y6 Early Modernism [1892 



English Catholic clergy, of the most revolutionary kind, especially 

 among the Capuchins, and that the Cardinal in some measure sympa- 

 thized with it. A movement of the widest sort, rationalistic and mystic, 

 which embraced all forms of religion and repudiated the finality of any 

 doctrine of the Church, a kind of positivism and creed of humanity 

 in which Plato, and Buddha, and Mohammed were alike canonized as 

 saints, and Christ himself hardly more than these. He assured me 

 that such doctrines were widely held by the younger priests, and that 

 some of their most zealous and able exponents were to be found among 

 our monks at Crawley. It was no heresy, he said, and the General of 

 the Capuchins who had come from Rome to put it down had gone 

 back converted. This sounds to me altogether incredible, but he prom- 

 ised to send me the writings of the new creed in print." [This was the 

 first word I had heard of the Modernist movement, afterwards so 

 notorious.] 



Mr. Meynell tells me that I unintentionally misrepresent the views 

 held by Father Cuthbert and his friends. " Not one," he says, " of 

 that fervent group of young Franciscans but fixed all his hope and all 

 his faith on the doctrine, fundamental and final, of the divinity oi. 

 Christ." 



" iSth Sept. (Sunday). — Meynell's talk has done me good. It opens 

 to me a view of a religious position, not absolutely illogical, in which I 

 may still be loyal to all my ideas without quarreling with the Catholic 

 Church. I mean to talk the matter over with Father Cuthbert, the 

 young Capuchin at our Monastery, whom Meynell speaks of as the 

 leading light of the new doctrine. 



"22nd Sept. — Lunched at the Travellers' Club with Frank Bertie, 

 whom I had not seen for years, and we had much talk about men and 

 things of a past generation. He tells me Evelyn Baring is seriously 

 ill with eczema in Scotland, one of the plagues with which Moses 

 afflicted Pharaoh. I hope it may determine him to let the Egyptians 

 go. Philip Currie was also there and Sanderson. 



" 26th Sept. — Margot writes that she's starting a paper to be 

 called ' The Petticoat,' in collaboration with Betty Balfour, Mrs. 

 Horner, Mrs. Singleton, and other women friends. 



" 2jth Sept. — On a visit to Frampton, a very pretty place with a 

 house of the early eighteenth century, the period I like best for domes- 

 tic architecture. Our host, Brinsley Sheridan, is a typical country 

 gentleman given to sport ; his wife, a Motley, sister of Lady Harcourt, 

 with two nice daughters, and there are sons, but all the boys are at 

 school. 



" There is a Miss Fetherstonhaugh staying in the house who showed 

 me letters she had received from young de Winton from Uganda, 

 written in the mixed missionary and fighting language one is familiar 



