MGR. ROBERT HUGH BENSON’S LOVE FOR IRELAND.

New Zealand Tablet, 4 March 1920, Page 28

MGR. ROBERT HUGH BENSON’S LOVE FOR IRELAND.

The late Right Rev. Mgr. Robert Hugh Benson’s warmly-expressed love for the Irish was such as would indicate that this convert son of an Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury must almost have wished that he had been born in Erin. The faithful and loving Catholic novelist saw in the mighty faith and sufferings of the Irish a section of the kingdom of God upon earth which sent him almost into raptures. Indeed, an Irishman might almost regret that ho did not write an Irish novel or two, though that, perhaps, was beyond what he felt to be his province, if he ever thought of it. In his life of the Monsignor, Father Martindale mentions a visit which the novelist paid to Killarney House in 1904, at the invitation of the late Countess of Kenmare. From it he wrote an enthusiastic letter which included the following passages : “The whole place breathes faith. “I went round to see some poor people this morning with Lady Castlerosse, and saw such amazing thingspeople in the most hopeless habitations, cobbled stones on the floor, real saints lying on the beds, with all their supernatural friends’ portraits on the shelf crucifix, Our Lady, St. Patrick, and so on. One woman was dying of cancer, beaming. Another dying of some other awful thingcalling everyone ‘darling,’ myself included, and absolutely serene with happiness. They don’t mind death or pain at all. It is as natural to suffer and die as to live, and has the advantage of being supernatural too. I wish I had the thousandth part of their chance of heaven. They seem like the real Royal Family of heaven.” Again, in another connection, he showed that he was most at home in Ireland; “Don’t mind what they say,” ho wrote. “Go to Ireland and see for yourself. It does me more good than any country in the world. The air throbs with grace and faith. That’s why the Briton doesn’t like it. The rest is LIES. Don’t bother at all about it.” And, says Father Martindale, “the essentially Irish spirit was to him like oxygen for the soul.”