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PARTISAN REVIEW
College was after my first communion together with the other first
communicants, and my brother had not even that for he made his first
communion at Clongowes.
"It was a mistake," says the same person, "although well-meant by
Father H enry at the time"-( It was Father Conmee's idea, not H enry's.
At the time we were at one of the schools of the Christian Brothers–
the rivals of the J esuits in education )-"to educate a boy here when
his background was so much at variance with the standards of the
schools, cultural and religious." When my brother won his second ex–
hibition, two priests of another order called on my father toward autumn
and offered my brother a place gratis in one of their boarding schools in
the country. To have a prize-winner in their schools was an advertise–
ment for any order, and they were not above a little underhand clerical
competition with one another. My father left the decision to his son,
and the boy, then very religious, decided without hesitation : " I began
with the J esuits and I'll finish with the J esuits." H e won three exhibi–
tions, and twice, in the Middle and Senior Grades, won the blue
ribbon of the Intermediate Examinations, the prize for English com–
position. Clerical orders, the most unabashed beggars in the country,
monopolize secondary education in Ireland, live on it, and yet seem
to consider it a favor if they impart it. That, at least, is the attitude of
the Jesuits of Belvedere College toward the most brilliant pupil their
school has produced in over one hundred years. In any civilized country
in Europe the son of a large and impoverished family (we were ten at
the time ) is admitted free of tuition fees to the state schools as a right,
not as a favor, and it is time secondary education was in secular hands
in
Ireland, too.
More sincere, and therefore more interesting, are the recollections
of Kathleen Murray because she confines herself to what she really re–
members-her cousin Jim. Her mother-the "Aunt Josephine" of so many
of my brother's intimate letters, gay, hopeful, desperate, and again full
of resurgent hope-had been my mother's most trusted friend. Dying
at an early age, my mother had recommended h er young and helpless
family to this aunt's care. She gave that care generously. H er house
was always open to us and we lived almost as much there as in our
own. There was just no limit to her patience. She had known my brother
from his infancy and followed his progress from childhood to youth
with almost maternal interest. My brother found in her tolerance and
good humor, understanding and wise advice in his difficulties. She
tried to counteract the wildness of his student days, and, as his last
letter
to
her shows, it became habitual with him to tum to her in all
