1909] Father Tyrrell Dead 255 



it is a happiness. Miss Petre has very sensibly written to the ' Times ' 

 announcing the fact of his having died at her house, and giving the 

 details of the last rites administered. It seems to have been a paralytic- 

 stroke, for he had lost the power of speech, and I fear his ecclesiastical 

 enemies will hold this to be a judgment of Heaven upon him, but it 

 will save him at least from the reproach of having ' recanted his errors ' 

 in the face of death. I have telegraphed to Miss Petre and shall cer- 

 tainly, if permitted, attend his funeral as an act of sympathy with a 

 persecuted man who was also, I am glad to think, my friend. 



" Later. I drove over to Mulberry House. Miss Petre had gone 

 out to the monastery, but her sister, Mrs. Powell, took me into the 

 garden house and showed me the poor body. It was laid out in the 

 tiny cell which had been his sleeping place, hardly more than a cupboard, 

 ten feet, perhaps, by five ; there was scarcely room to squeeze in 

 between the very narrow bed and the wall. There lay the dead 

 heresiarch, as sad a little shard of humanity as ever my eyes saw. 1 

 could not have recognized it as the man I had known so brilliant in 

 his talk, so full of combative life, or indeed, hardly as a man at all. 

 The face was shrunk and the features seemed to have fallen in though 

 he had been only thirty-six hours dead, for he died at nine yesterday 

 morning, and the body with its poor small fingers was more like an 

 accidental handful of shapeless clay than anything that had been alive. 

 Pious hands had clothed him in surplice and stole, as befitted the 

 priest he was, and there were two tapers lighted at his head. I knelt 

 a minute or two beside him and recited a ' De Prof undis ' and kissed 

 the hem of his garment, or rather the stole, and rose and went out, 

 moved, as one could not help being moved, to tears of pity. It was so 

 utter an ending. I had some talk with Mrs. Powell, a vigorous, un- 

 emotional woman of fifty, who gave me the details of his death and 

 of how the Archbishop was raising objections to his being buried as 

 a Catholic with full funeral rights. Her sister was out on this very 

 business at the monastery, but would be back immediately and she 

 urged me to await her. I occupied the half-hour which elapsed in 

 paying a visit to Mrs. Lucas, Meynell's married daughter, who has 

 taken rooms in a farm house, Chantry's, just outside the village. When 

 I came back I found Miss Petre had returned and she received me in 

 her room upstairs. I had been prepared to find her altered by this 

 sudden misfortune, but she met me with her usual cheerful smile and 

 without a trace of sadness on her face. There was no paleness on her 

 cheeks or trace of tears, and she talked at once in her open, straight- 

 forward way about all that had happened and was happening. She 

 is a wonderfully wise, courageous woman, for it is certain that Father 

 Tyrrell's death must be a terrible grief to her, and loss in every way. 

 She talked of him simply as a child might talk, but with the wisdom of 



