I have read about this photo and wanted to find it for a few years now, and have only been able to find small, grainy versions of it. Well, I now found a large, clearer print today. This is Fr. Hopkins in December 1883, age 39, just before moving to Ireland, which will be the darkest period of his life (he will there go to the brink of despair, and die five years later, though his last words will be whispering over and over "I am so happy. I am so happy").
I was struck by the account Paul Mariani gives of the event:
I was struck by the account Paul Mariani gives of the event:
There is a photograph of Hopkins taken on the grounds late in December, with one of the ivy-laced main buildings as backdrop. Hopkins, in buttoned black soutane and biretta, looks very uncomfortable, his body imploding inward, as if he wished he were anywhere but here.
[...]And so, on January 30, 1884, the University Senate votes to accept Hopkins, who in truth does not want the job, though he will of course in obedience do as he is bidden. Eyre for one knows just how disappointed Hopkins must be at having to leave Stonyhurst for Dublin, but there it is. Fiat, done, approved by his fellow Jesuits in England and Ireland and Rome. Ah well, Eyre writes Purbrick just after Hopkins has packed his things and left for Ireland. In poor Father Hopkins "we had a man of fine classical learning and perhaps overly gentle teaching methods." And some - who will go unnamed - having "stoned the prophet," will now "want to build him a monument!"
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| Seated on right. |
Strange, his right eye looks darker than it should be, almost like a black eye. Photo defect, perhaps?
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