by Nancy Merz
"Astronomer, Missionary, Photographer, Character" are just a few of the many adjectives that could describe Fr. Charles Marie Charroppin, SJ.
The phrase Remember Me is poignantly penned into the Victorian scrollwork decorating a photograph of Fr. Charles Marie Charroppin, SJ, a flamboyant science professor who lived from 1840 to 1915. An article published in 1958 referred to him as th e
"quaint genius of the Missouri Province," but there is little other evidence that priestly successors paid much attention to the
request of Fr. Charroppin, an imaginative photographer, a widely acclaimed astronomer, and a surrealist doodler whose precisely drawn creations give Steven Spielberg's movie beasties a run for their money.
Over the past years, however, cardboard boxes full of long-forgotten Charroppin papers and memorabilia have surfaced at the Missouri Province archives. Like colorful fragments of a stained-glass window, these remnants reveal a multitalented and charmin gly eccentric individual.
A photograph of a handsome boy in an unusual tunic is captioned in the priest's handwriting: "Charlie Charroppin, when young and innocent, 11 years old, St. Thomas, West Indies." His baptismal record confirms he was born on the island of Guad eloupe in the West Indies.
The young Charroppin entered St. Stanislaus Seminary at Florissant, Mo., on August 21, 1863, when the Civil War was at its peak. The archives contain an order by Brig. Gen. John B. Gray exempting "C. Charroppin . . . from service in the Enrolled M issouri Militia" because he was a French subject. He would be 52 years old before he became a U.S. citizen.
The seminary at that time offered a monastic, scholarly life with times set for rising, praying, working, learning, relaxing, and retiring. The mood is captured in the Charroppin photographs taken in the 1870s and 1880s, when the seminary was totally s elf-sufficient. The photographs show Jesuits at work pitching hay, caring for a dairy herd, repairing shoes, and going about other mundane chores.
After theology studies, Charroppin was ordained in 1875 at St. John the Apostle Church in St. Louis. Between 1876 and 1890 he taught rhetoric, math, chemistry, and astronomy at St. Louis University. Between 1880 and 1910, except for a few years while i n British Honduras, the professor-photographer documented St. Louis history with his camera. He took pictures of buildings, bridges, towers, parks, and the riverfront.
This Showboat-era shot (ca. 1890) is an example of the many photos Fr. Charroppin took of St. Louis's buildings, bridges, and other industrial sites.
During the 1890s, photography was becoming accepted as both art form and entertainment. Slide shows accompanied by lectures were a favorite pastime. Camera clubs became popular. Fr. Charroppin was vice president of the St. Louis Camera Club and head of its Lantern Slide Committee. Described as "official photographer of the Missouri Province," Fr. Charroppin photographed some of the earliest college and university buildings staffed and maintained by Jesuits in the Midwest.
The Charroppin self-portraits capture the zesty humor of a photographer who is also the subject. There's a knowing glitter in the eye of the nineteenth-century Renaissance priest with rosary beads dangling from his side as he mixes powder with mortar a nd pestle. High drama reigns in a photograph of a white-haired, bearded old monk (Charroppin) in a two-tiered cape standing before a crucifix, skull, burning candle, and picture of the Mater Dolorosa while he fingers a large book. The picture is entitled "Meditation on Death." In his photographs, whether of himself or others, Fr. Charroppin found life--and death--important enough to dramatize.
The priest also turned his camera heavenward. He explored the sky with some of the famous astronomers of his time; his file contains letters of consultation from Lick Observatory at the University of California, Yerkes Observatory at the University of Chicago, Harvard Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., and the Vatican Observatory in Rome.
The celestial photographer accompanied other scientists on what he called "eclipse parties," expeditions to study the eclipse of the sun. At one such outing on January 1, 1889, at Norman, Calif., an "astromiracle" occurred. Accordin g to a story found in the archives, when the eclipse day dawned cloudy and dark, Fr. Charroppin promised the scientific party that Mary, God's mother, would provide clear sky to view the solar phenomenon. He said, "Gentlemen, I have unbounded confide nce in the Mother of God. If she fails me, I promise to walk from here to Sacramento. But remember, if I obtain my request, you are all to get down on your knees and say with me the Hail Mary."
Charroppin's non-Catholic confreres were incredulous at the astronomer-priest's claim. The clouds grew darker; the sun and moon were hidden. But, a minute before the predicted totality, the clouds split. Excellent photographs of the total solar eclipse taken by the party vouched for the parting of the clouds. The story has it that the eclipse enthusiasts kept their end of the bargain, making one wonder which was the greater miracle, the parting of clouds or the scientists kneeling in prayerful perplexity.
Fr. Charroppin gained local and national notoriety as an astronomer. His writings were frequently featured in St. Louis newspapers and scientific journals. When he went to British Honduras as a missionary in 1894, the U.S. government offered him a set of instruments if he would open an observatory there and telegraph notices of storms. He would have liked to cooperate, he said, but there was no telegraphic communication from as far back in the bush as he would be working.
The Jesuit missionary's writings and letters from Belize paint a vivid picture of the academic, rotund, 54-year-old priest getting reacquainted with horseback riding in the exotic land of cacao trees and six-inch butterflies. Sixteen hundred miles from his home, he tended twelve mission stations and celebrated mass in a church with chickens and goats running about while he used a table for an altar and empty bottles for candle holders. He shared his quarters with scorpions and centipedes, each morning checking his shoes for such houseguests.
An 1898 newspaper account written by Fr. Charroppin explains how he stalked parrots, dried their wings for mementos, and then made parrot soup. He considered iguana fair game and good fare. When offered barbecued baboon by a friend, however, he passed. In a letter to Fr. Thomas Fitzgerald, SJ, the provincial, he said, "If it were not for my chickens and my garden, I think I would starve here. Therefore when you have a few intentions to spare, think of Corozal . . . I was once a man of science but I have turned out to be a great beggar." He described poverty as "well practiced" in that tropical paradise.
These accounts were descriptions, not complaints. In spite of the hardships, and perhaps because of his resourcefulness, he was happy in Corozal. He wrote, "Here I can breathe and ramble about the country. I love my horse. I delight in my missions . . . No dark days; no cloudy sky. But a bright sun that warms the heart and makes one feel younger every day."
Fr. Charroppin's letters show an easy rapport with Fr. Fitzgerald, whom he referred to on one occasion as "Old Fitz," later apologizing for his casual style. In an 1895 letter, he chided, "Let me have a peep of your chessboard. I like to see how you move your men and where you give the checkmate. All provincials are great chess players."
Fr. Charroppin's next move on that board came in 1898, when he was brought back to St. Louis University, which became his home base for the next twelve years. From there he traveled extensively, giving religious missions and lecturing about British Honduras and his sun-, moon-, and stargazing. Tales of the tropics made good fare for lectures, as did outer space, especially at the turn of the century, when curious Americans had already digested ample stories of the American West and were ready to explore new territory.
"Myiographs and Anthrenographs" were Fr. Charroppin's whimsical names for these whimsical creations. It's hard to tell which Muse he was obeying when he drew these and about 300 others, mirror images created like a Rorschach inkblot.
It is not known when Fr. Charroppin compiled the four neat leatherbound books of drawings found in the archives. They are entitled "Myiographs and Anthrenographs," archaic medical terms the artist used to describe his renderings, a wonderland of humorous, bizarre, and exotic drawings of part animal, part insect, and part human creatures. Any and all subjects may have wings, tentacles, legs, antennae, arms, feet, scales, and tails. Human and animal body parts turn up in unexpected places. In one drawing, a tiny, wide-eyed Loch Ness monster parts the waters between two fat floating birds while fish fly overhead. Another has a couple of cicadas engaged in what looks like meaningful conversation. Not too strange -- two cicadas conversin -- except these two are wearing Indian headdress.
Fr. Maurice McNamee, SJ, director of Cupples House Gallery at St. Louis University, called the sketches "remarkable . . . for the way they tie into such art traditions as the 'drolleries' in medieval bestiaries, the satiric misericord traditions in medieval wood sculpture, the exotica of Hieronymus Bosch's paintings, and the details of some primitive folk art."
Anecdotes found in various writings and stories by older Jesuits who knew the picture-taking, star-gazing, cloud-parting, story-telling, chess-playing priest/professor indicate he was thought of as an "eccentric--a character." For one thing, he wore a big, bushy beard, not in vogue with Jesuit priests of his day. A newspaper article tells how Fr. Charroppin, "who had suffered from throat trouble," insisted he cured it by wearing a beard. Along with Sen. Thomas Carter of Montana, he defended the beard in a debate with prominent men of the country.
By 1910, the 70-year-old priest had become the associate pastor of St. Charles Borromeo Church in a quiet little village outside St. Louis, where he worked until his death on October 17, 1915. His funeral had to be held in a neighboring church because a tornado had destroyed St. Charles Borromeo.
The circumstances of his death skirted the beaten path, just as his life had. Early newspaper reports stated that a power failure that knocked out lights during an appendectomy contributed to his death. A later article, however, stated that only one li ght had gone out, leaving ample light for the surgery. One wonders if somehow the droll Jesuit with a flair for dramatic mischief had a hand in writing the script for his final scene.
Nancy Merz, a Company contributing editor and former associate editor of a St. Louis neighborhood paper, has been assistant archivist for the Jesuits' Missouri Province for eleven years.