November 13 marks the 110th anniversary of the death of the poet Francis Thompson. I will pray for his eternal repose because he was a troubled soul, but few have sublimated their struggles more beautifully.
Thompson’s poetry first gave me an imaginative insight into the doctrine of
God’s immanence with lines such as:
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry; – and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
For Thompson, just as the fish doesn’t have to soar to find the ocean, the human soul doesn’t have to look further than his or her own life for signs of the presence of God. For all his Tennysonian diction – the “betwixts”, “casements” and “dravests” – there is a searing quality to his best poems which makes them not unlike some passages in the Psalms as they address the heartfelt question of where God is to be found. King David could easily have penned some of the lines in “The Hound of Heaven”: “My days have crackled and gone up in smoke, … Naked I wait Thy love’s uplifted stroke! … Is my gloom, after all,/ Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?”
Thompson was the son of a Lancashire doctor who was determined that his son follow in his footsteps. After some time spent in the junior seminary at Ushaw, Thompson left to study medicine but never qualified as a doctor. He was assiduous enough in his studies at medical school, but simply failed to turn up for his final exams. Instead he went to London and for three years lived the kind of life Dickens might have invented for one of his characters: homeless and destitute and reduced to selling matches to earn a living, while he scribbled poetry of mystical depth on scraps of paper and descended further and further into addiction to laudanum, the Victorian answer to Prozac.
On the centenary of Thompson’s death, a Texan forensic pathologist even advanced the hypothesis that Thompson was a profile fit for Jack the Ripper on the basis of his medical knowledge and some tenuous coincidences. It is true that he was rescued from a suicidal despair by a prostitute at Charing Cross. But Alice Meynell, the woman who took him off the streets, gave him a home and was instrumental in getting him published, was adamant that, apart from his addiction, he had not indulged other vices. It was mental illness rather than depravity which led to Thompson’s addiction and vagabond life.
Priests increasingly come into contact with those who are mentally ill – the lepers of the 21st century, shunned by those who fear contagion and poorly served by inadequate and overstretched mental health services. By mentally ill, I do not just mean those who exhibit the dramatic symptoms of psychosis, I mean those like Francis Thompson, in whom something of the will is broken mentally; who, crippled by compulsions, just don’t seem to be able to cope with the burden of living. They can be very high functioning in some areas, but something has left them vulnerable and unable to take responsibility for self-care, for thriving. Their healing is precarious for it requires more than drugs and counselling; it requires sensitive and charitable community. Like Thompson, many such people survive despair by clinging to faith even amid the gloom.
“The Hound of Heaven”, Thompson’s greatest poem, articulates so vividly the phenomenon of resistance in the spiritual life, how the flight from pain, from the Cross, actually prevents the deeper encounter with God we desire and how we resist the coming close of God, lest having him we “might have naught else beside”. I now realise also the psychological veracity of what Thompson attests to: that only when one stops the defensive flight from the pain of one’s past can one heal. In some people love and attachment have been the sources of such betrayal and pain that they continue to reject them. Fear of surrendering control has calcified into something so hard as to be impenetrable. Then only the Holy Spirit can speak to a level below the psyche: “Ah fondest, blindest, weakest,/ I am He Whom thou seekest!/ Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.”
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.