls, Emmanuel,
Redeem me from accursed ground.
The long descent
of wasted days,
To these at last have led me down;
Remember that I filled with praise
The meaningless
and doubtful ways
That lead to an eternal town.
I challenged
and I kept the Faith,
The bleeding path alone I trod;
It darkens.
Stand about my wraith,
And harbour me—almighty God.
In his short verse, entitled
“Twelfth Night,” he concludes with these provisional and comparably elegiac
lines:
Across the rime
their marching rang,
And in a little
while they sang;
They sang a
song I used to know,
Gloria in
Excelsis Domino.
The frozen
way those people trod [that “company of Travellers
who would talk with me”]
It led
towards the Mother of God;
Perhaps if I
had travelled with them
I might have
come to Bethlehem.
In his little verse “In a Boat,”
Belloc once more reaches out with yearning and courtesy and reverence to Our
Lady:
Lady! Lady!
Upon
heaven-height,
Above the harsh
morning
In the mere
light....
The twisting tides,
And the perilous
sands
Upon all sides
Are in your holy
hands.
The wind harries
And the cold
kills;
But I see your
chapel
Over far hills.
My body is
frozen,
My soul is
afraid:
Stretch out your
hands to me,
Mother and maid.
Mother of
Christ,
And Mother of
me,
Save me alive
From the howl of
the sea.
If you will
Mother me
Till I grow old,
I will hang in
your chapel
A ship of pure
gold.
The plangent tone memorably returns
in one of Hilaire Belloc's private verses, written after the sudden death of his
gracious goddaughter (the youngest child of Lady Laura Lovat) in her early
teenage years; and Belloc poignantly addresses his simple words directly to
her. His verse is entitled “Rose,” and the eight lines, in two stanzas, are as
follows:
Rose, little Rose,
the youngest of the Roses,
My little
Rose whom I may never see,
When you shall
come to where the heart reposes
Cut me a Rose
and send it down to me.
When you shall
come into the High Rose-Gardens,
Where Roses bend
upon Our Lady's Tree,
The place of
Plenitudes, the place of Pardons,
Cut me a Rose and
send it down to me.
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, pray for
us; and for the repose, pardon, and plenitude of Hilaire Belloc, who cherished
thee so, with his unmistakably loyal love. May his pierced heart now be healed.
CODA
After the brief presentation of
the other verses, we may also now know better how to cherish his wholehearted
macaronic poem, “Heretics All” and, finally, one of his own evocative Epigrams. The former runs in the following
irrepressible way, and we can hear him singing it, too:
Heretics all,
whoever you be,
In Tarbes or
Nimes, or over the sea,
You never shall
have good words from me.
Caritas non conturbat me.
But Catholic
men that live upon wine
Are deep in
the water [of Baptism!], frank and fine;
Wherever I
travel I find it so.
Benedicamus Domino.
On childing
women that are forlorn,
And men that
sweat in nothing but scorn:
That is on all
that ever were born [in our Fallen State!],
Miserere Domine.
To my poor self
on my deathbed,
And all my dear
companions dead,
Because of
the love that I bore them,
Dona Eis Requiem.
H. Belloc's Elegiac Noble Epigram
LX: “From the Latin (but not so pagan)”:
Blessed is he that has come to the heart of the world and is humble
He shall stand alone; and beneath
His feet are implacable fate, and panic at night, and the strumble
Of the hungry river of death.[18]
Blessed, too, is he that has come
to the Heart of the Faith and is humble.
As was so, I believe, with Hilaire Belloc, in and from his forthright
and very deep heart. And not only in Belloc's special loves, both of Our Lady
and also “of God that was Our Lady's Son”—thus “Our Little Lord” (and all the
Little Children) and likewise “Prince Jesus, in
mine Agony.” Requiescat in Pace et in Vita Aeterna.
--Finis--
This essay
is dedicated to my beloved wife, Maike Maria, who inspired it.
© 2013 Robert D. Hickson
