LITERATURE
AND
Borrowed Days
by Father Matthias Bodkin
Published by Browne and Nolan Dublin 1942
Father
Matthias Bodkin S.J. 1896 – 1973
Borrowed Days is a novel, set in the period 1760 to
1820, whose themes are the inheritance of Emo, the spiritual
development of the main character Maurice O’Moore and
the desire to create a Catholic school at Emo.
According to the flyleaf, it is “the drama of a man and a nation moving in step
to a new life: to the man it brings romance and a splendid inheritance ... For
the nation it means the ’98, the Union and the Veto ... The back-cloth is a
picture of the Georgian age of taste drawn with rare knowledge and sympathy
...”.
A
central character is the fictitious Earl of Portborough
(a composite picture of the Earls of Portarlington
under a different name).
At the
beginning of the fourth chapter, there is a lyrical description of
Fr
Matthias Bodkin weaves similar lyrical descriptions of