More adventures in Catholic fiction: "The Fifth of November"
Anyone who has spent any amount of time reading Victorian fiction--and not just of the didactic variety--has no doubt stumbled across an angelic child. Such children usually wind up bearing much of the novel's moral(izing) weight on their frail shoulders. (Think Tiny Tim or Little Nell.) In religious fiction, the angelic child normally models ideal faith--an approach that alludes to Matthew 18:3. When they appear in evangelical conversion novels specifically, these children further exemplify a kind of faith that renders argumentation moot; the child's faith is so pure, so rock-steady, that even cultured adults cannot but be awed by the display. The very life (and, frequently, death1) of the Christian child proves the religion's truth in a way that no theological disquisition could. Free from all pre-existing biases, apparently, the child turns out to be Scripture's best reader and best defender. Of course, as is so often the case, these children frequently seem designed to appeal to the converted instead of the would-be converts. The most notorious example is Charley from Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna's Judah's Lion: apparently, Tonna believed that there was nothing remotely off-putting about little Charley's habit of lovingly addressing the Jewish protagonist as "Mr. Jew."2 (Hint: don't try this at home, folks.) However, these children are hardly confined to the Protestant tradition.
May Ramsay's "The Fifth of November," published in The Fifth of November and Other Tales (1880), is a short story for Catholic children. Although the story eventually results in a Protestant family's conversion, its main point is not so much conversion as it is negotiating late-Victorian anti-Catholicism. Even though Ramsay does little with the overall setting, she does gesture to the realities of suburban modernity: the tale opens with the destruction of one of London's few remaining pastoral spaces, thanks to the needs of an expanding populace, and comes full circle in the end with a flower seller (the flowers, once available for free, must now be purchased). Both the (Protestant) Grantham and the (Catholic) Delaney families participate in the rush outward to suburbia--a similarity that is, in fact, one of the story's main points. Before we hear anything about the two families' religious allegiances, we discover everything that they have in common, whether social positions and servants or daily habits and children. Initially, then, Ramsay renders the two families virtually interchangeable on secular grounds. Both are quintessentially unremarkable English families, with the same interests, cultural investments, and allegiances.
Although the story takes place on Edgar Grantham's birthday, which is also Guy Fawkes Day, it turns out to be a coming-of-age tale for young Wilfrid Delaney. As the birthday party progresses, the tale draws closer and closer to the previously invisible, now unpassable barrier between the two families: in the tale, Guy Fawkes Day firmly allies Englishness with Protestantism, implicitly leaving the Delaneys out in the cold. Although Wilfrid cheerfully sings "'Remember, remember, the fifth of November'" (14), the moment signals his marginality, not his mainstream Englishness; after all, he only sings the song because he has no idea what it means. In fact, Wilfrid appears to have had no previous encounters with anti-Catholic sentiment at all. When Edgar's excitedly explains that they're going to burn an effigy of the Pope because "'[h]e is a horrible dreadful man who lives in Rome, and would like to burn all us Protestants, only the Queen won't let him'" (17), Wilfrid's response proves absolutely shattering to all concerned: "'I won't!' screamed Wilfrid, tearing himself from Edgar's grasp. 'You're a wicked bad boy to talk like that of our dear Holy Father. How dare you do it?'" (17) Edgar, of course, has assumed that Wilfrid is a Protestant just like himself, and his bigotry is a scrambled version of adult prejudices. In this moment, Wilfrid discovers, for the first time, that he belongs to a religion considered "other"; simultaneously, the Granthams find themselves disconcerted by the possibility that they have been inconsiderate of Wilfrid's feelings. This evening turns out to be equally shocking to Wilfrid, for it was the first time that he saw "the bleakness and barrenness beyond--the first time that Wilfrid and Protestantism had ever stood face to face" (26). Wilfrid's experience reveals that the interchangeability of the two families was an illusion, constructed out of silence and ignorance; their secular similarities merely cloak the Protestant family's existence in a spiritual abyss.
Mrs. Grantham's apology, in fact, does little to help matters: "'When you tell your dear Mama all about it, you must say that Edgar would not have sung that silly song for the world if he had known how it would have grieved you" (20). But hurting Wilfrid's feelings is not the actual problem--the insult to God is. As Wilfrid cheerfully explains, "'He takes the place of the Lord, you know; so that everybody who laughs at the Pope laughs at Him" (21). Wilfrid's instinctive, "but of course" response to the situation exemplifies the Catholic child's ideal response: besides being polite, if firm, Wilfrid refuses to watch the fireworks. At a very low level, then, Wilfrid models the kinds of sacrifice (here, a moment of pleasure) necessary for maintaining Catholic faith in a resolutely Protestant world. Ramsay counterpoints his innocent reaction with his father's mature explanation of how Wilfrid's behavior would have been judged: "The harm would have depended on the light in which the child's own conscience viewed the act" (30). This dialogue between Mr. Delaney and Mr. Grantham establishes a progression, from the child's pure faith (which startles the Granthams) to Mr. Delaney's more intellectual, culturally-oriented response (most Catholics refuse to discuss their religion because "'they suspect that you want to poke fun at it'" [32]) to, finally, the Granthams' visit to a local Catholic church and their subsequent introduction to the priest. Whereas a Protestant child might well convert an adult all on his or her own, this novel quietly insists on an ordered hierarchy of encounters (the innocent child believer/the adult believer/the priest) that culminates in conversion.3 And, of course, the conversion, like the flowers, brings the story back to the beginning--only, this time, the families are authentically identical...and, perhaps, even more authentically English.
1 See Elisabeth Jay, “'Ye careless, thoughtless, worldly parents, tremble while you read this history!': the Use and Abuse of the Dying Child in the Evangelical Tradition,” in Representations of Childhood Death, ed. Gillian Avery and Kimberley Reynolds (Houndmills: Macmillan Press Ltd, 2000), pp. 111-32.
2 As Michael Ragussis points out, Charley's "words of apparent affection [...] do not simply cloy, they virtually allegorize Alick out of existence." Figures of Conversion: "The Jewish Question" and English National Identity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 47.
3 This is standard in Catholic conversion fiction--although lay Catholics get the process started, it's almost always the priest who truly convinces the inquirer to convert.