MEMOIRS OF 
 RATH ER E GAUMED S, a 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Nixon Griff is 
 
^^ID) hJ 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://archive.org/details/cu31924029431974 
 
MEMOIRS OF 
 FATHER P. GALLWEY, S.J, 
 
ROEHAMPTON I 
 PRINTED BY JOHN GRIFFIN. 
 

MEMOIRS OF 
 
 FATHER P. GALLWEY, S.J 
 
 ft» 
 
 WITH PORTRAIT 
 
 BY 
 
 FATHER M. GAVIN, S.J. 
 
 LONDON : BURNS AND OATES (LIMITED) 
 
 NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO : BENZIGER BROTHERS- 
 
 I9I3 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Beyond a graceful tribute, entitled Father 
 Gallwey, by Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, in 
 memory of his revered master and life- 
 long friend, nothing has been published 
 since Father Gallwey's death to chronicle 
 his work for God in the Society of Jesus 
 during seventy years. 
 
 Mr. Percy Fitzgerald's little sketch, as 
 he terms it, contains some description of 
 Stonyhurst in the days of his youth, bears 
 witness to Father Gallwey's untiring 
 energy, his love of literature, his interest 
 in the Stonyhurst stage, and his devotedness 
 to his pupils . It provides us also with some 
 eighteen or twenty letters, written in the 
 early fifties, from St. Beuno's College, 
 North Wales, in the first year of Father 
 Gallwey's priesthood. They are extremely 
 interesting, revealing the warm heart of the 
 writer, and varied by comments on litera- 
 ture and music and the passing events of 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 the hour. They represent the bright and 
 happy days of his early manhood, and are 
 naturally very different from the grave and 
 measured letters of maturer years, in which 
 he spoke of things divine, and trained souls 
 in the perfection of their state. 
 
 This unpretending little volume of 
 memoirs is not meant in any sense to be a 
 Life. Various writers, who knew him as 
 Superior, or served with him in the ranks, 
 have contributed chapters which bring him 
 before us as Novice Master, Giver of Re- 
 treats, Preacher and Writer of Books, one 
 of which, the Watches of the Passion, has 
 gained the distinction of a sixteenth edition. 
 Thus sidelights are cast by friendly hands 
 on a fervent Religious, while an attempt is 
 made to describe his every-day life of 
 prayer and labour and self-sacrifice as a 
 member of the Mount Street Community. 
 
 A Life in the strict sense of the word is 
 an impossibility. His correspondence has 
 been almost entirely destroyed by himself, 
 or by others, in many cases at his special 
 desire. A letter, which quite recently came 
 into my hands, to a Religious of the Sacred 
 Heart, now in Mexico, gives the secret of 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 his wish to conceal all vestige of his good 
 deeds. To a question asked by the Reli- 
 gious, ** What is the quickest way of gain- 
 ing the personal love of our Lord that you 
 speak of so often? " Father Gallwey an- 
 swered in a letter" dated January 3, 1884: 
 
 *' My dear Sister in Christ, 
 
 ** St. John the Baptist's word is a good 
 answer to your question and will do for a 
 motto for the year : 'He must grow great 
 and I must grow less.' Self is anti-Christ : 
 self is the real obstacle to the love of 
 our Lord. Love and selfishness are day 
 and night. One must go before the other 
 can reign." 
 
 Father Gallwey practised what he 
 preached. The desire of advertisement is 
 the characteristic of self. It loves to 
 flourish its pious achievements. Hence our 
 Lord selects prayer, fasting, almsdeeds 
 as actions to be specially screened from the 
 gaze of men. If done to be seen of men, 
 the reward is given here, none other can 
 be expected. Father Gallwey had a hor- 
 ror of anything that looked like self-ad- 
 vertisement. He must have known per- 
 fectly well that some day an attempt would 
 
 • I 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 be made to publish his Life. He was de- 
 termined to defeat this project, and was 
 most successful in his aim. Of his corres- 
 pondence with persons of note like Cecil 
 Marchioness of Lothian, Lady Georgiana 
 Fullerton, Archbishop Errington, and hosts 
 of others, through forty years, hardly a 
 vestige remains. Lady Georgiana was his 
 penitent and intimate friend, his letters to 
 her were returned to him after her death. 
 They would naturally have dealt with her 
 literary labours and her many good works, 
 and would have provided instructive read- 
 ing. Her letters to him and his to her seem 
 to have been destroyed by his own hand. 
 
 During the twelve years of his first rec- 
 torate in Farm Street, from 1857 to 1869, 
 he was prominent in every good work in 
 London. His influence was greater at that 
 time than any subsequent period. He was 
 in the maturity of his physical and intellec- 
 tual powers, and much sought after as 
 preacher, confessor, giver of retreats and 
 missions ; he assisted and revised the publi- 
 cation of books, he was prominent in all 
 works of charity in the Archdiocese. He 
 never referred to his labours, and has left 
 
PREFACE ' ix 
 
 no word or solitary letter behind to help 
 his biographer. Few, for instance, know 
 that he was the real founder of The 
 Month, Mother Taylor, to whom we owe 
 the Congregation of the Poor Servants of 
 the Mother of God, always gave Father 
 Gallwey the credit of procuring that peri- 
 odical for the Society . After one year, dur- 
 ing which Cardinal Newman gave her for 
 publication the Dream of Gerontiiis, she re- 
 signed the Editorship. *' I consider," thus 
 wrote Mother Taylor, " the real founder 
 was Father Gallwey. He took the greatest 
 interest in its start. So did Father 
 Coleridge, whom I then knew only by 
 correspondence. . . . Cardinal Newman 
 took it up from the first and called on me 
 that summer about it. Father Gallwey got 
 James Doyle to design the cover, and it 
 was he ( J . D . ) who suggested the name 
 Month r 
 
 Though recognized as a master of the 
 spiritual life, little remains in writing of his 
 direction, which would have been highly 
 prized by confessors and penitents . A kind 
 of fatality seems to have followed all his 
 correspondence . Wholesale destruction 
 
PREFACE 
 
 was the order of the day. To a Rehgious 
 of the Sacred Heart, he sent many letters 
 of spiritual direction during two years' 
 noviciate. Through a mistaken spirit of 
 self-sacrifice she burnt all. One friend as- 
 sured me she had letters from him for fifty 
 years (and he rarely wrote save on spiri- 
 tual things). They, too, have vanished. 
 The clergy to whom he gave retreats would 
 naturally at times have sought his guid- 
 ance ; no line from them or him has ever 
 rewarded my search. 
 
 We can only offer, then, the record of a 
 holy life in great part hidden, with some 
 letters which will at least afford pleasure 
 and spiritual profit to his friends, while 
 others may be glad to learn more from one 
 whom they knew by reputation or heard 
 preach, who read his books, or knelt in his 
 confessional. 
 
 Should this little volume reach a second 
 edition, perhaps his friends in distant lands 
 may be tempted to forward letters that are 
 still in their possession. 
 
 The veil has indeed been lifted, in two 
 well-known biographies, from a portion of 
 Father Gallwey's Hfe, his Provincialate 
 
PREFACE 
 
 XI 
 
 ( 1S73 — 76). His name and doings come 
 to the front in Mr. Purcell's Life of Car- 
 dinal Manning, and in the admirable Life 
 of Cardinal Vaughany which we owe to the 
 pen of Mr. Snead-Cox. In Cardinal Man- 
 ning's life, Father Gallwey is not always 
 kindly spoken of, and in Cardinal Vaug- 
 han's life the letters and the biographer's 
 comments remind us of discussions and 
 controversies which are now almost an- 
 cient history. Men of great name and 
 high example and of inflexible resolve^ 
 eager for God's glory, which each yearned 
 to promote according to his lights, figure 
 in these chapters . Saints have differed ere 
 now in their mode of action and will differ 
 again. Pope Leo XIII. 's ruling in his 
 famous Constitution Romanos Pontifices 
 closed discussion and dispute, and brought 
 us profound peace. Any reference to 
 Father Gallwey's action in his Provin- 
 cialate would be out of place in these 
 Memoirs . 
 
 The pleasing task alone remains of 
 thanking all who contributed in any way 
 to the publication of a necessarily inade- 
 quate record of an apostolic life. My 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 gratitude is especially due to the Religious 
 of the Sacred Heart and of the Holy Child 
 Jesus for information and for letters kindly 
 lent, and to the Irish Sisters of Charity for 
 the account furnished by them of the Hos- 
 pice for the Dying at Hackney, that last 
 good work of much-needed charity estab- 
 lished by Father Gallwey in the weakness 
 of his declining years. 
 
 We are very much indebted to Father 
 Charles Blount, S.J., for his contribution, 
 *' Father Gallwey as Novice Master/' and 
 to Father John Rickaby, S.J., and Father 
 Michael King, S.J., for their respective 
 chapters on Father Gallwey as *' Giver of 
 Retreats " and on " His Pubhshed Works." 
 To the kindness of Father Sydney Smith, 
 S.J., we owe '' Father Gallwey as a Contro- 
 versialist," and to Father Chandlery, S.J., 
 the Index. 
 
 M. G. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface . v 
 
 Chapter I. 
 Stonyhurst in 1856 . ....:. i 
 
 Chapter II. 
 Twenty-four Years at 114, Mount Street, W. i o 
 
 Chapter III. 
 The Hospice for the Dying in Mare Street, 
 
 Hackney 44 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 Instructing Converts 59 
 
 Chapter V. 
 A Few Favourite Scripture Texts . 80 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 Father Gallwey's Letters 86 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 Letters to Religious of the Society of the Holy 
 
 Child Jesus 130 
 
 Chapter VIIL 
 Father Gallwey as Novice Master . -151 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 A Giver of Retreats 168 
 
 Chapter X. 
 His Published Works: Father Gallwey as a 
 
 Writer 197 
 
 Chapter XL 
 Father Gallwey as a Controversialist 221 
 
 Chapter XII. 
 The Last Sickness and Death . . . .235. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 Stonyhursi in 1856. 
 
 I HAVE been asked to put on paper some 
 Memoirs of Father Gallwey. It is a plea- 
 sure and privilege to be allowed to write 
 of a Jesuit Priest, so much respected and 
 so widely known in the English speaking 
 world. Although in the hackneyed phrase 
 he outlived his generation, the niemory of 
 his noble deeds still remains, his voice still 
 speaks in his books, and his Brethren of 
 the English Province venerate in him a 
 devoted labourer, a fervent religious, an 
 example for young and old to imitate. 
 
 Perhaps these jottings, however imper- 
 fect, may be welcomed by people in the 
 world, by members of religious orders, by 
 the secular Clergy, by religious in Convents 
 vfhere he gave Retreats, and taay revive old 
 recollections. Remarkable men are worth 
 remembering. 
 
 My first sight of him was in September, 
 B 
 
2 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 1856, when as a boy I went to Stonyhurst. 
 He was Prefect of Studies, and to him be- 
 longed the duty of assigning the class to the 
 newcomer. The class naturally, depended on 
 the knowledge of the pupil. After so many 
 years, I remember perfectly that he asked 
 me to put into Latin, '' They say that Caesar 
 was killed by Brutus/' and I muddled 
 through somehow. At that date Father 
 Gallwey was a tall, thin man, with black hair 
 partly curled, he had a stoop, a very large 
 massive head and sharp penetrating eye. 
 From 1855 to the autumn of i 8 5 7 he was 
 Minister and Prefect of Studies. The 
 Minister in our houses is next in command 
 to the Rector, looks after domestic dis- 
 cipline, and that important department, the 
 Commissariat. Although Father Francis 
 Clough, to whom Stonyhurst owes so much, 
 was Rector, I am sure in the estimation of 
 all the boys. Father Gallwey was by far the 
 biggest man in the house. Somehow you 
 felt his influence everywhere : everyone 
 spoke of him, and seemed to bow before 
 him, and nothing seemed complete without 
 him. He made giant changes in the 
 Studies , 
 
STONYHURST IN 1856 3 
 
 ** Coming back from the University 
 Examination/' says Father Gerard in his 
 Stonyhurst Centenary Record, ** to the 
 system followed in the College itself, a 
 great change has to be recorded, which 
 was introduced by Father Peter Gallwey in 
 the year 1855 — 6, Greatly curtailing the 
 amount of matter to be read in each class, 
 so that all might be able to prepare it ac- 
 curately, he at the same time revived the 
 institution of the Extraordinary, which had 
 fallen into disuse. He also introduced the 
 division of classes into two opposite par- 
 ties, Romans and Carthaginians, each boy 
 having his rival, and also Concertatios. 
 The system thus inaugurated, modified by 
 succeeding Prefects of Studies, notably 
 Father Purbrick and Father Kingdon, is 
 that which is still followed." 
 
 Father Purbrick bears testimony to the 
 life Father Gallwey infused into the Studies 
 at Stonyhurst in a letter whence the follow- 
 ing passage is taken : 
 
 *' When Father Gallwey came to Stofiy- 
 hurst as Prefect of Studies, he was unmis- 
 takably in earnest, working hard himself, 
 and bent on making everyone else work 
 hard, full of life and energy, no admirer of 
 tradition; but ever eager to start fresh ex- 
 
4 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 periments. He undoubtedly did a great 
 work by stimulating emulation, by intro- 
 ducing Concertatios in public during the 
 Community meals . In a word he could not 
 abide stagnation." 
 
 He urged on the studies with might and 
 main, and had the gift of inspiring at least 
 a little of his own enthusiasm in those he 
 came in contact with. He encouraged hard 
 work and hated idleness in a class. I re- 
 member one day at the oral examination of 
 a school, as we then called it, disappointed 
 with the answering of some, he did not hesi- 
 tate to say that over the door of every class 
 ought to be written the warning, ^aut disce 
 aut discedey either learn or go. He never 
 minced matters, he was blunt and straight 
 in his early manhood, blunt and straight in 
 his 'green old age. You felt his influence all 
 round ; wherever Father Gallwey moved, 
 there was life and stir and go. He kept up 
 the pace. I remember as if it were yester- 
 day when the handsome Refectory at 
 Stonyhurst was enlarged ; on November 
 12, 1 8 5 6, it was opened and ready for use . 
 The whole College was gathered together 
 to hear Father Gallwey's address on the oc- 
 
STONYHURST IN 1856 S 
 
 casion, the last words are in my ears still, 
 ** and I said, who ought not to say it, that 
 to-morrow the Feast of St. Stanislaus 
 should be a recreation day." Of course 
 rapturous applause followed that pro- 
 nouncement. Mention of his address re- 
 minds me of his sermons which the boys 
 sometimes heard. Nothing now remains of 
 them in my mind from these far off years, 
 except the earnestness of the man, and the 
 impression left of the holiness of the 
 speaker. Jesuits have their faults and 
 shortcomings like the rest of men. They 
 are not, however, accused ( at least among 
 themselves) of anticipating the verdict of 
 the Sovereign Pontiff and canonizing their 
 brethren before their death. They wait 
 with commendable patience for the pronan- 
 tict\muSy declaramuSy et definimus of the 
 Pope in his Bull of Canonization. Father 
 Gallwey had better luck in those (distant 
 times. I remember my master saying to 
 me that he regarded Father Gallwey as a 
 Saint. Everyone knows the meaning of the 
 phrase, many men say it, or at least think 
 it, of their mother. It means goodness far 
 outside and beyond the even beaten ordm- 
 
6 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 ary path. Most certainly that was the im- 
 pression left by him on the boys . And this 
 gave him immense authority with them, and 
 added weight to his advice or to his repri- 
 mands. The high esteem in which he was 
 held was conspicuous in every department 
 of that large College, and no one seemed 
 to rate him more highly than the Rector, 
 Father Francis Clough. Within my hear- 
 ing, years after when Father Clough was 
 Rector at Beaumont, he related how some 
 distinguished person in a trouble of con- 
 science earnestly besoug'ht of him a Confes- 
 sor more than usually gifted ; Father Gall- 
 wey was sent, and the penitent in tones of 
 deep gratitude remarked when the Confes- 
 sion was over : " Oh what a man 1" 
 
 He was destined for a larger field of 
 labour and left Stonyhurst in November, 
 1857, to be Rector of Farm Street Church. 
 He came to say good-bye in the higher Line 
 Playroom, and the parting advice I still re- 
 call : "Beat the Protestants." By these 
 words he meant that the students were to 
 win the first prizes at the London Univer- 
 sity and take the lead over their non-Catho- 
 lic competitors. My recollections from 
 
STONYHURST IN 1856 7 
 
 personal observation are broken off here, to 
 be resumed some 20 years later. Rumours 
 of his untiring energy in every branch of 
 charitable work, of his great success as a 
 Preacher and Confessor, reached us at 
 Stonyhurst. Cardinal Wiseman was then 
 at Westminster, various distinguished ec- 
 clesiastics were found in the Archdiocese, 
 FF. Faber, Dalgairns and Knox were at 
 the Oratory, Canon MacMullen at St. 
 Mary's (Cadogan Street, Chelsea), Canon 
 Oakley at Islington, Dr. Manning at Bays- 
 water, FF. Christie and William Eyre and 
 Hathaway at Farm Street, and doubtless 
 many others whom I am unable to quote, 
 but on all hands it was admitted that Father 
 Gallwey held a very conspicuous position 
 among the devoted men working in the 
 Vineyard. One heard of the converts he 
 received, of the great influence his strik- 
 ing personality exercised in London, of the 
 crowds his sermons drew. He founded the 
 Sodality of Our Lady in Farm Street, which 
 has done much among Catholic men arid 
 will do more, and he organized a large 
 Bazaar on a colossal scale for some charit- 
 able purpose which was supported by all 
 
8 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 the leading Catholics of those days. 
 
 These are tlie only two things achieved 
 by him which I can recall now. The life of 
 the busiest priest has its regular even round 
 of work. He is known and seen in his own 
 Church, in his Confessional and Pulpit, in 
 the sick-room, in the parlour of the Pres- 
 bytery, listening, instructing, consoling, 
 cheering and doing God's work effectively, 
 but secretly. Angels keep the records 
 which men are not privileged to write. 
 And so I must leave Father Gallwey to meet 
 him again when he was Provincial. 
 
 All that came under my personal notice 
 during his Provincialate was his special 
 kindness and charity to the sick members 
 of the Order, his extraordinary energy, and 
 I may say, his ubiquity. He was every- 
 where. Distance never checked him ; long 
 journeys never seemed to fatigue him ; he 
 was interested in all the work of the Pro- 
 vince, promoted competition between the 
 various Schools of the Society 'through 
 money prizes, and encouraged individual 
 members to some special line of study 
 suited to their taste, capacity, and charac- 
 ter. Many may not have agreed in the wis- 
 
STONYHURST IN 1856 9 
 
 dom of his regulations, but all readily ad- 
 mitted the zeal and boundless energy of the 
 man in promoting God's work according to 
 his lights. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Twenty-four years at 114, Mount Street, W . 
 
 I. 
 
 I NOW proceed to give for the reader's in- 
 struction and edification, * honestly and 
 truthfully as they seem to me, some recol- 
 lections of this remarkable man from the 
 year 1882 until his death in 1906. I will 
 mention his virtues and his shortcomings 
 too, otherwise his character would not be 
 truly painted. To chronicle a man's vir- 
 tues without the shadows which may dull 
 their brightness is to describe an unreal 
 being, one who is not human. Father Gall- 
 wey is unworthy of such treatment. 
 
 And first let me dwell on his independ- 
 ence of character. One of the many 
 charges brought against the Jesuits is that 
 they destroy all individuality, and swamp 
 instead of developing the natural charac- 
 ter. This is traced in great measure to the 
 
LIFE AT MOUNT STREET li 
 
 blind obedience (as the world says) incul- 
 cated by Ignatius of Loyola. That Saint 
 Ignatius demanded much of his children in 
 the matter of obedience is perfectly true. 
 Of the Three Vows obedience unquestion- 
 ably is the most difficult. The Saint wished 
 obedience to be the characteristic of the 
 Company of soldiers 'founded by him. 
 Other religious Orders in tTie Church may 
 practise greater austerity in fastings, and 
 watchings, in food and diet. In true and 
 perfect obedience, in the sacrifice of one's 
 own will and judgtnent, the Saint wishes 
 his children to be conspicuous. But this, 
 whispers the world, is -^blind obedience, 
 which destroys character arid cramps initia- 
 tive. Whatever else obedience may be in 
 the Society, most certainly it is not blind. 
 Blind obedience Saint Ignatius does not 
 ask, and does not want. For blind obedi- 
 ence is a leap in the dark ; and this is pre- 
 cisely what a Jesuit's obedience ought not 
 to be according to the mind of the Saint. 
 Read the letter on the virtue oT obedience 
 and judge for yourself. The Saint asks for 
 submission of intellect and will. But surelv 
 such submission is incompatible with blind- 
 
12 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 ness, as the metaphor is usually understood. 
 " The superior, who holds the place of God, 
 gives an order, or the rule prescribes a cer- 
 tain course of action. Saint Ignatius de- 
 mands obedience in all things where there 
 is plainly no sin. But he gives the sub- 
 ject the right of representation and conse- 
 quently imposes on the Superior the obli- 
 gation of weighing the reasons which sup- 
 port the representation. That done, the 
 Saint asks the assent of the intellect, add- 
 ing a saving clause so far as the well dis- 
 posed will {devota voluntas) can bend the 
 understanding. Besides, the subject al- 
 ways has the right of appeal to higher 
 authority. Such is the ready, hearty obedi- 
 ence described by the Saint. Whatever 
 such obedience is, most certainly it is not 
 blind. It is not a leap in the dark. It 
 seems difficult to see how a man can obey 
 and loyally carry out the orders of a Su- 
 perior except with submission of intellect 
 and will. The orders of a commanding 
 officer in a campaign cannot be effectively 
 put in execution by a suT3ordinate, 'if the 
 latter thinks the directions of his chief rash 
 and unwise. 
 
LIFE AT MOUNT STREET 13 
 
 Saint Ignatius, then, asks obfedience of 
 mind and judgment. Obedience as we have 
 explained it does not destroy independence 
 of character . The Saint never meant to des- 
 troy but to improve arid perfect the char- 
 acter which God has given . The model of 
 all obedience is Jesus Christ. Ignatius 
 asks his men to knock under, to obey, and 
 to toe the line. If the burthen is too great, 
 why join the Society? The rules are ex- 
 plained in the two years' Noviceship, and 
 the perpetual vows are taken with full 
 knowledge of all they demand and impose. 
 
 This independence of character was visi- 
 ble all through Father Gallwey's long life, 
 in word, and deed, and bearing, as subject 
 and Superior. It was traced even in his 
 spiritual direction in some ways peculiar, 
 distinctive, outside the beaten track. He 
 was so fashioned that others leant on hini, 
 while he stood alone, apart, a striking per- 
 sonality. To him old Homer's description 
 might in many senses be applied, ** con- 
 spicuous above the Argives by his head and 
 broad shoulders." 
 
14 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 II. 
 
 One of the striking qualities of Jesuits 
 in Community life is their strongly main- 
 tained individuality. This was seen in a 
 marked degree in Father Gallwey. He 
 claimed all the liberty the Church gives in 
 his judgments on men and things. He 
 claimed that liberty without violation of any 
 rule of domestic discipline. In this he fol- 
 lowed the great writers and thinkers, theo- 
 logians, philosophers and historians who, 
 throughout the ages, loyally served the 
 Church they adorned. A magni nominis 
 ilmbray the shadow of a great name never 
 darkened Father Gallwey's opinion. In- 
 deed he carried this so far that a brother 
 Jesuit, with a deep reverence for him, said 
 one day in my hearing that he never could 
 tell in advance what view Father Gallwey 
 would take on any subject. He always had 
 his own view and his own opinion on books, 
 devotions, practices, persons and events. 
 And he never hesitated to express it, at the 
 opportune moment, in language which was 
 not always diplomatic. The sly and art- 
 ful Jesuit formed no feature of his portrait. 
 
LIFE AT MOUNT STREET 15 
 
 Amongst ourselves, as with acquaintances 
 and friends outside the Society, he was 
 straight, open, blunt and fearless. He gave 
 his opinion when asked, people might adopt 
 it or reject it as they chose. This in- 
 dependence in word and action never inter- 
 fered with his obedience as a Jesuit, 
 
 He was a thoroughly obedient onan . Al- 
 though he held the highest offices in our 
 Order as Provincial, Novice Master, and 
 Rector at two separate periods in Farm 
 Street, for the last 26 years of his life he 
 was a private in the ranks, as a private he 
 died, and as a private this fine old soldier 
 went to Heaven. Superiors amongst us, by 
 our Founder's rule, are changed at stated 
 periods with the single exception of the 
 Father General, who holds office for life. 
 Appointments, however exalted, once aban- 
 doned, confer no exemption in the slightest 
 degree from the ordinary rule. An emin- 
 ent ecclesiastic once said that Saint Igna- 
 tius was an aristocrat, and that he stamped 
 his aristocratic spirit on the society that he 
 founded. Perhaps a more correct estimate 
 of the Saint is to describe him as partly an 
 aristocrat; and partly a radical. He was 
 
1 6 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALL WE Y 
 
 certainly a leveller, and he insisted that 
 his subjects, when they ceased to be in 
 authority, should knock under and toe the 
 line like the rest. Thus their obedience is 
 tested. In the ranks Father Gallwey was 
 remarkable by his obedience. His readi- 
 ness to ask leave for everything outside the 
 rule was one of the characteristics of his 
 life. He was perpetually in and out of the 
 Superior's room asking permission for 
 various things. To a man of his com- 
 manding character and strongly-marked 
 personality, the constant submission to or- 
 dinary rules and common life even more 
 than daily asking leave must have been ex- 
 tremely trying. For he was not like other 
 men : he had a difficult character to over- 
 come. He did not change it; by prayer 
 and grace he overcame it. A member of 
 the Order, much respected among us. 
 Father Gallwey's Superior, in later years, 
 thus writes of him : 
 
 *' My acquaintance with Father Gallwey 
 was not quite so prolonged as you seem to 
 imply. It was only during my stay in Farm 
 Street that I lived in the same Community 
 with him. My acquaintance with him at 
 
LIFE AT MOUNT STREET 17 
 
 Farm Street was long fenough, however, to 
 give me a great esteem for him, a great ad- 
 miration for his really marvellous labori- 
 ousness, his complete 'detachment from 
 everything that was not connected with his 
 duties, his minute fidelity to the religious 
 rule, the fidelity of a fervent novice, in spite 
 of all the drawbacks of his advanced years 
 and bodily infirmities. I think that the 
 spirit of obedience is more fully and ac- 
 curately tested and more rigorously proved 
 by his uninterrupted regularity than by 
 fidelity to less usual orders or instructions. 
 I believe the minute and uninterrupted 
 fidelity to rule and the observance of a re- 
 ligious house was wholly supernatural. He 
 was naturally a man of strong character, 
 and with very definite views 'and strong will. 
 With such a character obedience is not 
 easy ; not easy as it may be with pliant char- 
 acters ; it involves a constant struggle and 
 hard work, victory over self, a victory won 
 by Faith. I incline to think that to him 
 obedience was the most difficult of virtues. 
 "Whatbrought his. obedience mostkeenly 
 to the test was an order or a suggestion to 
 relax somewhat of his austerities to himself, 
 to avail himself of those appliances or con- 
 veniences which his years and his infirmi- 
 ties made desirable or even necessary. He 
 could not lend himself to such suggestions 
 c 
 
i8 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 without a severe struggle, but the struggle 
 was made. Surely such obedience is far 
 more meritorious than the easy yielding of 
 more pliable characters." 
 
 The reader will not fail to note that this 
 well-deserved tribute is given to one who 
 maintained to the last his individuality and 
 his strong will. 
 
 This perhaps is the most fitting place to 
 append the testimony of two men, his 
 Superiors in Farm Street. Each Rector 
 gave his own testimony and impressions in- 
 dependently of the other. 
 
 ** It would be insincere to speak of 
 Father Gallwey in terms of indiscriminating 
 eulogy. He had the defects of his quali- 
 ties. But they were great qualities. And 
 his defects were those of a great man. 
 
 *' The yoke of obedience must have been 
 galling at times to one so masterful by 
 nature and so accustomed to command. 
 But his obedience was that of a novice. He 
 was most scrupulous in asking for neces- 
 sary permissions, inconveniently so, as he 
 would often visit a Superior's room for the 
 purpose repeatedly in the course of the 
 day. 
 
 '*This punctiliousness in asking permis- 
 sions arose also from his love of poverty, 
 
LIFE AT MOUNT STREET 19 
 
 which he practised strictly. Very large 
 sums of money passed through his hands 
 for charitable purposes, and people were 
 the more ready to give what he asked be- 
 cause they knew he wanted nothing for 
 himself. 
 
 *' His charity to the poor was extraordin- 
 ary and was exercised on a large scale. He 
 begged unblushingly for causes he knew to 
 be deserving, for poor communities of re- 
 ligious, for the education of church stu- 
 dents, for reduced gentlefolk, for all, in 
 fact, who appealed to him for aid. 
 
 *' Almsgiving was his favourite topic in 
 his sermons, and he was sometimes thought 
 to ride his hobby too hard, but no one ever 
 questioned his motives . He did not confine 
 his begging to cases only in which he was 
 personally and immediately interested, but 
 he always had at heart the needs also of 
 the church he served, and was unremitting 
 in obtaining pecuniary help for its wants. 
 In an emergency, a Superior could always 
 turn to him for financial assistance and was 
 seldom disappointed. It is probably true 
 to say that the extent of his charities will 
 never be known. 
 
 ** Certainly he was not the man to reveal 
 them. Except his Superior, whose per- 
 mission he had to ask, and the recipients, 
 no one else was allowed to k:now. With 
 
20 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 him it was a case of the left hand not know- 
 ing what the right idid . This dislike of pub - 
 licity or of anything that had the appear- 
 ance of self-advertisement was characteris- 
 tic of him. His influence at one time was 
 widespread among all sorts and conditions 
 of Catholics. But it was exercised quietly 
 and unobtrusively, as spiritual influence 
 should be. 
 
 ** His love of work was insatiable. One 
 never found him unoccupied, he seemed to 
 take his leisure in prayer. No one' who 
 knew him could fail to recognize him as a 
 man of prayer. His devotion to our Lady 
 was very tender. The beads were seldom 
 out of his hands. He would speak of her 
 in his sermons, in season and out of season. 
 And those who have been present at his lec- 
 tures on the Passion will remember how he 
 would interrupt his subject to throw upon 
 the screen some picture of our Lady, usually 
 a copy of some old master, though it had no 
 bearing upon the matter in hand. 
 
 ** He was regular in all that concerned 
 common life. He resented almost fiercelv 
 any exception made in his favour, as when 
 for example, on one occasion, a specially 
 convenient chair was provided for his use. 
 The writer occupied the room adjoining his 
 for four years arid remembers how prompt 
 he was in rising at the first sound of the 
 
LIFE AT MOUNT STREET 21 
 
 caller's voice. He attended all community 
 duties to the very end, in spite of the in- 
 firmities of old age. 
 
 *' He was naturally a man of strong likes 
 and dislikes, and, though he would at 
 times express strong disagreement with 
 those from whom he differed, he was sel- 
 dom betrayed into any expression that 
 could be called uncharitable. He was by 
 nature a man of quick temper, but though 
 sometimes the old fire flamed out, in this 
 respect also grace had brought nature well 
 under control. 
 
 *' He had the saving sense of humour. 
 Those who knew him will not need to be 
 told that. But nevertheless he suffered at 
 times from considerable depression of 
 spirits. The writer remembers how de- 
 jected he was for a long period when, after 
 an operation on his eyes for cataract, his 
 sight was slow in returning, and what a sud- 
 den revulsion from low to high spirits took 
 place when one day he found himself able 
 to read again. 
 
 ** He prepared his sermons with the most 
 conscientious care, never trusting to the 
 spur of the moment nor to old sermons, but 
 making fresh notes each time of what he in- 
 tended to say. He told the writer jnore 
 than once that his sermons cost him more 
 labour to prepare as he grew older. He 
 
22 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 thought out his subject beforehand, usually 
 in presence of the Blessed Sacrament, and 
 hence his sermons were distinguished by 
 freshness and originality of thought and 
 treatment. But perhaps their chief charac- 
 teristic was that indefinable unction which 
 was due to his practising what he preached. 
 They made no pretence of studied elo- 
 quence, though of natural eloquence there 
 was often plenty, and they were frequently 
 wanting in method and order, but they were 
 always striking and impressive and full of 
 deep feeling. His pathos was genuine. 
 There he seldom struck a false note. He 
 disdained the tricks of oratory, but he 
 possessed the true orator's power of per- 
 suading and moving his hearers. 
 
 '' He was an acknowledged master of the 
 spiritual life and must have trained many 
 souls to great holiness. But of this, little 
 can be known except to those concerned. 
 He was thought by som'e to be strict and 
 exacting with those under his guidance. 
 But those who knew him best knew the al- 
 most womanly tenderness of his big heart, 
 especially to those in trouble, and the deep 
 feeling which, in spite of his great powers 
 of self-control, he was often unable to sup- 
 press. 
 
 ''He was, of course, an adept in the Spiri- 
 tual Exercises. He drew large numbers 
 
LIFE AT MOUNT STREET 23 
 
 yearly to his ladies' retreats, and this 
 m spite of the fact that he was said in the 
 latter part of his life to give the Exercises 
 almost in the same words year by year . He 
 had no liking for short retreats. He 
 thought the Exercises required eight days 
 at least 10 do them justice. And he in- 
 sisted on four meditations a day for all 
 exercitants. He required strict compliance 
 with the regulations of the retreat and woe 
 betide anybody discovered breaking the 
 rule of silence ; such offenders were some- 
 times summarily dismissed. But he de- 
 voted himself unsparingly to all in retreat, 
 and tried to see each of them individually 
 at least for a few minutes every day. Those 
 who have conducted ladies' retreats will 
 realize what labour that must have in- 
 volved." 
 
 Here is a second letter from his last 
 Superior : 
 
 " As I was Father Gallwey's last Su- 
 perior you ask me for my impressions. 
 Father Gallwey it was who made me a 
 Catholic at the early age of two ; he baptized 
 me, to him I had made my first Confession, 
 and it certainly was, or would have been 
 under other conditions than those of the re- 
 ligious life, an anomaly, that in the end I 
 should have been his religious Superior. 
 Never, however, did he allow these earlier 
 
24 MfeMOlkS OP FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 relations to affect his treatment of me in 
 this our last connection . I found him in all 
 things most helpful. He was intensely in- 
 terested and alive to all the work that went 
 on at Farm Street, and singularly free from 
 the proverbial conservatism of old age, be- 
 ing ready to fall in with the changes which 
 I was fond of proposing. This struck me 
 the more, for I naturally anticipated that 
 he would love the old grooves, and be op- 
 posed, at his great age, to new way3 ; but 
 again and again, I found him quite on the 
 side of experiment, progress and change. 
 There was nothing in him of the typical old 
 man, he was young at eighty-six in his 
 energy and desire for work, youn^g in his 
 simplicity and faith, and young in his con- 
 fidence. He never could bring himself 
 easily to submit to any of the special re- 
 strictions and precautions w'hich the doctors 
 prescribed, and which, indeed, ordinary 
 prudence would suggest. I remember re- 
 ceiving an unsigned letter a year before 
 Father Gallwey's death from an anxious 
 friend of his. In it 1 was told that if I 
 wanted to kill the Father, * prussic acid or 
 a bullet would prove a less cruel method 
 than an accident in a hansotn cab, for the 
 reckless way in which you permit or en- 
 courage him to drive about can have no 
 other result ' ! He was of an extraordinarily 
 
LIFE AT MOUNT STREET 25 
 
 active habit and anything like enforced rest 
 oppressed him excessively. Another point, 
 which is worth dwelling on, was his dislike 
 for display, or advertisement. When he 
 was Rector at Farm Street, the Sacred 
 Heart or Glutton aisle was opened : it was 
 done without any ceremony, at a quiet time 
 of the day the hoardings were removed and 
 the aisle was opened. When in my time 
 some little display was made on the occa- 
 sion of the completion of a new side altar, 
 I discovered that he thought it very 
 much out of place, and disliked such do- 
 ings exceedingly. It was, to me, an indi- 
 cation of his habitual simplicity and horror 
 of self-advertisement. His own religious 
 and spiritual life were precisely on these 
 hidden lines : his prayer and mortification 
 were incessant, but it was only after being 
 in the house with him a long time that one 
 became aware of it. He would make his 
 way quietly back to the Chapel, like a bird 
 to its nest, after every call to the parlour 
 or to the Church. There in a corner during 
 the day and late into the night he would 
 remain in the most absorbed prayer. His 
 humour and funny stories, very old chest- 
 nuts, had always served as a cloak to his 
 deep piety, and did so to the very end. 
 Other virtues of his I might touch on, were 
 his humility and poverty, for no one was 
 
26 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 SO regular and punctilious as he in asking 
 for * leaves/ even for the smallest things, 
 and chiefly might I dwell on his charity. 
 His was a charity which * thinketh no evil/ 
 for I fear he helped many a worthless vaga- 
 bond. After his death I had all his long 
 list of cases investigated by the Charity Or- 
 ganization Society, and I do not believe that 
 one of them quite stood that vigilant body's 
 impartial scrutiny. Father Gallwey's heart 
 was very large, and where he saw there was 
 suffering and want, that was enough for 
 him. This is only a brief sketch of the 
 good Father which I have written at your 
 request. It can only convey a very inade- 
 quate notion of my feelings and recollec- 
 tions of him, for his was altogether a great 
 personality and he never lost this note of 
 greatness to the last." 
 
 And now to resume my own recollec- 
 tions. 
 
 The next point in which religious and 
 laymen may copy him to some extent was 
 his love of prayer. Far back in the early 
 days of his priesthood, when Father Tracy 
 Clarke was his Rector, while the noviceship 
 was at Hodder, near Stonyhurst, Father 
 Clarke said to a friend, '' Value Father Gall- 
 wey, he is a man of prayer.'* The same 
 
LIFE AT MOUNT STREET 27 
 
 characteristic was most remarkable in the 
 Community life in Mount Street. In the 
 letter previously quoted from his Superior 
 we find the following passage : 
 
 '' It was impossible to live with Fathei 
 Gallwey and not recognize that he was 
 wholly a man of God ; a man whose single 
 purpose and continued effort was to pro- 
 mote the service of God, one who was in- 
 tensely interested in all that concerns the 
 interests of God. It was equally easy to 
 see that he was a man of prayer. x\s 
 a small but definite indication of this 
 spirit of prayer, he was most faithful 
 to the morning visit to the Blessed Sacra- 
 ment, as well as to the last visit before 
 retirmg at night, even in his last years, 
 when the labour of mounting and descend- 
 ing stairs made it a matter of no little diffi- 
 culty and pain. 
 
 " He left nothing incomplete in his 
 prayer, nothing that could detract from the 
 reverence and humility of the penitent. 
 Even in extreme old age, he would remain 
 throughout a Church Service on his 
 knees." : ■ ] 
 
 The reverence of his prayers could 
 hardly escape a casual observer, and still 
 less those who lived in the same Community 
 
28 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEV 
 
 with him for many years. Grace before and 
 after meals is not an easy form of prayer. 
 It is apt to be hurried. Neither the occa- 
 sion nor the place is a help to that outward 
 reverence which we always owe to God. 
 And yet during grace Father Gallwey was 
 remarkable for recollection and fervour. 
 He never failed in the answers, and his 
 **Amen" at the end was audible throughout 
 the Refectory. Similarly, in saying the Di- 
 vine Office, the posture, the expression of 
 the man would strike and impress. In the 
 preparatory prayer Aperi Domine, found in 
 the Breviary, and recommended before the 
 recitation of Office, we find the words, digne 
 attente ac devote, whoever does his best 
 may hope in God's mercy to pray worthily. 
 The word digne can only be used analogi- 
 cally. No prayer of Saint or Angel is 
 worthy of Him who dwells in the Highest, 
 but at least He will accept and grant the 
 petition, if it be for our welfare, even 
 though dust and ashes commune with God. 
 Father Gallwey had a claim to the attention 
 and devotion which should be inseparable 
 from our prayers. Office is proverbially 
 exposed to distraction, and perhaps to this 
 
LIFE AT MOUNT STREET 29 
 
 cause was due the extra pains he seemed to 
 bestow on its recitation. I have been asked 
 for my own impressions of him. And I 
 should point to recollection and fervour as 
 easily seen by such as have watched Father 
 Gallwey praying. Many years ago he was 
 taking his dinner on his knees at a little 
 table in the Refectory, a form of penance 
 usual amongst us and in other Religious 
 Orders, of any beholder his demeanour and 
 expression would naturally have arrested 
 attention . To what was the grave face due, 
 the eyes modestly cast down, the whole 
 bearing remembered now after many long 
 years ? He was making his annual eight 
 days' Retreat. 
 
 His passionate devotion to Mass, the 
 holy Mass as he used to call it, is well 
 known to those who heard his sermons or 
 meditations, and read his books and sought 
 his Confessional for guidance. His was a 
 most devout and recollected Mass without 
 extravagance or singularity, for he hated all 
 forms of eccentricity. By voice and look 
 and bearing you were reminded that he was 
 ministering in the greatest act of worship 
 man can offer to God. He sang Mass too 
 
30 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 with much feeling and most willingly late 
 on in life, would bear the inconveni- 
 ence of the fast by singing High Mass, to 
 relieve some tired member of the Com- 
 munity. 
 
 Father Faber mentions : ** Mass to St. 
 Philip was never said merely as a holy habit 
 or routine. To the Saint there was always 
 a holy novelty in it.'' Perhaps Father Gall- 
 wey shared this privilege to some extent 
 with the Saint. It was at least very notice- 
 able how anxious he always was to learn 
 the intention for which the Holy Sacrifice 
 had to be offered. Some priests form their 
 intention, as it is written for them on the 
 Tabella or Mass board, or remember it as 
 once promised. He seemed to make a rule 
 each day to examine carefully the inten- 
 tion, to know the person, the object for 
 which the Holy Sacrifice was offered. This 
 was a point on which he was most keen. 
 He had many claims on his Mass. Friends 
 were so anxious to have it said by him 
 rather than by others . 
 
 The thanksgiving after Mass was invari- 
 ably made before the Altar of the Sacred 
 Heart in Farm Street. It was well-known 
 
LIFE AT MOUNT STREET 31 
 
 that those precious moments were never to 
 be disturbed by Confessions or other calls . 
 The thanksgiving over, he was found in his 
 Confessional, to begin the day's work for 
 his Master. He was constantly on his 
 knees before the Blessed Sacrament outside 
 the time prescribed for prayer. His en(j)r- 
 mous correspondence, many visitors, con- 
 verts, sick calls, duties of Community 
 life, sermons, Retreats, never interfered 
 with his visits to the Blessed Sacrament. 
 How he found time was a marvel. Those 
 who have worked long in London, prize a 
 Sunday morning which happens to be free 
 of a sermon or other duty. As visitors are 
 few on a Sunday, the time is eagerly 
 grasped for arrears of work ; to answer let- 
 ters, or for some anxious pressing duty. 
 Yet a Sunday morning was precisely the 
 time when Father Gallwey was to be found 
 in the Sodality Chapel on his knees before 
 the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle, which 
 he loved to call a tomb, had a marvellous 
 attraction for him, late at night, and early 
 in the morning, and many times during the 
 day. He used constantly to rush up the 
 stone stairs, forgetful of age and infirmity, 
 
32 . MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 to say a little word to Jesus Christ before 
 going forth to work for Him in the busy 
 London streets . 
 
 Another characteristic oY our vener- 
 able friend was his absolute disregard 
 of creature comforts. As Superior he 
 was generosity itself when the sick were 
 concerned. Nothing was 'denied them 
 in the shape of food, clothing, change 
 of scene which his large heart could pro- 
 vide. As for himself he seemed to ignore 
 such things. When compelled by the 
 doctor's orders, because of his years and 
 many infirmities, to take extras in the shape 
 of wine or special diet, he never seemed to 
 pay the slightest attention to the meal be- 
 fore him ; wine was taken as children take 
 medicine, not always with the best of grace. 
 His room was the picture of discomfort, the 
 window open when it ought to have been 
 closed, and nothing to indicate that he 
 cared to look after himself. 
 
 Now I come to a striking point on 
 which some stress deserves to be laid, 
 gathered from personal observation. In 
 the twenty-four years passed with him in 
 the same house I never once entered his 
 
LIFE AT MOUNT STREET 33 
 
 room to find him, to use a familiar phrase, 
 taking things easily. In sickness one saw 
 him covered with a blanket, writing his let- 
 ters in bed. Often he was in deep thought 
 in a chair, or pacing the room, which always 
 seemed too small ; much more frequently he 
 was to be seen at his table studying or writ- 
 ing. Never once did I see him resting as we 
 understand the term, except in the last days, 
 when the armour had been taken off and 
 the old soldier lay down to die. Work had 
 an absorbing attraction for him : he could 
 not be idle. 
 
 These memories may well close with a 
 mention of his sermons and his charity to 
 the poor and the heavily-laden. 
 
 It belongs to a more skilful hand to speaTc 
 of his published sermons. After all, a ser- 
 mon is meant in the first place to be heard. 
 It is not an essay. The polished sermon 
 that reads well may easily be a failure in 
 the pulpit, and vice versa, a sermon that 
 produces a very great effect, when printed 
 ceases to attract, and is dull and un- 
 interesting. Though some of his published 
 sermons rank high in thought and expres- 
 sion, Father Gallwey to be appreciated had 
 
 D 
 
34 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 to be heard. For forty years he preached 
 in Farm Street ; during a long period he 
 attracted a large and attentive audience, in 
 the latter years the interest fell off, chiefly 
 because he forgot the wise advice of St. 
 Francis de Sales that it is always better for 
 a sermon to be too short than to be too long . 
 The elements in the success of a sermon 
 are the man, the matter and the delivery. 
 In the pulpit Father Gallwey was an 
 apostle, a messenger with tidings from on 
 high, and those that knew him were certain, 
 and strangers, total strangers, felt, he prac- 
 tised all he preached. There was no affec- 
 tation, or straining after effect, all was 
 natural, simple, straight. He gave his 
 Master's message from his heart, and never 
 minced words, or ran after sweet sounding 
 phrases. Clearly, blimtly, forcibly he 
 spoke. Often he offended like the Saints 
 before him, for he told unpleasant truths 
 and forced men to think. The divine 
 Preacher mightily offended the world, and 
 as His words could not be checked or 
 gainsayed, the world adopted a serviceable 
 method of closing His lips, it promptly put 
 Him to death. But the world was too 
 
/ » 
 
 LIFE AT MOUNT STREET 35 
 
 clever in its own conceits. It never reck- 
 oned on the most famous day in history 
 when the Man who had offended, crucified 
 in shame, rose again in triumph to receive 
 the homage of the world. The preacher 
 who loff ends finds himself in good company . 
 It is impossible to teach, to reprove, to cor- 
 rect, to instruct unto justice without offend- 
 ing. In hearing Father Gallwey the con- 
 gregation realized that the preacher in the 
 pulpit had really at heart the eternal salva- 
 tion of his audience, that he sought not him- 
 self, but Jesus Christ and His will by plac- 
 ing before his hearers a high standard of 
 action . 
 
 In the composition of his sermons he 
 spared no labour or pains . A Catholic still 
 living, with wide experience of Parliamen- 
 tary life, stated in the writer's presence 
 that the finest orator he ever heard, 
 finer even than Gladstone, was de Ravig- 
 nan. The secret of the latter's suc- 
 cess was largely due to the labour be- 
 stowed on his sermons. " Idleness,'' 
 said de Ravignan, in his instructions on 
 sacred eloquence to the Jesuit students 
 at Saint Acheuil, ** is the bane of the pul- 
 
36 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 pit." De Ravignan had all the natural ad- 
 vantages which help a public speaker ; a 
 striking presence, fine voice^ and splendid 
 delivery ; and as an excellent preparation 
 for the pulpit, he taught Theology in the 
 early years of his priesthood. For ten 
 years he wrote his sermons and learnt them 
 by heart. After that long probation, which 
 fitted him for his successful career at Notre 
 Dame, he was content with carefully pre- 
 pared notes, the skeleton of a sermon. 
 Father Gallwey could not compete with de 
 Ravignan — except in the martyrdom of 
 laborious preparation. He wrote his ser- 
 mons, even to the days when his eye- 
 sight failed. No pains or labour seemed 
 too great in this Apostleship of preach- 
 ing the word. Frequently what we 
 call domestic exhortations, meant for the 
 community alone, were read from the 
 written manuscript. In speaking 'to his 
 brethren he might have spare'd himself 
 this labour, for words from him always 
 commanded the attention due to his years, 
 long experience, high standing and holi- 
 ness. But he asked of others a high stand- 
 ard in labour and preparation, and he prac- 
 
LIFE AT MOUNT STREET 37 
 
 tised what he preached. 
 
 The sermons were eminently practical^ 
 and there was always a lesson to take away. 
 His thoughts were fresh and striking : a 
 listener would often think or say, *' I never 
 saw that truth in that way before ." He im- 
 pressed himself on his congregation. He 
 used the same texts of scripture again and 
 again, and though the interpretation may 
 sometimes have been fanciful and strained,, 
 somehow it fitted in with the truth he was 
 driving home, and the lesson stuck. Two 
 men, after a sermon from hiin in Lent, were 
 walking home from Farm Street ; one 
 opened the conversation, and the other an- 
 swered, '* After hearing a sermon like that,, 
 don't you think we had better walk home in 
 silence." He was particularly effective in 
 attacking scandals of the day. He never 
 minced matters : the words were forcible 
 and racy, the illustrations striking and 
 sometimes amusing, the dash and courage 
 of the attack reminded you of the land of 
 his birth. And yet there was nothing un- 
 kind in his censures, even those who de- 
 served them would admit that his intentions 
 were always of the purest and his great 
 
3S MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 merits enabled him to speak with a freedom 
 denied to others ; people remembered it 
 was Father Gallwey. The reader will not 
 forget that these observations represent the 
 impression made by the sermons as de- 
 hvered. 
 
 He seemed to me more effective in his 
 meditations than in his sermons. Want 
 of unity and connection could be frequently 
 observed in the latter, in the former they 
 were not so much needed. The medita- 
 tions were full of striking thoughts, thrown 
 out anyhow, pearls without any settings, 
 and on that account more telling. These 
 striking thoughts were borrowed from his 
 favourite author, the Crucifix. He studied 
 that Divine book, and practised the lessons 
 it teaches, and unfolded the secrets, which 
 eternity will not exhaust. In the pulpit, 
 convent, monastery and chapel, his voice 
 clear and musical, often quivering and 
 broken from deep feeling, the intense earn- 
 estness of the man, the language perfectly 
 natural, revealing much^, yet leaving you 
 with the impression that there was more in 
 the depths of his heart that could not be 
 told, added immense weight to the solemn 
 
LIFE AT MOUNT STREET 39 
 
 truths he unfolded in his Master's name. 
 
 And now to pass to what seems a hope- 
 less task, some records of his charities. 
 The task is hopeless, for his correspondence 
 is in great part lost, and he kept almost in- 
 violably secret the record of his deeds. He 
 rarely spoke of them except in the most 
 casual way. Whatever his faults, self-ad- 
 vertisement was not one. *' But when thou 
 doest alms, let not thy left hand know what 
 thy right hand doest." St. Chrysostom's 
 gloss on these famous words is, " If it were 
 possible for yourself to be ignorant of it, 
 that should be your aim : so that your very 
 hands in motion to give alms should not 
 know what you were doing." I think 
 Father Gallwey fulfilled his Master's wish, 
 and the Saint's commentary on the passage. 
 He never ceased asking alms and was most 
 successful in his appeals. He begged in- 
 cessantly, but never for himself. Some 
 may have resented his demands as exces- 
 sive. Before we condemn him we must re- 
 member that he was positively in love (my 
 vocabulary can afford no better word) with 
 the poor and the sick, the weary and 
 
40 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 heavily-laden. But you cannot check the 
 intemperate energy of love, or bridle its 
 words, or dictate its action. It has ways 
 and means of its own ; love is unreasonable, 
 and declines to be tied down by the hard 
 and fast rules of logic. All forms of need 
 had a claim on his large Irish heart. Many 
 years ago the Rector of a well-known Col- 
 lege said that Father Gallwey never sent 
 a boy without asking for a reduction of pen- 
 sion. He had a fund to educate poor boys 
 for the Church. Convents opened their 
 doors at his request to girls whose parents 
 had seen better days. He found places for 
 servants, and pupils for tutors, and procured 
 alms for all sorts and conditions of men, 
 right on to the end of his life. He had 
 two thoughts before his mind, the suffer- 
 ings of the poor and the dangers of the rich, 
 and with the bluntness of an Apostle, he 
 warned the rich that almsgiving was for 
 them the golden key that opened the Gates 
 of Paradise. The luxury of the age he de- 
 tested : lazy, idle, effeminate men, sumptu- 
 ously-dressed women were told plain truths 
 about the use and misuse of gold. 
 
 Not merely in procuring money for the 
 
LIFE AT MOUNT STREET 41 
 
 destitute was his charity displayed ; his 
 time, presence, words were ever at the ser- 
 vice of the sick. We speak of the *' rush " 
 of the age ; many are rushing away from 
 God, but fortunes are not spent, nor is 
 health impaired, by rushing after the 
 things of Christ. It used to be said 
 of Father Gallwey, and with much truth, 
 that he was always in a hurry. Yes ; 
 but the hurry and the rush was in the 
 service of the Lord, and often for the sick 
 and the dying. Distance was no obstacle 
 to his visits to the sick at any hour of the 
 day or night, in all weathers and in all 
 seasons. He loved the atmosphere of the 
 sick-room : to him it was a tonic. He more 
 than fulfilled all that is found in those in- 
 structive words of the Roman Ritual as ap- 
 proved for England, De visitatione et cura 
 infirmoram. The Ritual tells the Parish 
 Priest not to wait until he is summoned, but 
 to go unasked, and he is advised to supply 
 all the temporal and spiritual wants of the 
 invalid. This injunction Father Gallwey 
 fulfilled to the letter. The poor were sup- 
 plied ; those who alone asked spiritual 
 assistance had at their command the coun- 
 
42 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 sel, and vast experience, and holy thoughts 
 of the venerable Priest. One of his char- 
 acteristics was his constancy to liis friends ; 
 never was this more apparent than in sick- 
 ness or sorrow. 
 
 He was a specialist for the death -bed. 
 In his sermons and meditations the refer- 
 ence to death was frequent, but never out 
 of season. The Crucifix and Maria De- 
 solata inspired the lesson of Christian hope 
 which cheats death of its terrors. He had 
 quite an extraordinary faith in the virtue of 
 Extreme Unction. He availed himself of 
 the most generous views of Theologians, 
 and gave it, with the permission of the 
 Priest of the Mission, wherever there was 
 probable danger of death. He had the 
 firmest belief in its healing power for soul 
 and body. He enabled the dying to over- 
 come the tyranny of death with a courage 
 that leant exclusively on the strength of the 
 Crucified. No wonder he was sought after 
 as a specialist to soften and to sweeten that 
 punishment, which God, with all punish- 
 ments at His command, has selected to 
 prove His hatred of sin. When a soul that 
 Father Gallwey had attended passed from; 
 
LIFE AT MOUNT STREET 43 
 
 this world, he clamoured for the Holy Mass 
 as he used to call it : he was importunate in 
 his request for that acceptable sacrifice of 
 the Altar, which above all other forms of 
 prayer and penance, lessens the suffering 
 of Purgatory. He fought with all his heart 
 against that false form of Charity which 
 places the soul in Heaven almost immedi- 
 ately it leaves the earth. It puzzles us to. 
 see on what groun'ds such a verdict is re- 
 turned, since the Church, by solemn defini- 
 tion, has taught nothing of the duration of 
 that punishment, of which the Saints and 
 spiritually -minded speak with reverential 
 fear. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Hospice for the Dying in Mare Street, 
 
 Hackney. 
 
 Love for the poor and the dying is shown 
 more by deeds than by words, and although 
 Father Gallwey's acts of charity, because of 
 his reserve, must remain in numberless 
 cases unrecorded, there remains at least one 
 splendid witness to his zeal and prayers in 
 St. Joseph's Hospice for the Dying, Mare 
 Street, Hackney. It is said that this Hos- 
 pice was the reward of thirty years' prayer. 
 From his early years in London in the 
 'sixties it had been his ambition to estab- 
 lish a home where the poor could die 
 in peace with all the consolations of re- 
 ligion. The poor of his native land, often 
 lonely and abandoned in a wilderness of 
 busy men, claimed his special care. The 
 following letters from members of the Irish 
 Sisters of Charity, to whom the Hospice 
 
THE HOSPICE FOR THE DYING 45 
 
 was entrusted, describe the foundation of 
 this wonderful work due to Father Gallwey 
 and to two generous benefactors who sup- 
 phed the money. We may add that the 
 donor of £ 1 0,000 was personally unknown 
 to him. He laid the case before her 
 as a last resort after many years of 
 prayer, and his petition met with a success 
 he hardly dared to expect. 
 
 The following note from the Rev. 
 Mother of the Irish Sisters of Charity, 
 Gardiner Street, Dublin, tells its own tale : 
 
 '' I first met Father Gallwey in Tramore 
 in 1 867 ; he had come over to see his sister, 
 who was dying . 
 
 ''He took a great interest in our Con- 
 gregation, and was most desirous that we 
 should open a House in England, and for 
 this purpose he sent us many postulants. 
 Our Blind Asylum, Merrion, elicited his 
 genuine sympathy, and later on the Hospice 
 for the Dying. 
 
 '* Being a strong Irishman, he felt much 
 for our poor country people, who in an alien 
 land, and amid strange surroundings, soon 
 fell away from the practice of their Reli- 
 gion, though in the old people their great 
 gift of Faith remained intact, only waiting 
 for an understanding hand to bring it into 
 
46 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 action. He thought that a purely Irish 
 Congregation of Nuns would best appeal 
 to them, and influence them for good. He 
 regretted greatly that our first English f oun^ 
 dation in Preston had not been a success . He 
 made several attempts to get us to London, 
 but there were many difficulties in the way, 
 first, want of subjects, our Home Mission 
 requiring all our Sisters, then the difficulty 
 of providing the ways and means. This 
 latter difficulty was overcome in the year 
 1 900 by the generosity of a young convert, 
 a member of a rich London family ; she 
 offered to pay the rent of a House and 
 the support of four Sisters, as also the 
 Chaplain's salary. The good Father was 
 triumphant, he obtained the sanction of Car- 
 dinal Vaughan, who expressed a desire that 
 we should establish ourselves in Hackney, 
 and include in our labours the district of 
 Hoxton, where a great number of our 
 people were congregated : they came over 
 in the year of the famine, 1848, principally 
 from Cork and Kerry ; the old people pre- 
 served the faith, which in the second 
 generation, from mixed marriages, &c., 
 became considerably weakened, and was 
 most frequently lost in the third generation. 
 He then applied again to our Mother 
 General, M.M. Scholastica Margison, who 
 could no longer refuse. The following 
 
THE HOSPICE FOR THE DYING 47 
 
 February, M .M . Lucy and myself were sent 
 over to London to see how matters stood, 
 and we were indebted to the hospitahty of 
 Lady Catharine Wheble, who entertained 
 us for the necessary time. Father Gallwey 
 had seen about a house for us in King 
 Edward's Road, Hackney, and only wanted 
 our approval to take it for us : we met him 
 at Farm Street the day after our arrival, 
 and proceeded to Hackney. With us he 
 went over the house, seeing what repairs 
 and improvements would be necessary to 
 make it suitable, went with us to a 
 furnishing shop to order all requisites ; all 
 this to be done at the expense of our kind 
 benefactress. He proved himself a real 
 Father, introduced us to anyone likely 
 to help us, and procured for us an interview 
 with the Cardinal, who was most gracious, 
 and said, ' Remember, Sisters, I invited 
 you over a couple of times.' Father Gall- 
 wey promising to look after everything for 
 us, we took our way home. 
 
 ** On the 2nd of July the same year, 
 1900, the Foundation was made. Mass was 
 celebrated for the first time in the little 
 chapel. Father Gallwey arrived in the 
 afternoon with a few friends, gave Benedic- 
 tion of the Blessed Sacrament, and said a 
 few appropriate words, and from his heart 
 gave us all his blessing. He never ceased 
 
48 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 to prove himself the Father an'd friend of 
 the httle Community, coming up in the 
 Ember weeks to hear our confessions and 
 to give the customary exercises twice a year 
 of our Tridaam, even in extreme old age. 
 
 "Another great proof of his goodness and 
 the power of his prayer and union with God, 
 lay in obtaining the necessary means of 
 purchasing the freehold property on which 
 we are now well established, a matter of 
 £9,000 or £10,000. The Superior tried 
 every means of obtaining the money, even 
 going so far as offering to borrow it (we 
 had then only one small house on the same 
 property). This, of course, could not be 
 allowed by our Mother General. When 
 everything looked hopeless, and the Su- 
 perior had made her offering, a letter 
 arrived from our good Father, saying that 
 just as he too had given up hope, he re- 
 ceived that morning a letter from a lady to 
 whom he had written as a last resource, say- 
 ing that she was willing to pay the required 
 sum, which she most generously did to the 
 great delight and gratitude of all con- 
 cerned, doubtless to the joy of the good 
 Father himself." 
 
 A second letter from the Rev. Mother 
 of the Hospice for the Dying, Mare Street, 
 Hackney, gives full details of the founda- 
 
THE HOSPICE FOR THE DYING 49 
 
 tion and opening of the Hospital : 
 
 *' When first I tnet Father Gallwey it was 
 on the Feast of the Visitation, July 2, 1900. 
 The Father had come down with the foun- 
 dress and several friends for the opening 
 of our Convent at 4, King Edward's Road, 
 Hackney. It had long been his desire that 
 a community of the Irish Sisters of Charity 
 should be established in London, to visit 
 and instruct the poor Catholics, many of 
 whom were Irish. Benediction was given 
 in our little chapel, and Father Gallwey 
 spoke to the Sisters. 
 
 He quoted his favourite Psalm : 
 * Lift up thine eyes to the mountains 
 from whence help will come to thee.' 
 
 " He reminded the Sisters of the vast 
 field of work that lay before them and 
 warned them not to put their trust in the 
 great ones of this world, but that their help 
 was from the Lord who hath made Heaven 
 and Earth ; he prayed that the Lord would 
 bless their coming in and going out 
 amongst the poor and afflicted. 
 
 '' He then went through the house and 
 saw everything, and left the community 
 greatly strengthened by his words. During 
 our three years in King Edward's Road, 
 he came regularly four times a year and 
 also gave Trtduums twice a year, and was 
 always a father and a friend. On one 
 
 ' E 
 
 i i 
 
 (( 
 
50 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 occasion he was staying in a house near at 
 hand ; he asked Mother Rectress to lend 
 him the alarum clock as he was to say Mass 
 at 7.30. Next morning the Sisters saw the 
 old Father stepping out of a cab at 6.30 
 with the alarum clock grasped in his hand ; 
 he spent the hour before Mass in prayer. 
 Father Gallwey had no trace of human res- 
 pect, his wonderful simplicity and earnest- 
 ness about all things was a striking feature ; 
 as a rule he did not waste words, but was 
 very kind-hearted to everyone, and old as 
 he was, never gave himself any comfort or 
 allowed others to give him any. When 
 asked if he wanted anything, he used 
 to say : ' Get me more of the grace of God, 
 I want plenty of that ! ' He suffered very- 
 much from rheumatism, and told us one day 
 that it ' was only since the nuns came from 
 Ireland that he had felt it so severely ! ' I 
 am sure he offered up many a sharp twinge 
 for our works and our souls. 
 
 *' He loved to hear all about the poor, 
 and the places we visited in Hackney and 
 Hoxton, and got us help for them al a Sale 
 of Work held in St. George's Hall, Mount 
 Street, 1902. Father Gallwey took great 
 trouble to make it a success, and spent three 
 hours in a hot, crowded room, working for 
 the cause ! 
 
 '* In 1903 our lease was up in King Ed- 
 
THE HOSPICE FOR THE DYING 51 
 
 ward's Road, and though much work was 
 being done in Hackney and Hoxton, Father 
 Gallwey was anxious that we should open 
 an Institution in London. In years past 
 many had wished and prayed that some day 
 we might have a Hospice for the Dying in 
 London, similar to the one under our care 
 in Dublin. So the Community in Hackney 
 began to pray in particular to the Holy 
 Child Jesus for this intention ; a very small 
 house in Cambridge Lodge Villas was to 
 let ; trusting for help from on high it was 
 taken for seven years . It stood in a terrace 
 of six houses and next to a detached house 
 with garden. Once in the small house 
 prayers were renewed and a statue of the 
 Child Jesus was placed in the tiny chapel. 
 A lamp . was burning before it night and 
 day. After nine months' waiting the news 
 came that the whole freehold property was 
 up for sale, prayers were renewed, and 
 Father Gallwey was deeply interested in the 
 result. As the time drew near when the 
 Rectress was visiting him, he said : * Go 
 home, and tell the mms to pray harder than 
 ever !' When hope W3,s nearly dying out, 
 on November 30, 1903, a letter came from 
 Father Gallwey, saying that a lady had 
 offered to purchase the freehold for a 
 Hospice for the Dying ! 
 
 *' On December 4, 1903, feast of St. 
 
52 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 Barbara, the place was handed over to the 
 congregation for £10,000. 
 
 " A year and one month elapsed before 
 our hopes were realized, as the detached 
 house was still retained by the lady until 
 July, 1904, when she left. Many repairs 
 and alterations were required to make the 
 house suitable, and on January 15, 1905, 
 the feast of the Holy Name, Mass was cele- 
 brated in one of the rooms, and a poor man 
 and a poor woman were admitted. These 
 proved the forerunners of many poor souls, 
 who finding shelter in St. Joseph's Hospice, 
 have passed happily to their reward. 
 
 " Father Gallwey had a particular de- 
 votion to those who have seen better days, 
 and the Hospice has fulfilled his desires in 
 this, as many a poor wreck has drifted 
 there, whose birth and education would 
 have rendered the workhouse -infirmary 
 well-nigh intolerable. 
 
 '' In March, 1906, Father Gallwey or- 
 ganized a sale at the Porttaan Rooms, and 
 though obliged to go to Bournemouth for 
 his health, he insisted on coming to London 
 to be present at the sale, and after the usual 
 opening with one ' Hail Mary/ the won- 
 derful old Father remained for hours at a 
 table working away for the dying poor. 
 
 ** After that he came in June to give us 
 the Triduunt; he was very feeble and suf- 
 
THE HOSPICE FOR THE DYING 55 
 
 fering much, but in spite of all, his iron 
 will and great love for souls urged him on ; 
 he spoke of his favourite theme, the Pas- 
 sion of Christ and the love of God and the 
 poor. Anyone hearing him could not fail 
 to think that he lived as a ' Stranger and 
 Pilgrim ' in this world, and that he travelled 
 in spirit with our Lady and St. Joseph 
 to Bethlehem and Nazareth. Calvary was 
 his favourite resting-place ; as he expressed 
 it : * I will often go in spirit to the mountain 
 of myrrh and the hill of frankincense. If I 
 forget thee, O Calvary, let my right hand 
 be forgotten.' 
 
 " The day we came out of Triduum we 
 saw the old Father for the last time. He 
 asked to see the Sisters, and when Mother 
 Rectress came, she found him trying to put 
 on his shoes. Seeing what an efifort it 
 seemed to: be, she offered to help him . With" 
 his usual dry humour he said : * I am not 
 such a fool as I look,' and insisted on draw- 
 ing on the shoe with great difficulty. He 
 was very kind to us all, and walked over 
 to the Hospice, some of the poor patients 
 came to him, and one woman knelt down 
 and kissed the hem of his cassock ! The last 
 we saw of him was walking feebly with his 
 stout stick to help him, a bag slung over his 
 shoulder, and his venerable head stooped 
 with age. He was helped into the tram 
 
54 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 which passes our door, having firmly re- 
 fused to allow us to get him a cab. We 
 never saw him again until we went to see 
 him resting after his well-fougtit battle with 
 the spirit of the world. We were greatly 
 honoured by being presented with his pil- 
 grim's stick, and it is kept as a treasure in 
 one of the Hospice wards. We still feel 
 that he is helping on the work he loved so 
 well, and hope that it may enlarge and bring 
 more souls to add to his glory in Heaven." 
 
 Thus ends the letter. 
 
 Let no one suppose that the object of 
 these few memories of the venerable man, 
 now enjoying his reward through God's ex- 
 ceeding mercy, is to indulge in unmixed 
 panegyric ; mere praise is almost con- 
 temptible after his weary day. He had 
 his faults like the rest of us, and no one 
 would have more willingly acknowledged 
 his own shortcomings and resented an 
 unreal portrait. It is almost refreshing 
 to remember that we are all encom- 
 passed with infirmity. Our Lord's chosen 
 disciples were confirmed in grace at 
 Pentecost . This privilege secured for them 
 immunity from grave fault, while it left the 
 
THE HOSPICE FOR THE DYING 55 
 
 liberty of will intact. We shall not lose the 
 benefit of their intercession by the admission 
 that they may have committed venial sins, 
 semi -deliberate and deliberate, through 
 human weakness. It is absolutely certain, 
 and some theologians hold as of faith {de 
 fide), that the perfect cannot in a lifetime 
 avoid all venial sins without the special 
 privilege of grace . Approved authors have 
 thought that this grace was granted to St. 
 Joseph, at least, after his marriage with our 
 Lady, to St. John the Baptist and to the 
 Apostles after Pentecost. This is a tenable 
 opinion as regards venial sins fully deliber- 
 ate, but very uncertain in the matter of 
 semi-deliberate faults (see Noldin, vol. II . 
 
 p. 58). 
 
 Catholics are bound to believe as an 
 article of faith that the Blessed Queen o£ 
 Heaven, '* by the special privilege of God,'' 
 was preserved all through life from' every 
 venial transgression. In the noblest prayer 
 that ever was composed the Divine Master 
 bids not merely the sinner but the Saint to 
 repeat : *' Forgive us our trespasses as we 
 forgive them that trespass against us ." All 
 that Suarez, one of the Church's greatest 
 
56 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 writers, will allow is that the just man, by 
 good deeds and frequent prayers, can with 
 less difficulty for one whole day \fer diem 
 integrum) avoid every fault (see Tepe de 
 Gratia, vol. III. p. 45). 
 
 After this brief digression, which shows 
 the impossibility of escaping small sins, 
 even in the case of those far advanced in 
 the service of God, we have less difficulty 
 in understanding how great gifts and glori- 
 ous deeds are found side by side with 
 blemish and infirmity. Father Gallwey 
 had a difficult character to deal with. He 
 was a Inan of strong views, and most tena- 
 cious will. Human nature was strong in 
 him, and fine soldier that he was he set him- 
 self to a lifelong struggle with the foe. 
 
 A commentator on the Exercises of Saint 
 Ignatius, speaking of the Second Week, 
 devoted to the imitation of Jesus Christ, 
 lays down the principle that the more a man 
 overcomes himself the greater is his know- 
 ledge of Jesus Christ. Our venerable 
 friend led a mortified life, and vince te 
 ipsam was his motto . Placed in very high 
 and responsible positions, fully convinced 
 of the rectitude of his own views, he some- 
 
THE HOSPICE FOR THE DYING 57 
 
 times failed to see that others, inside and 
 outside the Society, were as anxious as he to 
 advance the glory of God. A character 
 such as his does not pull easily in harness 
 with other men ; it is apt to be over-exacting 
 in authority, and restless under opposition. 
 He sometimes forgot in his zeal that those 
 around were not called upon to think 
 and act alike with him, and that liberty of 
 thought and action belonged also to others 
 not so highly gifted. Men who keenly re- 
 sent roughness and harshness of manner 
 bow before gentle persuasion. To conceal 
 these small infirmities would be unkind to 
 him and unjust to others. All who knew 
 him admit that he rendered conspicuous 
 service to the Catholic cause in England 
 by his labours and writings, and was uni- 
 versally respected by his Brethren during 
 the seventy years he spent in religion. Or- 
 dinary folk loved him more with his faults 
 than without them. His standard was high, 
 and his example noble in every department 
 of a priest's life, in the pulpit^ in the con- 
 fessional, in the chamber of sickness and 
 death. He was ready to recognize to the 
 full the services of others, and reserved be- 
 
58 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 yond belief in reference to his work on the 
 Master's behalf. Clad in infirmity from 
 head to foot, he readily admitted his faults, 
 and frankly confessed that he had very 
 strong passions to overcome. 
 
( i 
 
 CHAPTER IV- 
 
 Instructing Converts. 
 
 No account of Father Gallwey, however 
 meagre, would be at all complete without 
 some reference to the converts whom he 
 received into the Church. Unfortunately 
 no accurate list has been preserved of those 
 who owed to him the gift of faith. He 
 was very keen in the blessed work of lead- 
 ing souls to the knowledge of divine truth. 
 But he is especially worthy of admiration 
 and imitation in the careful instructions be- 
 stowed on converts before reception. He 
 instructed Jiis converts with extraordinary 
 <:are, and drilled them in the Catechism. 
 His usual method was to teach the 
 Catechism, and next to explain the Creed 
 of Pope Pius IV. which converts recite on 
 their entry into the Church. Among the 
 questions wisely put in the Instructio, for 
 the reception of a Catechumen is this : 
 
6o MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 " Who will watch over and assist the con- 
 vert, as far as may be needed, after 
 his reception into the Church." He 
 watched his converts carefully after recep- 
 tion. If with all the strength of his com- 
 manding character he taught them that they 
 entered the Church not to teach and com- 
 mand, but to learn and to obey, he made 
 that obedience easy by showing them how 
 to pray and to meditate, and by urging 
 upon them frequent reception of the Sacra- 
 ments and attendance at Holy Mass. The 
 reasonable homage of faith is the effect of 
 grace, and if converts are to be worthy of 
 their vocation and to guard against the dan- 
 ger of relapse they need the help of 
 Heaven. It is deeply to be regretted that 
 hardly any personal record of conversion 
 is available for publication. Fortunately I 
 am able to offer the following letter from 
 one of the most distinguished of his con- 
 verts, who knew him intimately and at- 
 tended his Retreats. The reader will be 
 interested to see that Father Gallwey was 
 instrumental in a conversion which no less 
 a man than Mr. Gladstone was anxious to 
 prevent. 
 
INSTRUCTING CONVERTS 6i 
 
 *' Father Gallwey was a renowned fisher- 
 man of souls, and one example of his 
 method may not be without interest. If a 
 number of other stories of conversion were 
 collected together we should have a spiri- 
 tual Compleat Angler, for he made studies 
 in his art and was a real Izaak Walton in' 
 patience and adaptability, handling even his 
 3ait ' tenderly as if he loved it.' I had been 
 coming along quietly for some years by 
 reading and inquiry, with a real desire for 
 truth, but a considerable reluctance to put 
 my neck under the yoke, when one day 
 someone said to me, ' Would you like to 
 see a Jesuit priest? I could arrange it.' I 
 jumped at the idea, the name of ' Jesuit ' 
 made one tingle with interest and expecta- 
 tion. I thought all Catholic priests were 
 oracles of wisdom, but that through con- 
 tempt for my youth and ignorance, they 
 would not speak of what they knew. But 
 a Jesuit would surely explain things if there 
 were an appointment made on purpose, and 
 he would know all that could be known 
 about everything. So one January after- 
 noon in 1879, Father Gallwey kindly 
 stayed at home at Mount Street ' to be sent 
 for.' When he arrived it was not the Jesuit 
 of fiction who walked in, but simply — 
 Father Gallwey, with his great expanse of 
 head, and the visions in his eyes, and his 
 
62 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 kind smile and his quick shuffle, and his re- 
 assuring abruptness of speech. His coat 
 collar was turned up, and his gown — ' his 
 fisherman's coat " — girt up underneath it, as 
 it was his custom to wear it when he came 
 out in a hurry. There was nothing alarm- 
 ing or mysterious ahout him. He held my 
 hand a moment and looked me very straight 
 
 in the eyes. ' Well, Miss , I've often 
 
 heard of you,' he said, and I was too ready 
 for anything even to know that I was sur- 
 prised. Father Gallwey made everything 
 seem natural and inevitable, and it was a 
 great blessing to be able to skip the pre- 
 face of the interview ; there was no question 
 of * How to begin.' * Shall I leave you 
 alone ?' said my hostess, fresh from the ter- 
 rors of a lady who was afraid to face a 
 Jesuit ' by herself.' I gratefully accepted, 
 and saw with still greater gratitude that 
 Father Gallwey would conduct the inter- 
 view. This was a novelty, and most help- 
 ful, for I was mortally shy. Father Gall- 
 wey put me in an arm-chair and sat down 
 beside me. He began to ask preliminary 
 questions and I to answer them, feeling that 
 it was the most natural and the most un- 
 natural thing that had ever happened. 1 
 felt like Alice in Wonderland, and as if I 
 had never been so young in my life. How 
 old was I ? — Father Gallwey wanted to 
 
INSTRUCTING CONVERTS 63 
 
 know — just twenty -one ; * that^s all right/ 
 said Father Gallwey, rubbing his hands. I 
 wondered why, but it seemed to give him 
 satisfaction. Had I father and mother liv- 
 ing ? Only my father ; my mother had died 
 before I could remember. ' Poor child !' 
 said Father Gallwey, parenthetically, and I 
 noticed then what a non-Catholic writer 
 calls the blending of impersonality with 
 tenderness in the tone, which belongs to the 
 Catholic priesthood. He asked a few more 
 questions, and it touched and astonished me 
 greatly that he seemed to care about things 
 in a way that tnade ' Father ' quite a natural 
 title in speaking to him'. Then he came to 
 the point. Where was I as to religious be- 
 liefs ? and I explained that I was just at 
 the cross-roads, having understood that 
 there were only two alternatives, sub- 
 mission to the Catholic Church or no fixed 
 beliefs at all. What had I read? I had 
 read the Bible and Hooker, and mostly, of 
 late, German authors, in whose obscurities, 
 far beyond my understanding, I had hoped 
 to come upon the truth. * All that is very 
 good,' said Father Gallwey. * And then I 
 had read Archbishop Ullathorne, and the 
 Catholic Church had started up before my 
 mind as a possible solution of my difficul- 
 ties, but,' &c. Then Father Gallwey be- 
 gan — from the cross-roads where I was, and 
 
 / r 
 
64 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 taking his stand on the existence of God, 
 worked on to show the Church as the 
 Divine Teacher, and the only authentic wit- 
 ness of the Truth. I could not help seeing 
 it, and recognizing the voice ' which spoke 
 with authority, and not as the Scribes and 
 Pharisees.' He stayed an hour and went 
 away with ' God bless you, it would be a 
 million of pities if you should be lost.' I 
 did not understand what it meant ' to be 
 lost,' but felt grateful that he hoped it would 
 not happen to me. My hostess escorted 
 Father Gallwey downstairs, and came back 
 beaming. ' He says you are sure to come 
 right,' she said, ingenuously, ' because you 
 don't come back to the same point once it 
 has been answered.' This was anything 
 but joyful news to me, for * come right ' 
 had not quite the same meaning in my mind 
 as in hers. I told my father of the inter- 
 view, with the natural result that he begged 
 me to promise not to see Father Gallwey 
 again for the present. I promised, but re- 
 served my liberty to write, and the kind and 
 patient Father, protesting a little against my 
 father's decision but very mo^derately, 
 wrote constantly for the next few weeks. 
 I was sent down to the country to undergo 
 a cure of controversial reading and discus- 
 sion, but Protestantism as a religion had 
 been already dead some years for me, and 
 
INSTRUCTING CONVERTS 65 
 
 it was only a labour and a weariness ; the 
 new light was quite steady. After a fort- 
 night I wrote that I had had enough, and 
 that my mind was made up . I meant to be 
 a Catholic, After an interchange of tele- 
 grams I was taken up to London, and there 
 was a consultation of divines as to what to 
 do with me. At six a.m. the following 
 morning I was informed that Cromer had 
 been chosen for solitude and reflection. 
 Cromer was full of Quakers, a serene and 
 quiet atmosphere, and in those days there 
 was no priest nearer than Norwich. We 
 were to go at ten a.m. ' Then,' I said, * I 
 will go and get Father Gallwey to receive 
 me into the Church first.' Father Gallwey 
 was in his Confessional, my first introduc- 
 tion to * the box.' He looked quite natural 
 through the perforated zinc and considered 
 the situation. ' No,' he said, * I am not 
 afraid for you. Go to Cromer and let your 
 father have every chance.' It was a great 
 astonishment to the relations when I came 
 back saying that Father Gallwey had re- 
 fused my request ; the Jesuit reputation of 
 ' going round about the sea and land to 
 make one proselyte ' (and the end of the 
 text is not spared to the * proselyte ') 
 seemed in contradiction with his action. 
 We went down to Cromer for ten days. 
 Then we returned to London, and as a 
 F 
 
66 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 happy thought, Mr. Gladstone was called 
 in. He had saved so many, it was said, 
 from * going to Rome/ and I had the deep- 
 est admiration for him. Canon Liddon was 
 also suggested, but it was decided that a 
 layman would have more influence over my 
 mind. Mr. Gladstone patiently and kindly 
 gave his time and his eloquence for three 
 quarters of an hour, arid wrote the same 
 evening to say that he had done scant jus- 
 tice to his subject, and hoped that sotne- 
 thing might still save me from the grave 
 crime of moral suicide . He pointed out the 
 deterioration in mind and character which 
 he had noticed in his friends who had been 
 received into the Roman Church, and ex- 
 pressed every kind wish that I might not 
 3rove another example of it . His argument 
 lad been based on loyalty to the Anglican 
 Church, * the Church of your baptism.' I 
 was naturally unable to meet his arguments . 
 He said pathetically that ' he had so often 
 been dragged over the harrows of the 
 Roman Controversy,' but his words did not 
 answer the questions in toy mind, and I 
 went back to Father Gallwey. The idea of 
 * mental and moral deterioration ' had 
 rankled, and it vexed my soul. I had said 
 to him : ' Supposing I don't find my mind 
 satisfied, once I have been received into the 
 Church, I shall have put my neck in a noo§e 
 
INSTRUCTING CONVERTS 6-] 
 
 quite unnecessarily.' Father Gallwey was 
 sympathetic, and entertained the idea seri- 
 ously. After a minute he said thoughtfully, 
 ' I really don't see that you will be so much 
 worse off than you are now, you will only 
 have to go a stage further on, and seek the 
 truth elsewhere.' This was far more re- 
 assuring than any discourse of the blessed- 
 ness of the faith and the impossibility of 
 being dissatisfied when one was once in 
 possession of the truth. A few days after- 
 wards he received me into the Church, and 
 in congratulating me, gave his usual ex- 
 hortation about the fox and the fable, re- 
 commending tne to get * the other foxes ' 
 to cut off their ' tails ' likewise. Alas, my 
 * other foxes ' could not see the idea and 
 carried their brushes gaily to the end of the 
 run. 
 
 '* But Father Gallwey did not leave his 
 neophytes after baptism; he devoted him- 
 self to keep in touch by writing or talking, 
 to open out new points of view, to warn be- 
 fore bad turnings in the road, and to an- 
 swer all possible and impossible questions . 
 Once I brought him one of those tangled 
 problems with which erudite Anglicans love 
 to * pose ' those who are young in the faith. 
 ' What shall I say ? ' I asked . ' I would say, 
 ** upon my soul I don't know 1 " ' said! 
 Father Gallwey, and this satisfied me better 
 
68 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 than a treatise on the obscure point. After 
 all, why should one know these things 
 which were useful neither to God nor 
 Caesar, and only ornamental to learned 
 Anglican divines . Father Gallwey had the 
 reputation of being dictatorial and auto- 
 cratic with his converts, but I never came 
 across that side of his character. He was 
 extraordinarily gentle in his suggestions 
 and remonstrances, he ' begged as a per- 
 sonal favour ' that one would do this or that, 
 and made it seem as if it put him under an 
 obligation if one followed his advice. He 
 told me himself long afterwards, ' I always 
 went as far as I possibly could with you 
 along your own road before I asked you 
 to turn.' And this was true. He waited 
 three years patiently before he brought me 
 to the point of making a Retreat, proposing 
 it every year, but never insisting, and ex- 
 pressing himself as ' so grateful,' when at 
 length the invitation was accepted . When 
 the Retreat developed the fruit he had been 
 waiting for, a call to religious life, and the 
 time came to take leave of him, he stretched 
 out both hands — ' with both my hands I 
 bless you for it,' he said, and opening the 
 book of Esther, he read me the touching 
 passages in which Mardochai speaks of 
 himself as watching Esther from the time 
 that she went in and out as * a little one.' 
 
INSTRUCTING CONVERTS 69 
 
 * And he walked every day before the court 
 of the house in which the chosen virgins 
 were kept, having a care for Esther's wel- 
 fare, arid desiring to know what would be- 
 fall her' (Esther, Ch. 2, v. 11). He 
 said, 'that is what I have always felt for you 
 from the beginning and what I have done 
 in your regard/ It was perfectly true, and 
 no other words than those of Holy Scrip- 
 ture in his mouth could so well have ex- 
 plained it. There came clouds afterwards 
 Detween him and us for a time, and no one 
 quite knew why : God allowed it so, and 
 those who knew Father Gallwey well said 
 that it was not rare in the course of his long 
 friendships. But all came right in his last 
 years as inexplicably as it had gone wrong, 
 and in his Retreats he was his old and most 
 dear self. The last Retreat in the year of 
 his death was a great struggle, a swan's 
 song ; he was already half away from this 
 earth. He made a greater effort still to 
 come down for our distribution of prizes,, 
 
 * by command,' as he said. The last look 
 I had at him was as he leaned forward in 
 his chair, looking up arid smiling, to kiss 
 the Bishop's hand as he passed out, and I 
 regard it as a great privilege that the 
 last few lines he wrote, perhaps on the day 
 before his death, were for me.'* 
 
 We are allowed to offer a second letter, 
 
70 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 which describes the care Father Gallwey 
 bestowed, as already noticed, on his con- 
 verts, while incidentally it also refers to the 
 close attention and tender solicitude which 
 characterized him as director of Retreats : 
 
 ** One of Father Gallwey's great char- 
 acteristics was his thoroughness. Having 
 once taken charge of what he describes as 
 
 * a job/ he would go through with it to the 
 end. Having, for instance, got hold of a 
 convert, the Father settled down to work, 
 and right through the Creed of Pope Pius 
 IV. did he take them, his big Bible in front 
 of him and his kindly face beaming with 
 joy at having a soul to lead into the fold. 
 And when his wonderful teaching had made 
 it all clear, and the end was approaching, 
 there would come the question : ' Now 
 then ! we have been through a great many 
 things together, but suppose after you 
 are received, you come on something the 
 Church teaches which Fve forgotten to ex- 
 plain to you ; what about that, eh ? ' And 
 there was a little anxiety on his face till out 
 came the answer, slowly perhaps and halt- 
 ingly, as from lips not used to such acts 
 of faith : ' Well, Father, if the Church 
 teaches it, that will be enough for me, for 
 I know now that what she teaches is truth.' 
 
 * That's all right, that's all right, my dear 
 
INSTRUCTING CONVERTS 71 
 
 child, and God bless you 1 ' And when his 
 converts were safe in the fold, they were 
 not left to themselves, the foundations of 
 the interior life were well laid and built 
 upon. One of Father Gallwey's first cares 
 after they were launched was to initiate 
 them into the practice of mental prayer, and 
 here simplicity was as ever the note of his 
 teaching. ' Do you know you are making 
 meditations all day long? ' he would say, 
 and explained to his surprised hearers that 
 instead of being such a difficult flight to 
 meditate, it was (according to him) the 
 easiest thing in the world ; your memory, 
 understanding and will were constantly at 
 work, noticing people and things, reflect- 
 ing on them and coming to a decision about 
 them. One of his favourite illustrations 
 was of the telegram you were supposed to 
 receive. You opened it and read : ' Aunt 
 Maria seriously ill.' You began using your 
 memory, and recalled how you had heard 
 of her having been obliged to leave home 
 on account of ill-health . Then your under- 
 standing set to work to think out why they 
 had sent you a wire and not merely a letter : 
 was her state very critical ? Ah ! you have 
 it ; they want you to go and help to nurse 
 her, and at once. Now your will comes 
 in to decide whether or not you will go. 
 You decide to go ; then comes the writing 
 
72 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 of the reply telegram, and the searching out 
 of ways and means of getting to your des- 
 tination, and the carrying of them out. And 
 from this the Father would explain it was 
 but a short step to learn how to meditate, 
 how to think about pious subjects. * And 
 isn't it easy after all, eh ? ' And so he^ would 
 follow up his converts, and, if one may say 
 so, it was a joy to the Father to see them 
 ' safe off ' out of this world, watching over 
 them to the last. * I believe he would like 
 to see us all off before he goes himself,' 
 one of them remarked. The smallest 
 things were not too small for him. ' My 
 dear child,' he said one day to one of his 
 converts, * on which knee do you genu- 
 flect?' 'The right knee. Father/ with 
 some perplexity as to what could be com- 
 ing. ' Ah ! that's all right, that's all right ; 
 but I could not remember ever having told 
 you, and so many converts make a mistake 
 and genuflect on the left knee.' 
 
 ** In his direction Father Gallwey was 
 both father and mother to his spiritual chil- 
 dren. His warm sympathy and wonderful 
 way of entering, not only into difficulties, 
 but into the details of difficulties, had all 
 the delicacy of a woman, but underneath 
 was a very virile determination that his 
 people should do God's will and God's will 
 only, however much human nature might 
 
INSTRUCTING CONVERTS 12> 
 
 shrink. He had a very rooted objection 
 to shirkers ; never mind how often you 
 failed, he was always ready to put you on 
 your feet again and send you off afresh, 
 but you had to be ready to be put on your 
 feet again and very resolved to try arid 
 keep on them; if not, woe betide you. 
 
 '*To see Father Gallwey giving a Retreat, 
 or rather, conducting the Exercises, was to 
 see him at his best. The keynote was work, 
 a week with our Lord, a week's visit to Him, 
 but no time for idling. No ! a week of. 
 good hard work, plenty of exercise for 
 memory, understanding and will. It was 
 so essentially The Exercises as given by 
 Father Gallwey. You might fancy your- 
 self back in the days of St. Ignatius, so 
 closely did he follow his spirit, and so mili- 
 tary was the precision with which your day 
 was mapped out. The hour for rising well- 
 fixed, and kept ; the points for medita- 
 tion thought over before sleep, the mind, 
 on awakening, turned from all other 
 thoughts and fixed on the business of the 
 day. The hour for meditation come, an 
 attitude of humility and reverence assumed, 
 careful examination at the end of the Exer- 
 cise to see how it had succeeded or how 
 failed. ' Take up your work and go over 
 the stitches carefully,' as the Father used to 
 say. During the first part of the Retreat all 
 
74 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 joyful thoughts put aside, there was even a 
 recommendation to do the thing thoroughly 
 by excluding the light of day from your 
 room. Silence, real silence, not the lialf- 
 silence so often kept in Retreats nowadays . 
 Penance was not slurred over, though 
 the Father was very wise, and even tender 
 with his children. When he came to 
 the Meditation on the Passion he made 
 it all live. You felt the sadness of 
 Gethsemane creeping over you, you saw 
 the face of our Lord grow sorrowful 
 and sad. You realized, almost as if you 
 had been there. His love and agony of long- 
 ing for the salvation of the world ; you saw 
 Him left alone in His grief, and with shame 
 and sorrow you could but repent of your, 
 softness and lack of love for Him who bore 
 so much for you. When the time came for 
 the choice of a state of life, or for the 
 reformation of a state already decided on. 
 Father Gallwey redoubled his zeal for his 
 exercitants, inspiring, guiding, strengthen- 
 ing. * I want you,' he said to one of them, 
 ' to go on knowing and doing God's will 
 more and more every day of your life. May 
 God bless you and guide you until you are 
 safe in Heaven. After that you may do as 
 you like.' He was always intent on getting 
 the best out of his children, to get them to 
 do something great for God. In the last 
 
INSTRUCTING CONVERTS 75 
 
 letter he wrote to one of them, not long be- 
 fore his death, he said : " It is a great com- 
 fort to me to notice how our Lord is streng- 
 thening and guiding you. In the Book of 
 the Maccabees you will see the Mother of 
 the Seven Martyrs described as an admir- 
 able woman, who united a man^s heart 
 (courage) with a w&man^s thotCght, May 
 our Blessed Lord give you a man's cour- 
 ageous heart and a woman's very useful 
 tenderness that you may do something large 
 for our Lord 1 " 
 
 We are privileged to give yet another 
 account of Father Gallwey from the pen 
 of one who met him after her conver- 
 sion, and is now a Religious of the Sacred 
 Heart. Besides characteristic anecdotes of 
 Father Gallwey, we have additional proof 
 of his extraordinary care of converts, his 
 love of souls, and his joy in guiding Reli- 
 gious to the perfection of their state. 
 
 ** It was in 1866, just after having been 
 received into the Church in the country 
 that, by' the advice of Cardinal Newman, 
 I went to Father Gallwey. It was on the 
 eve of All Saints, and I still remember the 
 rows of benches filled with penitents at his 
 confessional door in Farm Street, After 
 
76 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 waiting two hours I had to come away, but 
 returned early next morning and saw him, 
 and from that day until his death, a period 
 of over forty years, he was for me always 
 the kindest of fathers, the most faithtul 
 of friends, and the most devoted of Direc- 
 tors. I can never forget the pains he took 
 to make sure that I was fully instructed, 
 both dogmatically and morally, in the 
 Catholic faith, and after that to teach me 
 the science of the spiritual life. In the 
 midst of all his work in the London season 
 he found time to give me a course of in- 
 struction on the methods of meditation of 
 St. Ignatius, as was his wont with all those 
 who put themselves under his direction. 
 There was no standing still with him in the 
 spiritual life, and he considered no pains 
 were too great to lead a soul to a knowledge 
 and love of our Blessed Lord. 
 
 '* His spiritual direction was based on 
 Holy Scripture and the Exercises of St. 
 Ignatius, of which he was a master. He 
 insisted that those under his direction 
 should learn by heart the rules of the dis- 
 cernment of spirits given by St. Ignatius, 
 which he never ceased commenting on, con- 
 vinced that a true knowledge of them was 
 the best safeguard against temptations and 
 delusions in the spiritual life. His rever- 
 ent love for Holy Scripture was certainly 
 
INSTRUCTING CONVERTS n 
 
 one of his marked characteristics. He al- 
 ways had a text at hand wherewith to an- 
 swer any query or difficulty, and his Bible 
 was his constant companion wherever he 
 went. A convert of his once related to me 
 that after visiting a Catholic Church when 
 a Wesleyan, she became desirous of know- 
 ing something about the Catholic faith. 
 Accordingly she went to 114, Mount Street 
 and asked to see a Father, having made up 
 her mind that should the priest who came 
 to her be able to base his arguments on the 
 Scriptures, which she had been led to be- 
 lieve were a dead letter to Catholics, she 
 would pursue her inquiries. What was not 
 her surprise when she found that Father 
 Gallwey, who came to her, had a well-worn 
 Bible under his arm; and that for everv 
 
 • 
 
 question she proposed, a text ready where- 
 with to answer it ! Needless to say, she 
 was soon under instruction, and was re- 
 ceived into the Church. I remember his 
 telling me that he never went to bed at 
 night, however late the hour, without read- 
 ing a chapter of Holy Scripture on his 
 knees. 
 
 '' His love of souls was that of a saint. 
 One day he said to me : * I am the happiest 
 man in the world for I have but one passion 
 — souls; and I can always satisfy that.' 
 Thus it was he not only thirsted after their 
 
7^ MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 salvation, but likewise after their perfec- 
 tion. When he saw the germ of a religious 
 vocation he watched over it and nurtured it 
 tenderly ; he could bear no trifling with this 
 grace, which he considered a priceless one. 
 He waxed wroth when parents offered op- 
 position to their children entering religion, 
 and in one instance I remember when a 
 father, who was under instruction to be- 
 come a Catholic, told him that he could not 
 enter the Church if his daughter became 
 a nun, he replied : ' Sir, you can then pre- 
 pare her grave clothes, for if you will not 
 give her to God in religion. He will take 
 her to Himself by death.' The gentleman 
 yielded, but it was not till many years after 
 that he was received into the Church on his 
 death-bed, saying he owed his salvation to 
 his child in religion. Father Gallwey had 
 predicted to the daughter that it would be 
 so were she faithful to her vocation .^ 
 
 ** Father Gallwey had an iron will and 
 could stand no shirking where there was 
 a question of doing something for God at 
 
 ^ To discover the fruits of prace in the souls of those he 
 directed was a source of real joy to him. One day, after having 
 paid a visit to the Convent of the Poor Clares at Notting Hill, 
 he was heard to say, with a face beaming with joy, " I had a 
 bit of real consolation to-dav. When I asked Sister Teresa 
 [a penitent of his who had lately entered], what she found hardest 
 in the life, she answered me, * That is difficult to say, for what 
 is hardest is the sweetest, ' *' 
 
INSTRUCTING CONVERTS 79 
 
 the cost of some little humiliation. To a 
 penitent who told him he was asking of her 
 what she could not do, he desired her to 
 leave the confessional and to remain on her 
 knees before the Blessed Sacrament, pray- 
 ing for grace until she felt she could do it, 
 and that he would not see her again until 
 then. 
 
 *' If he was at times severe he was 
 equally tender on other occasions ; thus, 
 to those who had erred and gone astray 
 through human frailty, he was truly the 
 * Good Shepherd.' A young convert in 
 whom he was much interested, got into 
 a dangerous position whilst he was away 
 from London as Master of Novices at 
 Manresa. When he returned and found 
 out what happened, he moved heaven 
 and earth to win her back, and when 
 the prodigal did at last return, his joy was 
 quite touching. Not a word of reproach, 
 but demonstrative affection. It was a case 
 of ' rejoice with me for my child that was 
 lost is found . . / His prayers and good- 
 ness were the salvation of that soul." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 A Few Favourite Scripture Texts, 
 
 Father Gallwey loved his Bible. He 
 quoted it largely in his sermons and medi- 
 tations, and though his interpretation of a 
 text was sometimes • fanciful, Scripture 
 added great weight to his words and 
 beauty to his discourses. He used often 
 to say that we ought to chew the words of 
 the inspired narrative and squeeze some 
 juice suitable to our character and needs. 
 The texts quoted were often heard from 
 the pulpit ; they will not on that account 
 be the less welcome, at least to his friends. 
 They will be helpful in meditation, and es- 
 pecially in that easier form of meditation 
 described by St. Ignatius in the Exercises 
 as the second method of prayer. 
 
 Texts of Scripture as prayer and to keep 
 in mind. 
 
 *' I know that Thou art a 2:racious and 
 
FAVOURITE SCRIPTURE TEXTS 8i 
 
 merciful God, patient and of much com- 
 passion and easy to forgive evil." {Jonas 
 iv,2.) 
 
 *' Is this the return thou makest to the 
 Lord, O foolish and senseless people ? Is 
 not He thy Father, that hath possessed thee 
 and made thee and created thee? " {Dent, 
 xxxii .6.) 
 
 " Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, 
 and ye gates thereof, be very desolate, salth 
 the Lord, for My people have done two 
 evils. They have forsaken Me the foun- 
 tain of living water and have digged to 
 themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that 
 can hold no water." {Jeremias iL 12 — 13.) 
 
 ** There is no beauty in Him, nor come- 
 liness ; and we have seen Him, and there 
 was no sightliness, that we should be de- 
 sirous of Him ; despised and the most 
 abject of men, a man of sorrows and 
 acquainted with infirmity, and His look 
 was, as it were hidden and despise'd, where- 
 upon we esteemed Him not. Surely He 
 hath borne our infirmities arid carried our 
 sorrows : arid we have thought Him as it 
 were a leper and as one struck by God and 
 afflicted. But He was wounded for our ini- 
 quities, and He was bruised for our sins, the 
 chastisement of our peace was upon Him, 
 and by His bruises we are healed." {Isaias 
 liii . 2 — 5 . ) 
 G 
 
82 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 *' The Lamb that was slain is worthy to 
 receive power and divinity and wisdom and 
 strength and honour and glory and bene- 
 diction." (Apoc. V. 12.) 
 
 ** But thou our God art gracious and 
 true, patient and ordering all things in 
 mercy. For if we sin we are Thine, know- 
 ing Thy greatness ; and if we sin not, we 
 know that we are counted with Thee." 
 ( Wisdom XV, /.) 
 
 ** Son, when thou comest to the service 
 of God, stand in justice and in fear, and pre- 
 pare thy soul for temptation. Humble thy 
 leart and endure ; incline thine ear and re- 
 ceive the words of understanding, and make 
 not haste in the time of clouds. Wait on 
 God with patience, join thyself to God and 
 endure that thy life may be increased in the 
 latter end. Take all that shall be brought 
 upon thee ; and in thy sorrow endure, and 
 in thy humiliation keep patience . For gold 
 and silver are tried in the fire, but accept- 
 able men in the furnace of humiliation. 
 Believe "God and He will recover thee and 
 direct thy way, and trust in Him. Keep 
 His fear, and grow old therein. Ye that 
 fear the Lord, wait for His mercy ; and go 
 not aside from Him, lest ye fall. *Ye that 
 fear the Lord believe Him and your reward 
 shall not be made void. Ye that fear the 
 Lord, hope in Him, and mercy shall come 
 
FAVOURITE SCRIPTURE TEXTS 83 
 
 to you for your delight. Ye that fear the 
 Lord, love Him; and your hearts shall be 
 enlightened. My children, behold the 
 generation of men ; and know ye that no 
 one hath hoped in the Lord and hath been 
 confounded.'' {Ecclesiasticiis it. 1 — //.) 
 
 '' And now thus saith the Lord that 
 created thee, O Jacob, and formed thee, O 
 Israel : Fear not, for I have redeemed thee 
 and called thee by thy name ; thou art 
 Mine. When thou shalt pass through the 
 waters, I will be with thee, and the rivers 
 shall not cover thee ; when thou shalt walk 
 in the fire, thou shalt not be burnt, and the 
 flames shall not burn in thee. For I am 
 the Lord thy God, the Holy one of Israel 
 thy Saviour : I have given Egypt for thy 
 atonement, Ethiopia and Saba for thee. 
 Since thou becamest honourable in My eyes 
 thou art glorious : I have loved thee, and 
 I will give men for thee and people for thy 
 lite. Fear not, for I am with thee : I will 
 bring thy seed from the east, arfd gather 
 thee from the west." (Isaias xliil. 1 — 5.) . 
 
 ** But I say to you that hear, love your 
 enemies, do good to them that hate you, 
 bless them that curse you, and pray for 
 them that calumniate you. . . . But love 
 ye your enemies, do good and lend, hoping 
 for nothing thereby, and your reward shall 
 be great ; you shall be the sons of the most 
 
84 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 High, for He is kind to the unthankful and 
 to the evil." {Luke vi. 27 ,) 
 
 '' Wherefore thou art inexcusable, O 
 man, whosoever thou art that judgest, for 
 wherein thou judgest another, thou con- 
 demnest thyself. For thou dost the same 
 things that thou judgest . Fo'r we know that 
 the judgment of God is according to truth 
 against them that do such things. And 
 thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them 
 that do such things and dost the same, that 
 thou shalt escape the judgment of God? or 
 despisest thou the riches of His goodness 
 and patience and long suffering? Know- 
 est thou not that the benignity of God lead- 
 eth thee to penance ? But according to thy 
 hardness and impenitent heart thou trea- 
 surest up to thyself wrath against the day 
 of wrath and revelation of the just judg- 
 ment of God, who will render to every man 
 according to his works . To them indeed, 
 who, according to patience in good work, 
 seek glory and honour arid incorruption, 
 eternal life ; but to them' that are conten- 
 tious, and obey not the truth, but give 
 credit to iniquity, wrath and indignation." 
 {Romans iL 1 — 9.) 
 
 He was fond of recommending the third 
 chapter of St. James on the evils of the 
 tongue and the difference between earthly 
 
FAVOURITE SCRIPTURE TEXTS 85 
 
 and heavenly wisdom. A very favourite 
 Psalm of his was the i 20th : '' I have lifted 
 up my eyes to the mountains whence help 
 shall come to me." As a consolation to 
 those who gave alms generously for the 
 honour of God, he used to point to the three 
 first lines of the 40th Psalm, and to the well- 
 known verses : ** For alms deliver from all 
 sin and from death, and will not suffer the 
 soul to go into darkness. Alms shall be a 
 great confidence before the most high God 
 to all them that give it '' (Tobias iv. 
 1 1 — 12), and to the passage from St. Mat- 
 thew (xxv. 34 — 40). These words from 
 the inspired writers ought to be read, he 
 used to say, for the consolation of the 
 charitable at the hour of death. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Father Galhvey^s Letters. 
 
 Father Gallwey was not a great letter 
 writer. He was not fond, so far as one can 
 tell, of giving spiritual direction by letter, 
 as Saints and holy men have done before 
 him. He preferred to give advice on the 
 spot in the confessional, in private conver- 
 sation, pr in the many retreats which he con- 
 ducted in the fifty years of his priestly life. 
 But as a very large number of persons is 
 sure to have corresponded with him during 
 the forty years he spent in Farm Street, he 
 must have written many letters ; of these 
 comparatively few have come under my 
 notice. Some contain private details un- 
 suitable for pulDlication . A careful selec- 
 tion has been made. All letters to him 
 seem to have been lost or 'destroyed. He 
 was most unwilling that any record of his 
 deeds should be published after his death. 
 
HIS LETTERS 87 
 
 To a friend, a religious of the Society of 
 the Holy Child, who remarked : ** They will 
 be writing your life some day/' he made 
 the characteristic answer : ** I shall take 
 good care that they don't." 
 
 Many of the letters, stretching over a 
 period of thirty-four years, bear no date or 
 address. They prove the kindness of his 
 heart, and an intense desire to raise his 
 penitents in the world and in religion to 
 the perfection of their state. The motive 
 he placed before thetn was the love of God. 
 He never wearies of reminding us that God 
 is first and foremost the Father and Lover 
 of the Soul, but love detaands a return in 
 love. The letters must speak for them- 
 selves . They will reward attentive perusal, 
 as the outcome of a holy man's prayer and 
 practice, and of experience gained during 
 fifty years in the confessional. These let- 
 ters, few though they be, enable us to 
 follow the lines of his broad and generous 
 spiritual direction. We hope against hope 
 that more letters may be forthcoming. 
 
 For the convenience of the reader a few 
 words are prefixed, not to all, but to some 
 of these letters, giving their drift. 
 
§8 MEkOlRS OF FATliER CALLWEY 
 
 I. 
 
 Letters to a Penitent in the World. 
 
 ( Father Gallwey, in this letter, urges kind 
 thoughts of God, and the love of children 
 and friends for His sake. The love of 
 Christ in the mysteries of religion is veiled, 
 lest they distract us from the duties of 
 life . ) 
 
 " My dear Child in Christ, 
 
 ** God bless you : I am hoping that you 
 will come, if God so wlls. Meanwhile I 
 will try to answer some questions. 
 
 *' Mortal sin is very easy to those who 
 neglect prayer and never deny themselves 
 pleasure, and give noi alms and do not fre- 
 quent Mass or Sacraments, and go into dan- 
 gers, such as bad theatres, unlawful love- 
 making, &c. Mortal sin is not at all easy to 
 those who are keeping far from it, hedged 
 round by Rules and Sacraments, and 
 Superiors and prayer, &c. . . . 
 
 " There are times, e .g., during Medita- 
 tion, when we select our subject and deter- 
 mine what sorts of thoughts we shall submit 
 to the millstone. If a person was habitually 
 to select severe texts, or sentences from 
 Massillon or some Jansenist writer, the 
 mind would gradually become steeped in 
 
HIS LETTERS 89 
 
 gloomy thoughts, and during the day these 
 gloomy thoughts would crop up unbidden. 
 
 '' If in meditation and prayer time you 
 3Ut under the millstone thoughts of God's 
 .ove, the mind becomes educated in that 
 direction, and those thoughts crop up of 
 themselves afterwards. Besides this, good 
 angels often suggest thoughts, and so do 
 bad angels, during the day. Saints gradu- 
 ally get a great command over their 
 thoughts all day long. As love grows it be- 
 comes more hard not to think of God. God 
 is a jealous God. But at the same 
 time He loves all His children and 
 wishes you to love them all. He does not 
 forbid you to like and to love children 
 and friends. Very often what pleases you, 
 pleases Him too ; and He by no means 
 wishes you to be without this pleasure, as it 
 helps necessary work. The only time we 
 must deny nature is when what pleases na- 
 ture displeases God, not when both nature 
 and God are pleased together. God is the 
 Creator of nature, much in it is good and 
 pleases Him. 
 
 *' Our Lord loves Charity above all, and 
 if you pray for me He will give me graces at 
 your request which He might not give me 
 at my own, and moreover He will give you 
 more graces than if you asked for yourself, 
 because you add alms to prayer. 
 
go MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 ** Our Lord is obliged to keep all mys- 
 teries covered by a veil for the present. If 
 you realized the Blessed Sacrament you 
 could scarcely attend to your children. So, 
 too, if you realized the mysteries of His 
 Passion, or Purgatory, &c. 
 
 ** We come into life poisoned and di- 
 seased, sins committed in the past, and 
 sometimes worldly education increases the 
 poison, so that we grow up with a mania 
 for self and for riches, comfort, &c ., which 
 has to be conquered. 
 
 *' Very truly yours in Christ, 
 
 P. Gallwey." 
 
 (Our Lord through humility allowed His 
 Apostles greater success in the work of con- 
 version than fell to His own lot. People in 
 the world exaggerate perfection. Christ 
 does not wish to deaden love of kindred or 
 friends. He loved dearly His Mother, 
 cousins, and friends.) 
 
 Stonyhurst College, Blackburn. 
 
 September i, 1887. 
 
 '' My dear Child in Christ, 
 
 ** God bless you and all dear to you ! 
 
 *' Here I am in the thick of the Retreat, 
 but though there are 1 20 in retreat they do 
 
HIS LETTERS 91 
 
 not take up my time as much as ladies 
 would or nuns, so that I can write to you. 
 Father Colley is making the retreat, and he 
 is a model to all. 
 
 '* You must understand well and make 
 use of the Rules of St. Ignatius for the Dis- 
 cernment of Spirits. 
 
 ** Curiously enough during the Tridiiam 
 
 at I answered one of your questions. I 
 
 was pointing out how our Blessed Lord, 
 through humility of heart, put His Apostles 
 forward and Himself in the background. 
 Our Blessed Saviour in three years con- 
 verted about 500, St. Peter in one sermon 
 3,000 (St. John iv. '^J, 38). It is very 
 good to pray that others may succeed better 
 than we do. 
 
 *' It is quite surprising how God in His 
 present plan for our redemption has multi- 
 plied humiliations to keep us down, infirmi- 
 ties of body and soul . At the same time God 
 wants us also to have more understanding 
 and knowledge, and will give it as soon as 
 we are humble enough, 
 
 '* You wonder if people sometimes exag- 
 gerate perfection beyond our Lord's exarii- 
 ple. Yes, very much. You see this often 
 in the Gospel. The Pharisee would not let 
 Magdalen come near him. Our Lord 
 would. The Pharisees wondered why He 
 dined with jsinners . St . John and St . James 
 
92 MEMOIRS, OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 wished that fire might come down on the 
 Samaritan because they would not receive 
 our Lord . He chid them ( St . Luke ix . 55). 
 They wanted to hinder some from working 
 miracles because they did not go about with 
 them. He did not approve. (Mark ix. 
 38.) I do not think that our Blessed 
 Lord wishes proper affection and friend- 
 ship to be deadened. He says, indeed 
 (Matt. X. 35), that He is come to separate 
 a man from his father, but He means when 
 He calls a son to be a Christian and the 
 Father remains a Jew. He rewards those 
 also who leave father and mother for His 
 sake. 
 
 He Himself had five of His cousins 
 among His Apostles, and many more 
 among His disciples, and His union with 
 His mother is our model. He loves her 
 more because of her high graces than on 
 account of the natural tie ; but both are His 
 own creation. 
 
 '' You say : ' I wonder why God made 
 people, for the best cannot add to His 
 glory.' This seems in one sense to be true, 
 but undoubtedly we can add to God's acci- 
 dental glory as theologians call it . You can 
 be quite sure that there is a way in which 
 God is affected by joy and sorrow, so that 
 we can deal with Him as with a friend. 
 '' Very truly yours in Christ, 
 
 P.Gallwey.'' 
 
HIS LETTERS 93 
 
 ( In the use of free tim'e it is well to follow 
 natural inclination, unless there he a clear 
 indication to work for others dependent on 
 us, as children on their mother. In doubt 
 how to act, ask our Lord, when there is no 
 one near to guide us He will be doubly 
 attentive to our call. A rule of time ap- 
 proved for those in the world is the best 
 way to know the hours to be devoted to 
 prayer arid work.) 
 
 
 My dear Child in Christ, 
 
 . .St. Ignatius calls his Rules for dis- 
 cernment of spirits, ' Rules which help to 
 a certain extent to distinguish inspiration? 
 which come from a good or bad angel,' &c. 
 If a person was in a very intense state ofl 
 fervour a thought of self-complacency 
 would probably cause alarm and trouble, as 
 St. Gabriel's words to our Lady. The 
 Rules help us to distinguish, but we often 
 want, moreover, lielp from a master or 
 Superior, and also that special gift of the 
 Holy Ghost called discernment. With re- 
 gard to working for others or praying, &c., 
 the best way is to have a rule of time ap- 
 proved. With regard to free time, I would 
 advise you in your case to follow your 
 attrait until you see clearly that you have a 
 duty to do for others . Your danger would 
 
( I 
 
 94 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 be to be scrupulous, and to be consequently 
 unable to fix your mind, because some dis- 
 tracting fear is worrying. You must be 
 God's little child, and whenever you are in 
 doubt whether you may pray or read or must 
 go to your children, turn to 'Him and say : 
 * My dear Lord, you know I am quite wil- 
 ling to do anything you want/ After this, 
 follow your attrait till a clear indication 
 comes to the contrary. Our Lord likes you 
 to be o'ften in doubt in order that you may 
 often come to Him and own helplessness. 
 
 '*About the lonely feeling, only our Lord 
 can fill the void . If you are working for the 
 children He will often make you feel how 
 grateful He is to you, and when you Tiave 
 no one at hand to lead you, He will be 
 doubly good. You have much more of a 
 docile spirit than is ordinary, and therefore 
 you lean more. This is a grace, but very 
 soon you will find that our Blessed Lord is 
 really your friend and guide and Father and 
 true love . Even in this world our Lord will 
 to a great extent fill the void. 
 
 ** ' I wonder whether it is good or bad to 
 feel a separate life from others.' " In your 
 case good ; but there will grow in you 
 a great interest in all sorts of persons. 
 
 ** Poverty of spirit is not humbug, but a 
 very great reality. But remember that 
 Christ means Gospel poverty to be quite 
 
HIS LETTERS 95 
 
 different from starvation poverty , He un- 
 dertakes to provide a hundredfold for those 
 who leave all. * I suppose for those who 
 care much about God this life becomes 
 more or less a Purgatory.' Quite right I 
 The Imitation says : ' Know for certain that 
 you must lead a dying life ' ; the cross with 
 much interior consolation. The cross 
 brought redemption from sin within reach 
 of the whole world. How do we know that 
 one Mass does not release a soul ? It often 
 does release many more than one. The In- 
 dulgence helps besides. 
 
 ** Yours very truly in Christ, 
 
 P. Gallwey." 
 
 (A meek mistress is strong, and governs 
 her house, her children and 'servants. 
 Meekness is not weakness. We are not to 
 be over-anxious or to see too many defects 
 in ourselves. Good seed can be dropped 
 even in a drawing-room.) 
 
 Navemter i6th, 
 
 '' My dear Child in Christ, 
 
 " You say the last three years have gone 
 by slowly. That is because you have 
 worked very hard, and travelled over much 
 
96 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 ground in the spiritual life. It has been a 
 life of genuine hard work. 
 
 ** The thought that the 'Gospel unfits us 
 for ordinary life must be a niistake. If the 
 Gospel were carried out, this world would 
 be a paradise. Sometimes we overlook 
 certain parts of the Gospel and then get our- 
 selves into a puzzle . We only take portions 
 of it as heretics do. Now, with regard to 
 the management of children and servants. 
 If we take the whole Gospel we shall find 
 that meekness does not mean weakness. 
 Our Saviour was very meek in His Passion, 
 but full of courage. Observe His gentle 
 word to the servant who struck Him, and 
 remember, too, that the meek possess the 
 land in the end. A meek mistress is silent 
 for the moment, shows no anger, but comes 
 back to the point next day after prayer and 
 sees that all obey. Do not imagine that 
 you are unfit to govern a house. You are 
 quite quick-sighted enough, and you are 
 certainly firm, and our Lord will help you ; 
 you are over-anxious and see too many de- 
 fects in yourself. The Devil's favourite 
 temptation with you is to tell you something 
 against yourself io perplex and depress you. 
 Remember St. Ignatius' Rule. If our Lord 
 wants you to see a fault He will speak in 
 a way that will neither perplex nor distress, 
 
 '* Your argument about the necessity of 
 
HIS LETTERS 97 
 
 an authoritative voice to settle doubts and 
 disputes in religious questions is perfect. All 
 you need add is prayer, because oftentimes 
 Protestants are not ready for argument till 
 prayer has prepared the way. You are 
 right also in your view that oftentimes in 
 drawing-rooms you can sow a good seed 
 and must leave it to time to take root. 
 *' Yours very truly in Christ, 
 
 P. Gallwey." 
 
 ( Love is pain, the value of love is proved 
 by pain. Killing lawful affection does not 
 promote the love of God. The love of 
 mothers, wives and friends is a wonderful 
 help to love God. Father Gallwey wishes 
 that he was ten times more affectionate. 
 Writing down thoughts in meditation time, 
 as a remedy against distraction, stops fer- 
 vour. A bit of the Our Father or of Hail 
 Mary, or of a text, is better, a plan followed 
 by St. Theresa. Tidiness in home and 
 dress and servants is to be insisted upon ; 
 and dowdiness is to be avoided.) 
 
 '' My dear Child in Christ, 
 
 '' God bless you and all dear to you. He 
 says to you : ' What I am doing, you know 
 
 H 
 
98 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 not now, but you will know hereafter/ 
 Acceptable men are tried in the furnace of 
 humiliation, and so He tries you to purify 
 you more and save you from pride. Read 
 the first thirteen verses (chap. 2) of Eccle- 
 siasticus (not Ecclesiastes) and take them 
 in well . 
 
 *' What you say, that love is pain, pleases 
 me much. Pain proves that love is 
 genuine. Love on earth must no doubt be 
 a foretaste of the hunger and thirst of pur- 
 gatory. Pray often that the children may 
 die rather than ever lose innocence. You 
 are not wrong. For though God, in His 
 infinite mercy, can mend the torn robe with 
 jewels, He would die to prevent one mortal 
 sin. Read the fourth chapter of Wisdom 
 on Innocence, verses 7 to 17. 
 
 " Scenery and nature help many souls to 
 God, but I think that living souls and their 
 wants in town are a grander study. * The 
 proper study of mankind is man.' The 
 poor Centurion I Do not be hard on him. 
 Our Lord never stays away because a man 
 says : ' Oh, Lord, I am not worthy.' How 
 do you know that He did not go afterwards. 
 The Devil guessed that our Saviour was 
 (he Christy the Messias promised, but did 
 not know that He was God. If he had 
 known he never would have worked for His 
 death. The early Fathers say that one 
 
HIS LETTERS 99 
 
 reason why St. Joseph was espoused to our 
 Lady was to conceal from the Devil the 
 miraculous birth of Jesus. It is not at all 
 certain that the Devil knows all our 
 thoughts — ^more probably not . He can give 
 good guesses from outward signs, but theo- 
 logians think that the devils do not read all 
 our thoughts. 
 
 ** I cannot conceive that killing an affec- 
 tion would promote love of God. Sensual 
 affection is, I think, a great impediment, but 
 I see in mothers and wives and friends an 
 affection which helps wonderfully to love 
 for God. It would be strange, indeed, if 
 God, who creates nature and grace, should 
 make one antagonistic to the other. 'St. 
 Paul speaks of a want of affection as one of 
 the worst curses of the latter days ( 2 Tim. 
 iii. I — 5). Nature ought not to be crushed 
 except when it is vitiated by sin and inor- 
 dinate. I wish I was ten times more affec- 
 tionate. St. Paul is wonderfully affection- 
 ate. Some Saints who were very affection- 
 ate have for God's sake risen above it, e .g,y 
 the Mother of the Machabees and our 
 Lady. 
 
 *' When you mix in society, I do not think 
 that you are bound to be interested in the 
 trivialities of life. I think your best plan is 
 to go about eagerly seeking for the chance 
 of doing some good by sympathy and 
 charity . 
 
loo MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 '* Bossuet is an orator, and orators say 
 things to strike. When he represents our 
 Lord as a sinner, he is only making use of 
 what St. Paul says, that He became sin for 
 us, or rather that God made Him sin 
 ( 2 Cor. V. 2 I ) (not sin the verb but sin the 
 substantive). I have often, in the pulpit, 
 called attention to the fact that the brazen 
 serpent was a type of Christ. At first sight, 
 this seems odd, till we remember that in 
 His Passion the Lord laid on Him the ini- 
 quities of us all, and He on the Cross per- 
 sonified the sinner. 
 
 '* I do not quite like the writing plan dur- 
 ing Meditation, though I remember hear- 
 ing one of our Fathers wish that he could 
 be allowed to have a pen in his hand all the 
 time. I think a pen would prevent all fer- 
 vent colloquies. I advise you rather when 
 your mind is wandering to begin colloquies. 
 Use bits of the ' Our Father ' or ' Hail 
 Mary ' or some text. St. Teresa used to 
 do this, and I always find a great help in 
 this plan. 
 
 '' I think sonie reading of modern books 
 for conversation's sake would be desirable. 
 Take care to get a tidy house that does not 
 look too dingy, and have tidy servants, arid 
 do not let your dress attract attention by 
 being dowdy. 
 
 '' Consolation and desolation are real 
 
HIS LETTERS lot 
 
 supernatural states or preternatural, sent or 
 permitted by God, and over which you have 
 no control. The more you get near to God, 
 the more you will be out of conceit with 
 yourself, and see more defects. Nierem- 
 berg and Lancisius are both very unearthly 
 men and most energetic in pushing for- 
 ward. 
 
 ** Very truly yours in Christ, 
 
 P. Gallv^ey." 
 
 (Christ accepts half an hour given to 
 children, servants, or the poor, as if spent 
 before the Tabernacle. Love is made up 
 of little acts ; great occasions for its display 
 are scarce.) 
 
 " My dear Child in Christ, 
 
 *"The thoughts which you have to bear in 
 mind are : First, that our Lord most faith- 
 fully adheres to His word, ' What you did 
 to the least of my little ones you did it to. 
 me/ and therefore accepts every half hour 
 which you devote to your children or your 
 servants or the poor, as if spent directly on 
 Himself in the Blessed Sacrament ; second- 
 ly, that your life at present made up of 
 home duties resembles our Lady's at Nazar- 
 eth ; (you can become most holy by doing 
 
102 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY . 
 
 all these daily duties in union with the car- 
 penter's work at Nazareth arid the Blessed 
 Virgin's housework), thirdly, that love is 
 made up of little things. You will find con- 
 tinually little opportunities of proving to our 
 Lord that you remember Him and love 
 Him. The love of married life and the love 
 of mother and child proves itself by a num- 
 ber of little acts. Great occasions are 
 scarce. 
 
 ** Very truly yours in "Christ, 
 
 P. Gallwey.'* 
 
 (Father Gallwey again urges on his peni- 
 tent poverty of spirit, hospitality, tidiness in 
 home and dress. Our Lord and His 
 Mother practised more than they ask of us. 
 Christ overlooks a mother's shortcomings 
 and loves her far more than she loves her 
 children. A mother can love Christ as 
 much as any nun. The confessor's guid- 
 ance checks the extravagance into which 
 
 love might betray us.) 
 
 * 
 
 ''My dear Child in Christ, 
 
 '* Remember our Lord's word . Blessed 
 are the poor in spirit. All cannot be poor in 
 effect, but all can be poor in spirit, and it 
 
HIS LETTERS 103 
 
 is much better to be poor in spirit and actu- 
 ally rich, than actually poor, and not poor 
 in spirit. A nun may be in effect poor, and 
 yet in her heart may be desiring the good 
 things of this world. On the other hand 
 a lady may be rich, and yet truly desirous 
 of our Lord's poverty. In the book of 
 Esther you see a good instance of poverty 
 of spirit. Esther wears lier royal crown, 
 but detests the pride of it. 
 
 **0f course our Blessed Lord needed not 
 30verty for Himself. Riches could not 
 larm Him. He was thinking of all of us, 
 and amongst the rest, of you His dear 
 child, and He chose poverty in order to save 
 your heart from loving riches inordinately. 
 In your position, then, you cannot be poor 
 in effect, but you can draw quite close to 
 our Lord by poverty of spirit. You must 
 keep your house nice and entertain hospit- 
 ably and dress tidily, and all the while in 
 your heart wish to be poor with our Lady, 
 and seek for opportunities of tasting 
 poverty by denying yourself some luxuries. 
 Aspirations, therefore, towards the imita- 
 tion of Christ are not at all mere illusions. 
 -Provided you do nothing outwardly without 
 advice and act under some obedience, you 
 will find that all the good desires will help 
 you much to our Lord. Even in the re- 
 ligious life nuns and monks are obliged to 
 
i , 
 
 104 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 regulate their poverty according to the 
 duties of their state. If they want a good 
 hbrary, they must have it, and if they must 
 be dressed neatly, they must have tidy 
 clothes. Our Lord and His Mother pur- 
 posely practised more than they wish us 
 to practise. You will find much more peace 
 if you will try to look on yours'elf asi our 
 Lord's little child. Instead of blaming 
 yourself because you do not equal the 
 Saints, try to take the view I take of you, 
 that our Blessed Lord is looking down on 
 you with wonderful pleasure, loving you 
 immensely more than you love your chil- 
 dren, not noticing your shortcomings, but 
 wonderfully contented because you make 
 efforts to please Him. This view will warm 
 your heart more ; it is the true view, and 
 no vanity will come from it. . . . To 
 every one our Lord says : ' Thou shalt love 
 with thy whole heart.' You may be quite 
 sure that our Blessed Saviour gives you 
 full leave to love Him as much as any 
 nun loves Him. All my intercourse 
 with you has left this impression on my 
 mind, that He gives you great grace, and 
 is very much pleased with you. Your only 
 danger would be if you pushed on without 
 guidance. The Devil might then trick you 
 and get you to injure health or do some ex- 
 travagant things. But so long as our Lord 
 
HIS LETTERS 105 
 
 continues to give you grace to be very open 
 the Devil cannot trick you. 
 
 I am always pleased to hear of chil- 
 dren's acts of self-denial. They win much 
 grace for after-life. 
 
 ** Very truly yours in Christ, 
 
 P. Gallwey.'' 
 
 '' My dear Child in Christ, 
 
 '' Though I wrote yesterday before re- 
 ceiving your last letter I will write again 
 just to say again God bless you always, my 
 good and dear child in Christ. 
 
 'T do not like your fasting every day. 1 
 think it is not safe. I think twice a week 
 better for you. 
 
 *'I am so pleased with what you write that 
 all worries are endurable except the fear of 
 sin. Our Lord will love you for writing 
 that, and will save you from deliberate sin. 
 Be very filial with God : call Him Father, 
 and call Him Jesus, Father, and Saviour. 
 These names must be very dear to you. 
 *' Very truly yours in Christ, 
 
 P. Gallwey." 
 
 (His correspondent's doctrine on sen- 
 sible devotion is incorrect. Such devotion 
 
io6 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 is a wonderful help to love. We should ac- 
 cept it gratefully when our Lord sends it, 
 and be patient \vhen he withdraws it. 
 Valuable advice is given for the training of 
 children by strictness and gentleness born 
 of a mother's love. Children should be en- 
 couraged to love flowers, to arrange them 
 for the altar, arid to give them to the sick. 
 Quickness in seeing faults in our neighbour 
 is a useful gift, if we are ready to help him 
 by prayer and a kind word. As for pen- 
 ance, it is better to offer it for others than 
 for ourselves. Penance for others has a 
 double value : while remaining penance it is 
 also an alms.) 
 
 '* My dear Child in Christ, 
 
 '* God bless you always and God bless 
 each of your children and everyone else 
 dear to you I 
 
 ** Your doctrine about sensible devotion is 
 wrong — it is an exaggeration and might do 
 harm. Of course it is true that the feelings 
 belong to the animal nature, but would it 
 not be a most grave heresy to say that the 
 senses of the body cannot help to sanctity ? 
 The eyes belong to the animal nature . Are 
 we not to use them as helps to salvation ? 
 Are we not to read good books or look at 
 
HIS LETTERS 107 
 
 a crucifix or at the poor? St. Ignatius 
 strongly urges us in retreat to pray for tears, 
 and he means not merely inward grief but 
 tears from the eyes . The Protestants have 
 adopted your false principle and pushed it 
 farther. They are fond of quoting the text, 
 * Rend your hearts and not your gar- 
 ments,' and wish to believe that God only 
 wants inward penance and not bodily pain 
 or weariness. Holy Church on the con- 
 trary, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, 
 knows that the body and soul must work 
 together. If inward sorrow is great, there 
 is sure to be outward penance, and so sen- 
 sible consolation is often a wonderful help 
 to love, and takes away inordinate relish for 
 this world. So, please, my dear child, do 
 not try to stifle sensible devotion whenever 
 our Lord sends it to you ; accept it grate- 
 fully as a great help, and be humble and 
 patient when He withdraws it. 
 
 '*You say that your sister thinks that you 
 spoil your children. On this point L think, 
 firstly, that you will be rendering them a 
 great service if you accustom them from 
 childhood to obey promptly, to conquer sel- 
 fishness, to be obliging to everyone, to do 
 acts of self-denial, to love to give alms ; but 
 secondly, all this must be so managed that 
 they shall never be too much afraid of you. 
 I see in you at the present day very great 
 
io8 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEV 
 
 proof of the good that has come to you in 
 consequence of having been brought up 
 strictly. The art to be learned is to com- 
 bine strictness with gentleness. In other 
 words there must be true motherly love, 
 true Christian love. For in love there is 
 both strength and gentleness . You say that 
 you have lost your former tastes for the 
 garden and for adorning the house. I do 
 not wonder at this, and this is one more 
 reason why I do not like your crushing sen- 
 sible devotion, for I believe that our X.ord 
 is very much pleased with you, and I think 
 I do know your spiritual state well. If then 
 our Lord is pleased with you, and is wean- 
 ing you Ifrom this world, it is that He may 
 unite you more closely to Himself, and 
 therefore I think He will often send you 
 some spiritual consolation as a help, other- 
 wise I think that your health would break 
 down, if you had always to work on in dry- 
 ness and desolation. Get your children to 
 have a taste for flowers, and to grow flowers 
 for the altar, and to give a bunch of flowers 
 to sick persons. You say also you are 
 quick to see faults in others. I have 
 thought much on this talent of seeing faults 
 in others, and this is the outcome of my 
 studies : If you become aware that a poor 
 neighbour has rheumatic fever, this know- 
 ledge brings with it an obligation o"f giving 
 
HIS LETTERS 109 
 
 some beef -tea or some other help. Even 
 so, if I see a fault in my neighbour, my dis- 
 covery brings with it an obligation of giv- 
 ing him a spiritual alms, so that a quick per- 
 ception of our neighbour's defects is a use- 
 ful gift, if the charity of our heart keeps 
 pace with the quickness of the intellect. 
 But if we see faults quickly and do not give 
 any help, the quick perception becomes a 
 very mischievous disease. . . , Renew 
 every day your faith in His promise that 
 every thought and every word and every act 
 of yours which goes towards helping your 
 children, will be valued as if given directly 
 to our Blessed Lord. . . . 
 
 '' The Devil's plan with you Tias been to 
 fill your mind with panics about yourself, 
 and mistrust 6i your good thoughts. You 
 will obtain very great contrition and very 
 strong love as soon as you begin to believe 
 that our Lord loves you very much, far 
 mor'e than you love your children, and that 
 He is so partial to you that He will not' look 
 at any of your faults, but will cast them 
 behind His back. 
 
 *' With regard to penance, it is a better 
 act to offer up penances to gain graces for 
 others than to'do penances for our own sins, 
 for penance for others has the double value 
 of penance and almsgiving. Another 
 motive for penance is the desire of sharing 
 
no MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALL WE Y 
 
 suffering with our Lord in His suffering for 
 us. 
 
 '' If after any duty that absorbs your 
 mind you find you can turn easily to God, 
 that is a good sign that you have not been 
 far away. Some duties require all your at- 
 tention, but when this attention is given 
 for God, there is no dissipation. 
 *' Very truly yours in Christ, 
 
 P. Gallwey." 
 
 (Our Lord is always delighted when we 
 run to Him in a difficulty. One reason why 
 our Lord spoke in parables and left the 
 Scripture in part difficult to understand, is 
 because He wants us to ask help of Him' 
 and of others. The Devil is a slanderer : 
 he slanders us to God, and God to us, and 
 accuses us to ourselves. Unable to assail 
 God directly, he tries to wound Him by 
 wounding us . ) 
 
 Sidmouth, Augtist 3, 1887. 
 
 '' My dear Child in Christ, 
 
 ''Our Blessed Saviour will be delighted if 
 when you want advice you lift your heart to 
 Him with very filial trust. If I were near 
 you what a consolation it would be to me 
 
HIS LETTERS iii 
 
 if you came to me in a difficulty ; how much 
 more pleased must our Lord be when you 
 run to ^Him'. Try to convince yourself more 
 arid more that you are more dear to Him 
 than the best child on earth is to the best 
 mother, and that the Devil hates you arid 
 torments you simply because you are God's 
 child, and His image. Not being able now 
 to assail God directly, he tries to wound 
 Him by wounding you . Our Lord sees that 
 this persecution comes on you because you 
 belong to Him, and therefore is full of pity 
 for you. One reason why our Lord spoke 
 in parables, and has left the Scripture in 
 part difficult, is because, first, it is part 
 of His plan that we shall all want a mas- 
 ter to help us and so depend on one another. 
 If you could solve all your difficulties my 
 occupation would be gone. . . Secondly, 
 He also wishes us to have some labour in 
 understanding that we may be forced to beg 
 light from Him. As the Jews would never 
 draw near to Him when prospering. He 
 often sent them troubles to force them to 
 have recourse to Him. I am quite sure that 
 you are much pleased when your children 
 come to you to untie a knot for them, and 
 most certainly it is a joy for me when you 
 come to me for help in a difficulty, there- 
 fore, why should not your Heavenly Father 
 also have the comfort of hearing you say 
 
112 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALL WE Y 
 
 ' O Lord, make haste to help me.' Do not 
 let the Devil trick you into the idea that 
 our Lord is displeased with you or far away. 
 Remember that Diabolus means ' accu- 
 ser ' ; he is always accusing you to our 
 Lord, accusing our Lord to you, and ac- 
 cusing you to yourself. Some uncertainty 
 is necessary, otherwise you would not need 
 help from God or man." 
 
 (We are not justified in applying all 
 truths to ourselves. One man's meat is 
 another man's poison. The Devil, in the 
 guise of an angel, may suggest anxious 
 thoughts that worry and perplex, while en- 
 couraging thoughts are from God. Father 
 Gallwey consoles his correspondent ; the 
 fear of God's judgment and of Purgatory is 
 a sign that the judgment will not be severe. 
 He urges again a strong love of God. God 
 is jealous and covets every bit of love. A 
 victory over self is a delightful act of love 
 for God.) 
 
 September 2, i8go. 
 
 '' My dear Child in Christ, 
 
 "This morning a verse in the 11 8th 
 Psalm brought to my mind the con- 
 
HIS LETTERS 113 
 
 versation we had about the chiUing effect 
 of desolation when it goes on long. ' My 
 soul has slumbered, become drowsy, 
 through heaviness.' There are a great 
 many verses in that Psalm which it would 
 be worth your while to study. Take one 
 at a time, or two or three, and just see 
 whether you can mean them. If you come 
 to one that seems unintelligible, skip it. 
 
 ** Yes, there is often truth at the bottom 
 of your difficulties, but it is a truth exagger- 
 ated, or more commonly a truth which is 
 true for others, but does not apply to your 
 soul. It is a truth that * quinine is a good 
 medicine,* but it may chance that to-day it 
 would be poison to you. Some writer has 
 said that our minds are like millstone s, al- 
 ways grinding sonte thought, but it depends 
 on us to determine whether we grind good 
 wheat or bad. There are severe truths in 
 the Gospel, and consoling hopeful truths, 
 and you have power to select one or other to 
 be ground. Naturally you always lean to 
 the severe truths, and after a time they 
 chill you and take the spring out of your 
 soul. St. Ignatius' simple Rule will help 
 you much. You imagine commonly, I 
 guess, that the Devil is deceiving you when 
 encouraging thoughts come, and when you 
 think you are doing well. I believe that 
 it is the other way round. It is when 
 I 
 
114 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 anxious thoughts are worrying and perplex- 
 ing and drying you up that the Devil is 
 speaking under the guise of an angel. Your 
 fear of God's judgments and of Purgatory 
 is a very strong sign that your judgment 
 will not be severe. Be bold and filial and 
 consider strong love to be quite within your 
 reach. 
 
 '* You say : * How silly, what good can it 
 do to God that you should eat less or have 
 some small discomfort ? ' The answer is, 
 * God is a jealous God/ that is to say, He 
 desires love from each of us as much as if 
 He were most jealous. Now God's great 
 rival is Self. Every act of inordinate love 
 of self pains and disappoints our jealous 
 God. Every act, however small, of resist- 
 ance to self and self-conquest is really an 
 act of delightful love to God. 
 
 One sometimes compares persons with 
 high aspirations with others who quietly go 
 on.' Such comparisons are of little use. 
 Unless you know the souls you cannot 
 judge. Some persons who seem to be go- 
 ing on quietly are committing grievous sins 
 very habitually, and some who express high 
 aspirations, do not in their practice aim so 
 high." 
 
^ ^ .'. 
 
 HIS LETTERS iiS 
 
 II. 
 
 Letters to an Old Friend and Peni- 
 tent IN THE World. 
 
 ( Explanation of the Atma Redemptoris . ) 
 
 ** I am very far away from Dorking up in 
 Yorkshire attending a dangerous case. I 
 hope to be back on Friday. Just at pre- 
 sent I am confining myself to one thought : 
 I am begging our Blessed Lady to obtain 
 for me some little share of that maternal 
 love which she had for her Divine Son. I 
 like the words : Mater parvuli JesUy gratia 
 plenay benedicta in mulieribus, ora pro 
 nobis peccatoribus: * Mother of the little 
 child Jesus, full of grace and blessed among 
 women, pray for us sinners.' 
 
 ** Have you ever studied the Alma Re- 
 demptoris? It contains some very useful 
 thoughts. Perhaps you have not a literal 
 translation of it. Paraphrases are not as 
 pretty as the original Latin. The literal 
 sense is something of this kind. 
 
 " ' Sacred (or Venerable) Mother of our 
 Redeemer, who art still (and dost ever con- 
 tinue to be) the open Gate of Heaven, and 
 the star of the Sea, bring help to thy falling 
 people, who desire to rise. Thou who, 
 while nature stood astonished, didst give 
 
ii6 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 birth to thy own Holy Creator .1 
 
 *' ' Before the birth a Virgin, and after, 
 still a Virgin. From Gabriel's mouth ac- 
 cept the greeting, Ave, and take pity on 
 sinners/ 
 
 '* Observe, if a woman can give birth to 
 her own Creator, no miracle of mercy is 
 impossible. You mistook my meaning 
 about the letters. I like yours in style 
 much more than the familiarity of mine . 
 
 *' W^hen I get back on Friday I will find 
 out whether the Enfants de Marie meet next 
 Tuesday and let you know. 
 
 ** God bless you and may our Blessed 
 Lady obtain for you a great increase of love 
 for her Son during this Christmas. 
 
 **My best wishes also to Mother General. 
 *' Very truly yours in Christ, 
 
 P. Gallwey." 
 
 (His correspondent is reminded that we 
 do not make as much use as we should of 
 the Passion in our ordinary prayers.) 
 
 ** When your New Year's note arrived I 
 was making my annual retreat. Since then 
 
 ^ Dante, in the Parcidiso, Canto 33, sa5^s : 
 
 Vero^ine madre figlia del suo fi^Wo 
 
 Umile ed aha piu cbe creatura 
 Termine fisso d'eterno consiglio. 
 
HIS LETTERS 117 
 
 I have been giving a Tridaum in addition to 
 other heavy work ; so that letters are late. 
 However, I find that I am writing on the 
 feast of one of your family Saints, St. Wol- 
 stan. This may make amends somewhat, 
 and now, as I consider that you are only 
 let out to the Dominican Fathers for a time, 
 I must beg of you to take great pains to 
 keep very good, so that we may not have too 
 much trouble to get the garden into good 
 order when the lease expires. I can give 
 you one suggestion which is very much in 
 my mind lately, that is, that we do not make 
 nearly as much use of the Passion of our 
 Lord as we ought. You may remember 
 that when the woman only touched His gar- 
 ment a virtue came out from Him. 
 
 ** Several holy Fathers write that much 
 more does a virtue come out of the Passion 
 even if we only call it to memory ; trying to 
 recollect how things happened. I think it 
 is a most efficacious remedy for troubles to 
 keep repeating some word that our Blessed 
 Lord spoke during the Passion over and 
 over again, during several meditations, till 
 light comes . 
 
 ** Present my dutiful good wishes to 
 Mother Abbess, and any Brothers who may 
 be with you, for there is no knowing when 
 they turn up, and beheve me very truly, 
 
 P. Gallwey.*' 
 
Ii8 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 (Father Gallwey mentions the help he 
 gained from the " Hail Mary " when out 
 of sorts, and adds some words of comfort 
 to the desolate.) 
 
 ** I have been negotiating for a priest for 
 you and I thought that I had one, but his 
 health is an obstacle at present. I hope 
 Rosary Sunday will have brought you some 
 spiritual grace. I used to observe formerly 
 that when an effort was made on that day 
 to honour our Blessed Lady, some marked 
 blessing came to the Church. You seem 
 from your account of yourself to have got 
 one of those lazy fits to which we are all so 
 subject ; and only the Saints know how to 
 resist them properly. One happy thing is 
 that the charity of our Blessed Lord does not 
 give us up when we are inclined to give our- 
 selves up. I have sometimes found good, 
 and great good, when seedy and out of gear, 
 in repeating the first words of the ' Hail 
 Mary ' slowly. Hail, full of grace — the 
 Lord is with thee — I am a sinner — The 
 Lord has good reason to leave me, but He 
 is with thee — there is no sin in thee, full of 
 grace. — Hail, I am glad, I wish you joy. 
 
 *' Another thought that helps is that each 
 step down hill brings so much trouble after; 
 and more as we grow older. We must 
 rouse ourselves at last before we get quite 
 
HIS LETTERS tig 
 
 to the bottom; and then it is very dismal 
 work cHmbing up. As I have often told 
 you before, I am much more surprised at 
 the constancy which I have witnessed dur- 
 ing so many years than at your occasionally 
 getting a fit of desolation. 
 
 I end with a word of Thomas a Kempis, 
 which has helped me before now : ' When 
 you are in trouble do not stick in the mud 
 too much.' The meaning is, do not brood 
 too much over it. Do not imagine that it 
 will not end, or that it is beyond cure. You 
 have got out of former scrapes, and God 
 is merciful now as then.'* 
 
 (The reason why the impression made in 
 Meditation does not always last is because 
 our Lord wishes us to go back to Him dur- 
 ing the day for strength and advice.) 
 
 '' Many thanks for your nice letter. It 
 cheers me to get a bit of good news. You 
 must not wonder that the impressions made 
 by a Meditation seem not to last. Some of 
 them do not last, but some do. 
 
 '' Some do not, because our Lord wishes 
 to keep us near Him' throughout the day, 
 and if by working for one hour we could 
 get bread for the whole day, we should not 
 
i I 
 
 120 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEV 
 
 go back to Him often. Moreover, some 
 impressions He does not wish always to 
 last. Whether we like it or not, there will 
 be a succession of clouds and sunshine to 
 keep us humble. Still you will find that 
 when you have a good useful light, you will 
 often be able, by making a repetition in the 
 same meditation, to deepen the impression 
 made till it becomes familiar. 
 
 **To-day Father Porter takes my place as 
 Rector, but I am to remain in London to. 
 scold you and others. 
 
 ** This evening I begin my retreat at 
 Manresa . Give me a prayer and tell Mother 
 Abbess also to do so. God bless both ! '* 
 
 ** God bless you more and more for your 
 last note, which I read in the train coming 
 here. It is full of charity and kindness. 
 Our Blessed Lord is very good to His child. 
 
 ** I was thinking of your note when my 
 eye fell on a word in the i 24th Psalm : * Do 
 good, O Lord, to those who are good and 
 right of heart.' Through His grace and 
 our Lady's care you seem to me to be al- 
 ways growing in goodness of heart. May 
 you go on till death every hour receiving 
 more graces. All your notes renew in me 
 the thought of which I spoke to you, that 
 
 ■ ■ i ■ 
 
His LETTERS l^t 
 
 I am not doing for you what I ought to be 
 doing . 
 
 *' You have a just claim to spiritual help 
 from me, and you will reproach me properly 
 m Purgatory if I do not do more for you 
 now. Again, my dear Child in Christ, God 
 bless you, and Mother Abbess also/' 
 
 (Father Gallwey introduces a favourite 
 text of his, often quoted with deep feeling, 
 in his sermons — 2 Kings xv. 2i.) 
 
 " May our Lord bless you every hour of 
 the next month in reward of all your great 
 charity. I am snatching a moment to say 
 one word to you in return for your two last 
 letters, which were so very kind and good. 
 I wish I could win good graces for you, 
 I will give you one sentence to think of. 
 Read the xv. chapter of 2 Book of Kings 
 and notice the 21st verse : ' In what place 
 soever Thou shalt be, Lord my King, either 
 in death or in life, there will Thy servant 
 be.* Apply that to our Blessed Lord and 
 His Blessed Mother. Say to them that 
 their child wishes to be with them in life 
 and death, in poverty and in humility. 
 Wherever my Lord and my Lady are, there 
 I wish to be. Again and again, my Hear 
 
t22 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 Child in Christ, may God bless you. Give 
 my very best wishes to Mother General." 
 
 (Life in the world and consecration to 
 God at the same time are quite possible.) 
 
 *' It seems to me that your line is pretty 
 clearly marked out. You wish to be conse- 
 crated, but cannot have the outward forms 
 of consecration. You must be consecrated, 
 and thoroughly so in your heart. Just as 
 there are many who in body are in a con- 
 vent, and in heart worldly, so you must be 
 in body in your home, and in heart a conse- 
 crated spouse of our Lord. That this may 
 be carried out one thing is absolutely neces- 
 sary, to conquer with courage the difficulties 
 in the way of prayer. Just at this moment 
 I know a lady in the world who has to man- 
 age a house, and she seems to have cour- 
 ageously conquered the difficulties that hin- 
 der prayer, and the consequence is that she 
 seems to me to get as large graces as any 
 nun I ever met. 
 
 '' In order to succeed in prayer, you will 
 have to manage your Meditations well, pre- 
 paring points well, and getting suitable sub- 
 jects. It will also be necessary to give a 
 good deal of time to voluntary prayer. 
 With regard to the Meditations, I think it 
 
HIS LETTERS 123 
 
 would help if you always afterwards gave 
 a few minutes to reflection in the morning, 
 to see if all had been done well, and also if 
 you kept a diary, writing every day a few, 
 lines to show how you succeeded, and what 
 thought occupied you. 
 
 *' Put down also in the diary any inspira- 
 tion that comes strongly to your mind dur- 
 ing the day . As to my health, I think I am 
 recovering very steadily, not quite as 
 quickly as might be, but I am decidedly 
 better. 
 
 '' May our Blessed Lord give you a good 
 bit of courage and bless you in every way. 
 
 ** The thought you mention about the 
 glory to God that accrues from an increase 
 of merit, is a specimen of what I mean by 
 an inspiration. That thought helps me 
 very much." 
 
 (Why we pray sometimes like parrots. 
 A miracle on the body at Lourdes is less 
 difficult than the conversion of a soul.) 
 
 *' What I was trying to make clear on 
 Sunday, was that when we say the Stabat 
 Mater y first, we often say so much that we 
 do not mean, like parrots ; for example, the 
 nati valnerati pcenas niecum divide, * share 
 the sufferings of your Son with me.' 
 
124 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 *' Secondly, what then are we to do ? To 
 go on honouring only with our lips, or to 
 turn honest and lay aside all such prayers ! 
 
 ** Thirdly, neither course will do ; we 
 must rouse ourselves, and mount up to a 
 much higher state far above our flesh and 
 blood. 
 
 '* Fourthly, How can we get to such a 
 state seeing that we do not even desire to 
 get to it ? We don't wish for sufferings . 
 
 *' Fifthly, we can ask our Lady to pray for 
 us sinners . She knows what to pray for ; 
 we don't. She will pray earnestly for the 
 better gifts for us. 
 
 ** Sixthly, but we must remember that it is 
 easier for God to cure a blind man at 
 Lourdes than to cure our souls, (a) Be- 
 cause the blind man is eager to be cured ; 
 we are riot, (b) Because his sins have not 
 caused his blindness ; our blindness is an 
 effect of sin. 
 
 *' I arrange matters differently. I like 
 going round the wounds of our Lord and 
 asking help for different groups at each. 
 By the crown of thorns I ask for Superiors ; 
 by the right hand for all in the state of pain, 
 and for all benefactors ; by the left hand 
 for all now in grievous sin ; by His sacred 
 feet for all I have trampled upon, and for 
 all trampled on by others, and for all who 
 suffer much ; by the sacred side I ask for all 
 
HIS LETTERS 125 
 
 for whom I am specially bomid to pray, who 
 have peculiar claims on account of new re- 
 lationship, religious bonds, friendship and 
 kindness, &c. However^ I shall tell you 
 more when I see you, which I hope will be 
 next Saturday ; I will write again exact 
 hour. If our Blessed Lord wills it we can 
 manage Extreme Unction. I will spend a 
 day or two with you.'' 
 
 (Valuable advice to souls in desolation.) 
 
 ''God bless you 1 I was going to write to 
 you about yesterday's letter when your card 
 
 about poor arrived. May our Lord 
 
 be very good to her ; she has had a fair 
 share of Purgatory in this world. About 
 yourself. Open the 2nd Chapter of Eccle- 
 siasticus (not Ecclesiastes) and read thir- 
 teen verses. Also read St. Ignatius' des- 
 cription of desolation in the Rules for the 
 discernment of spirits. You have them in 
 the Retreat prayers. I have often found 
 that in merely reading over what he says 
 about desolation to persons who were suf- 
 fering from it, the cloud was removed. 
 
 " He describes the soul as ' wholly slug- 
 gish and tepid and sad, without hope, with- 
 out love.' That is to say, the poor sufferer 
 thinks his soul to be in this state, and all 
 
126 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 ■ ■ 
 
 the while he may be gaining more merit far 
 than when in consolation . God is purposely 
 withdrawing sensible help in order to teach 
 you to live by faith and to trust Him when 
 all seems desperate. He is not gone away. 
 He is not far off. He is only waiting a 
 little while until you have conquered the 
 devil, and then He comes back. God bless 
 you again. May our Lord come back and 
 give you a double share of 'Christian 
 graces." 
 
 (A few words of consolation to his old 
 friend.) 
 
 "A very happy Feast to you and your sis- 
 ter and your papa and everybody else at 
 Maidenhead. Your little note I look upon 
 as the quarterly rent which is an acknow- 
 ledgment that still belongs to us . When 
 
 Europe gets back to a right state we shall 
 have our own again. Meanwhile I have a 
 thought for you which I take from our 
 Office for the Feast of the Sacred Heart. 
 If you will open your Bible at the twelfth 
 chapter of the Prophet Isaias, you will find 
 the thought that our Blessed Lord wishes 
 you to have to-morrow and henceforth in 
 life and in death. * I will give thanks to 
 Thee, O Lord, for Thou wast angry with 
 
HIS LETTERS 127 
 
 me. Thy wrath is turned away and Thou 
 hast comforted me ! Beloved God is my 
 Saviour. I will deal confidently and will 
 not fear ! * Find some time to go to your 
 chapel and think of the verses of this chap- 
 ter, one at a time, and make a good act of 
 faith, that they are sent to you from 
 the Sacred Heart of our Lord." 
 
 ( He urges greater care of health and re- 
 minds his correspondent that God values 
 much more our desires than our acts . ) 
 
 ** You will be most welcome on Monday 
 if you come, and if you wish to come to the 
 Confessional at i or 1.30, before the de- 
 vout, come. I will meet you there in order 
 that you may not be kept waiting. Take 
 great care not to undertake more than you 
 have a right to do. It is much easier for 
 our Lord to give you internal graces in your 
 own room, even at Dorking, than to work 
 miracles to cure your body if over-tired. 
 With regard to the words of the Imitation, 
 so often brought under your eye, they con- 
 tain a good lesson for your present state. 
 If you were well, you might, as you say, 
 run off to Westbury and be there in body. 
 In your present state you can do little cor- 
 
128 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 porally. All you can do is to watch your 
 heart arid its desires. Luckily our Blessed 
 Lord, like every other true friend, values 
 the desires of the heart immeasurably more 
 than tlie outward acts. The warning given 
 to you is that your wTiole attention is to 
 be given to your desires . For instance, you 
 must not be too much spent on actually go- 
 ing to London for All Souls, nor on going 
 to Mass. What is most important is that 
 you should desire to be with our Lord and 
 doing His will. I called your attention to 
 the 1 1 8th Psalm for this very reason, that 
 it expresses so wonderfully the desires and 
 thoughts of a loving heart. Try more and 
 more to form intense desires." 
 
 (Greater trust in God, especially in sick- 
 ness, is the advice of the last letter.) 
 
 '* Dr. Harper will not let me stir as yet. 
 He is at my throat every morning. I am 
 afraid, therefore, that I shall not be able 
 to get to you till the Feast of the Assump- 
 tion. I shall certainly go that day what- 
 ever happens. Meanwhile, may God bless 
 you and Mother Abbess. Try vigorously 
 not to lose great trust in our Blessed Lord 
 during your present starvation. He sees 
 
His letteks m 
 
 every desire of your heart, and every t'ime 
 you wish for Holy Communion you give 
 Him joy. He can speak to you and bless 
 you in your room. You give Him very 
 great pleasure, indeed, every time you make 
 an act of trust in the mercy and love of His 
 Sacred Heart. Again, may He bless His 
 suffering child. We must have a good talk 
 about Extreme Unction next Monday/' 
 
V 1 . t 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Letters to Religious of the Society of the 
 
 Holy Child Jesus. 
 
 The letters in this chapter were ad- 
 dressed to members of the Society of the 
 Holy Child Jesus. Providence seems to 
 have allowed that Father Gallwey's apos- 
 tolic work with nuns should be mainly de- 
 voted to the Religious of the Holy Child and 
 to the Society of the Sacred Heart. His 
 retreats to ladies in the world at the Sacred 
 Heart Convent, Roehampton, stretched 
 over a period of nearly fifty years. The 
 first was in September, i860, the last in 
 May, 1906. He gave also retreats and Tri- 
 duunis to the Religious, and from the 
 autumn of 1877 to his death was Director 
 of the Children of Mary, established in that 
 Convent. His labours for the Society 
 of the Holy Child Jesus covered a shorter 
 period, about the last twenty years of his 
 
HIS LETTERS TO RELIGIOUS 131 
 
 life. He gave retreats at Mayfield and St, 
 Leonards during this interval ; and he was 
 brought into close communication with the 
 Religious at Cavendish Square, where, as 
 Director, he gave Instructions and Medita- 
 tions to the Children of Mary. To both 
 Societies he sent valuable subjects. 
 
 He was attracted to these Orders for vari- 
 ous reasons, one probably being that 
 both have rendered eminent service in 
 the cause of Catholic Education. For in all 
 that concerned the training of youth of either 
 sex Father Gallwey took the keenest inter- 
 est. He was most anxious that nuns should 
 aim at a high standard of education ; and 
 urged the importance of this truly apostolic 
 work in private conversations, in retreats, 
 and in his letters . The battle of the Church 
 is fought in the schools, he thought, and no 
 pains should be spared to make our edu- 
 cational establishments thoroughly up-to- 
 date. Obviously the spiritual training of 
 Religious and their pupils should hold the 
 first place in the programme. True spiri- 
 tuality, love of God, and zeal for perfec- 
 tion are tested by a readiness for persever- 
 ing labour and a constant strain to make 
 
132 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 that labour in Colleges and Convents effi- 
 cient and successful. Such was his creed. 
 
 (A Religious apparently tempted to 
 change her Order for another is strongly 
 urged to remain where she is. She could 
 not have been over-absorbed by her work 
 during the year, for she prayed better dur- 
 ing the vacation. This is a sign that she 
 was not far away from God during the year. 
 Our Lord asks of her weary work ; the 
 sacrifice of time, com-fort and spiritual re- 
 pose. He urges the importance of the 
 highest standard in education.) 
 
 August, I goo. 
 
 **I advise you strongly to put quite out of 
 your head all thought of another Order, and 
 to bend all your efforts during the retreat 
 to obtaining more grace for your present 
 duties. I think it would be sheer loss of 
 time to debate the question whether 
 you are in your right place. I will 
 tell you some of the reasons that weigh 
 with me : first, you are able to pray better 
 during holiday time. That is always a sign 
 that you have not been far away from God 
 during the working time. If you had been 
 indulging passions during the year, prayer 
 would not be easy in vacation, but if your 
 
HIS LETTERS TO RELIGIOUS 133 
 
 mind has only been absorbed in work that 
 was a duty, our Lord will be good to you 
 when there is a chance. Either Rodriguez 
 or Lancisius tells of a lay-Brother, a cook, 
 who worked all day for the monks, and in 
 the evening was allowed to walk out in the 
 grounds, and then he was full of devotion 
 and shed tears. He imagined that if he 
 could get rid of the cooking he would have 
 the sensible devotion all day. Trie got leave 
 to give up the kitchen and all the devotion 
 vanished. 
 
 " Secondly, I think that by giving you 
 more pious thoughts during holidays, our 
 Blessed Lord says to you that during the 
 year, what He asks from you is not really 
 pious thoughts but weary work. 
 
 *' In St. Ignatius' time education became 
 so important to the Church, that for our 
 scholastics he cut down prayer, and would 
 only allow one Communion in the week, 
 lest anything should interfere with study. 
 He wanted all his men to follow our Lord 
 usque ad defatigationent. A very good 
 mother, when her child is very ill, has to 
 nurse and watch till she is quite spent with 
 weariness ; she has no sweet thoughts . 
 
 *' Thirdly, I have always considered you 
 one of our Lord's chosen children, most 
 dear to Him. He does not now call you 
 to rest at His Feet, but to weary work ; and 
 
134 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 while you are working, He is ever watch- 
 ing. He was very dehghted when He saw 
 the poor widow cast her two mites into the 
 poor-box, and called His Apostles to watch 
 her. His Sacred Heart is greatly consoled 
 when He watches you working for Him. 
 He calls His Blessed Mother and St. 
 Joseph and other Saints to see how you 
 sacrifice worldly pleasures and bodily com- 
 fort, and even spiritual consolation for His 
 little ones. 
 
 " Fourthly, the question of education is 
 now even more important to the Church 
 than in the days of St. Ignatius. There 
 is a fearful struggle going on Tor the souls 
 of children. It is of the utmost importance 
 that you should give an education up to the 
 highest mark. 
 
 '' So spend all your retreat time in be- 
 lieving firmly that you are God's most dear 
 child, and that He asks you to sacrifice 
 yourself thoroughly for His work. Your 
 motto is to be : Dilexit me et tradidii seme- 
 tipsiim pro me : ' He loved mc and He de- 
 livered Himself up for me.' He gave 
 Himself entirely for me. He entirely for- 
 got all His own rights for me. In return 
 He asks : ' Will you sacrifice yourself for 
 Me? Will you give up worldly pleasure, 
 bodily comfort, bodily health, if necessary, 
 spiritual repose? ' " 
 
HIS LETTERS TO RELIGIOUS 135 
 
 December 28, igoi. 
 
 ''Don't clamour to get rid of exceptional 
 leaves, but worry our Lady and St. Joseph 
 to make you well enough to work for our 
 Blessed Lord, and be very filial and prayer- 
 ful and loving. That is what He wants from 
 you. He perhaps sends you bad health for 
 a while in order that you may have leisure 
 to grow in love. Be a very good child. 
 You have most special reasons to be hope- 
 ful and loving." 
 
 July 2Q, I go 2. 
 
 *'( I ) One thing seems to me clear : that 
 you see all that has been wrong arid are 
 sorry for it, so that you can safely confess 
 and take your vows. 
 
 **( 2) If I were with you I would absolve 
 all ; therefore God will be infinitely more 
 merciful. 
 
 ''( 3 ) He says : *I am He who for My own 
 sake forgive sins ' : because He created 
 you, because He is your Father ; because 
 you are His child and H^e loves you with 
 a parental love infinitely above the love of 
 the best of mothers. He is far more de- 
 sirous of forgiving you than you are of be- 
 ing forgiven. 
 
 *'( 4) I can find excuses for many things 
 
136 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 in your letter. He will find more. 
 
 '*(5) One sure conclusion is that you 
 must love more after this absolution than 
 ever before. Confess, get absolution, and 
 go ahead I" 
 
 ( The following: were written immediatelv 
 after leaving Father Gallwey, and are more 
 or less his exact words.) 
 
 '' When you do get some time in the 
 Chapel, in Meditation and at Holy Mass, 
 tell our Lord to shield you and not to let you 
 stray from Him. He has given you more 
 chances of sanctity, and has made it easier 
 for you to become a saint than many others . 
 If it is not good for you to be where you 
 are, God will do something, remove you if 
 He sees it necessary. You have to live till 
 ninety and to do a great deal for Him. Fac 
 Cor amans Jesit mei — Fac at nos amemiis 
 Te. 
 
 '' You do not want to go avv^ay from 
 Jesus? When you feel jaded, then the 
 Devil tries to make you think it is all your 
 fault. Look for the cause of the fatigue, 
 and don't, above all, get discouraged. 
 
 '' Be God's little child. Return to what 
 you were. Call God your Father. Lie 
 (3own by Him in the Garden of O Jives, 
 
HIS LETTERS TO RELIGIOUS 137 
 
 * Abba, Father.' The first word on the 
 Cross was ' Father, forgive them/ The 
 last word was * Father, into Thy Hands I 
 commend my spirit.' 
 
 'Tf you have gone a bit astray don't stay 
 there. If you are in the mud, don't stick 
 in it. Get up ! Make an act of contrition. 
 Put that part of your hfe in parenthesis and 
 close it immediately, and begin again. 
 
 *'As a penance try to make others happy. 
 Would your mother forgive you what you 
 have done ? Yes . Then God certainly 
 will. Be always God's little child." 
 
 " Pray much for the spirit of love. Not 
 sweet thoughts and consolations, but suffer- 
 ing love. Our Lord loves us and thinks 
 nothing too good for us. When distracted 
 with study, remember when you go to 
 prayer, that although you may not feel glad 
 to go to our Lord, He loves you intensely 
 and is more than delighted to see you." 
 
 *' My dear Sister in Christ, 
 
 ''ist. Our Lord says to you : * Learn of 
 Me that I am meek and humble of Heart, ^ 
 
 '' 2nd. You see His humility of Heart in 
 
138 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 the words : ' My Heart hath expected 
 misery and reproach.' Habitually He was 
 ready for misery and reproaches. That 
 was His portion. 
 
 **3rd. Consequently, when any con- 
 tradiction came, He was ready for it. It 
 was what He expected. He was meek . 
 
 **4th. Humility of Heart also made Him 
 very grateful for small acts of kindness, 
 such as the good thief's friendly word, and 
 Magdalen's ointment. 
 
 *' Again God bless you. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 P. Gallwey." 
 
 *' God bless you always more and more. 
 That temptation that bothers you is only a 
 trial of the father of lies. He does not at 
 all like your persevering in looking at the 
 text with untiring importunity. The grace 
 will come, and it is the pearl beyond price, 
 but you must pay the price. Our Lord is 
 watching your struggle. 
 
 *Tray for me next fortnight. I have very 
 heavy work in Manchester : lecturing." 
 
 '' God bless you ! This is a line to thank 
 you for all your charity and for the good 
 news in your last letter . Fight a good fight . 
 
HIS LETTERS TO RELIGIOUS 139 
 
 Our Blessed Lord will be very good to you. 
 Knock and it shall be opened to you. I am 
 mending fast." 
 
 (Father Gallwey, with regard to prayer, 
 gives three short rules to those tempted to 
 abandon it : don't omit, don't shorten, don't 
 put off — prolong,) 
 
 " My dear Child in Christ, 
 
 '' God bless you ! I think that whenever 
 prayer becomes difficult, the only plan is 
 to persevere importuning. This is our 
 Lord's advice. The Devil is always trying 
 to get us (^) to omit prayers, ( ^) to shorten 
 them, ( ^) to put them off. We must do the 
 contrary, don't omit, don't shorten, don't 
 put off, but make time and prolong, 
 
 ** A second advice is when distractions 
 set in, or are beginning, begin at once with 
 words, ejaculations, DonH be idle, or the 
 distractions will waste the whole time ; but 
 incessantly multiply ejaculations and cry 
 for help, or use suitable texts. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 P. Gallv^ey." 
 
 *'God bless you I i . Go to our Lord and 
 say : ' My dear Lord, you know that this 
 
I40 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 is not the first time I behaved badly to you. 
 You have forgiven me worse things and you 
 will forgive me now.' 
 
 **2. Then start afresh v/ith your work of 
 self-sacrifice. You will understand better 
 now, that more effort is needed than you 
 thought to continue the office of a victim. 
 The spirit is willing, the flesh is weak." 
 
 '* God bless you ! You are God's child. 
 The remedy for your troubles is to pray till 
 you are black in the face for the person who 
 causes your troubles. It is an infallible 
 remedy. If you only say five weak ' Hail 
 Marys/ that won't do : but if you perse- 
 vere vigorously till your face is black, or 
 nearly so, you are sure to win." 
 
 ''God bless you ! May our Lord and His 
 Holy Mother be specially good to you this 
 Christmas and during the coming year. 1 
 am tolerably sure 1 answered your letter. 
 I always keep unanswered letters on my 
 table till they are answered, and there is no 
 vestige of yours there. I am also tolerably 
 sure that I put my name outside on the en- 
 velope. My penmanship is so good, the 
 fairies may have wished to keep a speci- 
 
HIS LETTERS TO RELIGIOUS 141 
 
 men of it, and stolen the letter. You may- 
 end the year in perfect peace, quite sure 
 that you are what you have always been, 
 a spoiled child. Again God bless you ! " 
 
 (A Religious should take the position as- 
 signed by Superiors. She may represent 
 her unfitness to be in authority, and then 
 take what is given. " Ask for nothing, re- 
 fuse nothing,'' ought to be the rule.) 
 
 " My dear Child in Christ, 
 
 **God bless you always ! I feel inclined 
 to pray that you may have more troubles 
 so that you may write to me oftener. Your 
 letter makes me smile a little. The Irish 
 nurses say to a child that is crying, ' You 
 will be well before you are twice married.' 
 So I say to you : when you have been two 
 or three times Rev. Mother, you won't think 
 much of your present trouble. . . . Don't 
 disgrace our country by making any oppo- 
 sition to your appointment. At the altar 
 rails you say : Dontine non sum dignus, and 
 then receive the Sacred Host ; so now, say 
 to God, and to Mother General if you like : 
 * I am not worthy,' but then take what- 
 ever office is committed to you. ... I 
 can't pity you one bit. I can only ask our 
 
142 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 Lord to be very good to you all your days, 
 to remind you constantly that He is very 
 close to you, and to keep you holy till you 
 enter Heaven. After that, you may do as 
 you like, and there is no knowing what a 
 wild Irish girl will attempt even in Heaven. 
 Keep this rule, ' ask for nothing and refuse 
 nothing.' 
 
 '' Yours very truly, 
 
 P. Gallwey." 
 
 ''God bless you and all the nuns ! Your 
 letter made me wish that I had seen you in 
 London. Our Blessed Lord, who has al- 
 ways been so good to you and your family, 
 chose the exact right time to call away to 
 Heaven your sister and your father. They 
 are safe for ever ; and all they wanted were 
 some earnest prayers to get them quick 
 through Purgatory. They, of course, ex- 
 pected you to do this much for them. But 
 now, as you did run wild, go back to our 
 Lord at once as if nothing had happened. 
 He is quite willing to make friends and He 
 won't be very angry with you for being 
 fond of your people. Luckily, He is more 
 fond of them than you are : and preferred 
 to have them in Heaven than to leave them 
 in this beautiful world. For whatever you 
 
His letters to religious 143 
 
 may say, even N — is not quite as good as 
 Heaven. Our Lord will forgive you en- 
 tirely. Good-bye again, God bless you ! " 
 
 Letter to a Novice. 
 
 ( In this very striking letter a novice is 
 taught how to pray. She is to keep the 
 thought of God's love before her mind, and 
 to remember that He loves her infinitely 
 more than father and mother, that He has 
 forgiven her sins long ago, and that all He 
 wants now is her love. She is to make col- 
 loquies almost through the entire Medita- 
 tion. He advises some sentence of Scrip- 
 ture, and asks her to suck it, as if it were a 
 lozenge. His own favourite lozenge 
 was *' Hallowed be Thy Name." Words 
 are not needed when we are with Him ; 
 when we think of our Lord He is proud of 
 it ; when in our daily work we turn towards 
 the Tabernacle, He is proud of it. We do 
 not love our prayers, because we do not 
 realize how intensely God loves us, and 
 longs to hear us pray. A bad headache, 
 well borne, is worth ten Meditations.) 
 
544 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 '' My dear Child in Christ, 
 
 '' In order to pray well, you must set 
 about it in this way. You must be ab- 
 solutely convinced that God loves you in- 
 finitely more than your parents ; He has 
 died for you, you personally ; He longs 
 for a return of love. He says to you: 
 ' Don't mind your faults, your sins, they 
 are forgiven. I know them all, so you need 
 not tell them to Me ; and I have atoned for 
 them : but I want you to come and visit Me 
 lovingly as My own dear child.' 
 
 '' Keep this idea of His love for you run- 
 ning through all your prayers and medita- 
 tions : during the latter make colloquies al- 
 most all the time. Take some sentence, 
 eg., ' Flallowed be Thy Name,' and think 
 of His two names of * Jesus ' arid 
 * Father.' Then say to Him: * My 
 Father I Hallowed be Thy Name! I want all 
 the novices to love Your Name of Father. 
 May it be fully realized in my respect and 
 let me be Your true child,' &c. Or : * He 
 loved me and He died for me ' ; or again : 
 ' Father forgive them ' ; or : ' You are in- 
 deed the Good Shepherd and I am Your lost 
 sheep,* or anything you like out of the Gos- 
 pel or elsewhere. Repeat them again and 
 again, use them as lozenges ; get all the 
 good you can out of them. For my part 
 I like, ' Hallowed be Thy Name.' If you 
 
 i i 
 
HIS LETTERS TO RELIGIOUS 145 
 
 notice, when anyone likes you very much, 
 they also love your name. Should it not 
 be so with us towards Jesus? . . . You 
 say you don't know what to say at times I 
 There is no need for words when you are 
 with Him. He loves you so, that even if 
 you turn your eyes on the Tabernacle, He 
 is proud of it. If you are at work in some 
 other part of the house, and you turn your 
 head towards the Tabernacle, He is proud 
 of it. Your own earthly father loves you 
 very much ! Well, suppose you would not 
 go near him because you did not know any- 
 thing to say to him, would he not say : 
 ' Don't mind that. I don't want you to talk 
 to me, but I want to look at you ? ' And 
 so it is with our most loving Heavenly 
 Father. He says : ' I know you cannot 
 say grand prayers, but just come and see 
 Me. I love you to come and visit Me.' If 
 you cannot pray, sometimes sit, and, as it 
 were, hold our Lord's Hand. And make 
 use of the sentences from time to time with 
 acts of love and confidence. When your 
 head aches, remember, that if well borne, it 
 is worth ten meditations ; for you are then 
 suffering like our Lord in His Crowning 
 with thorns. Always keep before you His 
 great personal love for you, and if you re- 
 turn in some measure, as well as you can, 
 His love for you, you will realize what 
 K 
 
146 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 is really meant by the words Delectare in 
 Domino, If I were staying here, this 
 is what I would keep you up to. 
 
 ''So now, write down to-day, 'I am to be- 
 lieve that God loves me personally infinitely 
 more than father or mother/ and keep this 
 idea before you continually. Introduce it 
 into all your meditations, visits, and all you 
 do, and you will soon love your prayers. 
 We do not take pleasure in them because 
 we do not think we are so intensely loved 
 by Him to whom we pray. We fancy we 
 are not cared for, and this puts a restraint 
 on us. But you must get rid of this idea 
 and try to be our Lord's pet child. He 
 loves you very much ; so much that you 
 can have no idea of your value in His eyes 
 on account of all He has done for love of 
 you. Now try this plan and I assure you, 
 if you keep to it, you will love the time of 
 prayer, and go to it joyfully and lovingly ; 
 and you will find your visits to Him in the 
 Blessed Sacrament all too short a time to 
 spend with Him who loves you and who 
 died for you. 
 
 *' Very truly yours in Christ, 
 
 P. Gallwey." 
 
 Letter to a Professed Nun. 
 
 (In his last letter to the Religious of 
 the Society of the Holy Child, he in- 
 
HIS LETTERS TO RELIGIOUS 147 
 
 sists in the case of the trained ReUgious 
 as in that of the novice, on the immense 
 advantage of remembering God's personal 
 love of us. This conviction is never to 
 leave us in prayer or work. Did we 
 realize the full meaning of *' He loved me 
 and delivered Himself for me\^^ we should 
 go mad. He recommends repeating 
 prayers, a practice he found most useful in 
 his own devotions. He lays greater stress 
 on what is done in our ordinary prayer, 
 more still in extra or voluntary prayer than 
 on prayer in retreat.) 
 
 '' My dear Child in Christ, 
 
 ''When you run down in the spiritual life, 
 you must not remain down, but quickly run 
 up again . The Devil does not so much care 
 for what He makes you do ; but what he 
 wants is to make you distrustful of our 
 Lord. . . . Remember the words 6i 
 Martha and Mary : * Lord, he whom Thou 
 lovest is sick.' They did not say : * He 
 who loves TheCy but * whom Thoa lov- 
 est.' So, if I were praying for you, I 
 should say : * She whom Thoa lovest,' 
 &c. Our Lord loves yoa most intensely, 
 far, far more than you can realize. He 
 loves you, not for what you have done for 
 
148 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 Him, but for what He knows you can be- 
 come, a child of God. St. Paul tells us 
 that God loved us while we were ' yet in 
 sin ' ! He did not wait till we turned to 
 Him. No ! It was while we were still His 
 enemies that He gave His life for us. 
 
 *' ' He loved me and delivered His life 
 for me ' 
 
 '* Take this sentence in three parts : i. 
 * He loved me.' 2. ' He delivered Him- 
 self.' 3. ' For m^.' Study it. Repeat 
 it over and over again till you believe it 
 firmly, till it penetrates you fully. If we 
 really believed it and realized the words in 
 all their full meaning, we should go mad. 
 That a God should so love a& as to die for 
 us I The idea is so great, so wonderful, 
 and yet so true, perfectly true. If we did 
 but supernaturalize our lives more, we 
 should more easily believe God's love for 
 us. His unv/orthy children. The Devil's 
 great wish is to lessen our belief in God's 
 love and our trust m Him. If we commit 
 some fault, he at once tries to persuade us 
 that we are not fit to go and say our prayers 
 now ; that we may as well put off our Con- 
 fession till we are in better dispositions, &c. 
 Don't listen to him, but go to our Lord after 
 any or every fault. Say : ' Yes, Lord ! I 
 have fallen, but YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU 
 can put things right again . If I were alone, 
 I might be hopeless ; but You are here, You 
 
HIS LETTERS TO RELIGIOUS 149 
 
 will help me, Yoa know how weak I am and 
 how I have sinned. Lord, put things right. 
 Don't let me distrust you ; help me, I am 
 sorry. Help me to begin again and for- 
 give my past weakness.' Always remem- 
 ber God's love for you and how He longs 
 to help you, and looks for your trust, and 
 how disappointed He is when you won't 
 trust Him and you won't let Him help you. 
 No matter how unfaithful you may have 
 been at any time. He longs for you to turn 
 to Him. Never hesitate after a fall, but 
 turn to Him at once. . . . When you ar- 
 rive home after a journey, if someone tells 
 you that a person who loves you very dearly 
 is upstairs, you do not wait to think of your 
 fatigue, but run up quickly. Well, our 
 Lord is always waiting for you, ever on the 
 look-out for you ; run up to Him then 
 quickly, don't make Him wait. Why 
 should He have the last place? The Devil 
 often tries to make us put off our prayers, or 
 abridge them ; this too often means to omit 
 them altogether. No 1 Give our Lord the 
 first place : let others wait if necessary. 
 Make this a rule of your life : ' Never 
 cut short a prayer, never put off a 
 prayer, never omit a prayer without 
 a just reason.' . . . When you find 
 difficulty in prayer or meditation, take a 
 sentence, e .g., ' Mother of God, pray for 
 us sinners.' Repeat it, if necessary, the 
 
ISO MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 whole hour, till you are penetrated with it, 
 even for several days if needs be ; worry 
 our Lady till she ntust hear you ; go on until 
 she does, until you get the help you need. 
 I find this repetition of prayer most bene- 
 ficial. Continue it also during the day (say 
 twenty times morning and afternoon ; or 
 whenever you enter or leave a room, for 
 instance). ... A retreat helps one very 
 much, but I don't count so much on what 
 is done then as on what one does at one's 
 ordinary spiritual duties, and even more at 
 one's ' voluntary ' prayer. Our Lord's heart 
 is so tender. He loves to see us coming to 
 Him of our own free will when we are not 
 obliged to do so. . . . After having com- 
 mitted a fault you would not be afraid to 
 come to me ; you would trust me to forgive 
 you, would you not? Well, our Lord for- 
 gives far more readily and fully than I could 
 ever do ; so you must always banish any 
 want of trust in Him' and tell Him how 
 sorry you are for having been wanting in 
 His confidence and paining Him by the want 
 of trust. You have your life before you, and 
 I am perfectly certain that you can become 
 a real pet child of our Lord. So you must 
 resolve to grow nearer and dearer to Him 
 every day. He does so love you. Don't 
 disappoint Him. 
 
 ** Very truly yours in Christ, 
 
 P. Gallwey." 
 
CHAPTER VIII. ; 
 
 Father Gallwey as Novice Master. 
 
 In October, 1869, Father Gallwey was 
 taken away from the important work which 
 he was doing in London and appointed 
 Rector and Master of Novices at Manresa 
 House, Roehampton. In those days, more 
 perhaps than at the present time, the care 
 of the novices seemed to overshadow some- 
 what the duties involved in the general 
 government of the house. Though not 
 quite as numerous then as now, the novices 
 and juniors formed a larger proportion of 
 the whole establishment, and at first sight at 
 all events it would seem that there would 
 be little or nothing to recall of Father Gall- 
 wey during this period apart from his work 
 among the young men committed to his 
 training. On the other hand it is not sur- 
 prising to find on a little closer examina- 
 tion that his zeal and energy have left their 
 
152 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 mark, not only on the individuals who were 
 initiated by him into religious life, but on 
 the whole house and Community of which 
 he was Rector. 
 
 In the first place the material buildings 
 were considerably enlarged. It was his pre- 
 decessor, Father Fitzsimon, who had built 
 the greater part of the present domestic 
 chapel, and had adde'd to the original house, 
 which forms the centre block of the whole 
 existing building, the north wing contain- 
 ing what is known as St. Ignatius' Quarters. 
 Father Gallwey added the corresponding 
 wing stretching to the south, and compris- 
 ing the present library, the Quarters of the 
 English Martyrs and St. Francis Borgia, 
 and the present Juniors' Recreation Room. 
 
 It was as Rector, too, that in 1870, when 
 Rome was seized by the Italian Army, and 
 the Roman College was appropriated as a 
 barracks for a portion of the invading force, 
 Father Gallwey offered a home at Manresa 
 to some of the exiled Italian scholastics and 
 their Professors. As many as thirty-eight 
 of the former and four of the latter were 
 before long accommodated, and they re- 
 mained in their new abode for nearly a 
 
AS NOVICE MASTER 153 
 
 year. Father Gallwey's influence is hardly 
 to be mistaken in the fact that within Httle 
 more than a month of their arrival the 
 Italian scholastics gave a little entertain- 
 ment to their entertainers, consisting of 
 songs and of addresses in Latin prose and 
 verse. This no doubt helped them to feel 
 more at home and more welcome to the 
 Community, and such displays of talent 
 were always much encouraged by the Rec- 
 tor. He greatly appreciated any effort 
 made to interest and amuse the Community 
 in this way, and did a great deal to encour- 
 age literary or musical talent among 
 younger men. Seances y as he called them, 
 of this nature, seemed to give him great 
 pleasure, and he was really an audience in 
 himself as he listened in his intense way, or 
 with that whimsical and genial smile of his, 
 to the serious or witty compositions of the 
 young students or novices. 
 
 Among the additions made to the 
 material buildings by Father Gallwey 
 should be included the Long Gallery of the 
 ground floor. The walls of this gallery 
 were literally covered with sacred engrav- 
 ings and prints, which were intended to aid 
 
154 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 i 
 
 the imagination of beginners in mental 
 prayer. The method of prayer which 
 Father Gallwey's training tended to pro- 
 mote, can be best understood from a study 
 of his most important book, The Watches 
 of the Passion, It corresponds to what St. 
 Ignatius called Contemplatio in the book of 
 the Spiritual Exercises, and aims at bring- 
 ing about the true Christian attitude of 
 niind and heart, the Christian dispositions 
 and affections of the soul, by a great num- 
 ber of observations on the persons them- 
 selves and the words and actions of the 
 persons who enter into the mystery and sub- 
 ject of the Exercise. These observations, 
 as made and thrown out, so to say, by 
 Father Gallwey, were very varied, very 
 pointed and striking, often very touching 
 and pathetic. The phrase, " Points for 
 Meditation," had a special application to his 
 method of preparing the subject for mental 
 prayer. He pointed oat, as with the 
 finger, all sorts of unexpected aspects and 
 illustrations of the matter in hand, and each 
 of these seemed, almost at once, the 
 moment it was presented, to incline the will 
 to some devout desire or sentiment. Sel- 
 
AS NOVICE MASTER 155 
 
 dom was there suggested any formal pro- 
 cess of reasoning, calculated to lead in a 
 systematic way to a definite conclusion. 
 The concrete example and illustration was 
 the chief means for arousing the will. If, 
 to take the first sentence of the Foundation 
 Exercise of St. Ignatius, he was proposing 
 for meditation the truth that man is created 
 to praise God, he did not reason from the 
 nature of man and of God, and the mean- 
 ing of the word praise ; but immediately the 
 way in which a man praises a person or a 
 thing was brought up before the niind, and 
 it was felt that some similar conduct was 
 the becoming one for a man towards his 
 Maker. A Meditation on Death, as given 
 by Father Gallwey, was more likely to be 
 a contemplation of the administration and 
 reception of the Sacrament of Extreme 
 Unction, than any consideration of the 
 shortness and uncertainty of life, or of the 
 nature of death, followed by the conclusions 
 which naturally flow from such considera- 
 tions . Father Gallwey was apparently very 
 fond of giving points for meditation to his 
 novices ; besides the times of retreats or 
 TriduumSy when he regarded this duty as 
 
156 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 r 
 
 part of his office, he not unfrequently gave 
 novenas or even months of such points, and 
 the notes made on these occasions were 
 greatly treasured by some of hisTiearers. 
 
 But it was perhaps in his Exhortations 
 to the novices or to the whole Communitv 
 that Father Gallwey's gifts found their most 
 wonderful opportunity. In these Exhorta- 
 tions the spiritual life, and in particular, the 
 life of the perfect Jesuit,was presented in the 
 most vivid and winning manner, so that one 
 who was no mean judge said of them, that 
 they were the best examples of true rhe- 
 toric that he had ever heard. Not that they 
 were delivered in any lofty style or in flow- 
 ing periods ; on the contrary, they consisted 
 rather of jerky, and even of seemingly dis- 
 connected remarks, shot out in all direc- 
 tions and with every variety of aim and 
 character, the most ludicrous and humorous 
 mingled with the most serious. All sorts 
 of witty sayings and stories entered into 
 these Exhortations, and they were looked 
 forward to with great eagerness and lis- 
 tened to with ever renewed delight. The 
 dangers and deficiencies to be met with in 
 the Jesuit's life were all there, together with 
 
/ I 
 
 AS NOVICE MASTER 157 
 
 its glorious realities and possibilities. The 
 great motives of The Spiritual ExerclseSy 
 such as the unlimited rights of the Creator, 
 the awful evil of sin, the invitation and 
 example of our Saviour, entered in every- 
 where ; Holy Scripture furnished innumer- 
 able illustrations ; experience gained in col- 
 lege and residence gave point and reality 
 to every warning or advice ; spiritual books 
 were often quoted and even followed some- 
 times at considerable length, as in a series 
 of exhortations on St. Bernard's twelve de- 
 grees of Pride ; but at the same time, every- 
 thing had passed through his own shrewd 
 and original mind, his deeply spiritual 
 heart, his versatile and humorous imagina- 
 tion. It is to be feared that nothing re- 
 mains of these most interesting instructions 
 for novices on the Rules and Constitutions 
 of the Society, except the imperfect notes 
 made by some of his listeners. The pre- 
 sent writer has had the opportunity of 
 examining some portion of the notes made 
 by the late Father Richard Clarke, S.J., 
 who was a man of over thirty at the time, 
 and certainly far more competent than the 
 great majority of the novices to summarize 
 
158 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALL WE Y 
 
 efficiently what was delivered at these Ex- 
 hortations. But even these notes give but 
 a very partial idea of their real beauty. It 
 so happened that Father Clarke heard 
 Father Gallwey treat of some of the Rules a 
 second time, and he was specially impressed 
 by the fact that the treatment was quite dif- 
 ferent, and seemed to show that Father 
 Gallwey made little or no use of any pre- 
 vious notes, but prepared his instruction 
 afresh, and presented the subject in quite a 
 fresh light. 
 
 In the preceding paragraphs something 
 has been said of the three chief general 
 means which Father Gallwey employed to 
 act upon the young men who came under 
 his influence. These were, in sbort, his 
 Exhortations, his Points for Meditation, 
 and the displays of literary and musical 
 talent, which he encouraged amongst them. 
 Some endeavour must now be made to des- 
 cribe the aim arid tendency of the training 
 which he may be said to have inaugurated. 
 For it is not an exaggeration to say that he 
 did inaugurate a new era in the training of 
 the novices of the Society, as, indeed, he 
 may be said to have done of a considerable 
 
AS NOVICE MASTER 159 
 
 portion of the devout Catholics, and more 
 especially of the devout women of his day. 
 He found in possession at the novitiate a 
 system, sound indeed and solid, but a little 
 inelastic and timorous, fearful of departures 
 from rule and precedent, more careful, per- 
 haps, to suppress or curb what is faulty in 
 human nature than to bring but and rein- 
 force what is good. He set himself at once 
 to introduce what he believed to.be the main 
 principle of progress in the spiritual life, 
 that of making experiments. You never 
 know what you can do till you try. It is 
 not what you do in common with others 
 that helps you most, though of course you 
 must not neglect common duties ; it is what 
 you do beyond, what is of your own initia- 
 tive, extra prayer or mortification or work 
 of any kind which really counts. Sancti- 
 fication is the business of the individual, 
 and cannot be managed in companies under 
 a drill-master, however useful and neces- 
 sary drill may be in itself. Consequently, 
 the thoughts that one beats out for oneself 
 in meditation, one's own private practices 
 in devotion or self-denial, are to be prized 
 most highly. There is a minimum of regu- 
 
i6o MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 larity and observance to be required of all, 
 but beyond it there are endless varieties of 
 proficiency to which individuals may aspire. 
 Father Gallwey used to say that the differ- 
 ence in holiness between the average 
 Religious and the good layman was not 
 greater than that between Religious them- 
 selves. The effect of this teaching, incul- 
 cated as it constantly, was in all manner of 
 ways, was to encourage in them a sort of 
 enthusiasm and hopefulness which was very 
 marked, especially at the beginning of his 
 time at Manresa. Novices who passed 
 from a former management into his hands, 
 felt as if they breathed a freer atmosphere, 
 and had thrown upon them a greater re- 
 sponsibility, because they were supposed 
 now to act more of themselves, arid not 
 merely to conform to a routine. Formerly 
 the points of meditation were read out by 
 one of the novices for all from an appointed 
 book ; now when the Rector did not pro- 
 pose them, every one made them for 
 himself out of a book, which he chose 
 with the approval of his Superior, though 
 it was considered better still if a novice 
 could prepare his meditation directly from 
 
AS NOVICE MASTER i6i 
 
 the Gospels, or even the Epistles of St. 
 Paul. And in other ways changes came in 
 of similar tendency. 
 
 Yet this enterprising, energetic spirit of 
 his, disdainful almost of conventions, ever 
 ready to welcome new methods, was quite 
 compatible with an immense admiration for 
 the past of the Society, and a keen desire 
 to know all that could be gleaned about the 
 details of the lives and circumstances of its 
 great Fathers, and even of his own immedi- 
 ate predecessors. He used to tell his 
 novices that whenever they were lucky 
 enough to come across an old Father who 
 had lived with the Founders of the restored 
 English Province, they should pick his 
 brains. His idea seemed to be that the 
 early days of the Society were more spa- 
 cious and generous than our own, simpler 
 in thought and deed, and that a return to 
 them in affection and aspiration as far as 
 possible, could do nothing but good. On 
 the other hand, he often dwelt on the dis- 
 advantages which the English Jesuits had 
 lain under for so many years by reason of 
 their practical confinement to the north of 
 the country. However good the type thus 
 
i62 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 formed, it must suffer from its very indi- 
 viduality, and be less fully fitted to win its 
 way into the national mind arid heart . For 
 this reason he gladly welcomed novices who 
 came to Manresa from non-Jesuit Catholic 
 colleges, or '' from the world/' as the phrase 
 was, that is, not directly from any school, or 
 as converts from Protestantism. He saw in 
 them, particularly in converts from the Uni- 
 versities, the promise of that wider influ- 
 ence which Catholics were destined soon to 
 exercise on their fellow-countrymen. It 
 was in view of this that he so noted and 
 encouraged signs of exceptional ability in 
 younger men, and left nothing undone to 
 develop them, taking little account of 
 seniority or custom, or even of the imputa- 
 tion of partiality which is so easily made. 
 It was not his way when he had before him 
 a worthy object to let himself be turned 
 aside by what he would have considered 
 small matters at best. In truth, his plans, 
 like his own physical nature and his mind, 
 were built on a large scale . He left nothing 
 out of the range of his hopes. He wanted 
 his novices to be saints of course, but also 
 scholars, orators, and men of affairs . The 
 
AS NOVICE MASTER 163 
 
 juniors also, namely those who had passed 
 out of the noviceship, and their studies were 
 near to his heart. As often as he could 
 spare the time he was present at their ex- 
 hibitions, and always either praised or 
 blamed according to their deserts . In their 
 sermons he took a special interest, and used 
 to send them to London churches, where 
 some distinguished preacher was an- 
 nounced, and even to the Houses of Parlia- 
 ment to hear some famous orator. 
 
 As was remarked in the beginning of this 
 chapter. Father Gallwey came to Manresa 
 immediately after having been Rector of 
 the residence in Farm Street, London. The 
 natural result was that a good many visi- 
 tors came out to see him, and one of the 
 noticeable features of his time at the novi- 
 tiate, was the frequent appearance of 
 fashionable equipages in the courtyard of 
 the otherwise very quiet establishment. No 
 doubt such visitors did, as a matter of fact, 
 occupy a good deal of the Rector's time, 
 but it may be safely said that neither the 
 Community in general, nor any novice in 
 particular, ever felt that Father Gallwey's 
 interests were rather elsewhere than at 
 
1 64 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALL WE Y 
 
 home. All through his Hfe he had a won- 
 derful power of giving his whole thought 
 and attention to the person with whom he 
 was actually concerned, and of letting each 
 feel that he was the object of special care 
 and affection . None ever felt this more sen- 
 sibly than his novices. Each seemed 
 everything to him for the moment, so it was 
 not surprising that he seemed everything to 
 them. Hence the dismay with which the 
 announcement of his departure from Man- 
 resa was received ; some of the more diffi- 
 cult subjects among the novices were al- 
 most in despair : ** Nobody will ever under- 
 stand me as he did/' was the lament of more 
 than one. There was something very ten- 
 der in his kindness and care of the novices. 
 In all that concerned their food, exercise, 
 and sleep he was most vigilant. He was in 
 truth all to each, and yet with the result that 
 each realized the better how truly he was 
 loved individually by the divine Master and 
 Friend, to whom the whole aim of Father 
 Gallwey's training was to guide and bring 
 each one whom he directed. If a certain 
 portion of his time had necessarily to be 
 given to those who came from a distance to 
 
AS NOVICE MASTER 165 
 
 see and consult him, he made up, we may 
 say, for this, by seldom leaving home him- 
 self. His place was rarely vacant in the 
 refectory or chapel, and at the appointed 
 times he was nearly always to be found in 
 his room to receive the visits of his novices . 
 These visits were usually short, even at the 
 more formal times of spiritual direction ; 
 but he learnt a great deal about a person 
 in a short time, and what he said himself 
 was very much to the point, and evidently 
 not vague theory, but the outcome of ex- 
 perience and prayer. He occupied a very 
 poor and inconvenient room, the one which 
 now belongs to the Brother who acts as 
 manuductor, as he is called, to the novices. 
 Except for a very small window in one 
 corner, the light was merely borrowed from 
 the gallery outside, and to anyone who en- 
 tered the room Father Gallwey seemed al- 
 ways to be in semi-darkness. The bed was 
 usually so covered with papers arid other 
 articles as to leave some doubt in the minds 
 of many whether it was at all regularly 
 used for resting in. He kept the fasts very 
 strictly, and from his general movements 
 one could hardly help concluding that in- 
 
i66 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 struments of penance, of one kind or 
 another, were in frequent and almost con- 
 tinuous use. He seemed to have a great 
 fondness for the devotional little domestic 
 chapel, and spent a good deal of time there, 
 especially over the Divine Ofifice and the 
 Rosary. He never seemed to be watching 
 the novices, but he knew their characters 
 well, and often arranged little opportunities 
 of testing their inclinations and tendencies. 
 Under his training, as we have seen, more 
 was left to individual choice than had been 
 customary, or than was always approved of 
 by other Fathers of the Province. It was 
 feared that too critical, reforming and in- 
 dependent a spirit might be the outcome of 
 his methods ; on the other hand, no one 
 could have insisted more than he did on the 
 necessity of embracing humiliations as the 
 only path to humility ; and the humiliations 
 he most recommended were those involved 
 in a Jesuit's obligation to be entirely sub- 
 ject and candid in regard to his Superiors. 
 He certainly taught as much by his example 
 as by precept . He was revered for his holi- 
 ness, and it was felt that he practised all 
 that he preached. His extraordinary self- 
 
AS NOVICE MASTER 167 
 
 control was a perpetual object-lesson. One 
 could not fail to see that he was naturally, 
 a man of quick temper, but to his novices 
 he was meekness and gentleness itself. 
 Again, the larmes a la voix sometimes 
 choked his utterance. He seemed ashamed 
 of betraying his feelings in this way, and 
 would pause till his voice came back to him. 
 No doubt there was an individuality about 
 all Father Gallwey's methods that left a 
 very marked impression upon youthful 
 minds and as yet unformed dispositions ; he 
 was so different from others under whose 
 authority they were likely to be placed later 
 on, and at the same time was regarded with 
 so much affection and admiration, that the 
 transition from his government to that of 
 others was not always easy and natural . It 
 was, perhaps, especially difficult in the case 
 of those for whom this transition took place, 
 in the middle of the noviceship itself. 
 Father Gallwey filled the post of Master of 
 Novices for less than four years ; in July, 
 1873, he was appointed Provincial of the 
 English Province of the Society, and left 
 Manresa amid much lamentation on the 
 part of the novices and to the great regret 
 of the whole Community. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A Giver of Retreats. 
 
 If we suppose at starting the wish of Father 
 Gallwey to be respected, that no regular hfe 
 of him should be written, then we may as- 
 sume, that among the illustrative chapters 
 of this Memorial, he would have been pas- 
 sively tolerant of a sketch that should serve 
 as some account of his long career in the 
 unobtrusive, unchallenging office of con- 
 ducting retreats, whether for religious com- 
 munities or for assemblages of lay persons. 
 On this subject some clearness may be 
 gained by exhibiting the characteristics, 
 rather roughly as regards sharpness of the 
 divisions, under the three heads of discip- 
 line, doctrines delivered, and the methodi- 
 cal quality of his work. 
 
 I. 
 
 As regards discipline we must begin 
 from the fact that he was severe with him- 
 
AS GIVER OF RETREATS 169 
 
 self. He rose early after going late to bed : 
 at times it was inferred that he had not been 
 to bed at all : for which neglect Nature used 
 at times to compensate herself in his unin- 
 tended **naps" by day. He always secured 
 to himself a free hour for his own morning 
 meditation, which he might be seen on 
 many occasions making in the Chapel. 
 After Mass and Thanksgiving, he still had 
 Divine Office to recite. For this also he 
 was mindful to make due provision in his 
 time-table. As a busy Rector at Farm 
 Street Church, which he did so much to 
 make efficient in the early years of its 
 growth, in order to render recital of Office 
 safe, he used to take refuge in the Chapel, 
 from which it was known that he was not 
 to be summoned unless to answer a call of 
 more than common urgency. He was then 
 not at home to casual visitors. The care 
 for himself in his spiritual interests and the 
 disregard for himself in his temporal con- 
 veniences, marked Father Gallwey's career 
 throughout . He gave as a reason for wear- 
 ing a mackintosh that it was like charity, 
 covering a multitude of sins in his poor, out- 
 worn garments. Hence he could preach 
 
170 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 self-sacrifice to others for charity's sake. 
 He hked to take occasion, when address- 
 ing the Sisters of Charity, to remind them 
 that they were by name also what other Sis- 
 ters were by office, imitators of Christ in 
 self-renunciation for the good of others. 
 He did all he could to deprecate the exist- 
 ence of a comfort-seeking Religious, who 
 had too little care of duty towards neigh- 
 bours, or had a zeal limited to the require- 
 ments of duty alone. 
 
 And now as regards his dealings with 
 others who put themselves under him for a 
 retreat. It must not be forgotten that he 
 had for his first disciples, out of the ranks 
 of the laity, a raw material, in the sense 
 that the exercise was new to them, and in 
 their case, silence, recollection, regular 
 hours, obedience to the sound of bells, 
 meals in common, and other like practices 
 had for the large part not fallen within their 
 experience. On the other hand. Father 
 Gallwey, at the time, was fresh from the 
 habit of using strong control as Prefect of 
 Studies at Stonyhurst, where his energy had 
 stirred up great emulation among the boys 
 to outdo one another in mental contests, 
 
AS GIVER OF RETREATS 171 
 
 which were conducted in the several school- 
 rooms, and in the more general gathering 
 of the separate schools and of their 
 teachers. He was also physically a large, 
 strong -built man, dark in aspect and full , 
 of vigour, not yet tamed by old age. When 
 such a man found in a house of retreat can- 
 didates who could not be made amenable, 
 he dismissed them to their homes. One 
 lady who left him wrote an account of his 
 personality and procedures for a newspaper 
 to amuse Society. As regards those who 
 persevered in the purpose of their coming, 
 he was very vigilant. He kept a sharp eye 
 on their behaviour himself, and got others 
 to help him in preventing the irregularities 
 of a few from injuring not only themselves 
 but also their associates. His ideal was to 
 see each exercitant daily, at least for two 
 or three minutes, to inquire how their 
 efforts were succeeding, and to put some 
 pressure upon them that they should make 
 a genuine effort. St. Ignatius provides for 
 the individual surveillance and direction 
 while he guards against its excesses. At 
 the same time, the practice is one that varies 
 much in its advisability and its degree with 
 
172 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 the persons of the retreat -givers and of the 
 retreat -makers. Souls in such a matter 
 cannot be treated all alike by an iron rule. 
 Trained Religious normally require less 
 guidance from' without than those accus- 
 tomed only to life in the world, who are try- 
 ing, for a short season, to adopt the life of 
 the cloister. 
 
 Father Gallwey's love for taking people 
 in hand is shown also in his correspond- 
 ence. He invites one whom he meets for 
 the first time to continue the relationship. 
 When she writes to him he thanks her and 
 begs for more frequent letters . He informs 
 her how much he wishes to put her through 
 the Spiritual Exercises, and when she had 
 gone through these, and by repetition had 
 grown familiar with them, she stated how 
 clearly she recognized in them the sources 
 whence her Director had all along been 
 drawing the principles of her guidance. So 
 to take souls in charge argued in Father 
 Gallwey no morbid love of domineering in 
 the inmost recesses of spiritual life, though 
 there is such a morbidity. His was a real 
 desire to do his priestly function, and 
 therefore he did not shrink from the many 
 
AS GIVER OF RETREATS 173 
 
 exactions upon one who has many clients, 
 some of whom are sure at times to be 
 troublesome . 
 
 On the other hand, Father Gallwey was 
 very far indeed from the delusion that he 
 alone should be active while the others were 
 passive receivers. He insisted much on 
 personal endeavour and initiative, and on 
 the private action of the Holy Ghost with- 
 in the recesses of the soul, which noliuman 
 hand could touch. He steadily refused to 
 make the meditations at length for his 
 hearers : he dismissed them often, after 
 about half an hour, to fill up for themselves 
 three-quarters by pondering on the points 
 which he had suggested. Also he liked 
 them to raise discussions, for which purpose 
 he set up a Question Box, in which they 
 might deposit written inquiries. Occa- 
 sionally he would imitate the newspapers 
 that wrote letters to themselves in order the 
 more effectually to ventilate an opinion, or 
 call attention to neglected topics . 
 
 But his love of initiative did not so ^far 
 relax his discipline as to induce him to de- 
 part from the text-book of the Exercises 
 as it had been constructed by St. Ignatius 
 
174 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 with SO many agonies, groans, tears, 
 prayers, conflicts with self and with Satan, 
 and inspirations from God . By his position 
 as a Jesuit, Father Gallwey held himself 
 pledged to his appointed book. It had 
 not, indeed, all the inflexibility of the pub- 
 lic liturgy as it now binds the Church, 
 when it is no longer allowed in the Mass for 
 *' prophets to give thanks as much as they 
 like " (Didache x. 7), and " presidents as 
 much as they can " (Justin Apol. i. 66). 
 But it does not prescribe an important order 
 in the course of the spiritual training or 
 drill, which could not be disregarded with- 
 out loss. The loss is felt by those ac- 
 customed to a progressive march along 
 definite roads to definite goals, when 
 they hear a retreat from the mouth of 
 one who, perhaps, has a good collec- 
 tion of miscellaneous sermons, and de- 
 livers passages from these by a selection 
 that lacks a unifying principle. He would 
 not have asked all directors of a retreat 
 to use the book of St. Ignatius ; but he 
 would have urgently advised all to follow, 
 some well-calculated plan, while for him- 
 self he considered that no substantial varia- 
 
AS GIVER OF RETREATS 175 
 
 tion of plan was permissible under his 
 obligation to be loyal to his own position 
 and to his avowed undertaking, when he 
 presented himself as a Jesuit. 
 
 Father Gallwey was keenly alive to one 
 objection made against the Ignatian Exer- 
 cises and the method of Meditation as ex- 
 pounded by a recent General of the Order. 
 The whole system, as systematic^ may seem 
 killing to that mysticism which is nowadays 
 so much in favour. Once a young student 
 of his Order asked his counsel on this 
 point ; and the reply, probably adapted to 
 the needs of the inquirer who would not 
 abuse it, signified that an over-done settle- 
 ment beforehand of the exact line of 
 thought to be undeviatingly pursued, '' tied 
 the hands of the Holy Ghost." The gol- 
 den mean here consists in pre -arrangement 
 of the course with such a subsequent fol- 
 lowing of it as in practice is found most 
 profitable. It is never the recommendable 
 thing to say, '' I have so mucTi matter to 
 travel through, and before the end of the 
 hour I must get through it all." Such a 
 policy would be directly in contradiction to 
 the rules of the Exercise book, which pre- 
 
176 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 scribes a stay upon any thought so long as 
 it is found most fruitful. '' Not an abund- 
 ance of knowledge, but the interior feeling 
 and taste of heavenly things are what 
 satisfy the desires of the soul." So we read 
 in the preliminary annotation, number 2 ; 
 and the next number tells how the affec- 
 tions of the will are especially to be valued 
 as that which the understanding is meant 
 to arouse, and how they are to be elicited 
 with a more reverent attention than is re- 
 quired by the discourse of reason which 
 leads up to the affections . Father Gallwey 
 was too faithful a follower of his book to 
 neglect such instructions, the wisdom of 
 which he fully appreciated, while he was 
 moved also by obedience to his institute as 
 an authority for him in his position. 
 
 II. 
 
 From what has been said, the next point, 
 namely, that of the doctrines delivered in 
 retreat by Father Gallwey, is settled in 
 general : but in particular his teaching has 
 yet to be illustrated. This will have to be 
 done very summarily. Perhaps one best 
 
rr 
 
 AS GIVER OF RETREATS 177 
 
 and sufficient example for the purpose will 
 be his treatment of the queen of virtues, 
 Christian and religious charity, a great sub- 
 ject in the Exercises. Let it stand for a 
 sample of the rest of his teachings.^ 
 
 In the first place on this matter he did 
 what perhaps it becomes harder and harder 
 to do as our times grow more delicate . The 
 difficulty may be put crudely by the fable 
 of the fine lady, who objected to sermons 
 directly enforcing the ten commandments, 
 
 1 His favourite meditations are told us by a good authority, 
 a Religious of the Sacred Heart, who attended his Retreats 
 before and after her entrance into Religion. "There were 
 some meditations," she writes, " which stood out as peculiarly 
 his own, The Presentation in the Temple, when the com- 
 mentary on the waiting of Holy Simeon, and the N^mc Diviittis 
 gathered meaning from his advancing years ; and those on the 
 Passion, in which his deep feeling sometimes overmastered him 
 and the long pauses said even more than his words. Others 
 were given incisively, the Meditation on the Two Standards 
 and the Three Classes, There was no escape from con- 
 clusions, but they were always the same year after year. The 
 Exercitants knew what they came for and his particular way 
 of adapting means to the end. When the time of the Election 
 came, he was perhaps more lavish than ever, advising, consider- 
 ing, and revising decisions and resolutions and projects ; and 
 then, fearing lest any one should think the work was done before 
 the crown was set upon it, he redoubled his insistence upon 
 the importance of the last meditation. The final explanation 
 of the ' Sume et suscipc ' were those, perhaps, in which he most 
 clearly • let himself go.' He was often very joyful on the last 
 day of the Retreat, as if he had been consoled by God or seen 
 already some good fruit of his work." 
 
 M 
 
178 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 because, as she protested, " they were so 
 offensively personal." Pedagogic rules 
 warn us against being too direct and didac- 
 tic in trying to teach virtue to boys and 
 girls, who are to be got at rather indirectly 
 and casually. Father Gallwey was bolder. 
 He would address a religious community 
 as straight as ever he could by painting pic- 
 tures and conducting dialogues to illustrate 
 even the worst possibilities among an asso- 
 ciation wherein nothing very bad was 
 to be supposed. He would graphically de- 
 pict the workings out of prejudices, in- 
 compatibilities, envies, delusions, rivalries, 
 retaliations, unforgivenesses, caprices, irra- 
 tionalities and strange wilfulnesses or con- 
 trarinesses. No doubt his established 
 reputation enabled him to say what others 
 could not ; whose danger therefore is 
 lest they confine themselves to ineffec- 
 tual speech, because they fear that any local 
 colour will act like red on the eye of a bull. 
 Such beating the air is nowadays, by some 
 and in some degree, practised and almost 
 exacted. Father Gallwey thought that a 
 religious community should be so master 
 over its sensitiveness to the appearance of a 
 
I I 
 
 AS GIVER OF RETREATS 179 
 
 slur on its character as to listen humbly, 
 patiently and good-humouredly to some of 
 his pungent descriptions of at least possible 
 scenes of discord, which he did not declare 
 to be actualities among themselves. The 
 negative work of combating such faults he 
 called '' coming down the hill of uncharit- 
 ableness." 
 
 In looking over such notes as are left by 
 listeners, severally in distinct quarters, to 
 Father Gallwey in retreats, one might al-- 
 most think there was something fanatical 
 or some undue fixity of an idea, in the in- 
 sistence on charity, so uniform are the 
 memoranda gathered from various con- 
 vents in recording exhortations on this 
 head. His hyperboles and grotesque- 
 nesses were in part meant to show that he 
 was not actually scolding known offenders. 
 He seemed to say : *' Your life is angelic 
 and yet not purely angelic ; a liability to 
 failures from perfect love of one another 
 is rooted in your bodily temperament. 
 Well, use your common frailties here as a 
 motive to endure trials one from another, 
 such mutual irritations as the diseases of 
 the flesh make more or less inevitable. Re- 
 
i8o MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 member the word of the penitent thief on 
 the cross : We deserve to suffer these 
 things, He does not/' The name of this 
 repentant malefactor was constantly on his 
 lips, both in his playful and in his most seri- 
 ous moods. It may have been under some 
 influence from him that one candidate in a 
 nunnery, who certainly had stolen nothing, 
 had a desire which was not carried into 
 effect, to take the name of Sister Dismas, 
 the traditional name of the '' Good thief," 
 as we do not fear to call him by a verbal 
 catachresis . Again, in view of the fact that 
 religious life cannot be wholly a heaven on 
 earth, but must present some trials from the 
 failure of perfect charity. Father Gallwey 
 recalled that it was a marriage state ex- 
 pressly of the soul with Christ ; and that, 
 therefore, it must be taken '' for better and 
 worse/' A Religious must be ready in a 
 minor degree to bear what many married 
 couples have to bear in sore distress, so sore 
 that several non-Christian reformers are 
 calling out loudly for a dissoluble marriage 
 to relieve the dreadful tension between 
 tempers grown incompatible. Personal at- 
 tachment to Christ, the spouse throughout 
 
AS GIVER OF RETREATS i8i 
 
 all trials, is the lesson deep in the minds 
 of many who listened to Father Gallwey. 
 
 The religious bride should desire no such 
 divorce, but rather should cling the closer 
 to Christ when relations are strained be- 
 tween brothers or sisters. After all, the re- 
 ligious community is not, as some describe 
 the social contract of civil government, a 
 compact of all the citizens mutually one 
 with another : the compact is with God. 
 The religious marriage is with Christ, and 
 He at least is guilty of no offence ; there- 
 fore to Him Religious should always ad- 
 here most closely, as to the One who, for 
 their example, while doing no iniquity, suf- 
 fered injuries the most outrageous. Hence 
 it was by deepest devotion to the Passion, 
 his favourite subject, that Father Gallwey 
 opposed a remedy to the strain and stress 
 of discordant minds in the same house of 
 God. Here he repeated his remedy, given 
 against some of the intensest difficulties or 
 disgusts which may occur, namely, continu- 
 ously maintained prayer. For every great 
 conquest the Cross was his weapon . There- 
 with offences were to be wiped out. His 
 own horror at giving offence made him seek 
 
i82 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 sedulously to ingratiate himself with any 
 person whom his severity of manner had 
 frightened or alienated during retreats. 
 
 The figure of descent from the mount of 
 uncharitableness he often used in the way 
 above described ; and he completed it by 
 an account of the ascent up the hill of posi- 
 tive charitableness, after passing through 
 the valley of cold, gloomy indifference. In 
 either case he thought it cowardice to make 
 regard for susceptibilities the primary rule 
 of his speech. 
 
 Among positive acts of charity, Father 
 Gallwey's insistence on almsgiving, which 
 was made sometimes even with the vehem- 
 ence of exaggeration, was well-known to 
 his friends. Speaking to vow-bound Reli- 
 gious, who had no money to give, he de- 
 clared that their alms must be spiritual, 
 such as he conceived to have been the 
 compassion shown by the penitent thief to 
 the innocent Sufferer on the middle cross. 
 Applying the fundamental meditation on 
 the use of creatures, he made it a point of 
 charity to do good to every person whom 
 one met while trying to derive for oneself 
 a good influence in return. It was to be 
 
AS GIVER OF RETREATS 183 
 
 a give-and-take of edification. This is a 
 very different idea from the notion that one 
 might get to Heaven very well if it were 
 not for other persons with whom one is 
 thrown into contact and has to 'deal ; that 
 individually one is well-intentioned, but 
 those around us will not let one's natural 
 goodness have fair play and expansion. 
 
 Where the audience consisted of persons 
 who had money at their disposal, then for 
 some of this also he begged, and begged 
 importunately, and for generous measures. 
 He knew much distress in the world be- 
 cause the distressed appealed to his well- 
 known charity. His tender compassion 
 was for the poor who were ashamed to beg 
 because they had been brought up to 
 wealth ; for those whose temptation was to 
 sacrifice their faith or their purity for 
 money from scoundrels ; for those who had 
 not the clothing in which they dared to face 
 their acquaintances ; for those who seemed 
 to give fair promise if only they could re- 
 ceive the education that suited their voca- 
 tion ; for charitable institutions whose work 
 was crippled by want of means, and whose 
 directors groaned under a crushing weight 
 
i84 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 of contracted debts ; for missions or 
 churches that were similarly distressed ; for 
 casual beggar-people who seemed to have 
 some desert, or who needed assistance in 
 spite of their undeservingness . He bade 
 donors remember their own undeserving- 
 ness and repeat often, '' If Thou^ O Lord, 
 wilt mark iniquities, who shall endure it? " 
 *' Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive 
 them that trespass against us." We should 
 help also those whose offence has not been 
 against ourselves. 
 
 Probably few survive now to remember 
 a signal effort of Father Gallwey's earliest 
 days in London, when by his indomitable 
 energy and the influence which his charac- 
 ter gained for him over the purses of the 
 rich, a severe test of moral strength, he got 
 together a large sum of money for general 
 charities. One of his lay friends felt bit- 
 ter disappointment that the organizer of the 
 fund had not the distribution of it ; that was 
 taken by higher ecclesiastical authorities 
 more representative of the diocese at large. 
 Father Gallwey was willing to give up his 
 personal consideration here, and remained 
 content with the important and drudge -like 
 
AS GIVER OF RETREATS 185 
 
 part of the work which God had allowed 
 and inspired him to perform. Also on the 
 several other occasions he organized funds 
 for various good works as they occurred to 
 be done ; and he was ready to give help 
 in the matter of charitable bazaars, which 
 are often the last toilsome resort of institu- 
 tions in desperate need of material means 
 whereby to pursue spiritual ends. 
 
 In these charitable works, Father Gall- 
 wey was no merely mundane philanthrop- 
 ist ; with his preaching of alms-deeds went 
 that of prayer and fasting and the driving 
 out of devils. His urgency of prayer was 
 intense. In view of apparent insuperabili- 
 ties, such as that of forgiving a deeply-felt 
 offence, he would say : '' Pray till you are 
 black in the face, pray in the suppliant 
 attitude of the kneeler, and before the 
 Blessed Sacrament." 
 
 Thus, briefly, upon the single subject of 
 charity. Father Gallwey's presentment of 
 doctrine in retreats has been sketched ; his 
 other teachings were delivered in the like 
 spirit . 
 
1 86 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALL WE Y 
 
 III. 
 
 Of Father Gallwey's method no small 
 part was his policy to sacrifice method to 
 practical results ; moreover, characteristic- 
 ally he could hardly have adapted himself 
 to the precision of a French litterateur. On 
 a more literary estimate of his writings we 
 should have to signalize here a defect. 
 Often he preferred to throw out short, dis- 
 connected suggestions, such as may be seen 
 in his Watches of the Passion, which many 
 readers have found very helpful in spite of 
 its disjointedness. His favourite name for 
 his detached maxims was " lozenges '' ; fre- 
 quently he would inquire, ''' Well ! What 
 lozenge did you pick out to suck? " 
 
 ^The like unmethodical policy appeared 
 in his very free adaptation of Scripture by 
 what is called the '* accommodated sense,'' 
 for which we have some warrant in the use 
 of the Old Testament by the New and much 
 warrant in the early Fathers. While tra- 
 velling in the train, where continuous read- 
 ing would not have been easy, especially 
 to his failing eyesight, he would carry his 
 Bible with him, and busy himself with the 
 
AS GIVER OF RETREATS 187 
 
 twists and turns he could give to passages, 
 with no intention of doing violence to the 
 literal sense in its own supreme place. He 
 would take the accounts of the strong- 
 minded, strong-willed mistress of the 
 household in the Book of Proverbs and 
 apply it to Superiors in quite different posi- 
 tions, or even to persons in no position of 
 authority. He. would take the exclamation 
 from the pleasant experience of the Trans- 
 figuration, and apply it to the painful Cruci- 
 fixion, making the penitent thief say, 
 '' Lord, it is good for us to be here." He 
 had a well-remembered application of the 
 hopes expressed by the two disciples on the* 
 road to Emmaus as they told Christ, whom 
 they did not recognize, what they had ex- 
 pected of Him and had not found. Their 
 Sperabamus became quite a watchword in 
 relation to any profitably disappointed fore- 
 casts, and it would be said resignedly, '* Oh, 
 that was only a Sperabamus of ours." 
 
 In his method of retreat to excite interest 
 Father Gallwey would use whatever little 
 indiistriae y as spiritual writers say, he could 
 prudently command. The same had been 
 his way also as supervisor of schools, where 
 
i88 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 he would apply what he knew of music and 
 painting to illustrate or dignify the prosaic 
 lessons of the boys. He collected anec- 
 dotes, vivid or amusing descriptions, made- 
 up incidents or sayings, to which he added 
 much from his own original invention, 
 which was not a small power. Thereby he 
 was not seeking a vain reputation for wit 
 and comicality, although the comic often 
 appeared, occasionally when he wanted to 
 smooth over a roughness or a too great sen- 
 sibility of his own to the touching things 
 which he had to propose for meditation. 
 The Passion was a subject which often 
 overpowered him beyond what he was wil- 
 ling to display of feeling. His freedom 
 from vanity was seen in the unblushing way 
 in which he told over and over again tTie 
 same stories, when he thought them ser- 
 viceable. To him an '' old chestnut " was 
 as good as a novelty in jokes. In the same 
 spirit he would reiterate his points of medi- 
 tation, so that, especially in his later years, 
 some of his devotees, when starting for re- 
 treat, knew as well what they were going 
 to hear as they knew the Epistle and the 
 Gospel when they went to Mass. His 
 
AS GIVER OF RETREATS 189 
 
 method and his defiance of method alike 
 looked to the good of souls, and were res- 
 pectively employed, as he considered their 
 contribution to that end to be best adapted. 
 Short as the account thus rendered of 
 Father Gallwey's retreats has been, it may 
 serve as some memorial that in this field of 
 spiritual culture he was an indefatigable 
 worker, who in his many days of priestly 
 life, did thereby a great work for the good 
 of souls, cleansing some from sin and help- 
 ing others on the upward path of perfec- 
 tion. So to have worked, and to have left 
 living monuments in the souls of men and 
 women is better than to have left behind 
 carefully written meditations, creditable 
 from a literary point of view, and indicat- 
 ing the scholarly, accurate, orderly, com- 
 prehensive mind, human excellences which 
 Father Gallwey obviously had neglected. 
 In his rather rough-and-tumble manner he 
 poured out the matter of his retreats, an- 
 xious only to sanctify souls, and sometimes 
 stern in his deadly earnestness. But 
 against the severe aspect was set his mani- 
 fest side of deep tenderness, which often 
 showed itself in irrepressible tears or in the 
 
190 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 gentle words that followed after the hard 
 utterances or reproofs . He once said hum- 
 bly, '' You are going to give a retreat in 
 such and such a place : try there to undo 
 my blunders." His mistakes of zeal, and 
 his earnestness to repair them with a hu- 
 miliation to himself, were all parts of an 
 heroic character, tireless in the service of 
 God, to which he was devoted by vows. In 
 his toil he sought and found no adequate 
 repayment on earth : to him it has not been 
 said, '* Amen, I say to thee thou hast re- 
 ceived thy reward,'* 
 
 At the cost and with the gain of repeti- 
 tion, we may take from a single source 
 what above has been gathered from several. 
 The leading characteristics already men- 
 tioned as marking Father Gallwey's retreats 
 are well illustrated in his letters to a lady 
 who had not yet had that spiritual drill. He 
 often tells her how anxious he is that she 
 should go through the course of discipline. 
 From its lessons he answers her repeated 
 questions as to what she should do with her 
 great love for natural scenery : she is to use 
 it and not abuse it : to sanctify it and not 
 leave it a merely mundane taste ; abstin- 
 
AS GIVER OF RETREATS ■ 191 
 
 ence is to temper its enjoyment : nature, in 
 some way lost by sin, has been bought back 
 for us by Christ's Blood, which has elevated 
 it, and even made it supernaturally sacra- 
 mental . The human heart, like nature, has 
 its seasons, moods^, alternations of storm 
 and sunshine : the Exercises give rules for 
 conduct under these vicissitudes . As in re- 
 treat, he would daily see his exercitants, so 
 he repeatedly urges his correspondent to 
 write him constant letters, telling how she is 
 faring, especially what she says in prayer 
 to God, and what God says to her. On this 
 latter and often neglected point of God's 
 voice he insists and answers a question as 
 to his meaning. For example, God some- 
 times says : *' Suffer and give up pleasure," 
 arid that voice is liable to be passed by or 
 to be unheard. But he deprecates a life 
 much mortified, too, which may do mis- 
 chief : for instance, refusal to the body of 
 sufficient food, sleep and exercise. Pa- 
 tience is urged : a good example of it is 
 waiting till the Blessed Sacrament from be- 
 ing a trial to young faith, becomes the daily 
 enjoyment of the hungry soul that has 
 patiently merited an appetite for its savour . 
 
192 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 Faith, however, is helped out by sight : 
 lantern slides, showing pictorially the 
 career of saints, are mentioned as having 
 proved very effective. By whatever means 
 acquired, piety must not remain at home : 
 it must be missionary, apostolic, seeking to 
 spread itself to others. 
 
 This summary of the correspondence 
 may now be illustrated by quotations : 
 '* Your paper on accende lumen sensibus 
 and your enjoyment of nature make me 
 wish to take you through St. Ignatius' 
 Exercises. I think you would learn there 
 how far you can go and when to stop." 
 '' The Exercises make it quite plain that 
 before we can use activities to advantage 
 we must begin by learning how to ab- 
 stain from them. When once we learn 
 how to command ourselves thoroughly, 
 God gives us the grace to see beyond the 
 surface of the creatures to the things that 
 they picture to us." " You are right 
 enough. The coming of Christ has in a 
 certain sense raised up all creation. His 
 presence has sanctified the earth." '" I 
 cannot tell you how much your letters and 
 your papers comfort me, and how much 
 
AS GIVER OF RETREATS 193 
 
 I wish that I could answer them more 
 quickly, and receive them oftener." " Tell 
 me how much you sleep, I wish much to 
 prevent indiscretion which might injure 
 your health." *' Fishing is admirable exer- 
 cise for your purpose. You are alone, and 
 you have a little distraction for your mind, 
 but not much . I only wonder how, with your 
 heart for creation, you can bring yourself 
 to kill a fish." *' Do not shorten sleep and 
 get plenty of exercise, but I fear you are 
 too bold on horse-back. It would not be 
 a proper finale for you to die out hunting, 
 but if savages were to kill and eat you as 
 a Christian I should not mind." ''' Desola- 
 tion is as necessary as winter and clouds : 
 without them you will never arrive at your 
 destination." '* It is rather hard for you 
 at your early stage to take in the doctrine 
 of the Blessed Sacrament ; but the day will 
 come when it will be the joy of your life." 
 ** I am very anxious that you should become 
 holy and helpful to others." '* In the day 
 when the Lord will take entire possession 
 of His child, then for His sake you will find 
 yourself compelled to speak of Him to 
 others ." All these points are enforced with 
 
 N 
 
194 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 reference to the Spiritual Exercises which 
 the correspondent at the time had not 
 made. *' I wish much to take you through 
 St. Ignatius' Exercises." " If I give the 
 retreat at Roehampton I hope you will 
 make a bold effort to attend it." '' I wish 
 very much to guide you through the Exer- 
 cises of St. Ignatius. I hope our Lord will 
 give me this consolation." Here is shown 
 the zeal which ended in the retreat given 
 and the religious life embraced. He did 
 not here work upon such material as a 
 convent might spontaneously present him, 
 either of its own members or of lay persons 
 assembled in the world : it was a case not 
 uncommon to him. For when he came 
 across, by apparent hazard, a soul that he 
 thought could profit by a retreat, he set to 
 work actively to bring that soul under the 
 influence of holy retirement and medita- 
 tion. Thus he added labour to the labours 
 of the confessional, a tribunal which, when 
 crowded, suggests the greatest expedition 
 compatible with the validity of the sacra- 
 ment. He wanted not merely quantity of 
 penitents, but also quality : and therefore he 
 would be prodigal of time oyer an mdiyi- 
 
I V. 
 
 AS GIVER OF RETREATS 195 
 
 dual when he had hope of choice fruit. 
 His own words, just quoted, were verified 
 in his own case after a manner truly note- 
 worthy : " In the day when our Lord will 
 take entire possession of His child, then you 
 will find yourself compelled to speak of 
 Him to others." The compulsion is to 
 speak in a variety of tongues, and for 
 Father Gallwey it was in the tongue of his 
 Exercise Book. In that also he found, as 
 we see in this special correspondence, the 
 rules for choosing a state of life, that mat- 
 ter so very important and often so little or 
 so ill considered. He had the keenest 
 sense of the recklessness with which many 
 determine on a career, or have it deter- 
 mined for them by parents who are worldly 
 and without due idea of responsibility in 
 so grave a consideration. His interest in 
 the correspondent, whose case has been 
 chosen to illustrate our subject, turned 
 largely on this point : how to bring her to 
 the position which God wished her to 
 occupy, even though it might negative what 
 previously had been in view. The matter 
 is momentous enough to furnish the last 
 word in this brief outline of Father Gall- 
 
196 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 wey's labours, not only in retreat -giving, 
 but also in bringing people into retreat, and 
 causing it to act as the determinant of their 
 whole career. By God's grace he per- 
 suaded many to live and die by these sound- 
 est principles, wTiich he himself enforced 
 by his own signal example. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 His Published Works, 
 
 Father Gallwey as a Writer. 
 
 I. 
 
 The influence which Father Gallwey exer- 
 cised over those who knew him personally 
 was extraordinarily great, as those readily 
 admit who had the privilege of being in- 
 structed by him in all that concerns the 
 dealing of the soul with God. It was not 
 merely that one felt that he was in com- 
 munication with an exceptionally strong 
 and independent character, or with a very 
 highly-gifted man : it was his earnest saint- 
 liness, his keen realization of the things of 
 faith, his sympathy and irrepressible kindli- 
 ness which told and which produced such a 
 deep impression. His friends were his 
 friends for life, and after. When Father 
 Gallwey was in the full vigour of his man- 
 
198 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 hood, no man, woman, or child (and his 
 sympathies extended to all) v/ith whom he 
 was brought into contact, could fail to 
 be influenced by him. 
 
 As a preacher his influence though great 
 was more restricted, and much of his 
 magnetic influence was lost. His style of 
 preaching did not commend itself to all . It 
 is true that he attracted large audiences and 
 was heard with close attention, but some 
 were offended by what they called his 
 *' "fierce aggressiveness," by his flashes of 
 scornful humour which sometimes seemed 
 misplaced and ill-timed, by exaggerated 
 claims upon the generosity of his hearers, 
 by a plainness of statement which bordered 
 on the grotesque. To such he seemed un- 
 sympathetic and harsh. Closer personal 
 intimacy would have dissipated these false 
 impressions, but the opportunity for closer 
 intimacy was denied to the majority of his 
 hearers. 
 
 What influence will Father Gallwey ex- 
 ercise as an author? He was not a volum- 
 inous writer. Besides the sermons which 
 he published, and his Lectures on Ritualism, 
 he has written no really important work ex- 
 
HIS PUBLISHED WORKS 199 
 
 cept The Watches of the Passion. As a 
 writer he must be judged by this work ; and 
 it is fortunate that it is so. Of the value 
 of this book there can be but one opinion 
 amongst Enghsh-speaking Cathohcs. It 
 sums up in its two volumes the results of 
 fifty years' almost daily meditation on the 
 sufferings of Christ . It represents the main 
 study of his life, and as such is an ascetical 
 work of the highest value. It will be read 
 and re-read by thousands of holy souls who 
 in religious life or in the world are Striving 
 after a greater knowledge and greater love 
 of Christ crucified. To those who knew 
 Father Gallwey and who listened to his re- 
 treats and exhortations it is his voice, still 
 sounding. To those who did not know him 
 it is a revelation of a singularly holy and 
 beautiful soul. 
 
 It is hard to speak in criticism of such a 
 book. To some it will seem scrappy, dis- 
 connected, jerky, and unfinished. Scrip- 
 ture phrases, uniformly printed in italics, 
 break up the continuity of the style . Pious 
 traditions, historical facts, archaeological 
 details, questions of harmonistic arrange- 
 ment are all mingled together in a manner 
 
200 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 most confusing to one who expects an 
 orderly straightforward narrative of events. 
 But Father Gallwey did not intend to give 
 a narrative of events or an orderly, com- 
 mentary. In his own original way he 
 wished to present scenes and details of the 
 Passion as they had presented themselves 
 to his own glowing mind in countless con- 
 templations. . It is a book for meditation 
 rather than for continuous reading ; notes 
 for a retreat rather than a series of con- 
 nected discourses ; a storehouse of facts 
 and thoughts and illustrations and pious 
 fancies rather than a carefully collated 
 literary production. That this was clearly 
 the design of the author is sufficiently in- 
 dicated by the title, The '' Watches ^^ of the 
 Passion. Let us take a few examples. In 
 the second Night Watch he deals with the 
 Agony in the Garden. 
 
 ** Is His Blessed Mother in the Grotto 
 when the drops of Blood are trickling 
 down upon the ground? Writers on 
 the Sacred Passion take it for granted 
 that she is not. They argue from 
 ancient custom, that like other virtuous 
 women, she would not walk abroad after 
 
HIS PUBLISHED WORKS 201 
 
 dark. This reasoning, however, is not con- 
 clusive. For are there not at times excep- 
 tions, even to prudent and wholesome 
 rules ? Our Blessed Lady, walking upon 
 earth, is a quite exceptional and most un- 
 earthly work of God. She stands alone, 
 the Blessed one among the women whom 
 Eve had deprived of blessedness . She is the 
 Lily among the thorns ; the Immaculate 
 among sinners ; the Fleece plentifully be- 
 dewed with the graces of Heaven, when all 
 around is parched and dried up. So that, 
 had she gone with her Divine Son to the 
 Garden, in this point also she would have 
 been an exception to ordinary rules. 
 
 '' She is the Most Prudent of Virgins, oh 
 yes ! but heavenly and Divine prudence 
 soars high above human prudence, and be- 
 comes merged in the folly of the Cross. 
 Who so prudent as her Son Jesus ? Yet 
 where was human prudence when He be- 
 trayed Himself and all His rights, and be- 
 came Surety for us sinners ? 
 
 " She is the Prudent Virgin ; but her 
 prudence, like her Divine Son's prudence, 
 ^cnows that there is a time to remain 
 hidden and a time to walk abroad. So 
 that, had she gone with her Divine Son 
 to the Garden, as has been said, she would 
 have been an exception to ordinary rule. 
 
 '' Holy women, it is argued, shrink 
 
202 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 from being abroad at night ; and yet, the 
 night was very far spent, and the day was 
 very near its dawning, when Judith, who 
 was a holy woman, and the chaste type of 
 the Virgin Mother, passed through the city 
 gate and went down the hill clothed with 
 the garments of her gladnesSy and sandals 
 on her feet, taking her bracelets and lilies 
 and earlets and rings with her and decked 
 with all her ornaments (c. x.). 
 
 '* She was a holy woman, very holy, but 
 because she was holy, she understood from 
 above that the time of peace has its rules, 
 and the fierce battle has other rules. 
 
 ** As Holy Mary is the second Eve. and 
 as it stands in God's primeval decree that 
 she is to share largely in the second great 
 conflict with Lucifer, which is begun to- 
 night ; and as it is written in the very be- 
 ginning of the prophecy that the enmities 
 are to be between her and the serpent, 
 it would be passing strange if she is to have 
 no prominent share in the night-watches of 
 the Passion. 
 
 *' The fact, moreover, that the Garden 
 belonged to her might render it probable 
 that she could be there, and still sufficiently 
 sheltered and retired. 
 
 " A well-known modern painter repre- 
 sents her as watching through the window 
 of her apartment in Jerusalem the return 
 
HIS PUBLISHED WORKS 203 
 
 of her Divine Son from Gethsemani. The 
 holy Fra AngeUco, on the other hand^ in 
 one of his paintings, places her in the Gar- 
 den near the sleeping disciples. 
 
 '' The Abbess Mary of Jesus {d^Agreda\ 
 according to the account she gives of her 
 visions, sees our Blessed Lady in Jerusalem 
 following in spirit every step and every 
 movement of our Lord in the Garden. As 
 He has three disciples with Him, so she has 
 Magdalen and two other devout women. 
 When He goes into the Grotto, she retires 
 alone into her chamber, and prays in union 
 with Him and shares all His Agony. 
 When He visits His disciples, she goes to 
 her three companions to encourage them to 
 pray. ' 
 
 '' This account harmonizes with the com- 
 mon opinion that she is not, in body, pre- 
 sent in the Garden, and also satisfies the 
 mind of those who think that the second 
 Eve must have had her full share in every 
 stage of the Sacred Passion. 
 
 '' It seems repugnant to think that there 
 was any scene of the great conflict in which 
 the woman, the Blessed among women, the 
 second Eve did not take her part. Can I 
 hide from Abraham what I am about to 
 do ? '' 
 
 The above passage gives an idea of the 
 minute investigation which Father Gallwey 
 
204 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 devotes to every portion of his subject. 
 One other extract may be given, from the 
 Second Station of the Third Watch of the 
 Day, as quite characteristic of the writer's 
 style and manner : 
 
 '^ At the ninth hoar Jesus cried oat with 
 a load voice y Eloi, Eloi, lamma sabacthani; 
 which is, being interpreted, My God, my 
 God, why hast Thou forsaken me? (St. 
 Mark xv. 34.) 
 
 *' A. With a load voice , 
 
 ** Louder far and more wonderful than 
 this cry at Bethany, which reached Lazarus 
 in his grave ! One of the countless miracles 
 of the Sacred Passion is this, that Jesus, 
 worn out, quite exhausted, faint and 
 parched, helpless and prostrate, can utter 
 this loud cry, ' Laboravi damans^ with 
 effort and labour I cried out : for My jaws 
 are become hoarse^ My eyes have failed, 
 whilst I hope in my God (Psalm Ixviii.) 
 . . . De Profandis clamavi — Out of the 
 depths of My sorrowing Heart, and with 
 all the energy of My loving Heart, I have 
 cried.' 
 
 *' For love is strong as death, and much 
 stronger. The many waters that are come 
 in to His Soul cannot quench charity, 
 neither can the floods drown it (Cant, viii.) 
 
 ** B. With a load voice. 
 
HIS PUBLISHED WORKS 205 
 
 " The voice of the Lord (is) upon the 
 waters: the God of Majesty hath thun- 
 dered: the Lord is upon many waters. The 
 voice of the Lord is in power : the voice of 
 the Lord breaketh the cedars ; yea^ the Lord 
 shall break the cedars of LebanoUy and re- 
 duce them to pieces (Psalm xxviii.). 
 
 *' Under the canopy of darkness this cry 
 of our Saviour travels over the heads of the 
 vast crowd, and is heard by everyone ; and 
 passes across the deep fosse around the 
 walls into the silent streets of the city. 
 More even than the mysterio.us darkness, 
 it spreads awe and consternation . 
 
 *' When He spoke gently last night in the 
 Garden, and said in humble meekness, / am 
 He : who was able to stand it ? 
 
 *' Attendite , Pause then to contemplate 
 for a while the trouble and dismay awak- 
 ened now by this loud cry from the Cross, 
 in the souls of all who have rejected oui 
 Saviour ; and most of all, in the Rulers and 
 Ancients, who have planned and meditated 
 vain things against the Lord and against 
 His Christ, — The voice of the Lord break- 
 eth the cedars. These strong-minded men 
 are terror-stricken and appalled . Destruc- 
 tion and unhappiness in their ways, and the 
 way of peace they have not known (Psalm 
 xiii.). For the way of peace is to follow 
 Jesus : to love Jesus, tok:eep close to Jesus, 
 
2o6 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 The eve of the Lord is on them that fear 
 
 Him . 
 
 ** Though He will not save Himself on 
 Calvary, He can save all who trust in Him. 
 He is their powerful Protector, and stronf^ 
 stay ; a defence frow the heat, and a cover 
 from the sun at noon. A preservation from 
 stumbling!;, and a Help from falling. He 
 raiseth up the soul, and enlifrhteneth the 
 eyes, and giveth health and light and bles- 
 sing (Ecclus. xxxiv.)- Thfese unhappy 
 men are among those who have not called 
 upon the Lord ; there have they trembled 
 with fear, where there is no fear (Psalm 
 xiii . ) . This loud, strong cry fills them with 
 the fear that after all Jesus is not going to 
 die, for He has all His life within Him still. 
 He may, they think, in this darkness, be 
 coming down from His Cross to strike His 
 enemies and deliver the people from their 
 yoke. We fools! what hath pride profited 
 us? 
 
 " From those, O Lord, who resist Thy 
 right hand, keep us as the apple of Thy eye 
 C Psalm xvi.). 
 
 '' From anger, hatred, and all ill-will, de- 
 liver us, O Lord." 
 
 There is no straining after effect in these 
 passages. Simplicity and conspicuous sin- 
 cerity are the characteristics of his style'. 
 
HIS PUBLISHED WORKS 207 
 
 As he saw and felt he wishes others also 
 to see and feel. His one wish is to drive 
 the lesson home. Father Gallwey was a 
 great devotional worker in the best and tru- 
 est sense of that much -abused word. His 
 familiarity with the Sacred Text is such that 
 he uses it almost unconsciously, nor does 
 he hesitate to employ it even when the 
 words in the context are spoken in alto- 
 gether a different meaning. Some critics 
 no doubt will object to this, and there are 
 some few cases in which Father Gallwey 
 seems to have lessened rather than in- 
 creased the effect intended by allusions to 
 'incongruous ideas suggested by the Old 
 Testament language he employs. But still 
 he has abundant authority for the use that 
 he makes of Scripture in an applied sense, 
 both in the liturgy of the Church and the 
 writings of devout authors from the earliest 
 days unto our own : and many allusions and 
 expressions which would seem extravagant 
 to some may prove useful and serviceable 
 to others. 
 
2o8 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 II. 
 
 Father Gallwey's published sermons are, 
 to many of those who heard him preach, 
 something of a disappointment. He 
 seemed to say so much more than the 
 printed words convey, which is only 
 another way of saying that he was a sacred 
 orator rather than a writer. As an author 
 his most striking characteristics would 
 seem to be absolute originality of thought 
 and diction, a straightforwardness of ut- 
 terance which he took no pains to disguise, 
 and fearlessness as to any consequences 
 which might follow, provided only that his 
 Master's cause was served. 
 
 We come now to his printed sermons. 
 The best known of these are the funeral 
 discourses preached by him on various oc- 
 casions, which are now collected in one 
 volume under the somewhat peculiar and 
 striking title. Salvage front the Wreck, 
 This book contains sermons preached at the 
 funerals of the following distinguished per- 
 sons : Sir Charles Tempest, the Hon. 
 Charles Langdale, S J. (with an appendix 
 on Sir Edward Vavasour and Lady Stour- 
 
HIS PUBLISHED WORKS 209 
 
 ton), George W. Cunninghame "(with an 
 appendix on Margaret Mary Cunning- 
 hame), Cecil, Marchioness of Lothian, 
 Prince Louis Napoleon, Mother Magdalen, 
 O.S.P\, Lady Georgiana Fullerton, Charles 
 Weld, William Joseph Middelton, Robert 
 Caddell, Eliza Katharine Devas and 
 Joseph Weld. The second edition of the 
 book (1903) contains also the discourse 
 preached at Hadzor over the remains of 
 Mrs. Theodore Galton ; and centenary ser- 
 mons, preached at Stonyhurst, July 25, 
 1894, and at New Hall, July 5, 1898. 
 
 It is hardly possible for anyone even re- 
 motely connected with the subject of any 
 of these sermons to read them unmoved. 
 There is a tender pathos running through 
 them, a sincerity of sympathy, an ever pre- 
 sent realization of what death means to a 
 Catholic, which renders them exquisitely 
 touching. With peculiar delicacy and 
 judgment Father Gallwey singles out the 
 particular trait of character in his friend, 
 on which those who stand about the bier 
 would most willingly linger at that moment, 
 — and this without the slightest suspicion of 
 
 exaggeration or flattery. He meditates on 
 o 
 
2IO MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 these traits of character, weighs them, as 
 it were, in God's sight, in a manner that 
 is all his own, striving meanwhile to bring 
 home a lesson to his hearers, and above all, 
 never omitting in the true spirit of Catholic 
 piety to beg their prayers for the departed 
 soul. That this last point of prayer for the 
 dead was in his mind long after the 
 mourners had departed and the grave had 
 closed, is evident from the little word of 
 exhortation he adds at the end of nearly all 
 these printed discourses. '* Kind reader, 
 pray for his soul and the souls of all the 
 Faithful departed." And in the sermon 
 preached at the funeral of Sir Charles 
 Tempest, the same lesson, or one kindred 
 to it, is powerfully inculcated : 
 
 *' And here, brethren, let me, before 
 going further, call attention to the hope 
 which we derive, when thinking of the 
 fate of departed friends, from the doc- 
 trine delivered to us concerning purga- 
 tory. It is an ancient belief. How 
 many long centuries have rolled away 
 since the old Jewish chronicler penned the 
 words : ' It is a holy and a wholesome 
 thought to pray for the dead that they may 
 be loosed from their sins ! ' Our fathers 
 
 "^ 
 
 •^ 
 
HIS PUBLISHED WORKS 211 
 
 believed, and handed down to us this creed. 
 But, brethren, a large number of those 
 around us, from the training of their child- 
 hood, are accustomed to consider the 
 notion of a purgatory as a cruel fiction. Yet 
 I would ask any thoughtful person amongst 
 us who has watched in sorrow by a death- 
 bed ; I would ask the mother, the wife, the 
 father, the husband, the child ; and I 
 would ask you, my reverend brethren, 
 who so often have anxiously to watch 
 the dying man as you have to answer 
 for his soul — if we were obliged to be- 
 lieve that the instant the heart of man 
 beats no more the soul must either be 
 pure enough to enter Heaven or tnust perish 
 eternally, which of us could face a death - 
 scene? If we are to form an opinion at 
 all, how often in our lives are we so blest 
 as to find our dying friend prepared for his 
 passage so thoroughly, that our firm con- 
 viction is that his soul is without wrinkle 
 and without stain ? And with what courage 
 should we lie down ourselves, were we 
 bound to believe that at the instant of death 
 we must either be spotless and owe nothing 
 to God's justice, or else perish forever? 
 Happily this is not the faith that has come 
 down to us. We believe as our fathers be- 
 lieved, that Almighty God, in his great 
 mercy, wishing that none may perish, and 
 
212 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 seeing how forgetful and improvident man 
 is while busy here on earth, has appointed 
 a time after death when the Christian can 
 sin no more, but can do penance for sins 
 committed. This is our faith and our 
 hope." 
 
 In this same sermon there is a passage 
 which, whilst it illustrates very clearly the 
 preacher's piety and affection, brings out 
 also his uncompromising honesty of utter- 
 ance. 
 
 '' If then, when you ask me, ' Where 
 is he ? ' you speak of his mortal body, 
 which remains in our keeping ; if your 
 meaning is, Where shall his place be ; 
 where shall his grave be made ? I answer 
 at once, there where a Christian's conse- 
 crated body ought to lie, near to the altar 
 of Jesus Christ. Anointed and consecrated 
 when life begins, anointed and made pure 
 and holy when life is drawing to a close, 
 a Christian's body should rest near the 
 tabernacle. For the tabernacle, if it be the 
 dwelling-place of the Son of God amongst 
 men, from whence as from the sun in the 
 firmament, a stream of light and warmth 
 pours forth upon our lifetime, so also may 
 we say that it is the coffin and the grave in 
 which we bury the Body of our 'Lord in the 
 
HIS PUBLISHED WORKS 213 
 
 midst of his departed servants. See what 
 a narrow prison it is, brethren ! Straighter 
 and more humble than the coffin we pre- 
 pare for man, the tabernacle ought to re- 
 concile a Christian to the narrowness of his 
 own coffin and the silence of his grave . Let 
 him then lie near to the tabernacle, under- 
 neath that altar which he built to the hon- 
 our of his God, so that even in death his 
 silent lips may seem to utter the Christian's 
 hope, * I know that my Redeemer liveth ; 
 and in the last day I am to rise again out 
 of the earth, and in my flesh I shall see my 
 God. Laid up in my bosom is this my 
 hope.' There then, brethren, let his body 
 sleep, near to Him who is * the first-born 
 from the dead.' 
 
 '* But as we know that the body is not 
 the Christian man, the question is not an- 
 swered, ' Where is he ? ' Where is the soul 
 that cannot die, that cannot sleep ? We 
 cannot set this question aside. What then 
 is the answer, brethren ? What answer can 
 we give, except by turning to the altar and 
 saying to our Lord, as the prophet said of 
 old : ' O Lord God, Thou knowest ' ? We 
 know nothing of the secrets of Thy judg- 
 ment seat. On which side the tree fell we 
 know not. ' O Lord God, Thou knowest.' 
 I am aware, brethren, that it is almost a 
 fashion and received usage in this country, 
 
214 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 at the death-bed, as soon as the last gasp 
 is drawn, to H£t one's eyes for a moment and 
 say : ' 'Tis well, 'tis well ; he is gone to 
 God.' We give the verdict flippantly. It 
 is the established form ; it is a cheap word 
 that costs nothing, means nothing, does 
 nothing, and is worth nothing. It is a 
 phrase that will serve for saint or sinner. 
 Ecclesiastes tells us that men used words 
 in this way in his time. * I saw,' he says, 
 * the wicked buried ; who also, when they 
 were yet living, were praised in the city as 
 men of just works ' : and then he adds, 
 ' This also is vanity.' Is it not, brethren, 
 a vanity, a hollow emptiness, a very heart- 
 less parting word, to say with our lips : ' He 
 is gone to God,' and so leave the dead man 
 to his doom, whatever it may be. I am 
 sure that you will not when death comes, 
 be willing that your friend should say over 
 you : ' He is gone to God : he was a man 
 of just works,' and then forget you." 
 
 The sermon preached at the Dirge in 
 Farm Street Church in memory of Cecil, 
 Marchioness of Lothian, who died in Rome, 
 has a very striking passage on the joyous- 
 ness of a Catholic life. 
 
 '' What is your evidence? Was her life 
 melancholy ? Had she more dull days than 
 
tilB PUBLlSHfit) WORliS 2f5 
 
 her contemporaries? Had she not, to say 
 the least, a good average of sunny hours ? 
 Or rather, if we are to speak the full truth, 
 was not her life characterized by joyous- 
 ness and buoyancy of heart? Was there 
 not in her soul a cheerfulness and serenity 
 that spread itself among her companions 
 and attracted the young to her, and made 
 her so much at home among children when 
 sharing their preparations for some festi- 
 val day ? And is it not owing to this charm 
 of her cheerfulness, and to the happiness 
 it diffused around, that now we so often 
 hear the words : * Her place is empty ; who 
 can fill it ? ' . . It is only now, when death 
 makes revelations, and things hidden come 
 to light, and friends interchange their 
 thoughts and observations, that we become 
 alive to the fact that we have had before 
 our eyes a very striking instance of the way 
 in which that triumphant grace of Jesus 
 Christ, which gives to innocent children the 
 maturity, the dignity, the majesty of vener- 
 able old age, can also teach those advanced 
 in age and high in honour how to become 
 like to Christ's little ones of whom ' is the 
 Kingdom of Heaven.' " 
 
 The sermon on Lady Herries preached 
 at Everingham on December 4, 1883, ^^^ 
 on Lady Georgiana Fullerton at the Sacred 
 
2i6 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 Heart Convent Chapel at Roehampton on 
 January 23, 1885, are both remarkable, 
 and contain many passages of unquestion- 
 able interest and beauty, but we pass on to 
 speak of one of Father Gallwey's funeral 
 discourses which, from the circumstances 
 of the case, excited the widest interest and 
 which is also, in our vieW;, the most beauti- 
 ful and striking of any of his printed ser- 
 mons . 
 
 The sermon in memory of Prince Louis 
 Napoleon, the young Woolwich cadet, who 
 met his death under such painful circum- 
 stances in the Zulu War of 1879, whilst 
 fighting under the British flag, was 
 preached at Farm Street on July 3rd. The 
 young prince had petitioned for active ser- 
 vice to escape, as he said, from the idle 
 frivolity of a worldly life, and to be of use. 
 He was a Catholic through and through, 
 and in his last will and testament, written, 
 it would almost seem, under the influence 
 of a premonition of his early death, occur 
 the words : '' I die in the Catholic, Apos- 
 tolic Roman faith. I hope that my mother 
 will cherish towards me, when I shall be no 
 more, affectionate remembrance such as I 
 
His PUBLlSHEi) WORKS 217 
 
 shall ever retain for her till my last 
 moment. I shall die with a feeling of deep 
 gratitude to her Majesty the Queen of Eng- 
 land, and to all the Royal Family, and to 
 the country where I have met with such cor- 
 dial hospitality. Of my arms and uniform, 
 the last that I shall have worn, I leave to 
 my mother.'' Amongst his papers were 
 found a prayer in French, composed by 
 himself for his own use, in which he offers 
 himself unreservedly to God, and in ex- 
 change begs the gift of an unswerving 
 faith : he asks for direction and for 
 strength : O mon Dieu, montrez-moi tou- 
 jour s oil se trouve mon devoir : donnez-moi 
 la force de Vaccontplir en toute occasion. 
 To such a one Father Gallwey's heart went 
 out. He takes for his text the portion of 
 the seventh chapter of St. Luke, which 
 deals with the miracle worked upon the son 
 of the widow of Naim. 
 
 ** It was not by chance that our dear 
 Lord arrived at the gates of Naim as this 
 funeral was coming out. He Tiad planned 
 the meeting from eternity. Neither was 
 it for the sake of those only that fol- 
 lowed the bier that He was there. His 
 divine Heart was ranging far beyond the 
 
218 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 limits of that hour and far beyond the 
 borders of that one city. All time 
 was present to Him, and every land, 
 and all the generations of men, and each 
 man's home. The maize-field of Africa, 
 and the mourning chamber in Kent, were 
 as much before His all-seeing eye as the 
 gates of that town of Galilee. And for 
 the wounded body of the young Prince, 
 and the crushed spirit of his bereaved and 
 august mother, the Divine Heart was plan- 
 ning as much as for the dead who lay upon 
 the bier and the widowed mourner who fol- 
 lowed it. . . . There is not a holy Chris- 
 tian death-bed, there is not a hallowed 
 funeral at which our Blessed Saviour Jesus 
 Christ does not assist, even as He stood by 
 the bier at Naim. Whenever and wherever 
 one of His servants is called away from' the 
 world, He is there. Even though no visible 
 minister of His be present to do His Office, 
 Jesus Himself is there in time to anoint the 
 parting soul, and to give it Viaticum for the 
 long journey." 
 
 After this consoling thought, so beauti- 
 fully expressed, the mind of the preacher 
 is with the poor, mangled body. 
 
 *' You that are in charge," he says, '' of 
 the mangled body of the young soldier, with 
 its seventeen wounds upon it, go and bear 
 
HIS PUBLISHED WORKS 219 
 
 it to Mount Calvary, and lay it down there 
 beside the Body of Jesus, and the Son of 
 holy Mary. What do you find ? Have you 
 not wound for wound, and many over ? Go, 
 too, and find the disconsolate mother, and 
 lead her silently to Calvary, and set her be- 
 side the Mother already there, and say : 
 Which of the two is the bruised heart, 
 lonely and crushed, bowed down and de- 
 solate? In the sinless Mother, as in the 
 Divine Son, death has done its worst ; but 
 death is entirely conquered. And since 
 that hour, from the dead Body of Jesus, 
 and from the agonized heart of His Blessed 
 Mother, a virtue is ever coming forth 
 to anoint and soothe the wound that death 
 inflicts, whether on the one that is called 
 away, or in the aching hearts of those who 
 are left behind." 
 
 There is another passage of great force 
 and sustained eloquence, which we should 
 like to quote, in which the preacher shows 
 how Christian death is but a passing sleep, 
 but we must pass on to the concluding por- 
 tion of the discourse, in which Father Gall- 
 wey returns to his old lesson, that we must 
 pray. 
 
 *' And now, brethren, there is one les- 
 son more which his lips would teach if 
 
220 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 he might raise himself on his bier and speak 
 to us. He would say : My mother and my 
 friends, you weep and are anguished be- 
 cause you were not by me when I fell, to 
 bathe my brow, to fan my cheek, to moisten 
 my lips, to turn my couch for me. But all 
 this, and more — oh ! how much more ! you 
 can do for me now. My friends, * have 
 pity on me, have pity on me,' remember me 
 at the altar. Your prayers, your tears, your 
 alms, joined to the Holy Mysteries, can 
 purify and refresh my poor soul in its 
 needs." 
 
 Father Gallwey was not an ideal writer. 
 His style, both in the Watches of the Pas- 
 sion and his printed sermons, is uneven, 
 the transitions too abrupt. His brilliant 
 imagery is sometimes inept, occasionally 
 bizarre. But what more than compensates 
 for these shght flaws are his virility of 
 thought and utterance, his uncompromising 
 straightforwardness, his absolute sincerity 
 of purpose. Like the great modern artist, 
 whose representations of the Sacred Pas- 
 sion Father Gallwey so much admired, his 
 word-painting produces in the mind a 
 noble, vivid and true picture ; it is only 
 when we study details that the small de- 
 fects appear. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 Father Gallwey as a Controversialist. 
 
 Another side of Father Gallwey's literary 
 activity is represented by the Lectures on 
 Ritualism,, which he dehvered in the church 
 at Farm Street, and afterwards pubhshed 
 in 1878. Another side, and yet not alto- 
 gether another side, for the inspiring 
 motive of all that he ever wrote was the 
 zeal for souls which dominated his entire 
 personality. Still, the matter of his Sal- 
 vage from the Wreck and of his Watches 
 of the Passion was directly spiritual, 
 whereas that of the Lectures on Ritualism 
 was, in the better sense of the word, contro- 
 versial. A prejudice against these lectures, 
 which to some extent destroyed their utility, 
 was evoked, or rather occasioned, by a 
 feature in their style, which was quickly set 
 down to undue levity of tone in dealing with 
 a peculiarly sacred subject. There was, 
 
222 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 perhaps, some pretext for this charge, for 
 at times Father Galhvey let loose his native 
 humour in a way that could not be but irri- 
 tating to the victims of his banter. It was 
 one of his shortcomings that he did not al- 
 ways perceive how out of place is humour 
 of this sort when directed against persons 
 who are in deadly earnest, especially when 
 these, as the outcome of long years of close 
 intimacy, are held in affectionate respect 
 and veneration by the very persons he was 
 seeking to convince of the fallacies of their 
 religious position. Still his banter was in- 
 variably genial, and employed only with the 
 object of casting a clear and forcible light 
 on the incongruities of the positions taken 
 up by some of the Ritualists, Anything 
 like controversial bitterness or intentional 
 unfairness was altogether foreign to his 
 nature, as all who knew him intimately can 
 testify, and many passages in these lectures 
 demonstrate. But his intense realization of 
 the spiritual loss sustained by souls who are 
 kept out of the Church, and lose the aid of 
 its guiding truths and saving sacraments, 
 made him ichafe under the hopeless fallacies 
 to which at the last moment Anglican 
 
.. x 
 
 AS A CONTROVERSIALIST 223 
 
 Directors so commonly resort, to hold back 
 former penitents who have become con- 
 vinced on all fundamental points of the 
 truth of Catholicism. 
 
 It is this which determines the charac- 
 ter of his Lectures on Ritualism:. It is 
 now a quarter of a century since they 
 were delivered, but what moved Father 
 Gallwey to deliver them was the circum- 
 stances that, as a London priest, he was 
 brought into constant relations with in- 
 quirers, who were being plied with these 
 specious pretexts for holding back when 
 God was calling them into His Church ; and 
 priests and others of the present generation 
 who are faced by the like experience, may 
 still find their profit in resorting to the 
 bright pages and solid arguments of these 
 two little volumes. 
 
 *' It has often been observed," he says 
 in his short Preface, '' during the last 
 twenty-five years how, among those who 
 belong to this [High Church] section of the 
 Church of England, certain phrases have 
 become the fashion for the time, and passed 
 current as good arguments, and been used 
 with much energy by the Anglican Clergy 
 
224 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 to deter waverers from joining the Catholic 
 Church. I allude to such phrases as these : 
 ' Will you abandon the Church of your 
 Baptism ? Surely you cannot forsake your 
 sick mother in the hour of her need. You 
 have all the means of grace in the Anglo- 
 Catholic branch of the Church of Christ. 
 What more do you want than true Sacra- 
 ments and Apostolic Succession ? Observe 
 the signs of life in our Anglo-Catholic 
 Branch — the sanctity of our clergy, the re- 
 vival, the Catholic spirit. Who can doubt 
 our Sacraments ? our Orders ? One cannot 
 help feeling that our Clergy are true 
 priests? ' " 
 
 The book is addressed not directly to the 
 Anglican clergy who advance these the- 
 ories, or even to the waverers who are liable 
 to be influenced by them, but to the Catho- 
 lic laity who, if they know how to use them, 
 have more frequent opportunities than have 
 their priests of giving correct explanations 
 to perplexed Anglican friends . 
 
 *' I have two objects," he says to his im- 
 mediate hearers, '* in bringing this subject 
 before you ; the first is to move you to take 
 an interest in the movement that is going on 
 in this country^ — which for convenience sake 
 I will designate by its popular name as the 
 
AS A CONTROVERSIALIST 225 
 
 Ritualistic movement — in order that you 
 may help with your prayers all who are 
 seeking for truth ; and the second is to in- 
 duce you to instruct yourselves carefully on 
 all the points of dogma which are brought 
 into prominence by this movement, so that 
 you may not by want of knowledge put any 
 bar in the way of inquirers who may come 
 across your path, but on the contrary, may 
 be able, by saying the right word in season, 
 to prove * an eye to the blind and a foot to 
 the lame.' " 
 
 The first volume contains eight Lectures, 
 in each of which some one of the fallacies 
 enumerated in the passage quoted from the 
 Preface is made the occasion for elucidat- 
 ing a fundamental principle of Catholic 
 teaching. Thus, in reply to the question 
 whether the blessing of God is on Ritualism, 
 and whether the reputed holiness of Angli- 
 can directors is to be regarded as a sign 
 that it is, Father Gallwey takes occasion to 
 explain the essential difference between 
 submitting to the authority of the Church 
 and submitting to that of some individual 
 minister, together with the absurdity of ac- 
 cepting a man's real or reputed holiness ks 
 proof of his authority, when the doctrinal 
 P 
 
226 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 programme he prescribes to his congre- 
 gation is completely at variance with that 
 of his Nonconformist, or even his Anglican 
 neighbours — who, if reputed holiness is 
 such, can show just as good titles as he, in 
 attestation of their spiritual authority. 
 Father Cuthbert '* is, they say, a good and 
 holy man, and we are safe in following him ! 
 Pope, Bishops, and Councils, the early and 
 the living Church, have all faded out of 
 sight, and nothing remains but our Lord 
 and His Prophet, Father Cuthbert, or his 
 curate as the case may be." And he goes 
 on, quite in his own style, to contrast the 
 spirit, so opposite to the spirit of faith in the 
 early Church, which this method of group- 
 ing round individual clergymen and party 
 leaders engenders. 
 
 ** As a curious illustration of the absence 
 of the spirit of faith even among those Ang- 
 licans who proclaim themselves to be thor- 
 oughly Catholic, I will cite [he says] from 
 an Instruction printed recently by a Ritu- 
 alistic clergyman 'namely, in the Penitents^ 
 Manual] to teach his flock how to profit by 
 sermons, the following few words : * If you 
 hear anything spoken against the faith in 
 the pulpit try to bear it patiently.' This 
 
AS A CONTROVERSIALIST 227 
 
 counsel would startle a Greek or Latin theo- 
 logian of the old times, for, if there was 
 anything that roused them to put in practice 
 the Psalmist's precept, ' Be angry and sin 
 not/ it was a heresy ; and a heresy in the 
 pulpit especially would have all the power 
 of electricity on their spiritual nerves . The 
 counsel, therefore, that a zealous pastor 
 would have given in those days would be 
 diametrically opposite to what we have 
 here : it would be : 'be meek, yes, and 
 humble of heart like your Master ; but if 
 you hear anything spoken against the faith, 
 more especially in the pulpit, do not bear 
 it patiently ; denounce the preacher at once 
 to Holy Church. . . .' This meekness 
 and patience, which is to be maintained in 
 presence of the heresies preached from 
 Anglican pulpits, will appear more clearly 
 in its true character if we contrast this piece 
 of advice with another given by the same 
 clergyman a few pages further on in the 
 same popular volume . For having put the 
 question : * How are you to treat the Roman 
 Catholics ? ' he gives this answer : * Refuse 
 to enter into or listen to any controversy 
 with them. Simply and firmly decline to 
 listen or argue.' Now here, you observe, 
 we have something that looks like the 
 action of faith in the ancient Catholic 
 saints. This language smacks of St. Paul's 
 
228 
 
 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 trenchant warning-word, ' A man that is a 
 heretic avoid'; * Beware of 'dogs/ &c. 
 And St. John's peremptory injunction, 
 * Say not to him, God speed you.' So that 
 in presence of the Roman Catholic and 
 Apostohc Church the Rituahst leaders 
 sound the alarm, set their watches, and arm 
 at all points against attack, just as the 
 Apostles would have the Church do in the 
 presence of the unseen wicked spirits, or 
 their heretical agents on earth : * Whom re- 
 sist ye strong in the faith. .' . .' But for 
 the heresies of the Established Church, 
 whose name is legion, there must be more 
 indulgence. When you hear one or more 
 of them preached from "the pulpit try arfd 
 bear it patiently/' 
 
 This long extract may be permitted as 
 affording a good specimen of Father Gall- 
 wey's method of exposition, of its incisive- 
 ness and originality. In the Fourth Lec- 
 ture he discusses the claim of the Ritualists 
 to be accounted Catholics, not Protestants, 
 and points out, and proves by reference to 
 history, how the essential feature in Catho- 
 licism is the distinction between its or- 
 ganized clergy forming in all ages, by con- 
 tinuous succession, a living Church, under 
 the perpetual guidance of the Holy Spirit, 
 
AS A CONTROVERSIALIST 229 
 
 and its faithful laity, who owe and render 
 a willing submission to the teaching of this 
 living voice ; and the essential feature of 
 Ritualism is, on the contrary, the rejection 
 of this living voice, on the plea that it 
 ceased to exist many centuries ago on the 
 outbreak of the Photian Schism, with the 
 practical result of fastening on the general 
 body of the laity the duty of implicit sub- 
 mission to the doctrinal vagaries of their 
 respective pastors. In the Fifth Lecture, 
 Father Gallwey takes up the root question 
 of the Scripture evidence for the Suprem- 
 acy of St. Peter. In the Sixth, he starts 
 from the implicit obedience which Angli- 
 can directors were wont in those days, as 
 indeed to a lesser extent they are still, to 
 exact from their penitents^ on the plea that 
 they stand to them in the place of Christ ; 
 he asks on what grounds can such a claim 
 be substantiated. In reply, after postulat- 
 ing that at best their titles can be secure 
 only if it can be shown that these clergymen 
 adhere faithfully to the system of Church 
 constitution brought over by St. Augustine 
 and made the basis of the English Sacerdo- 
 tal succession, he expounds, with copious 
 
230 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 extracts from the Letters of St. Gregory the 
 Great, the behefs of that Pontiff as to the 
 authority of his See, and contrasts them 
 with those of the Rituahsts . The last two 
 Lectures of the first volume pursue this 
 comparison between primitive Christian 
 and modern Anglican beliefs into the fifth 
 century, with special reference to the deal- 
 ings of St. Leo the Great with the Council 
 of Chalcedon, and those of St. Celestine 
 with the Council of Ephesus. Too often, in 
 the treatment of these episodes of early 
 Church history in their bearing on Papal 
 Supremacy, Catholic books 'have lost in 
 convincing force by cutting down such quo- 
 tations overmuch. Father Gallwey does 
 not hesitate to quote at great length, and 
 thereby to make the strength of his conclu- 
 sions duly felt. 
 
 The second volume, which consists of 
 four Lectures, is occupied entirely with the 
 familiar Ritualist contention that there can 
 be no need for Anglicans to go over to 
 Rome, inasmuch as they have all the means 
 of grace accessible to them in their own 
 Church. Here the assumption is that, pro- 
 vided the Orders of the Anglican Church 
 
AS A CONTROVERSIALIST 231 
 
 are valid, nothing else of consequence for 
 salvation is required. Father Gallwey, of 
 course, begins by disputing this assumption 
 and insisting on the guilt of schism ; also 
 on the necessity, even for the valid adminis- 
 tration of the Sacrament of Penance, of the 
 confessor being possessed of valid juris- 
 diction over the penitent — a point which he 
 takes up again in his final chapter on *' The 
 Ritualistic Clergy in the Confessional," and 
 discusses minutely. But what is the evi- 
 dence that Anglican Orders are valid? It 
 is well known how fond the Ritualists are 
 of resting their claim to validity on the sole 
 test of experience. *' Our Sacraments are 
 real, because nothing but real Sacraments, 
 could make me feel as I do.'' This is a 
 mode of argument with which it is as hard 
 to deal as with that of the extreme Low 
 Churchman or Evangelical Nonconformist 
 who tells you " he is quite happy because he 
 has within him an assurance that he is of 
 the number of the elect." In fact, says 
 Father Gallwey, *' to the inward assurance 
 of the Evangelical, the happy feelings of 
 the Ritualist which prove the truth of 
 his Sacraments are cousins-german." Or 
 
232 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 again, the Communion Service is periodi- 
 cally celebrated in the Baptist Chapel by 
 a minister who does not even pretend to be 
 more than a layman. The Ritualist is 
 therefore certain that the simple-minded 
 Baptist, who participates in this rite, how- 
 ever convinced that he has been fed by the 
 Body and Blood of our Lord, does not 
 really receive it. Yet he goes away happy 
 and light-hearted in the firm assurance that 
 grace has come to him. If these similar 
 devotional feelings attend the Ritualist's 
 communions at the hands of his own clergy, 
 how can the evidence of these feelings 
 prove more to him ? And this all the 
 more because the distinction between the 
 action of grace on the soul ex opere operato 
 and ex opere operantis furnishes a perfect 
 explanation of all such assurances of grace, 
 experienced in the hours of his intercourse 
 with God, as the devout Ritualist or the de- 
 vout Nonconformist can appeal to. It is 
 thus that Father Gallwey disposes of this 
 cherished Ritualistic theory, adding, it must 
 be acknowledged, one of those parables, as 
 he calls it, of a marriage ceremony felt at 
 the time to be truly sacramental, but after- 
 
AS A CONTROVERSIALIST 233 
 
 wards legally proved to be invalid, which, 
 though effective enough in bringing out his 
 meaning, was calculated to irritate when 
 the aim should have been to conciliate. 
 
 But to decide on the question of Angli- 
 can Orders we must, proceeds Father ^Gall- 
 wey, enter upon an historical study, and 
 look for ** facts '' and *' proofs that will 
 satisfy legal minds." On this he passes to 
 a systematic study of the question of these 
 Orders, which runs through some two hun- 
 dred and fifty pages . The subject has been 
 frequently treated by other pens, which 
 have gone into it more deeply. Moreover, 
 it has passed into a new stage through the 
 publication of the Bull ApostoliccE Curce of 
 1896, which concentrated attention on the 
 most fundamental vice in these Orders, 
 namely, that inherent in the *' form " in- 
 vented by the framers of the Edwardine 
 Ordinal, a form quite inadequate to signify 
 the Order to be conveyed, either by its ac- 
 cepted name or a true description of its 
 grace and power. Father Gallwey, writing 
 at an earlier date, could not profit by the 
 new documents which the Commiss^ion of 
 1896 brought to light and the Bull cited, 
 
234 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 but his account of the dififerent pomts 
 is painstaking and accurate except that he 
 somewhat misses the true proportion in 
 point of gravity between the different 
 arguments. He is, however, particularly- 
 good on the historical question of the char- 
 acter and significance of the Lambeth Con- 
 secration of I 5 58, a question which has by 
 no means been discredited either by the 
 Bull of 1896 or by the general opinion of 
 Catholic students, though it has lost much 
 of its importance through the argument 
 from the character of the rite being now 
 defined by the highest authority of the 
 Church as of itself sufficient to determine 
 the absolute nullity of these Orders. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The Last Sickness and Death. 
 
 A MEMBER of Father Gallwey's family des- 
 cribed him as gifted with a cast iron con- 
 stitution. Without it he could not have 
 laboured as he did for many years. He 
 strained his constitution to the utmost, and 
 amongst hard-working men he was con- 
 spicuous by his unflagging zeal and in- 
 dustry. Off and on during the last ten 
 years of his life he suffered from various 
 infirmities, amongst these a cataract In the 
 eye, which, with the necessary operation, 
 must have taxed severely his frame. About 
 fifteen months before he died the members 
 of the Mount Street Community noticed a 
 marked change. Rheumatism showed it- 
 self in the left leg, the spine was bent, and 
 the large massive head drooped wearily on 
 the chest. We saw that he was failing. 
 He, who once was the life of our after- 
 
236 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 dinner recreation, was often silent and de- 
 pressed, and though he was observant of 
 all that went on around, it was evident that 
 the old go was wanting, and that he could 
 not be with us for long. He was still found 
 in his confessional, never missed his daily 
 Mass, saw friends in the parlour, wrote let- 
 ters constantly, and took his turn in the pul- 
 pit. The voice lost none of its music or 
 freshness though the end was approaching. 
 Strangers saw a wearied and bent form 
 dragging itself slowly along from the 
 sacristy to the pulpit, and wondered how 
 one so feeble could possibly preach a ser- 
 mon. He revived in the pulpit . The voice 
 was surprisingly strong, the clenched hand 
 would fall with something of his old energy 
 on the well-worn Bible, his constant com- 
 panion, as the old man hammered in the 
 solemn truths, or quoted the familiar, much 
 loved texts. On July 29, 1906, he preached 
 his last sermon in Farm Street, and the 
 same evening left for Dublin to preach at 
 the Clothing of a Nun, accompanied by the 
 Brother Infirmar'ian, who nursed him so 
 affectionately in the last illness. 
 
 He bore the journey well, his solace in 
 
LAST SICKNESS AND DEATH 237 
 
 the train was the Rosary, which never left 
 his hand. Marked attention was paid him 
 on board the steamer, and especially by the 
 Captain, who knew him from other days. 
 All were anxious to promote the comfort of 
 the venerable Priest. Nothing would in- 
 duce him, weak though he was, to break 
 the fast, and he said Mass in Gardiner 
 Street Church the morning of his arrival in 
 Dublin. 
 
 Ireland brightened him up. There was 
 no place he loved so much. He always en- 
 joyed the warm welcome of his friends on 
 his visits to the land of his birth, was ena- 
 moured of Irish scenery and music, and 
 above all things, prized the living faith of 
 the inhabitants. Throughout life he was 
 invited there for sermons and retreats, and 
 between professional engagements some- 
 times had a short holiday. 
 
 I referred to his love of Irish music. 
 He was specially fond of the melodies. 
 Here, as in other matters, he had his own 
 strong views, and would not allow that the 
 melodies were improved by harmony. He 
 told me once that he could not help crying 
 as he listened to the blind children singing 
 
238 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 ? 
 
 them in the Asylum, Merrion, near Dublin. 
 Though he had much sympathy with the 
 wrongs of the people, on the great political 
 question of the day he was never heard to 
 express an opinion. It seemed strange, 
 that to the country he loved so deeply he 
 should have returned soon before his death 
 to preach his last sermon on earth. To a 
 Jesuit Father who remarked that he must be 
 pleased to make one more visit to Ireland, 
 he observed that nearly all his old friends 
 were now dead, and that his visit was very 
 different from what former ones had been. 
 The day of his arrival in Dublin he 
 visited the Convent of the Poor Clares, St. 
 Damian's, and saw the Religious at whose 
 Clothing he was to preach. His old 
 humour did not desert him on his journey 
 to the Convent. On reaching the Convent 
 door, he asked the driver the amount of the 
 fare. '* Sure, Til lave it to your Rever- 
 ence," was the answer. ** Then if you leave 
 it to me," said Father Gallwey, '' I say six- 
 pence." Needless to say, the driver received 
 a substantial pour boire, A Jesuit Father 
 present at the Profession writes : '* Though 
 Father Gallwey was rather infirm and had 
 
LAST SICKNESS AND DEATH 239 
 
 to be assisted by me in mounting and des- 
 cending the steps of the altar, he dehvered 
 his discourse with much of his old fire and 
 all his old unction. He sat during it, turn- 
 ing sideways so that the nuns behind the 
 altar might hear what he said." And now 
 we offer the account, possibly very imper- 
 fect, of his last discourse on this earth, as 
 printed in a Dublin newspaper. 
 
 Father Gallwey said : *' They had now 
 added one more convent to the many al- 
 ready existing in Catholic Dublin. They 
 were aware that in France the convents had 
 been proscribed, and banished as useless, 
 and worse than useless — as criminal ; but, 
 thank God, St. Patrick had not allowed that 
 demoniac rnadness to come into Ireland. 
 There was no land where the Gospel of 
 Christ was more adhered to than in Ireland. 
 What was the Gospel of Christ? Our 
 Blessed Lord, as they knew, on the first 
 Good Friday, fought a great battle with 
 Lucifer, but the battle did not end that day, 
 for it was to go on to the end of time. Our 
 Lord was to go on to the end of the world 
 earning the name of Jesus — Saviour — while 
 working for the redemption of man. 
 When the angels rebelled He used Angels 
 to overthrow them, and afterwards, wTien 
 
240 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 the fallen angels attacked Adam and Eve, 
 our Lord determined to fight the second 
 great battle with the aid of men and women 
 in order to humble Lucifer more . The task 
 of our Lord was a gigantic one, and he 
 wanted the aid of a large army of workers. 
 He wanted men and women of all classes 
 and conditions to join with Him in carrying 
 out His great work. He 'foresaw that if 
 men and women had to earn their bread 
 they could only give Him their spare hours. 
 Therefore it was that He Imade the covenant 
 that if anyone will leave house, home, lands, 
 and possessions, and devote himself entirely 
 to God's work, God would take care of his 
 maintenance. It was one of the wonders 
 of Christianity that they saw numbers of 
 men and women who had responded to the 
 call of Christ. The Holy Church had a 
 large body of workers in the shape of 
 monks and nuns, and to those workers the 
 promise was given that for the sacrifices 
 they had made, they would be repaid a hun- 
 dredfold. Then the question was asked, 
 Why talk about the poverty of nuns and 
 religious if they are to have a return hun- 
 dredfold? But the poverty referred to by 
 Christ was not the squalid poverty which 
 prevailed in the slums of the cities of Eng- 
 land and Ireland. The poverty which now 
 existed in parts of England— the wretched^ 
 
LAST SICKNESS AND DEATH 241 
 
 degrading poverty— was not the will of 
 God, but was the result of great vice. The 
 poverty of the Gospel was a moderate 
 poverty, a bearable poverty, and our Lord 
 promised that those who became poor for 
 His sake shall have a sufficiency for all 
 their wants . Then the question was asked, 
 Where is the poverty? Well, every single 
 nun who joined the Order made a vow to 
 be poor through life, and there would never 
 be a single day when she had a penny 
 of her own. She was like the pauper in 
 the workhouse, who was given food and 
 clothes ; but at the same time our Lord 
 had undertaken that Religious would have 
 enough for their daily wants as long as they 
 lived. But about the ' hundredfold.' God, 
 of course, never intended that anyone who 
 left something in the world would have a 
 hundred times more in the shape of luxury 
 in the convent life. Suppose a lady left 
 home ; she left one home to find in the 
 Order that she had selected a home in every 
 part of the world — there was no princess or 
 duchess who had so many horties as a nun. 
 She was welcomed in all places, and if she 
 parted with two or three sisters in the world, 
 she had a legion of sisters to work with her 
 gladly all the days of her life . There were," 
 the Father said, ** a great number of per- 
 sons, even outside the Church, who were 
 
 Q 
 
242 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 enthusiastic about convents in their work 
 for the poor. There was a body of people 
 in the world nowadays who called them- 
 selves philanthropists, and who professed 
 to be the champions of the poor, and the 
 masters with regard to charity, and they 
 had the idea that the poor had claims of 
 their own entirely distinct from' God. They 
 believed in alms given direct tOi the poor, 
 but they had nothing but contempt for alms 
 given direct to God. They joined in the 
 cry Judas raised when Magdalen poured 
 some precious ointment on the Body of our 
 Lord. * What is this waste for,' he said, 
 * why was not this money given to the 
 >oor?' St. John had told them that Judas 
 "lad no care at all for the poor. We are 
 not,'' the preacher said, ** bound to pour out 
 our hearts to the poor because they be- 
 longed to what is called the human race — 
 their real claim is that they are the chil- 
 dren who were redeemed by Jesus Christ. 
 Our Lord had said that if alms were given 
 to one little one in His Name He would 
 treat it as if it were given direct to Him. 
 In the Old Testament the Jews were build- 
 ing houses for themselves, and they would 
 not build a temple for God, and our Lord 
 said, in effect, ' Very well, you will see what 
 will happen.' They had to remember that 
 God did require alms for Himself while ex- 
 
 ■» 1 
 
LAST SICKNESS AND DEATH 243 
 
 pecting that the ordinary alms should be 
 given to the poor. He required alms in the 
 shape of churches, pulpits and chalices in 
 order to carry on the work of salvation, for 
 if He was rich in Heaven He was poor in 
 this world. With regard to alms, there 
 were different degrees . Some people gave 
 out of their superfluity, others gave what 
 they might not immediately require for 
 their own wants, and others gave all they 
 possessed. There was no greater form of 
 alms than ministering to the sick, and they 
 were sweet in the sight of God. Fasting 
 and praying for the souls of those who were 
 dead was another great form of alms prac- 
 tised by the enclosed Orders. 
 
 '* Let me now say a few words about this 
 Convent. It was a new one in more senses 
 than one. First of all the Convent was a 
 new one, and it was a new kind of religious 
 Order compared with those which already 
 existed in Dublin. It was the rule of the 
 Community to live on what they got and 
 trust in God, whose daughters they were, 
 for more on the morrow. Before the com- 
 ing of our Lord the whole world was filled 
 by men and women who were full of in- 
 clinations towards bodily sensuality, and al- 
 though our Saviour "had changed that to a 
 great degree, it still existed to a wide extent . 
 If they passed through the streets they 
 
244 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 would see on every side evidence of the fact 
 that men and women were using all their 
 intellect and energy to find more luxuries 
 for the body . They knew when death came 
 their minds would change much on that 
 subject, because when Dives died and 
 begged most earnestly for a little drop of 
 water to cool his burning tongue, the 
 answer was : * No ; remember you had 
 your good things on earth ; you had your 
 heaven there, aiid you cannot have it twice 
 over.' It was far better to listen to our 
 Lord's injunction to deny themselves ; for 
 then they would have their Heaven in the 
 world that was to come, which had no end, 
 while the present life was only a Heeting 
 dream. The nuns of that Order made it 
 a point to diminish the comforts of life, and 
 in this way the life of the nuns was a per- 
 petual lesson which, if followed, would 
 mean that when death came they would 
 have the comfort of hearing the words, 
 ' When I was hungry you gave Me to eat, 
 when I was naked you clothed Me, what 
 you did for My little ones you did for Me 
 —come you blessed of My Father, possess 
 ye the Kingdom prepared for you from the 
 beginning of the world.' 
 
 '* The Priest previously quoted says that 
 the last words, * Come, ye blessed of My 
 Father, possess ye the Kingdom prepared 
 
LAST SICKNESS AND DEATH 245 
 
 for you from the beginning of the world/ 
 were most impressively uttered, as the 
 preacher looked towards Heaven. In his 
 last interview with the Religious, he warned 
 her of the gravity of the step she was tak- 
 ing and of the irrevocable nature of the 
 sacrifice. ' He was, however, quite satis- 
 fied,' thus writes the Father previously al- 
 luded to, ' after seeing her cheerful face for 
 the last time that he had advised her well.' 
 As we drove away he said, ' Did you notice 
 how peaceful and happy she looked ? ' " 
 
 Though he only spent two or three days 
 in Ireland, the improvement in health and 
 spirits was wonderful. The Brother In- 
 firmarian urged him to stay a week or two 
 longer. The strong will asserted itself, and 
 the sense of duty called him to the Provin- 
 cial Congregation at Stonyhurst. It met to 
 elect Deputies for the general Congrega- 
 tion which chose Father Wernz General 
 of the Society. The fatigue 6i the jour- 
 ney to Stonyhurst probably hastened the 
 end of his valuable life. 
 
 He broke the journey at Rhyl and stayed 
 at the Jesuit Mission. Whatever was the 
 cause, a change for the worse became at 
 once apparent. He lost more than he 
 
246 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLVVEY 
 
 gained from Irish air and Irish hospitality. 
 On August 6y 1906, he arrived at Chtheroe 
 en route for Stonyhurst. It was pitiful to 
 see him guided across the rails^ as he 
 passed from one platform to another, lean- 
 ing heavily on the arm of a railway porter. 
 He could barely walk, the large frame was 
 almost bent in two . We drove in the same 
 cab to Stonyhurst. Provincial Congrega- 
 tions meet at seated intervals to discuss 
 matters connected with the Province. 
 Latin is used at the Sessions, a language 
 which Father Gallwey spoke easily and cor- 
 rectly. He was always a welcome figure 
 at these meetings. Plis age, experience, 
 merits, holiness, conspicuous services to his 
 Order, secured weight and attention to his 
 opinions . They were always given with the 
 utmost frankness. His judgment was ever 
 independent, and he urged warmly and 
 vehemently what he conceived ought to be 
 done in the shape of addition and correc- 
 tion and improvement. There never could 
 be any doubt as to what he meant. 
 
 At the last Provincial Congregation the 
 familiar voice was silent ; wit and repartee 
 were heard no more . Father Gallwey was 
 
LASt SICKNESS AND DEATH 2^f 
 
 a wreck. At the Sessions he hardly ever 
 said a word ; during recreation he kept to 
 his room; the Fathers saw little of him. 
 When the Congregation had concluded its 
 work, the Fathers left for their respective 
 homes, not without saying good-bye to one 
 to whom the Province is so much indebted. 
 A Father, who had been nine years his Pro- 
 vincial, knelt down for the old man's bles- 
 sing, and after receiving it, rose, stretched 
 out his hands with the words, '' a rivederci 
 in ParadisoJ^ They never met again. 
 
 On August the i ith, the invalid returned 
 to Rhyl a dying man. He was met there by 
 two friends who were assiduous in their at- 
 tention. He stayed at the Jesuit house, and 
 in spite of his many infirmities, said Mass 
 every morning. It was sad, said his 
 friends, to see the old man stagger to the 
 altar. Even then his love of rule displayed 
 itself. Someone seems to have noticed that 
 his Mass was rather long. He begged a 
 friend to tell him in what portion of 
 the Holy Sacrifice he tarried unduly, be- 
 cause, as he said, St. Ignatius is very par- 
 ticular as to the length of Mass. When the 
 friend said that the slow Mass was the re- 
 
:^48 MEkOIRS OF FATHER GAlLwJEY 
 
 suit of bodily weakness, he insisted, never- 
 theless, on hearing where he delayed too 
 long, so as to finish in half an hour. In 
 spite of weakness, which seemed to in- 
 crease daily, he was happy and cheerful at 
 Rhyl. He grew thinner and more emaci- 
 ated because he could not eat. No food, 
 however light or delicate, tempted him. He 
 was constantly saying, *' I can't swallow, I 
 can't swallow." The doctor thought the 
 nerves of the throat had contracted and 
 were unable to function. It gave him a lit- 
 tle pleasure to walk and scent the sea 
 breeze. He never liked taking a cab for 
 fear of the expense ; and when he did ac- 
 cept this small comfort, the difficulty of get- 
 ting in and out was considerable . At last, 
 by much coaxing, he was persuaded to ac- 
 cept a bath-chair, and every day he took a 
 drive. For some time, even before his last 
 illness, he much enjoyed listening while a 
 book of his own selection was read. The 
 reader will be interested to know the style 
 of book he chose. Individuality, as the 
 world in its wisdom assures us, had long 
 ago been stamped out of him. Weary and 
 worn after seventy years of labour, suffer- 
 
LAST SICKNESS AND DEATH ^49 
 
 ing from various infirmities, shortly before 
 God's tremendous judgment, the old Sol- 
 dier of Christ asked for the Lives of Wel- 
 lington and Napoleon ; and there by the sea 
 at Rhyl he listened while his friend read of 
 their glorious deeds. ** I like great men, 
 big men, strong men,'' he said, and when- 
 ever some act of unusual daring was re- 
 lated, '' Ah," he would remark, '' there's a 
 fine move, there's a fine move." The Irish- 
 man in him was not dead yet . The old fire 
 smouldered still, it only needed a little en- 
 couragement to leap into flame. But, of 
 course, the world is right, as it always is : 
 individuality had gone for ever. Now the 
 fact is, St. Ignatius and all the Saints of his 
 Society could not have stamped individu- 
 ality out of Father Peter Gallwey. And 
 what is more, St. Ignatius would have been 
 the last man to try, not only because the 
 task was impossible, but because his strong 
 common sense would have revolted against 
 such an insane proceeding. The Samt 
 wished to mould his men, clad in infirmity 
 from head to foot, on the Divine Exemplar. 
 The natural character is from God. Igna- 
 tius no more desired to destroy the indi- 
 
2SO MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLVVEY 
 
 viduality of his subjects than to change the 
 shape of their faces. But no matter what 
 one says, the world will go on repeating the 
 story, and the silly tale will stick. 
 
 The weakness continued to increase, due 
 to inability to swallow food, and Father 
 Gallwey expressed a wish to return to Farm 
 Street. He was very anxious to see the 
 Father Vice-Provincial, to whom he was 
 tenderly attached. He was fully aware of 
 his state, for he wrote to one of our Fathers 
 that he was returning home to die. A 
 month at the sea was unavailing to restore 
 his strength, and on September loth, the 
 Brother Infirmarian met him at Euston arid 
 brought him to his room in Mount Street. 
 On his arrival he went to his bed, from 
 which he never rose. 
 
 His love of prayer was, as in life, very 
 striking at the end. He was praying, said 
 the Infirmarian, all day. Few of the Com- 
 munity saw him in his last illness, except, of 
 course, his Rector arid the Vice-Provincial, 
 who heard his last confession and adminis- 
 tered Extreme Unction and Viaticum. 
 Father Gallwey's habitual reserve, his sim- 
 plicity and strength of character, accounted 
 
LAST SICKNESS AND DEATH 251 
 
 for his desire to be alone with God in the 
 last days spent on earth. The Infirmarian 
 who nursed him so long was ordered by the 
 Superior to Bournemouth for a change of 
 air, and the Infirmarian from Manresa took 
 his place. The latter assured me that he 
 never nursed a more obedient patient. 
 Whatever the doctor or Infirmarian or- 
 dered, he readily and cheerfully obeyed. 
 At times he had to submit to medical treat- 
 ment which must have been most repug- 
 nant to a man of his disposition. But he 
 bore the pain and the humiliating surround- 
 ings without a murmur, his lips wliispering 
 prayers all the time. 
 
 He grew daily thinner as he could not 
 swallow ; and one day he remarked to the 
 Infirmarian : ** Brother, I can count my 
 own ribs.'' On the last occasion I saw him 
 the change was most marked. The body 
 seemed extended beyond its natural length, 
 and the face, usually pale, was covered with 
 a deep, crimson flush. The aged priest, 
 who had so often chased the shadows from 
 the chamber of death, had himself to face 
 the darkness and sorrow that hang around 
 its gates. For others he was a death-bed 
 
252 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 specialist. He had only one medicine for 
 the dying, Jesus Crucified and Maria Deso- 
 lata. Their names were in his heart and 
 on his lips. He loved to give the dying 
 the Body of the Lord, and that marvellous 
 invention of mercy, the last anointing, 
 which purifies and strengthens the soul ere 
 it passes to the judgment. Now his own 
 time had come, the Master pronounced the 
 words Consulmmatum esty the day of labour 
 was over. He had consoled many a death- 
 bed. The chamber of the dying, after the 
 Chapel, was the place which he loved most 
 in this world. The God of all consolation 
 will not forget his faithful servant's well- 
 earned reward. Assuredly the reward 
 came, though not perhaps in the form we 
 anticipate. Some ten days before his death 
 he wrote in a letter to a great friend, a Reli- 
 gious of the Holy Child : '' Get me some 
 prayers, child, my soul is sad." Here is 
 a frank confession, " my soul is sad/' and 
 he was not a man to complain without a 
 cause. *' My soul is sad," and that sadness 
 seems to have remained to the end. It 
 might seem presumption and impertinence 
 to attempt any explanation of divine deal- 
 
LAST SICKNESS AND DEATH 253 
 
 ings, for we are told that high as the 
 Heavens 'are above the earth are God's 
 thoughts above our thoughts, and His ways 
 above our ways. But surely to those who 
 are surprised at Father Gallwey's com- 
 plaint, it may be permitted to offer an ex- 
 planation which lies on the surface. Of two 
 souls the holier may have the longer and 
 severer punishment on earth and in Purga- 
 tory. Great and glorious deeds for God 
 earn a magnificent reward, but in men of 
 strong character and great virtue there may 
 be many faults to cancel, and much rust to 
 remove, ere the eye be strong enough to 
 see God face to face, or the heart pure 
 enough to rejoice in His joy. Why may 
 not the sadness have been sent to this true 
 Jesuit at eighty-six on his bed of death, 
 after working seventy years for his Master, 
 possibly in punishment of small offences 
 due to human frailty, and as an act of jus- 
 tice, sweetened by mercy, to shorten Pur- 
 gatory, where pain is far more severe, and 
 sadness far more acute ? Surely there is also 
 another explanation which, without pene- 
 trating God's unseen ways, may be men- 
 tioned in all reverence. Christ's death will 
 
254 MEMOIRS OF FATHER GALLWEY 
 
 remain to the end of time the model, the 
 hope, and the strength of the dying. No 
 death was ever so holy : He alone was found 
 worthy to suffer without any consolation in 
 His abandonment. The sadness at the end 
 in the aged Jesuit may have been bright- 
 ened by moments of spiritual comfort un- 
 observed by onlookers, and it may have 
 been a privilege to draw him closer to the 
 Crucified, whom in life he preached unceas- 
 ingly. Whatever be the hidden mystery of 
 those words, '' My heart is sad," fear of 
 death was not one. He assured a member 
 of his Community that death had no terrors 
 for him. And he was the last man in the 
 world to exaggerate . 
 
 As the end drew near, his anxiety to die 
 increased. The frame was terribly worn 
 and exhausted ; the tongue could only 
 feebly gasp forth the words, often re- 
 peated, *' My God, my God," and on Sun- 
 day night, September 23, 1906, raising his 
 hand to make the Sign of the Cross, 
 he died. 
 
 The Sodality Hall was converted into a 
 Chapelle ardente, good Catholics came to 
 pray beside the coffiji where he lay in his 
 
LAST SICKNESS AND DEATH 255 
 
 priestly vestments . On September 2 7th', the 
 Solemn Requiem was sung in Farm Street. 
 A few words of recognition and encourage- 
 ment were said from the pulpit, in which he 
 so often preached during forty years . After 
 the Absolution he was taken to Fulham 
 Churchyard. The prayers at 'the grave 
 were read by his Rector, and as the Farm 
 Street Choir sang the Benedictus, the can- 
 ticle of hope and praise, the mortified body 
 was gently lowered to its lonely bed for the 
 long sleep. May he rest in peace. 
 
INDEX 
 
 rv-^ 
 
 Activity, Extraordinary 
 
 Advice on Prayer 
 
 Advice to a Mother 
 
 Advice to a Religious 
 
 Affection for Kindred 
 
 Aggressiveness 
 
 Alma Redemptoris Mater 
 
 Alms, Asking . ... 
 
 Almsgiving . . . 
 
 Anecdotes in Retreats 
 
 Anglican Clergy and Waverers 
 
 Anglican Orders 
 
 Anxiety to Die 
 
 Anxious Thoughts: Their Source 
 
 Bazaar, The Immaculate Conception 
 
 Begging for the Poor, &c. 
 
 Begging for other Charitable Objects . 
 
 Blind Obedience not in the Society 
 
 Brazen Serpent, a Type of Christ 
 
 Busy in his Room, Always 
 
 Calvary, his Resting Place . 
 
 Cast-iron Constitution 
 
 Catechism and Creed of Pope Pius IV. 
 
 Cavendish Square Convent 
 
 Chapel, Love of the 
 
 Character. Strong Views, Tenacious Will 
 
 Characteristics as an Author 
 
 Charity . ... 
 
 Charity, Christian and Religious . 
 
 Charity to the Poor .... 
 
 Charities, Hidden .... 
 
 
 
 PACE 
 
 • 
 
 8 
 
 > 25 
 
 • 
 
 123, 
 
 124 
 
 
 103, 
 
 104 
 
 • • 
 
 • 
 
 136 
 
 • 
 
 
 99 
 
 * • 
 
 • 
 
 198 
 
 • 
 
 
 115 
 
 • 19, 
 
 39, 
 
 183 
 
 19. 39> 
 
 40, 
 
 182 
 
 • ft 
 
 • 
 
 .188 
 
 » • 
 
 224, 
 
 227 
 
 « 
 
 231, 
 
 233 
 
 • 
 
 • 
 
 254 
 
 • 
 
 « 
 
 114 
 
 
 7, 
 
 184 
 19 
 
 « 
 
 39, 
 
 183 
 n 
 
 100 
 
 « 
 
 • 
 
 33 
 
 
 • 
 
 53 
 
 • • 
 
 • 
 
 235 
 59 
 
 • • 
 
 
 131 
 
 • 25, 
 
 31, 
 
 166 
 
 ft 
 
 • 
 
 56 
 
 • • 
 
 « 
 
 208 
 
 « • 
 
 * 
 
 26 
 
 * • 
 
 ft 
 
 177 
 
 • 
 
 19 
 
 , 26 
 
 • • 
 
 19 
 
 , 39 
 
2s8 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Children, Training of . 
 
 Church Students' Fund 
 
 Clarke, Fr. Richard 
 
 Clitheroe, Arrival at, Exhausted . 
 
 Clough, Fr. Francis .... 
 
 Clutton Aisle, Farm Street Church 
 
 Colley, Fr. Reginald .... 
 
 Comforts, Dislike of . 
 
 Confessor, Gifted as a . 
 
 Consecration to God in the World 
 
 Controversialist .... 
 
 Convert, A Letter from 
 
 Converts, Instruction of 
 
 Converts Received 
 
 Correspondence 
 
 Correspondence Destroyed . . vi.. 
 
 Creature Comforts, Disregard of 
 
 Daily Life 
 
 Daily Round of Work . 
 
 Dead, Masses and Prayers for the 
 
 Death-bed Hours 
 
 Depression of Spirits 
 
 De Ravignan, Fr. 
 
 Desolation, Advice in 
 
 Devil, a Slanderer 
 
 Devils: Can they Read our Thoughts.^ 
 
 Dilexit me 
 
 Direction of Souls 
 
 Discernment of Spirits, 
 
 Divine Office 
 
 Education 
 
 Energy, Extraordinary 
 
 Exercises of St. Ignatius 
 
 Exhortations 
 
 Exiled Italian Jesuits 
 
 Extreme Unction 
 
 Eye Ailment 
 
 Failing Health 
 
 Faith. Absence of its Spirit in Anglicans 
 
 Faults and Defects .... 
 
 PAGE 
 
 107 
 
 40 
 
 246 
 2, 6 
 
 25 
 91 
 
 32 
 
 122 
 221 
 
 61 sq. 70 sq. 
 59 sq. 
 
 vu., vni., IX 
 
 35 
 
 172 
 
 . X. 
 
 32 
 169 
 
 8 
 
 43 
 
 252 
 
 21 
 
 > 36 
 125 
 112 
 
 61 
 
 Rules for the 
 
 99 
 148 
 
 sq., 70 sq., 76 
 
 91, 93, 125 
 27 
 
 131, ^33y 134 
 8, 24, 25 
 
 76 
 156 
 152 
 
 42 
 235 
 
 23 s 
 226 
 
 54, 5S> 56, 57 
 
INDEX 
 
 yy 
 
 J7 
 
 y> 
 
 yy 
 
 >> 
 
 >} 
 
 Favourite Meditations 
 Favourite Scripture Texts 
 
 Fisher of Souls 
 
 Fitzgerald, Mr. Percy^s Tribute . ... 
 
 Funeral at Fulham 
 
 Gerard, Fr. John 
 
 Gladstone, Mr., Dissuading from entering the Church 
 
 God's Love for us ... , . 147, 
 
 Grace at Meals .... 
 
 Hackney, King Edward's Road . 
 
 Hail Mary, Remedy in Trouble 
 
 Hallowed be Thy Name 
 
 Hard Worker .... 
 
 Headache well-borne worth Ten Meditations 
 
 Health, Bad ... 
 
 Health, Care of 
 
 High Offices .... 
 
 Holy Scripture, Reverent Love of 
 
 Holy Scripture Texts 
 
 Hospice for the Dying . 
 
 Its Opening . 
 
 Its Generous Founders 
 
 Its Removal 
 Human Respect 
 Humiliations 
 Humility 
 
 Humility of Heart 
 Hurry to do Good 
 Ignatius, St. .... 
 
 and Obedience 
 and Spiritual Exercises 
 Independence of Character , .10 
 
 Individuality 
 Influence on Others 
 Interview with Fr. Gallwey 
 Ireland, Love of . 
 Irish Music, Fondness of 
 Irish Sisters of Charity 
 Journey to Dublin, His Last 
 Joyousness of a Catholic Life 
 
 259 
 
 PAGE 
 
 . 177, note 
 
 80 sq., 121 
 
 . 61 
 
 • • • 
 
 . ui. 
 
 . 255 
 
 . 3 
 
 66 
 
 148 
 28 
 
 47 
 118 
 
 144 
 
 235 
 
 14s 
 
 135 
 127 
 
 IS 
 
 76, 77, 80 sq. 
 
 80 sq., 121 
 44 sq. 
 
 . 47, 49 
 46, 48, 51 
 
 SI 
 
 ^37y 
 
 II, 
 
 50 
 166 
 
 190 
 
 138 
 
 41 
 
 IS 
 
 . 76 
 
 13, 15 
 
 14, 249 
 . 198 
 
 61 
 
 . 237 
 . 237 
 
 45, 170 
 
 236, 237 
 
 . 214 
 
26o INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Junior Scholastics of the Society .163 
 
 Kind Thoughts of God . . .89 
 
 Kindness to the Sick ... . .8 
 
 Kindred and Friends, Love of . . . 92 
 
 Lantern Slides . . . ... 192 
 
 Last Sermon (in Dublin) . . . 238 
 
 Last Sickness . . . 235 sq. 
 
 Lectures on Ritualism . . 198, 221, 223 
 
 Leo XIIL*s '* Romanos Pontifices " . . . xi. 
 
 Letters ... . 86 sq. 
 
 Letters from Converts 
 Liddon, Canon 
 Love of Souls 
 Love of Work 
 Lozenges, Spiritual 
 
 61 — 69 
 
 . 66 
 
 . 17 
 
 20 
 
 186 
 
 Luxury of the Age, Hateful , 40 
 
 Mackintosh, Why Worn . . . 169 
 Man of God ...,.,. 27 
 
 Man of Prayer . . . . . 27 
 Manresa House, Rector . . . • ^5^ 
 „ Additions to Buildings 152, 153 
 „ „ Visitors to 163 
 
 Mass, Devotion at ... 29, 30 
 „ Thanksgiving after 30, 31 
 Mayfield Convent 131 
 
 Meditation .... . 38 
 
 and Colloquies . . ico 
 
 •* Points for *' . . .154 
 Preparation for . ... 160 
 Method of . . . . 71, 89, 155 
 Meekness ... 96 
 
 Method and Defiance of Method . . 186, 189 
 Minister and Prefect of Studies (Stonyhurst) 2 
 
 '* Month, The " . . . ' . ix. 
 Mortal Sin . . . 88, 98 
 Mortifications ... 165, 166 
 Mount Street, Twenty-four years at 10 
 
 Mysteries Veiled for the Present 90 
 
 Mysticism . . ... -175 
 Nairn, Our Lord at 217 
 
 
INDEX 
 
 261 
 
 Napoleon, Prince Imperial 
 Napoleon, I., Life of . 
 Newman, Cardinal 
 Novice Master 
 
 „ Training .... 
 Novices from Non-Jesuit Colleges 
 Nuns of the Holy Child . 
 Obedience in the Society- 
 Obedience, Model of 
 Oratorical Powers 
 Our Lady . . . . 
 
 Our Lord's Love for Us 
 Over-exacting in Authority . 
 Pain and Love .... 
 Parables, Why our Lord Used . 
 Passion of our Lord, to be More 
 Penance . . . . 
 
 Physical Aspect 
 Poor, Beloved by him 
 Poverty of Spirit . 
 Prayer, Advice on 
 
 Love of . . 
 
 When Difficult (Advice) 
 
 and Mortification . 
 
 for the Dead . 
 Prefect of Studies, Stonyhurst 
 Prince Imperial (French) . 
 Provincial Congregation 
 Purbrick, Fr. E. . 
 Purcell, Life of Cardinal Manning 
 Purgatory .... 
 Qualities, Great Religious 
 Question Box 
 
 Quick Temper .... 
 Recourse to God in Difficulties . 
 Rector of Farm Street 
 Refectory, Stonyhurst, Enlarged . 
 Regularity in Religious Life 
 Rehgious Life: Its Trials . 
 Religious Vocation 
 
 ft 
 
 77 
 
 >9 
 
 » 
 
 PAGE 
 
 216, 217, 218 
 . 249 
 
 . ix. 
 
 151 sq. 
 
 159, 160, 166 
 
 . 162 
 
 . II 
 
 15, 16, 17 
 
 . 22 
 
 20, 55, 115 
 
 . 148 
 
 • 57 
 . 98 
 
 . Ill 
 
 Contemplated . 117 
 
 . 109 
 . 171 
 
 . 39, SO 
 
 . 94, 102 
 
 144, 149, 185 
 . 26, 27 
 
 . 139 
 
 . 25 
 
 . 220 
 
 2, 170 
 
 216, 217, 218 
 
 245, 246 
 
 . xi. 
 
 210, 211 
 
 17, 18 
 
 . 173 
 . 21 
 
 . no 
 
 viii., 6 
 
 . 4 
 . 20 
 
 . 180 
 . 78 
 
262 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Restless under Opposition . 
 
 Retreats 
 
 Retreats, Giver of 
 
 Return to London to Die . 
 
 Rheumatism . ... 
 
 Rhyl, A Dying Man at 
 
 Ritualism, Lectures on 
 
 Room at Manresa .... 
 
 Rules for Discernment of Spirits . 
 
 Sacred Heart Aisle, Farm Street 
 
 Sacred Heart Convent 
 
 St. Bernard's Twelve Degrees of Pride 
 
 St. Ignatius ..... 
 
 St. Ignatius and Obedience . 
 
 St. Leonard's Convent .... 
 
 Sanctity, Opinion of Fr. Gallwey's 
 
 Sayings of Fr. Gallwey 
 
 Scenery, Love of 
 
 Scripture Texts .... 
 
 Stances at Manresa 
 
 Self-advertisement Shunned 
 
 Self-Love, Words on 
 
 Sensible Devotion, Consolation . 
 
 Sermons • • • • • 33 
 
 Their Effect 
 Preparation foi 
 „ Published 
 Severe with Self \. . . 
 
 Sick, Visits to . . . 
 Sisters of Charity, Irish 
 Sleep, Advice on ... 
 
 Small Sins, Difficulty of Avoiding . 
 Society of Jesus, Knowledge of the Past 
 Sodality, Farm Street 
 Spiritual Director 
 
 Spiritual Exercises .... 
 Spiritual Exercises, An Objection to 
 Stability of Vocation . 
 State of Life, Choice of a 
 Stonyhurst in 1856 
 
 *i 
 
 ;> 
 
 PAGE 
 
 • 57 
 
 23, 73> 74 
 168 sq. 
 
 . 250 
 . 50, 235 
 
 • 245—249 
 198, 221, 223 
 
 . 165 
 
 9^ 93, 125 
 
 25 
 
 . 130 
 
 • 157 
 . IS 
 
 II, 12 
 
 . 131 
 
 5 
 
 192, 193, 194 
 . 190 
 
 80 sq. 
 
 • 153 
 
 • 19, 39 
 
 . vii. 
 
 106 
 
 34, 35, 36, 37 
 
 22 
 
 21, 22 
 
 . 208 
 
 . 168, 169 
 
 41, 42 
 
 45, 170 
 
 193 
 . 56 
 . 161 
 
 . 7 
 
 22 
 
 22, 157, 174 
 
 • 17s 
 . 132 
 
 195 
 I 
 
INDEX 
 
 263 
 
 Studies at Stonyhurst .... 
 
 Success in Work of Conversion, Our Lord's and 
 Apostles* .... 
 
 Tabernacle, The 
 
 Taylor, Mother Magdalen 
 
 Tempest, Sir Chas. 
 
 Tender Care of the Novices 
 
 Thanksgiving after Mass 
 
 Tracy Clarke, Fr. ..... 
 
 Troubles, Do not Brood over 
 
 Visits to the Blessed Sacrament 
 
 Vocation, Religious . . . 
 
 Vocation, Stability in 
 
 Vocation, State of Life . . . . 
 
 *' Watches of the Passion" 154 
 
 Wellington, Life of . . 
 
 Wheble, Lady Catharine 
 
 Wiseman, Cardinal 
 
 Work and Prayer . 
 
 Work, Spirit of . ... 
 
 Working for God .... 
 
 Wounds, Devotion to the Sacred 
 
 Written Works 
 
 Young at Eighty-six ... 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 • ■ 
 
 3, 4 
 
 d the 
 
 
 m « 
 
 90 
 
 • 
 
 • 31 
 
 
 ix. 
 
 • 
 
 210 
 
 
 164 
 
 • 30, 31 
 
 
 26 
 
 
 119 
 
 • « 
 
 31 
 
 . 
 
 7S 
 
 
 132 
 
 
 195 
 
 y 199; 
 
 200 
 
 
 249 
 
 
 47 
 
 
 7 
 
 
 . lOI 
 
 
 • 33 
 
 
 ' 134 
 
 
 124 
 
 
 197 
 
 
 24 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 BX4705.G17 G28 
 
 Memors of Father P. Gallwey S.J. / by 
 
 olln 
 
 3 1924 029 431 974