A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (53 page)

130.16
capuchin dress
: see 119.34 n.

130.18
dubitative
: ‘
literary
: of, expressing or inclined to doubt or hesitation’ (
OERD
).

130.20–2
some talk … other franciscans
: the Capuchins always wore their traditional robes, even in public; other Franciscans wore theirs only within the confines of the community.

130.23
cloister
: from Old French
cloistre
from Latin
clostrum
, ‘enclosed space’: the enclosed space of a convent or monastery.

130.34
Les jupes
: French: ‘The skirts’.

131.7
Stradbrooke
: see 53.5–9 n.

131.18
craft of jesuits
: the Jesuits ‘took the lead in opposing the Reformation in Europe and became known for the uncompromising zeal with which [they] spread Catholic beliefs’ (
OERD
); indeed, they came to be thought to be capable of guile and deceit in the pursuit of good ends, of being ‘too worldly’, even of casuistical behaviour; also, because of their devotion to education, they have been accused of being too clever by half. Stephen finds no evidence for any of this in his actual experience.

131.30
muff
: a beginner.

131.31–2
his equivocal position in Belvedere
: Stephen was a ‘free boy’; he paid no fees.

131.35
obedience
: see 49.26 n.

132.3–5
Lord Macaulay … mortal sin
: Thomas Babington, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–59), English historian and essayist; the comment here is
misguided on the one hand, ludicrous on the other: Macaulay was Protestant and largely anti-Catholic (Lord Acton, himself Catholic, remarked of his
Essays Critical and Historical
(1834) that they were ‘A key to half the prejudices of our age’); there is no such thing as a non-deliberate mortal sin. Cf. ‘In the opinion of his director, Saint Robert Bellarmine, and three of his other confessors, [St Aloysius Gonzaga] never in his life committed a mortal sin’ (Alban Butler, ‘St Aloysius Gonzaga’,
Lives of the Saints
, rev. edn. (New York: Kenedy, 1956), quoted by
A
).

132.6
Victor Hugo
: (1802–85), French poet, novelist, and dramatist; only his early
minor
work is overtly Catholic, unlike the later work on which his entire reputation rests.

132.12
Louis Veuillot
: (1813–83), French journalist, editor of
L’Univers
, a political Catholic paper which ‘supported the temporal power of the Pope and the church’s right to interfere in civil affairs’; his prose style was that of ‘a first-rate journalist’ (
JSA
249).

132.29
a vocation
: a strong feeling of fitness for a particular career, here, the equivalent of a divine call to the priesthood.

133.3–4
prefect … sodality
: see 88.4–5 n.

133.12
power of the keys
: the power to hear confession and to give absolution; after Matt. 16: 19: ‘And I will give unto thee [Peter] the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’

133.29
thurible
: see 34.8n.

133.30
chasuble
: a loose, sleeveless, usually ornate outer vestment worn by a priest celebrating mass or the Eucharist (
OERD
).

133.32
the second place
: deacon, one who assists the priest at mass.

133.36
minor sacred offices
: the deacon, and the deacon’s assistant, the sub-deacon.

133.37
tunicle of subdeacon
: short vestment worn at Eucharist or mass.

133.39
humeral veil
: from ‘humerus’: the shoulder: a veil or scarf worn on the shoulders of the sub-deacon during mass and in which the sacred vessels are wrapped when he holds them.

133.39
paten
: plate used to hold the Eucharist.

134.1–2
a dalmatic of cloth of gold
: ‘dalmatic’: wide-sleeved, long loose vestment, open at the sides, worn by deacons over their white vestment (or ‘alb’) at Eucharist.

134.3
Ite, missa est
: Latin: ‘Go, it is a dismissal [the mass is ended]’, words comprising the Dismissal, what the priest says at the end of mass.

134.15–16
sin of Simon Magus … sin against the Holy Ghost
: from Acts 8: 9–24: Simon Magus (or ‘Simon the Sorcerer’) offered the Apostles money in exchange for the power of bestowing the gift of the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands; from him the word ‘simony’ derives: the buying or selling of ecclesiastical privileges; in medieval writers, his story is elaborated to include sins against the Holy Ghost (see 125.27 n.)

134.18
children of wrath
: Eph. 2: 3: ‘Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh
and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.’

134.22
ordination by the imposition of hands
: priests are ordained through the blessing conferred on them (the Sacrament of Holy Orders) by the ‘laying on of hands’ (Acts 6: 6) by the bishop; Catholicism maintains that the priesthood had been so conferred from Jesus to Peter and from Peter to the Apostles and so on in an unbroken line.

134.26–7
eat and drink damnation … body of the Lord
: 1 Cor. 11: 27: ‘Where-fore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.’

134.29
order of Melchisedec
: Melchizedek: King of Salem, ‘the priest of the most high God’ (Gen. 14: 18); Jesus is described as ‘a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec’ (Heb. 5: 6); following the line of authority outlined above (134.22 n.), this makes Catholic priests priests ‘after the order of Melchisedec’.

134.32
novena
: from Latin:
novem
: ‘nine’: a nine-day devotion consisting of special prayers or services devoted to a particular saint or to the Virgin Mary for a particular purpose: here, that Stephen might know whether or not he has a vocation.

134.32
your holy patron saint, the first martyr
: see 6.26 n.

134.36
Once a priest always a priest
: true, in Catholic doctrine; though he may have his right to celebrate the sacraments removed because of unworthiness.

134.36–9
Your catechism … never be effaced
: in Catholic doctrine, baptism, confirmation, and holy orders can neither be repeated nor effaced.

135.7
Findlater’s church
: Presbyterian church in Rutland (now Parnell) Square.

135.22
novitiate
: the probationary period after entering an order and before taking holy orders; the house where those in the novitiate (‘novices’) live.

135.37–8
fainting sickness of his stomach
: from fasting the night before entering the novitiate.

136.4
S. J
.: ‘Society of Jesus’, signifies a Jesuit.

136.12–13
Lantern Jaws … Foxy Campbell
: nicknames for one of the Belvedere teachers; see
U
40.

136.14–15
the jesuit house in Gardiner Street
: the house attached to the Jesuit church of St Francis Xavier in Gardiner Street Upper, central Dublin.

136.36
bridge over … Tolka
: Tolka: river in north Dublin which flows to Dublin Bay; the bridge: Ballybough bridge.

136.39
hamshaped encampment of poor cottages
: the original ‘Tolka cottages’, made of mud and straw, have been destroyed.

137.16
second watered tea
: i.e. tea that has had a second pot of water poured on to the leaves (to save tea).

138.1
Oft in the Stilly Night
: first line of a poem by Thomas Moore (see 151.14 n.): ‘Oft in the stilly night, | Ere Slumber’s chain has bound me, | Fond memory brings the light | Of other days around me; | The smiles, the tears, | Of boyhood’s years, | The words of love then spoken’, etc.

138.14–17
Newman … children in every time
: in Newman’s
An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent
(1870) about Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70–19
BC
, Roman poet, author of
Eclogues
and the
Aeneid
): ‘his single words and phrases, his pathetic half lines, giving utterance, as the voice of Nature herself, to that pain and weariness, yet hope of better things, which is the experience of her children in every time’ (London: Burns, Oates & Co., 76). Cf. ‘Portrait’, where are echoed passages of Newman’s
Grammar
(
PSW
211 and n. 5). (As Atherton discovered, ‘all the passages which Stephen quotes from Newman’s work … are given in a one-volume anthology,
Characteristics from the Writings of John Henry Newman
, William S. Lilly, London, 1875’ (
JSA
249).)

138.19–20
Clontarf Chapel
: ‘Clontarf’: from Gaelic:
Cluain Tarbh
: ‘bull’s meadow’ (
O
13), on Dublin Bay east of Dublin; the chapel: Catholic St John the Baptist on Clontarf Road, Clontarf.

138.26
the university
: University College, Dublin; opened as Catholic University (1854) with Newman as rector; reorganized as University College (1880) in affiliation with the Royal University (a misnomer: really an examining board; established by the University Education Act of 1879); became Jesuit (1883); reorganized and finally merged (by the 1908 Irish Universities Act) with the Queen’s Colleges in Cork and Galway, into what will become the National University of Ireland (
F
419, 607, 611). See 75.1 n.

138.28
the Bull
: a sea-wall running from the shore at Clontarf into Dublin bay.

138.30
police barrack
: near Clontarf chapel.

139.7–8
to escape by an unseen path
: cf. Dante’s and Virgil’s escape from hell by way of ‘an unseen path’ in the
Inferno
, xxxiv. 127.

139.10–13
notes of fitful music … an elfin prelude
: for one explanation, see
G
.

139.19–21
Newman … everlasting arms
: Newman,
The Idea of the University Defined and Illustrated
(1852), Discourse I, ‘Introductory’ (ed. I. T. Ker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 29); Newman borrows his phrases from Ps. 17: 34 (Douay) and Deut. 33: 27.

139.28
Dollymount
: area just north of Clontarf.

139.30
christian brothers
: see 59.32 n.

140.14
the commandment of love
: cf. Luke 10: 27: ‘And [Jesus] answering said: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.’

140.19
A day of dappled seaborne clouds
: a slightly adjusted quotation from Hugh Miller (1805–56),
The Testimony of the Rocks; or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed
(Boston, 1857) in the context of his thinking about Satan’s being unable to understand divine creation: ‘a day of dappled, breeze-borne clouds’ (both
G
and
JSA
give fuller contexts).

140.30–1
lucid supple periodic prose
: cf ‘Portrait’: ‘For the artist the rhythms of
phrase and period, the symbols of word and allusion, were paramount things’ (
PSW
214).

141.2–3
slowflowing Liffey
: ‘slowflowing’ because at this point an estuary, so subject to the ebb and flow of tides; see 79.2–3 n.

141.5–6
seventh city of christendom
: for a discussion of the possible origins of the phrase, see
G
.

141.8
thingmote
: place of Scandinavian council of law (from Old Norse
þing
: a public meeting or assembly, especially a legislative council, and
mote
: a mound, especially as the seat of a camp, city (
SOED
)); when Dublin was ruled by the Danes (mid-ninth to early eleventh centuries), there was just such a huge mound in the centre of town (demolished late seventeenth century).

141.9–10
clouds, dappled and seaborne
: see 140.19 n.

141.21
Stephanos
: Greek:
στ
φανος
‘crown’ or ‘wreath’.