CHAPTER XVIII

THE CATHOLIC REVIEW

WHEN Mark got back to St. Cyprian's, he found everybody much occupied with a project to bring out a really dignified review that would represent the intellectual outlook of the Catholic party in the Church of England. Mortemer had expressed his willingness to finance the enterprise and appoint Michael Heriot editor.

"I should enjoy editing a review, Vicar," said Heriot in his precise tones. "There is hardly anything that I should enjoy more; but I should not feel a genuine editor if you were to finance the review. Forgive the slight upon the unbeneficed clergy, brethren," he went on, turning to the rest of his colleagues who were sitting round the table in one of the committee-rooms of the Clergy House. "Yes, I beg you'll forgive the slight, but really, Vicar, I should always feel much more like what I am, the senior assistant-priest at St. Cyprian's, South Kensington, than a genuine editor. I should like it to be the editorial sanctum, not . . .”

"The ter sanctum it would have to be called, if you were editor, Heriot," Nash interrupted with a laugh.

"I wish you wouldn't interrupt with your witty observations, Nash. I do not think that it is fair. The best tradition of wit aims at retort, repartee or riposte, but it never allows an interruption. I had quite a good joke of my own that I was on the very verge of making, and of course now it will have to remain mute and inglorious for all time."

Everybody begged Heriot to reveal his joke.

"A post obiter dictum is never a success," Heriot said. "My lips are sealed. But to return to serious matters, I do think that if this review is to be of any value there will have to be a kind of public guarantee fund opened.

I should then feel that I was a real editor. If the Vicar pays for everything, it will be too clerical; when I reject a contribution, I shall feel as if I was pitching the offertory at the heads of the churchwardens.

"I agree with Heriot," said Dayrell. "It must not be too obviously clerical. In fact, I'm inclined to question the advisability of appointing him editor. Why don't we try to get some brilliant young layman?

"Ah, no, I think Heriot will be exactly right as editor," Mortemer said. "How would it be to call a meeting before the season is over, and take the temperature of the Catholic public? One could get up an impromptu committee-the Duke of Birmingham, Lord Hull, et hoc genus omne. You know the sort of thing."

"I helped to run a paper at Oxford," said Nigel Stewart. "I remember that we were always having meetings to promote it. It was called The Oxford Looking Glass. By the way, how about The Catholic Looking Glass as a title?

"My dear Nigel," Cyril Nash protested, "people would think that it was all about fashions in chasubles."

"Well, a good deal of it probably would be," Mark flung out.

"I feared thee because thou art an austere man," Nash quoted, laughing and shaking his head.

"Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant," Mark retorted.

"The obvious title is The Catholic Review, it seems to me," the Vicar said. "Now, cannot one draw up some kind of prospectus?

"Doesn't one get promises of help first from likely contributors?" Heriot asked.

"One can always count on getting promises," said Mark. "It doesn't matter how many eggs one counts before they're hatched. It's only the chickens about which one is advised to preserve a decent pessimism."

So letters were written, and circulars were sent out, and cards of invitation were printed, inviting by name various distinguished and undistinguished Anglo-Catholics to attend a meeting under the chairmanship of His Grace

the Duke of Birmingham, K.G., at which the Bishop of Tobago, the Bishop of North-West Matabeleland, the Bishop of the Ivory Coast, the Earl of Hull, Sir Charles Horner, Bt., the Reverend Canon Warrilow, the Reverend J. Q. B. Moxon-Hughes, the Reverend Drogo Mortemer, Dom Cuthbert Manners, O.S.B., the Reverend Michael Heriot, the Reverend Cyril Nash, G. K. Chatterton, Esq., Crompton Macaulay, Esq., etc., etc., had kindly consented to address the meeting on the subject of a proposed Catholic review.

"Of course, the etceteras will be the only speakers we shall hear," Mark laughed.

"Oh no, I'm going to speak. Nothing shall stop me," Nash declared. "I think it was a tactful move to invite Moxon-Hughes."

"Oh, Moxon is very keen on the idea," the Vicar affirmed.

The platform at the parochial hall did not look like being quite the galaxy upon which the Vicar of St. Cyprian's had hoped to focus the eyes of the meeting.

"Of course, you know, it's too near the end of the season," he lamented, when telegram after telegram expressed the regrets of one after another notable supporter of the scheme for his inability to attend.

"I don't think that colonial bishops ought to be influenced by the end of the season," Mark said. "It's rather flighty of them."

"Oh dear, oh dear, now the Duke has cried off," the Vicar exclaimed, after reading another telegram. "That's really too bad of him. What is one to do for a chairman?"

"Dayrell and Stewart and I will come and support you on the platform, Vicar," Mark offered. "And when we write the report of the meeting, we will comment on the large and distinguished sprinkling of unbeneficed clergy that was noticeable."

"I hope some of the literary gents will turn up," Heriot said. And, as the future editor spoke, another telegram was delivered to say that G. K. Chatterton was unable to be present.

"He gives some particularly weighty reason, no doubt," said Nash.

"We shall have no big guns at all," the Vicar grumbled.

"We shall have Canon Warrilow," said Nash.

"Please don't go on being funny, Cyril," Heriot begged.

"Well, you must admit that it is funny," said Nash. "It's not half so funny as it's likely to be at the meeting," Mark chuckled.

"You'd much better have let me stick to my original plan," the Vicar said.

"Yes, but everybody would have called it an extension of our parish magazine," Heriot objected. Heriot objected. "Hallo, here's another telegram."

The Vicar opened it and began to laugh.

"Do listen," he exclaimed. "This is too priceless!"

Dear brother warmly support proposed catholic review suggest strong line first number action bishop kidderminster communicating two hundred and twenty mixed dissenters summer conference best demand excommunication canterbury if kidderminster in southern province cannot remember sorry cannot attend meeting hope great success delighted have telegram read if opportunity tell Heriot am writing long nonsense poem for early issue hundred lines done very good

"Dorward!" everybody shouted before the Vicar had time to read the signature.

"Dorward, of course," Mortemer confirmed.

The meeting at St. Cyprian's parish hall compensated with its enthusiasm for what it may have lacked by St. Cyprian's standards in distinction. The hall was well filled, and nobody seemed to mind that practically none of the advertised speakers had put in an appearance. Canon Warrilow, who was in the chair, opened the proceedings and called upon the Vicar of St. Cyprian's to explain the position of affairs. After Mortemer had argued the conspicuous, the almost vital necessity of a dignified organ of Catholic opinion and Moxon-Hughes had made an eloquent plea for hand-made paper and hand

printing, and a revival of the true spirit of the old English guilds; after Cyril Nash had claimed that the AngloCatholic Movement was essentially modern, but not modernist, and therefore required an organ that would appeal to the intellect while it preserved the strictest doctrinal orthodoxy; after Michael Heriot had made a most elaborately allusive speech to which the audience listened in puzzled silence until they were told that the last speaker was going to be editor, whereupon they cheered vociferously; and after one or two more speeches from the platform, Canon Warrilow rose and invited any ladies or gentlemen present that desired to address the meeting to mount the platform and give them the benefit of their suggestions. On this a young man at the back of the room made his way through the crowd and prepared to address the meeting. Shrugged shoulders replied to those who tried to ask by lifting their eyebrows who he was. Presently he began to speak in what Mortemer vowed after the meeting was a pronounced Cockney accent; but Mortemer was not a good judge of accents that day, for when he heard this young man holding forth, instead of just the right person he had hoped to hear, Mortemer was inclined to leap from the zenith to the nadir, and be perfectly sure that this was 'just the wrong person.'

"Ladies and gentlemen," the young man began, "I reckon that I've got what you might call rather a nerve." Mortemer winced and drew in his breath sharply. "Yes, I reckon that I've got no business to stand up here and start talking when there must be dozens of other ladies and gentlemen better able to talk than me. ["No, no," ejaculated a benevolent voice from the back of the hall.] I am much obliged to my friend for his kind encouragement, and anyway here I am for better or worse. Well, ladies and gentlemen, besides being an English Catholic, I'm a journalist, and what I want to say right off is that you've chosen the wrong name for this magazine. [Voice: "Query."] Well, I say you have, and I'm ready to argue the point with anybody here. If you call this review or magazine The Catholic Review, you're going to give the man in the street a wrong impression.