Places and Persons

...And near him I always seem to see the scarlet figure of the great Cardinal, Raphael Merry del Val-scarlet which is the hue of blood: the ichor of life-scarlet which symbolized the oath of all the princes of the Church to be faithful even unto the shedding of blood...

...But divine things formed the centre of his human world and his high human character...

...Places and Persons CARDINAL MERRY DEL VAL By MICHAEL WILLIAMS WHEN I was in Rome in 1922, reporting for a newspaper syndicate the events and ceremonies connected with the election and coronation of Pope Pius XI, second only in interest to the august person of the Supreme Pontiff was the radiant personality of the late Cardinal Merry del Val...

...It recalls that strange mystical chapter on the same theme in Herman Melville's Moby Dick...

...For this writer, then, who speaks, he believes, for many others, Raphael Cardinal Merry del Val was a consoling portent...

...In him were mingled the blood of Ireland and of Spain...

...He went on speaking for perhaps half on hour...

...On this occasion, a note from Cardinal Gasquet, the Benedictine man of letters who did so much to make The Commonweal known abroad, and another note from that eminent Catholic journalist, the late L. J. S. Wood, of the London Tablet, perhaps the only journalist ever admitted to the confidence of Cardinal Merry del Val, opened his door to me in his quiet, lovely Palace of Santa Marta: nestling so humbly by the side of the huge Church of Saint Peter, of which he was the arch-priest...

...Almost overwhelmed by my impressions and experiences, at a time when, as I have said and written over and over again, the coming out of the Vatican of Pope Pius XI marked one of the great turning-points in modern history, I found it almost impossible to keep my memories distinct and individual...

...It was my first visit to the centre of Christendom...

...Never have I heard the English language used with such perfect spontaneity and appropriateness...

...Catholic journals, particularly journals edited and written by laymen, are perilous adventures...

...rather in an absolute sense...

...We shall publish in these pages later on a more considered estimate of his career and of his character by an American gentleman who was closely and intimately associated with Raphael Merry del Val: Mr...

...When one day I saw him in the almost-empty, vast space of Saint Peter's, surrounded by an Italian army corps to keep the multitude at a distance, when he greeted the king and queen of the Belgians and led them to where they all knelt together at Saint Peter's tomb, even the splendid figures of the heroic king and the queen were heightened in dignity by the superb scarlet figure that led them forward...

...There were great matters touched upon- even more than touched upon, emphasized and underscored ; but it was no sermon...

...And although a leader in their ranks has fallen in the battle with vulgarity, mediocrity, sensualism and materialism, his work will inspire those who will move forward along the path which his stately, yet never pompous, splendid figure trod for so long...

...His death does not break the seal of confidence...

...They tended to blend together into one rich but somewhat vague symphony of almost incommunicable moods and adventures: adventures at once physical, mental and spiritual...

...I had no desire to ''quote him," as the saying goes, but if he would speak to me as to the place that the lay writer could and should occupy in the modern movement of the Faith, I would treasure what he might say, and I would know that the paper I represented (the paper for which I am now writing) would have a trustworthy compass for its adventurous voyage...

...Cram employs to invoke this memory...

...Joseph Scott of Los Angeles, California...

...I borrow them from Mr...

...I tried, as a journalist, not only to see but to speak with him...

...My particular purpose in these hasty notes is to register as well as I may the impression produced upon me by a man whose Mother Church, it seems to me, had brought into complete harmony the most admirable and distinctive traits of a cultured gentleman...

...Among them all, only Theodore Roosevelt, former Governor Alfred E. Smith, and the present cardinal archbishop of Boston stand in the same class with the late Merry del Val as masters of the English language in the spontaneous expression of their thoughts and their personalities...

...Later on, I again went to Rome...

...He was what might perhaps be termed a superhumanist...

...The comfort of this thought is made greater by the fact that throughout Christendom there are many such super-humanists...

...Unless we who presume to write on behalf or in interpretation of the Faith are firmly orientated toward the centre of that faith, which is the Chair of Peter, all the good intentions in the world will hardly save us from some sad blundering...

...the subtle fire of irony, and the gleam of wit, and the charm of a conversationalist who conversed as a great artist might play his instrument-all this gave that half-hour's utterance a place forever set apart in my memories...

...He summed up the education and the culture of Catholic Europe...

...It was a discourse that if it could have been taken down would, I believe, remain as a classic utterance...

...Matter and form seemed united in a perfect harmony...

...His last will and testament proves the final and convincing truth of this judgment...

...All that I heard about Merry del Val added to the aura of high romance and of spiritual beauty which surrounded a figure superb in its masculine beauty...

...Not even now shall I "quote him...

...In a world almost overwhelmed by mediocrities, placed by accidental circumstances, or the seesaw operations of popular politics, or the accidents of financial success, in the seats of the mighty-affecting therefore the destinies of millions of other souls-it is high consolation to meet such men as the late Spanish-Irish Cardinal...

...I was told quite plainly and decisively that he did not talk with newspapermen...

...He was an example of that true aristocracy which has been nourished by the Catholic Church throughout the centuries : an aristocracy of talent, or of genius, or of service, which chooses its leaders from any rank or class of men or women, and gives their native gifts or acquirements the fullest possible development and opportunity to manifest themselves...

...Therefore, my rebuff added to my respect for this prince of the Church who had stood at the right hand of Pius X throughout the period of one of the deepest spiritual epochs of the modern Church, and who as secretary of the Congregation of the Holy Office again stood at the side of the new Pope, dealing with the deep central affairs of the universal Church...

...but they will still evoke his interest...

...As a reporter I should have been furious...

...Ralph Adams Cram has published in the American Mercury a magical essay dealing with the wonder of whiteness...

...But Merry del Val occupies a place apart from all others, by virtue of the high degree of serene, mellow, yet ardent cosmopolitan culture which distinguished him and ever made him a living proof of the humanistic effect of sound spiritual doctrine...

...Cram in recalling my own memory of Pope Pius XI at those supreme moments when I saw him on the balcony blessing the world and the city, heading the onward march of the Church which is the greatest event of our times, or as he stood, bowed in adoration, saying his Mass under the dome of Michelangelo, amid the thrilling chant of the silver trumpets...

...Nobody could be more modern in his utilization of the inventions and devices of our modern mechanical genius...

...Scott was a pupil under the Cardinal as a young man, and throughout his own distinguished career he kept closely in touch with him...

...Something of all this I timidly said to the great Cardinal, who sat there watching me calmly and gravely, and listening with that courtesy and patience which everywhere mark the gentleman...

...But laymen with the best intentions, when writing about the Church, may too easily be rash, or wrong-headed, or only superficially acquainted with the profound problems of such a tremendous organism as the Catholic Church...

...the figure of a great gentleman, a supreme Churchman, a man of the world also in the truest and finest sense of that abused figure of speech...

...But it was not for a newspaper interview...

...a reminder of the great standards which once ruled our western civilization, a proof that these standards have not died out, and a promise that they will be inevitably renewed in the future...

...Cram writes that the white magic which gives the Acropolis in Athens its transcendant beauty has never in his experience been equaled except once, long ago, when, at his jubilee, Pope Leo XIII was borne into Saint Peter's in his sedia gestatoria...

...A man among men: an accurate marksman with the rifle: a horseman of splendid ability: a student of books: a connoisseur of art: a ruler of men who at the same time knew the secret of obedience and order in his relations to those placed in superior positions above him-and yet, the deep springs of his life were not in time but in eternity...

...Chiseled ivory glowing with an interior fire are the words which Mr...

...His private fortune was given to his mother the Church: to be used for the propagation of the Faith, and particularly for the poorest among the world-scattered missions and missionaries...

...Continuing, I said that of course I did not come to ask for words to peddle in the market-place of journalism...

...The Society of the Sacred Heart and many other religious orders lose their protector in Rome...

...They must meet peculiar difficulties...

...But this I may say, that as the Cardinal spoke I heard the Church itself speaking...

...As a journalist, I have interviewed many of the great ones of this world...

...After a moment, he spoke...

...He had consented to give guidance to the work in which I was engaged...

...But most reporters, as they go on with their work, learn to distinguish between the great and the near great, between the mere publicity seekers, and the few truly great men and women who only speak to the press, or through the press, when they have something to say that means something- and means something not about themselves, but about their work or their mission...

...The great aristocrat from beyond the grave will continue the work of all true Catholic aristocrats, namely, to labor and spend themselves to uplift and console the poor and the humble: in spirit and purpose being themselves poor and humble men: followers of the Poor Man of Galilee Who was Lord of heaven and earth...

...Eternity and time are all one for Catholics...

...And the Cardinal's body will rest by the side of his master during the greatest epoch of his career: Pope Pius X, above whose body, lying in the crypt of Saint Peter's, you see pilgrims from all the ends of the world kneeling in prayer...

...The headlong rashness of most secular journalism, which constitutes so much of its worldly charm and its attraction for the adventurous characters who make up the front ranks of newspapermen, can have no place in a paper which, because it draws its principles from the everlasting Church, must always remember that in its own little way it is a journal of eternity rather than of time...

...The new humanists who are now appearing in the United States might well turn to the life and character of such a man as Cardinal Merry del Val as a subject for their deepest study...

...but in no Einsteinian relative sense...