Original gatehouse, no longer extant, at present day gate of abbey property

In this talk given September 28, 1973, the author Daniel Sargent asks us to consider “Galloping Time” – in a perhaps ironic and unanticipated way, as we now “gallop” back 50 years, returning to the publication of his talk in the Winter Bulletin of 1974, to relive the moment as if it were yesterday. He himself gallops back yet further in is talk, to an encounter in 1919 with an eponymous Sargent (Father Leonard). The piece provides for us now an animated verbal window into his visits to Portsmouth, and a vivid picture of some of the evolution of the monastery and school.

The title of my talk is "Galloping Time," and those of you who have heard the title may ask me to apologize for saying that time gallops. Don't I know that our chief grudge against time is that it doesn't budge? Rich and poor have this grudge, young and old, saints and sinners. Have I forgotten that Saint Teresa of Avila, when she set up an hour-glass and started to meditate for an hour, became so exasperated with the sands that did not move, that she took up the glass and shook it angrily? - She has told us she did. – I am not apologizing. Time does gallop. We all know it. Because we have immortal longings and can't get immediately what we long for, we do sometimes blame time, saying it halts. But we know better. Nothing can we be more sure of than that time gallops.

Our maxims say that time flies, or flees. We repeat it in Latin – tempus fugit – which some college professor has said is the only Latin phrase a modern collegian knows, except for O. K. – But our maxims ought to go on to say that it more than flies, it gallops, for who cannot see that it runs not smoothly but in eddies and leaps like the Horse-Shoe Rapids below Niagara? We are painfully aware that it gallops, for it keeps us ignorant by its turbulence. We can't be omniscient like gods. We can't discern much of what has happened, and less than nothing of what will. What a confusion because it gallops! What an inconvenience!
Former Cory’s Lane Train StopBut why, since we know this unfortunate fact too well, talk about it? Why not forget it? Why celebrate galloping time on this pleasant day, September 28th, 1973, at Portsmouth Abbey School? I will tell you. Time on its mad way gives us some good things – surprises. Even bad surprises are good. Good surprises are so good that they give us the greatest gladnesses we have here on earth. I am talking today about the good surprise of having galloping time present us with a Benedictine Abbey, here on Newport Island. I have the right to speak about it, for, though an outsider, I have watched the surge of time bringing it into being for a longer time than anyone here. – And let not Father Wilfred Bayne try to look old, and pretend that he saw this headland and the changes on it before me. – I have been watching this piece of land, and what time is doing there, for nearly fifty-five years, in never-ceasing visits.

My first visit was on May 23rd, 1919, just after the First World War, and let me explain why I made it. I had, a month before, been received into the Catholic Church, and a friend of mine, Arthur Graham Carey, "a born Catholic" whom I had become intimate with in France during the war had advised me to learn better the way of Catholics by visiting a Benedictine foundation, that had been started the year previous at Portsmouth, Rhode Island. He said that a Father Sargent, like me a convert, and with my name, although no relative of mine, was in charge of the foundation. This led me to write to Father Sargent and arrange to spend a night at the foundation. – At this point I interrupt my story to say of Graham Carey that, though a contemporary of mine, he now has a son at Portsmouth Abbey School, John Carey, Class of 1975, who is considerably younger than my grandchildren – which makes life wonderful. – Taking Graham Carey's advice, I did write to Father Sargent; and received from him instructions. Following them I took a train from the Back Bay Station at Boston at 3:25, May 23rd, and got off the train at Cory's Lane, a whistle-stop, on the way to Newport, and crossed the tracks and climbed a grassy slope on which Father Sargent said he would be strolling, waiting for me.
This drawing of Leonard Sargent by Hubert von Zeller was included in the original publication of Daniel Sargent’s 1973 talk in the Portsmouth Bulletin.No Father Sargent in sight. There was a gazebo in front of me, and, to the left of it, a white-square house, looking to have been built in the 1870's and nothing more. But as I climbed, out from the gazebo emerged the first monk I was ever to speak to, Father Leonard Sargent. He looked like the monks I had seen in history books – that is in dress – except that he wore on his head a wide-brimmed hat like a "Frisbie" with black fleece. I had seen such hats on priests in Italy and France, but in our country I had seen them only on members of Anglican religious orders, marching exotically in Boston.

Father Sargent and I approached one another, then he addressed me with gentle, not abrupt, cordiality. "Welcome,'' he said, "to my kinsman." After we had shaken hands in kinship he led me to the gazebo (honey-suckle covered, but with blossoms not yet out) and began a discussion of what relation we might be to one another. He was of the Virginia Sargents – and I of the Massachusetts ones, but surely there must be a connection. He went on and on, but at last he changed the subject, perhaps because he saw me looking at his hat. "I hope it doesn't frighten you," he said. "It frightened Cardinal O'Connell of Boston. And once it got me thrown into jail. It was during the Spanish-American War in 1898. I was still an Anglican, and was walking the railroad platform at Fall River with it on, when I was picked up by the police as a Spanish Jesuit in disguise, a spy." Then he changed the subject again, and a deeper quality of his came out. He spoke very clearly of what the "work" of a Benedictine was, as I shall always remember. Then he spoke concisely of the story of his life, and of his Benedictine foundation, which I shall repeat in his words, as I remember them, after fifty-five years.

"I was graduated from Harvard in 1879. Later on I joined the Anglican order of the Holy Cross. After the turn of the century I changed and became a Catholic. Then I become a Catholic priest, and then a Benedictine priest, a member of Downside Abbey in England. Then I was allowed by the Abbot of Downside to go back to my own country, there to try to establish a dependency of Downside. I came to Boston, – and there received very little encouragement either in words or funds, but I did discover that a Catholic lady, a Mrs. Hall, was putting up for sale her estate at Portsmouth, Rhode Island. I had no money, but I asked to see it. She kindly had her chauffeur drive us to the manor and this gazebo, and these fields. I found them very suitable for a Benedictine foundation, so I asked her price. "Twentyfive thousand", she said. "That was the end of it. What an amount!” But we continued our walk, and wherever the grass was long enough to hide what I was doing, I sprinkled little Benedictine medals like this. I had brought them from Downside. Just before we got into her automobile, I asked her. 'Could you possibly make the price lower?' 'Not possibly' she said, 'for I have decided to give you the property free.' Thus by Saint Benedict's help, the property became ours. We have only to find the monks, and then some more money, and we will start on the real building. It has been proposed that the monks conduct a school, as does Downside. But it is getting cold and I must show you your room. Let me carry your bag. You must be weary."
Unicorn edition of Sargent’s
Thomas More"No, thank you," I said. He led me into the house through a side door, explaining that I shouldn't invade the enclosure. Truly there were but very few people to be enclosed – only two or three – but rules were kept as if there were a hundred. He showed me my room, explained to me that tomorrow when awakened I should answer Deo Gratias, and then led me down to another room of which he said, "This is our calefactory. It is not in the enclosure." Then he showed me some drawings of the abbey-to-be. Would you want to know what they looked like? They looked like pictures of the Houses of Parliament seen from across the Thames at London. On this first visit I did not see a sign of a real abbey. All I saw was an abbey as it existed in Father Sargent's mind, and in the drawings he had showed me.

It was more than two years later that I next visited Cory's Lane. I had not stayed away through lack of interest, but only because I had gone to France for a time. When I returned I found Father Sargent unchanged, except that he was not wearing his Frisbie any more – which may have been because I saw him only indoors. He began again on the relation between the Sargents of Virginia and those of Massachusetts, and he led me into a room again, which again he explained to me was a calefactory, and not of the enclosure, and he showed me again the architect's drawings. But this visit I did catch signs of a possible future abbey. There was evidence of a beginning of it in the numerous figures I found in the Manor House. They were generally in religious dress, and were all considering joining this Downside dependency. There were at least a dozen of them. The drawings of the architect became to me photographs, taken ahead of time, of buildings which would quite possibly be in place on this hill-slope tomorrow.

It was possibly five years later that I made my next visit to this Manor House on a hill. Father Sargent was exactly the same. He went off into a discussion of the genealogy of Sargents and couldn't be stopped. He showed me again the House of Parliament. But where were the dozen men who had been studying to become monks? They had vanished away, all save one lad, I believe. No sign of a future monastery remained except the Manor House itself, its laws of silence and "enclosure," and Father Sargent's composure. It seemed that Newport Island would never be surprised by possessing a Benedictine Abbey.

Some years went by, and I received little news of Father Sargent, except that I knew he was still at Cory's Lane. But again I visited the place. Father Sargent, when I arrived, which was now by automobile, was outside the Manor. His face was serene and unchanged, but now on his head he wore an enormous straw hat such as you might expect to see on a worker in the sugar fields in Costa Rica. But other things had changed. The property no longer belonged to Downside Abbey. It had been transferred to Fort Augustus Abbey of Scotland. Some monks of the latter abbey were running the foundation, among them an American, Father Hugh Diman, who had, before his reception into the Catholic Church, been headmaster of Saint George's School at Newport. Father Sargent was still a Downside monk, but living on as a guest of the dependency of Fort Augustus, which had become a priory. New things were all about. There was a chapel outside the Manor. There were boys about, which meant that a school had begun. Saint Benet's had been built. There might well be an abbey in the offing.

One of my next visits was when I brought my son to the Priory School, to leave him there as a pupil. – It was in the mid-nineteen thirties. – Afterwards I asked him if Father Sargent had spoken to him. He said he had. Father Sargent had called him "a kinsman: whatever that meant" and had talked about ancestors. This leads me to recount a story that my son did not tell, but which remains in Portsmouth's book of memory. One day my son was appointed to serve Mass for a visiting prelate, an Englishman. The prelate, wishing to be kind to the young, patted my son's head, and inquired his name. "Sargent," said my son. "Any relation to Father Sargent?" asked the prelate. To this my son replied, "I believe he is one of my remote ancestors." At this news the prelate was so convulsed with laughter that he could hardly go on with the Mass.
Dom Leonard SargentBut what my son had said was not wholly to be laughed at. Father Sargent had been made by galloping time into a remote ancestor not only of my son, but of all those at Portsmouth. On this visit to Portsmouth, when I had left my son there, I had seen what progress the priory was making to become the surprise of an abbey; and the progress seemed likely to continue under the ancestorship of Father Sargent, and the governing activity of the Prior, Father Diman, always youthful. I became more and more optimistic on each of the successive visits I made to Portsmouth during the nearly forty years between the day that my son gave Father Sargent his right name and now. On almost every visit there was a new building, and an increase of the number of students, and teachers, and of monks. It all ended in the unveiling of a large campus of the Abbey which had come into being very quietly and only half-noticed. I was here when the Priory became even in name an Abbey, and the happy surprise had come true, with its attendant gladness, of which gladness I fully partook.

But I will not dwell on these optimistic visits, nor even on the glad visit when the Abbey's first abbot was installed. I will skip to this visit today, which comes several years after that event. This evening at gentle sunset when I stood on the steps of your chapel which was brought here by galloping time from Ravenna I gazed at the flotilla of buildings before me, anchored there on our hill, "out of the sway of the sea." And I contrasted them with the Houses of Parliament which I had seen as planned to crown this slope. And in my heart I exclaimed, "Isn't it a double gladness to have come true not only the surprise you hoped for, but the surprise altered and bettered."

Long live amazing and galloping time.
DANIEL SARGENT

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Daniel Sargent was a noted author of a number of books focusing on themes of the Christian faith and the history of the church. He was long a friend and benefactor of the monastery and a parent of an alumnus of the School, Daniel I. Sargent, class of 1942.