A Note on Cardinal Manning

Extract

Mr. Purcell’s Life of Cardinal Manning has so long held the field and the market that it may be questioned whether it can be ever supplanted or at most supplemented, for its claim was certainly to be exclusive and inclusive. A quarter of a century has elapsed since Mr. Gladstone congratulated the author on writing “the history of a soul, a dividing of marrow and bone,” and leaving so little for disclosure on the Day of Judgment. And few critics have questioned the finality of that utterance.

It is well known that Mr. Purcell differed from most biographers by committing no sins of omission with the signal exception of an autobiographical note on the corporate action of the Society of Jesus in England. Mystery veils this as well as the memory of Mr. Purcell himself. As an orthodox and humble journalist his name sometimes occurs in the papers of ecclesiastics. Mr. Purcell had for a time conducted an ultramontane but unsuccessful venture in journalism, for he later confided to Archbishop Ullathorne of Birmingham (November 2, 1881), “Since giving up the Westminster Gazette I have been exclusively engaged in writing for non-Catholic papers.” His Life of Manning was presumably written for the same public. By the year 1887 the Cardinal, being anxious to recoup him for his losses, allowed him to begin to write a brief Memoir of himself, to be published and scrutinized in his own lifetime. He lent him one of his diaries on condition that it should not be quoted, but he had already suggested that Mr. J. E. C. Bodley should write the final Life, and had given leave to Mr. Bodley to remove his notebooks and diaries.