PATSY: A PORTRAIT

New Zealand Tablet, 30 August 1917, Page 7

PATSY: A PORTRAIT

(By W. M. Letts, in The Month.)

I think he was one of the bravest souls I ever knew, but he was not a soldier. I met him first many years ago. It happened in this way. A friend who was going away for a summer holiday said to me: “Will you look up a little boy for me ? He lives in those condemned houses down Church road. His name is Patsy B- . Go and see him for yourself.” I went one day. It was a summer day when the dust is heavy and wanton useless pieces of paper play thriftless games about the pavements. The slum houses of our suburb looked very gaunt and sordid against the clean summer sky. Hot and dirty children sprawled on doorsteps, happy enough—for your slum child is a very happy person in most cases. Given health, a mere sufficiency of food, and parents of tolerable kindness, the slum child lives a life of interest and social pleasure that leaves the over-cared and solitary offspring of large houses far behind. I came at last to Patsy’s door. It stood half open, and as nobody was about I went in. It was the typical Dublin house, entirely unsuited to its owners : high, inconvenient, old, and sordid. There was just one person in the room— little boy fast asleep with his head on the table. He sat on a hard chair, his legs dangling; near him lay a pair of crutches. The feckless flies of summer buzzed and hummed about him and about a largely bitten piece of bread and jam that lay on a chipped plate near him. His mother came in. She was the harassed but devoted mother of seven sons and three very small daughters. She wanted to rouse him but I begged her to let him sleep. To rouse the sleeping is surely one of the corporal works of cruelty. “Ah!” she explained, “it’s little enough sleep he gets at night. He does be lying awake most times, but he won’t let on for fear of troubling us.” I asked the conventional questions about the causes of the diseased hip, the boy’s age, and all the rest of it. He was fourteen and he had loved the school when he could go, —“a bright little lad he was at his books, and all elementall element.” Whatever “element” might be, I gathered somehow that it was Patsy’s chief characteristic. When health was his he had been swift as a redshanks in careering up and down the pavements after his hoop. He had been “careless and gay as a wad in a window,” as we say in this land of broken windows. Then Patsy opened his eyes and stared at me with bewilderment that turned to courteous greeting. He was not handsome then or later, but his face was one of the most attractive one could see. It expressed crystal innocence, boyish jollity, friendliness, ready interest; and beyond these good things some quality I cannot analyse, something that made him of those pure in heart who see God. ; , ... . ’ - We began to talk in a tentative way that strangers = use. One did not think of pitying Patsy ;it was far more natural to tell him of one’s own troubles, or interests, or pleasures. In that first interview I

gathered that boxing was the main interest of his life. His hands .were .white and thin, his arms puny and wasted, but his whole face shone when he spoke of Wells and Carpentier and Jack Johnson, and of y the others whose names I did not even know. lie had an exact and scientific knowledge of the noble art and read Boxing every week. ' Did Patsy draw, I asked? Shyly he produced one of those large scribbling notebooks. It was full of chalk drawings. Brawny boxers with huge, biceps held the place of honor. The artist showed a shy pride in them. These were his heroes. There were other pictures-landscapes, seascapes, houses that tottered perilously, and a scene that took my fancy specially where a -large Irish rabbit gazed eastwards towards the rising sun. That picture seemed to express new life and irrepressible hope, and in this way to be emblematic of Patsy. At my second visit I found him cheerful but a little tear-stained. He was lying in a small bed in the corner of the kitchen. He had been worse, his mother said, but he would, no doubt, play the violin if I wished it. So he played sweetly and rather tremulously “The Minstrel Boy.” Of the cause of his tears I learnt something later from his mother outside the door. • “He’s a bit knocked about to-day. The other young ones are all after starting for the ‘Feat’ —the Coronation Feat down at Ballsbridge— and he was a bit overcome not to go with them. It’s the first time ever I known him cry—God help the poor lad that was always gayest of the gay —and it was not crying he was, it was a kind of snorting. He didn’t want to let on he was that upset. He’d never let us know it. From about this time there began for Patsy long sojournings in hospital, and operations and experiments that we all fondly hoped might give him new life. The physical history of tubercular hip-disease varies little, and it is all too well known ; but the spiritual" history that . runs its course beneath the malady is another matter. Patsy’s was ever a tale of friendship. Somehow his Matron and Sister and nurses were always the most delightful people : his doctors were always the best: they were all his friends. Perhaps it was that the little feeble boy with the shock of fair hair and the ready smile brought his own atmosphere of peace and kindness and happiness. I soon discovered that my typical example of a happy person was Patsy. Everything interested him, especially desperate adventure and deeds of strength and prowess. He read everything, wrote an excellent hand, and produced little stories which I keep in memory of him. Every year we expected him to die. His strength ebbed from him till he seemed just a shadow of a boy, just something that held an undaunted spirit still upon the earth. “The only thing that troubles him,” said his mother, one day, “is that he’s too weak to say his prayers.” I have not spoken yet of his piety lest I should suggest the pale-faced, blue-eyed hero of the Victorian Sunday School prize. 1 find it hard to make others know the charm of his simple, unfaltering holiness. It was something like the clean manliness that inspired the quest of the Sancgreal. It was a knightly zeal for God and His Kingdom, and with this was that fine burning faith of the medieval gentleman. To Patsy the great companies of saints and of angels ere as real and heroic and exciting as the mighty boxers of the ring. He knew with unfaltering trust that to pray was to work. When he could work he worked with the zeal of three; when he was helpless he prayed with a tireless energy and devotion that is not often found outside a Celtic country. When Tom, his father, came back from the 1 war he remarked with humorous condemnation, “That ould lad in the bed there was awake half the night rattling His beads—-two pairs of beads he has in — and there’s not a boy from, these parts that isn’t on them, and

there’s me lad telling their names out all the night long.” ... Needless to tell _ it, the war was now Patsy’s supreme interest. He could talk of guns, and tactics, like any olfl general. He was all on fire to be out in the thick of it. There was blue..fire in his eyes when he talked of fighting. Of such stuff is Michael O’Leary, V.C. His military zeal was inflamed by the almost miraculous improvement of his health during this last summer. For the first time for four years he went to Mass ; for the first time in his life he worked and earned money— three shillings a week and in the evening he went to that hive of industry “The Tech.” to learn book-keeping. “He’s going to keep me in the lap of luxury when I’m old,” said his mother proudly. Then came the end of it. We had been planning, he and I, to go some time to see the Somme battle pictures. I felt it would be like going with a staff officer to have Patsy there to explain everything. But 1 heard when I suggested a date that he had a chill “was not so well at all, at all.” “I wonder will he get over it?” said his mother anxiously. “I don’t think after all he’ll do any good,” a statement which was used only in a physical sense. It was the last fight this time, and he fought it heroically, splendidly, triumphantly. Tie faced much pain with clenched teeth and never a murmur. He was conscious to the end, and roused himself to speak words of hopeful and brave farewell to those who were honored by his friendship. When at last he lay still and tranquil in the little room where we had so often visited him, there were many who came to say good-bye. We all regarded him as a saint, but such a gallant, happy, boyish saint that one could talk of him with laughter even while he lay there dead ; we could remember his jokes, his merriment, and take courage to part with him. Very many followed him to his grave over hard frozen roads. All were his friends. He had been poor in so much, rich always in friendship. And of his happy spirit we can feel, as of other heroic boys, killed in France and Gallipoli—- “ Dear boys! they shall be young for ever. The Son of. God was once a boy. They run and leap by a clear river And of their youth they have great joy. God Who made boys so clean and good Smiles with the eyes of fatherhood.”