ATHENAEUM AVENUE is not one of the chief thoroughfares of the United States, but few American streets are handsomer. From the circular hub of Hartfield Common, the broad maple-shaded avenue runs due south through the most prosperous quarter of the second-largest city in New England. For the first few blocks Athenaeum Avenue is flanked by imposing semipublic structures: here in pillared grandeur stands the Phoenix Mutual Assurance Company; beside it rises the cool white spire of the Congregational Church, one of the purest examples of meetinghouse architecture in America. Opposite them are the Hartfield National Bank, St. Alfred’s Episcopal Church, and the Greek-porticoed Athenaeum, which gave the avenue its name. Alongside the Athenaeum is St. Philip’s Cathedral, seat of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Hartfield. That these structures, together with the Hiram K. Weatherby High School and the Central Fire Station, support and preserve, each in its own way, an existing order and a desirable mode of life has never been pointed out to the four hundred thousand citizens of Hartfield. The fact itself is either too self-evident or has become too deeply unconscious for comment.
It was not always so. Time was when only property holders were allowed to enter the shadowy bookstacks of the Athenaeum—and none but worshipers at St. Alfred’s or the Congregational meetinghouse could become directors of the Hartfield National Bank. That era was already on its way out when, shortly before the turn of the century, Bishop John P. (“Desperate”) Desmond bought the two-acre lot on Athenaeum Avenue and broke ground for St. Philip’s. “Overweening,” “cheeky,” “riding for a fall,” were some of the kinder things said about Bishop Desmond. The only fall the Bishop feared was the aesthetic tumble one might easily take while building opposite the chill white perfection of the Congregational meetinghouse. What he said to his architect will never be known, but his directions went something like this:
“Design a Cathedral that will translate Chartres, Strasbourg, yes, and St. Peter’s, too, into American terms. Use native freestone; it weathers best. Besides, our local quarries need the business. Build out of the eternal past, into the industrial present, for the unforeseeable future. Give Catholicism and Hartfield a monument they can be proud of!”
How an architect could manage to translate the symbolism of rose window and flying buttress into an idiom acceptable to a Yankee community is only part of the secret that clings to the Gothic. Undeniably, this architect had succeeded. St. Philip’s massive strength seemed to spring from the unshakable rock of Peter; its stone poetry, ascending in twin magnificent spires, suggested the devotional dream that nourishes the lives of men. On September 7, 1927, both the strength and the dream were renewed in the profoundly mystical ceremonies accompanying Stephen Fermoyle’s consecration as Bishop of Hartfield.
At ten o’clock that morning, while four thousand worshipers knelt inside the Cathedral and an exterior multitude clogged traffic on Athenaeum Avenue, a procession of richly vested clerics, preceded by crossbearer, acolytes, and choristers, entered the center door of the great church. A full organ swelled jubilantly into Ecce sacerdos magnus; bourdon, Doppelflöte, and open diapason hurled triumphant thunder down the long nave as the ecclesiastical train approached the altar. Soon the sanctuary was a pool of crimson and gold; throughout the Cathedral softer blocks of color marked the presence of religious orders: Carmelites and Dominicans in white, Paulists in black, Capuchins in coarse brown. Kneeling in the first pew, Dennis and Celia Fermoyle scarcely dared lift their eyes to the solemn pageant in which their son was playing the central role.
Tall tapers wavered in vagrant drafts as Lawrence Cardinal Glennon, flanked by Alfeo Quarenghi and Michael Speed as assistant consecrators, moved in the slow tempo of ceremony to their positions at the Epistle side of the altar for the reading of the Apostolic mandate. Meanwhile, Stephen had put on his amice, alb, cincture, stole, and cope. Kneeling before his consecrators, the Bishop-elect took a solemn oath of obedience to the decrees and ordinances of the Church. He pledged himself to defend it from evil men, promised to visit the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul in Rome at five-year intervals, and render during these visits a full accounting of his stewardship to the Pope. Examined briefly regarding his orthodoxy in matters of faith and morals, Stephen declared his firm belief in the fundamental doctrines of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.
While choir and organ burst into Haydn’s Kyrie eleison, Solemn High Mass began with Cardinal Glennon as celebrant. Stephen meanwhile put on the stockings and slippers proper to a bishop. Taking off his cope, he received the pectoral cross together with the dalmatic. Attired in these traditional vestments, each symbolizing the powers and duties laid upon him by the Church, Stephen was again brought before his consecrators. Mitered, they knelt while Stephen prostrated himself at full length before the altar. In the position of the meanest suppliant, he lay flat on his face, humbly entreating God not to mark his iniquities as a man or his unworthiness as a priest. No jubilant music now; no supporting ritual. Only a whispered plea for grace—the sanctifying gift by which God bestows on men some part of His nature.
Muffled in his robes, Stephen heard the choir chanting in Latin the Litany of the Saints—that roster of names blessed in heaven and venerated on earth:
St. Michael, St. Gabriel, St. Raphael … All ye holy patriarchs and prophets,
Pray for us.
St. Peter, St. Paul, St. John … All ye holy Apostles and evangelists,
Pray for us.
St. Benedict, St. Dominic, St. Francis … All ye holy monks and hermits,
Pray for us.
St. Magdalene, St. Agnes, St. Cecily … All ye holy virgins and widows,
Pray for us.
The note changed; the plea for protection and mercy ascended directly to God:
From Thy wrath,
Deliver us, O Lord.
From anger and hatred and ill will,
Deliver us.
From the spirit of fornication,
From lightning and tempest,
From plague, famine, and war,
From everlasting death,
O Lord, deliver us.
Again the note deepened; became somber with fear of the Lord:
In the Day of Judgment,
We beseech Thee, hear us,
That Thou wouldst spare us, that Thou wouldst pardon us,
Lord, we beseech Thee.
That Thou wouldst vouchsafe to govern and preserve Thy
Holy Church,
That Thou wouldst vouchsafe to confirm and preserve us
in Thy holy service,
We beseech Thee, hear us.
Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world,
Spare us, hear us, have mercy on us, O Lord.
The Litany ended. No human voice or action seemed worthy to break the hush that followed. Worshipers, choir, consecrators, the muffled figure lying prostrate before the altar, were motionless, silent. For a moment the ritual passed into a realm of mystery as the sense of the Apostolic succession about to take place hung over the Cathedral.
Stephen rose to a kneeling position. Assisted by coconsecrators, Lawrence Glennon laid the open Book of the Gospels on Stephen’s neck, murmuring as he did so, “Receive the Holy Ghost.” In the name of the Holy Trinity, the Cardinal then anointed Stephen’s forehead with a chrism composed of precious oils and resin blessed for the purpose. The anointing disarranged Stephen’s hair; Glennon smoothed it back with a gold-handled ivory comb. He anointed Stephen’s hands that he might labor for God, then gave him his crozier, saying: “Receive the staff of the pastoral office, so that in the correction of vices thou mayest be lovingly severe, giving judgment without wrath, softening the minds of thy hearers whilst fostering virtues, not neglecting strictness of discipline through love of tranquillity.” Blessing the episcopal ring, he slipped it onto Stephen’s finger as a sign that as Christ is wedded to the Church, so the bishop is wedded to his diocese.
In return Stephen presented his consecrator with two votive candles, two small loaves of bread, and two tiny gold barrels of wine.
Not until the Mass was over did the new Bishop receive his miter. When Glennon placed the gold-embroidered crown on Stephen’s head, choir and organ burst into the Te Deum of St. Augustine. Turning for the first time to his people, Bishop Fermoyle descended the altar steps and moved down the aisle, showering benediction on his flock as they bent before his upraised hand.
The first to receive his blessing were Dennis and Celia Fermoyle. They took their son’s benediction with bowed heads and hands clasped, right thumb over the left. When Stephen passed on, they brought their heads close to each other, as dumb creatures sometimes do when sharing knowledge not communicable to others.
THE PUBLIC RECEPTION on the Cathedral lawn combined the best features of a civic holiday, a Hibernian picnic, and a family reunion. From refreshment tables set up by the Knights of Columbus, eight thousand sandwiches and two hundred gallons of grape-juice lemonade vanished in forty minutes. A uniformed K. of C. band gave music while notables of all sects and politicians of both parties shook Stephen’s hand. The governor of the state (Repub.-Episc.) ended his address of welcome on the elegant note gloria virtutis umbra, which meant, he was careful to explain, “Glory is the shadow of virtue.” The Mayor of Hartfield (Dem.-Cath.) presented a scroll illuminated in Book of Kells style; into his address he worked a Gaelic phrase meaning “plow deep.” The Protestant clergy sent a noble delegation headed by the patrician Bishop Forsythe of the Methodist-Episcopal Church. Rabbi Joshua Felshin of Temple Beth Israel shook Stephen’s hand. A bevy of little girls from St. Rose’s Academy tendered Stephen a spiritual bouquet. Prelates of the Cathedral parish and heads of religious orders filed past, each kneeling to kiss the episcopal ring; some seven hundred pastors, curates, and nuns from all over the Diocese did likewise. Flash bulbs snapped; reporters begged for statements, and traffic through Hartfield Square had to be rerouted.
At one-thirty P.M. the last sandwich had disappeared, and the band played its final number—a medley of “Adeste fideles,” and “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” composed for the occasion by Professor Valentine Mullaney, principal of the Hartfield Academy of Music. As the crowd drifted away, Stephen turned to greet his family and friends gathered in the parlor of the episcopal residence.
The parlor, furnished in what might be called Irish Victorian style, was trying hard to preserve the museum atmosphere that Mrs. Goodwin, the “old Bishop’s” housekeeper, had stamped upon it during her long reign. The windows were lace-curtained, with beige overdrapes caught up in a swirl of silver knots so admired by undertakers. Though the deceased Bishop had not been addicted to dressing his hair with bear’s grease, Mrs. Goodwin had taken no chances—every chair was protected by an antimacassar. A crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling like a frozen stalactite, outproportioning everything else in the room but the Ivers and Pond piano, a claw-footed walnut monster that Mrs. Goodwin had seemingly tried to conceal with a triangular lace throw. In the center of the room a glass bell stood on a marble-topped table, and under the glass bell was the missal used by the first Bishop of Hartfield. Empty, the parlor would have been a tomb. Now, filled with Stephen’s family and friends, it buzzed with quite untomblike gaiety.
Having changed his robes for a black broadcloth suit given him as a consecration gift by his parents, Stephen stood in the doorway. “Alone at last,” he said, and plunged shoulder-deep into the laughter caused by his remark. Here, gathered in a single room, were the people who, by blood or love, were most nearly part of himself. One by one he greeted them: Din and Celia, givers of life itself; Din, painfully barbered and wearing a baggy blue serge suit undistinguishable—saving the arm stripes—from his motorman’s uniform; Celia, almost comely in the silk print and chic new hat her daughters had urged upon her. With awe and curiosity Celia fondled her son’s amethyst ring. “Handsome, Steve, handsome,” she murmured. Then a touch of mischievous humor lighted Celia’s once-pretty face. She held out the third finger of her left hand on which she wore the thin gold band that Din had placed there thirtyeight years before.
“This had to come before that” she said with mimic hauteur. And not all the theologians between Origen and Mercier could have refuted her.
The happiest event of the day took place when Stephen presented his father to Cardinal Glennon. Proudly he led Din to the armchair that Glennon had transformed into a throne by the simple act of sitting in it. Din, the earthly father, and Glennon, the spiritual sponsor, both aware of their equity in the young Bishop of Hartfield, shook hands as equals. Tutored by natural dignity, Din bowed over the Cardinal’s sapphire; Glennon, moved by the knowledge that in one respect at least this grizzled motorman was his better, drew Din close, locked him for a moment with a half embrace, and said:
“This must be a proud day for you, Mr. Fermoyle.”
“It is, Your Eminence.”
Glennon’s imperious hazel eye scrutinized Din’s massive head. “Stephen once said I reminded him of you. Can you see the resemblance?”
Visible evidence told Dennis Fermoyle that the resemblance was not physical. He had all his hair, the Cardinal was bald as an egg. Din’s midriff and hands were hardened with toil: Glennon was paunchy, soft. A life of command had given the Cardinal a viceregal carriage; drudgery had bowed Din’s head and shoulders. Could a likeness exist between these two men? Dennis saw that it could. Lacking courtier skill, he uttered the simple truth:
“I think I know what Stephen meant, Your Eminence. I taught my son to prize fearlessness. If he finds a resemblance between us, it is because he sees my teaching magnified in you.”
Din’s compliment fairly took the wind out of Glennon’s purple sails. “You Fermoyles,” he murmured, then recovered himself sufficiently to add: “The most striking resemblance that I note in this room, Mr. Fermoyle, is the notable likeness between you and your son.”
The blue vein in Glennon’s domed forehead was throbbing violently—the outward sign (Stephen knew) of a splitting headache brought on by strain and excitement. “Would Your Eminence like to lie down a bit?” he asked tenderly.
“And miss the jollification? No, Steve boy, no. I can have a headache any day—but how often can I enjoy a family party like this? So much prayer and ceremony today! Let us be people for a little while.”
Pressing around their Bishop-brother were the Fermoyles: Bernie, resplendent in morning jacket, ascot, and suede spats—no longer the touch artist, but a rising radio star, billed nationally as “the Irish Thrush”; George, the political lawyer, and adviser to Alfred E. Smith, correct in the not-to-be-imitated New York manner of selecting and wearing clothes. Here was shy Ellen, unwimpled descendant of St. Theresa, the frail candle of her body still flaming with secret devotions and tireless labor in the sacristy. In all thy orisons remember me, Ellen. Childless Florrie, trying to yield a little under her heavy corset as Stephen embraced her. Next, Rita and Dr. John Byrne, weaving an oak-and-ivy pattern of Catholic marriage, their four children budding around them. And gazing up at Stephen, the dark-curled fosterling, Mona’s child, that the Byrnes had adopted as their own.
“Regina, this is Uncle Stephen,” said Rita.
Nothing bashful about Regina. “Hello, Uncle Stephen,” she said, making a little curtsy. Delicate face turned upward, she accepted his kiss with a matter-of-fact comment: “You smell like a church.”
General merriment. “Out of the mouths of babes,” remarked Glennon.
In the doorway Mrs. Goodwin was announcing luncheon, served buffet style in the dining room. Diligent thumbing through the pages of her Marion Harland Cook Book had led the housekeeper to choose scalloped oysters, stewed tomatoes, Parker House rolls, Washington pie, pistachio ice cream, and coffee as the opening salvo in her campaign to “stay on” with the new bishop. She had brought out the Spode china, Gorham silverware, and double damask napkins, all of which created a proper sense of awe in Celia Fermoyle. In a private conversation with Mrs. Goodwin, Celia ticked off her son’s favorite dishes: creamed codfish on Fridays, beef and kidney pie, hot gingerbread, well buttered, and clam chowder without tomatoes. “Before he goes to bed,” continued Celia, “he sometimes likes a glass of milk with a slice or two of homemade bread and a small pitcher of molasses.” All of which Mrs. Goodwin noted for future reference.
While an edifying clatter of forks went on in the dining room, Stephen foraged for laggards in the parlor. There he found Dollar Bill Monaghan, failing somewhat in eyesight but otherwise in good repair, discussing the high costs of construction with Cornelius Deegan. Mike Speed and Paul Ireton, seminarians together at Brighton, were catching up on the lost years. Stephen shunted them toward the table. Hanging back, too, was Father Jeremy Splaine, a chestnut-haired young curate with electric blue eyes and the chrism of ordination still wet on his forehead. “Jemmy, you remind me of the Italian peninsula,” said Stephen. “You’re too long for your width. Into the dining room with you.”
From her discreet station in the butler’s pantry, Mrs. Goodwin watched the provisions vanish like so many rabbits at a magicians’ convention, while waves of merriment creamed up the walls of the dining room. She decided that the stoutish man in the morning coat and ascot tie must be quite an entertainer, else why should tears of laughter be streaming down the Cardinal’s face at some story or other about a piccolo player?
BACK in the parlor, Bernie Fermoyle was gradually taking over the party. Good food, and the even headier stimulant of Glennon’s laughter, had brought out Bernie’s biologic compulsion to sing and play. Sooner or later he would sit down at the piano and cast his warbling spell over an audience quite ready to be entertained. His opportunity came sooner than he had expected. Sipping coffee, crony fashion, with the Cardinal and Stephen in a curtained bow window, Bernie fingered the silver knots on the beige overdrapes.
“Such grandeur, Steve,” he said. “Quite a bit different from ‘Shanahan’s Ould Shebeen.’”
Lawrence Glennon pricked up his ears. “ ‘Shanahan’s Ould Shebeen’? My father used to sing it. I didn’t know anyone remembered ‘Shanahan’ these days.”
“Show His Eminence how good your memory is, Bernie,” suggested Stephen.
Thus persuaded, Bernie strolled over to the Ivers and Pond, twirled the piano stool a couple of times, and sat down with the easy seat of the born performer. He vamped a few bars, then, laying back his head, sounded off with his own variant of the all-but-forgotten ditty describing the forlorn plight of one Cassidy, longing amid wealth, for the old carefree days in Shanahan’s Ould Shebeen:
In me bran’-new brownstone mansion—lace curtains hangiri fine,
The Cathedral round the corner and the Cardinal in to dine—
Sure I ought to be stiff with grandeur, but me tastes are mighty mean,
And I long for a mornin’s mornin’, at Shanahan’s Ould Shebeen.
That’s why, as I sit on me cushins, wid divil a thing to do,
In a mornin’ coat of velvet and a champagne lunch at two,
The mem’ry comes like a banshee, meself and me wealth between,
An’ I long for a mornin’s mornin’ in Shanahan’s Ould Shebeen.
’Tis fit I mix with the gentry—I’m a laborer now no more—
But ohonel those were fine times, lad, to talk of them makes me sore,
An’ often—there’s times, I tell you, when I’d swap this easy chair,
An’ the velvit coat, an’ me footman wid his Sassenach nose in the air,
An’ the Cardinal’s elegant learnin’ too—for a taste o’ the days that ha’ been,
For a glass o’ a mornin’s mornin’ in Shanahan’s Ould Shebeen.
Lawrence Glennon struck his plump hands together in hearty applause. “More, more,” everyone cried.
“Any request numbers?” asked Bernie.
Din spoke up. “Like a good boy, Bernie, give us ‘Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill.’”
“Sure thing, Dad.” Again Bernie was off in song—this time his own version of a railroad chantey sung by Irish immigrant laborers who had made straight the transcontinental way for America’s steel tracks.
Oh, every morn at seven o’clock
There are twenty tarriers on the rock.
The Boss comes along and says: “MacGill,
Put all your powder in the cast-steel drill.”
(Voice of Boss: spoken) “Stand out there with the warnin’ flag, Sullivan. Look sharp, O’Toole. Blast! Fire! All over.”
Then drill, ye tarriers, drill;
Drill, ye tarriers, drill.
Oh, it’s work all day with no sugar in your tay
When ye work bey ant on the railway.
So drill, ye tarriers, drill.
Blast away that hill,
Crack those ledges with your I-rish sledges.
Drill, drill, drill.
(Voice of Boss: spoken) “Stand out forninst the fence
with the flag, McCarthy. Where’s the fuse, McGinty?
What? You lit your pipe with it? Stop the handcar
coming down. Stand back! Blast! Fire! All over.”
Just as the terrible blast went off,
A mile in the air went big Jim Goff;
When payday next it came around
Jim’s pay a dollar short he found.
“What for?” said he. Came the boss’s reply:
“You were docked for the time you were up in the sky.”
Operating on the vaudeville formula, “Always leave them laughing,” Bernie retired. Stephen hoped the Cardinal would volunteer to play, but His Eminence made no movement toward the instrument. Instead he gazed paternally at the little girls clustered around Rita Byrne. “Will any of you young ladies favor us with a selection?” he asked. While Louise and Elizabeth Byrne snuggled blushingly into their mother, Regina piped up:
“I’ll play.”
“Good girl. What pieces do you know?” asked the Cardinal.
“Für Elise and Le Secret.”
“Why, those are quite hard. Especially Le Secret.”
“Not really. Sister Veronica says it’s only the sharps and flats that make it seem hard.” Regina twirled the piano stool till it teetered up to its last spiral groove, then climbed aboard and sailed through the chromatic narrows of Le Secret. It was a sprightly, though by no means prodigious, performance for a six-year-old child. After absorbing the last drop of applause, Regina followed with Für Elise. “It’s by Beethoven,” she explained, then proceeded to gather up the gently melodic phrases into her little basket of music. Her assurance and beauty fascinated Stephen. He was sorry when Regina, her repertory exhausted, started to climb off the stool.
Obviously, Glennon was sorry, too. “Have you any other pieces?” he asked.
“Sister Veronica says my Chopin won’t be ready till next week.”
“Chopin?” Glennon pretended to rack his memory. Then hoisting himself out of his armchair, he walked to Regina’s side. “Does it go like this?” The Cardinal fingered the first four measures of the Prelude in A major.
“Yes, yes!” Regina clapped her hands. “How did you know?”
“Oh,” His Eminence was suitably vague, “Sister Veronica tells me things. Do you think you can play it now?”
Regina began bravely enough, then bobbled hesitantly over a wrong note. Violet eyes sought the Cardinal’s help. “That doesn’t sound right,” she said.
Glennon agreed. “How many sharps in the key of A major?”
“Three. F, C, and G.”
“Sharp your F and see what happens.”
Regina sharped her F, smiled gratefully at His Eminence, and went on. Toward the end she broke down. “I don’t remember how it goes from here.” Arms around the little girl on the piano stool, his hands on the keyboard, Lawrence Glennon finished the prelude.
Afterwards he sat down at the piano and improvised on a theme from Scarlatti.
Almost a quarter of a century before, he had embroidered this very theme in the presence of a Pope long dead. Sadness wove a golden thread through the Cardinal’s music; meditatively his fingers explored the nostalgic shadows enshrouding departed days and friends. A triumphant note emerged as he recalled the power and the glory that had been his; honors of place and preferment—he had known them all. An unwonted melancholy returned to his music; he had missed something, too—something that Dennis Fermoyle had enjoyed in fullest measure. The rewards of family life, the pride of gazing at a powerful son, a taller, nobler projection of oneself! How did it feel to be surrounded by earthly immortality in the shape of beautiful children repeopling the world with others like themselves? The power to consecrate bishops lay in Glennon’s hands, but he could never fondle as his own a dark-haired little girl with violet eyes who could tell you fearlessly, and quite correctly, that the key of A major had three sharps.
Glennon’s music took on a more buoyant voice as he glanced across the room at his spiritual son, who, hearing the sadness in the Cardinal’s playing, gazed back at him with unspoken sympathy. Glennon smiled, nodded: “It has passed. All is right again.” Breaking off his musical meditations, the Cardinal ended his little recital with a showy arrangement of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance, a selection perfectly suited to the taste and understanding of his audience.
Homage and affection saluted him as he left the piano. Both were comforting to His Eminence, but more comforting yet was the fact that his headache had entirely disappeared.