Gerard Manley Hopkins and his Friends in Dublin

Abstract

Studies • volume 106 • number 422 193 Gerard Manley Hopkins and his Friends in Dublin1 Michael McGinley Much of the writing about Hopkins in Dublin relies heavily on analysis of the so-called Sonnets of Desolation written probably in 1885–86. It is well to recall, however, that even in these poems there is light and even some hope in the gloom. In ‘To seem the stranger’ Hopkins asserts: Not but in all removes I can Kind love both give and get. It may be useful to note some of Hopkins’s ambitions when he came to Dublin to take up his appointment in University College in February 1884: 1. His priesthood – his relationship with God was central to Hopkins’s being; 2. His job in Dublin – the ‘Dublin Notebook’ clearly shows that he fulfilled his academic duties with care and expertise;2 3. Poetry – his own, and his detailed suggestions to Robert Bridges, Canon Richard Dixon and Coventry Patmore; 4. Dorian measure – Hopkins planned to write a major original book on the metre of Greek lyric poetry; this required deep involvement with classical Greek literature but also the deployment of sophisticated analytical tools which Hopkins lacked;3 5. Music – he composed at least twenty-seven settings for poems. In a letter to Robert Bridges, of 12 November 1884, he says: ‘Before leaving Stonyhurst I began some music … to Collins’s “Ode to Evening”. Quickened by the heavenly beauty of that poem I groped in my soul’s very viscera for the tune and thrummed the sweetest and most secret catgut of the mind. What came out was very strange and wild and (I thought) very good’.4 Hopkins experienced the great highs and lows sometimes seen in people of genius. In his biography of Ronald Knox, Evelyn Waugh notes: Mystical writers agree that it is a common, if not universal, sign of Gerard Manley Hopkins and his Friends in Dublin 194 Studies • volume 106 • number 422 advance in the spiritual life when ‘consolations’ are withdrawn, and the soul is left without any sensible delights for very long periods. 5 WH Gardner, in his introduction to Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, published in 1953, comments: Such moods of ‘desolation’ conform to those periods of spiritual dryness, which are carefully described and prescribed for, by St Ignatius in the Spiritual Exercises. Desolation is the human shuddering recoil from the strain of a rigorous discipline – a sourness, loss of hope, of joy, almost a suspension of faith itself, which makes the victim feel he is totally separated from his God.6 In a letter of 28 October 1880 when he was a curate in Liverpool, Hopkins wrote to Bridges: Time and spirits were wanting; one is so fagged, so harried and gallied up and down. And the drunkards go on drinking; the filthy […] are filthy still […] would that I had seen the last of it. In Ireland, Hopkins increasingly suffered low moods. An intriguing question arises – would he have experienced the highs that so glowingly shine in his poetry if he had not also plumbed the dark depths of his soul? In focusing on Hopkins’s Dublin poetry, it is important not to ignore his social life in Dublin. He moved in many different circles: the Jesuit community, academic circles, the literary and artistic scene, recreational activities and contacts with families in the city. The Jesuit community He greatly valued the help and friendship of Fr William Delany, President of University College. In a letter to his mother dated 26 November 1884 he says, ‘Fr Delany has such a buoyant and unshaken trust in God. He is as generous, cheering, and open hearted a man as I ever lived with’. But Hopkins’s greatest friend in the Jesuit community was Robert Curtis. In the same letter he goes on to say: … and the rest of the community give me almost as much happiness, but in particular Robert Curtis. He is my comfort beyond what I can say and a kind of godsend I never expected to have. His father, Stephen Curtis QC, and mother live in town and I often see them. Robert Curtis, born in 1852, was a gifted mathematician...