Love again
Julia
I like the way she compares exotic Indian detail to things at home – the view like the view from Mount View, the buffaloes in place of cows. Was she happy? It’s hard to tell – but she doesn’t seem unhappy. And busyness is a great panacea. Before long, Julia got the news that she had earned her BT with distinction. That was a good moment; but it also marked the high point of her happiness at Church Park. An unexpected piece of news came that made Julia feel confused and uncertain, and led her to sense some of the underlying unhappiness that had been growing in her at the convent. The news was that Peggie was no longer a nun. She had left the Presentation Sisters and was living in Dublin.
Peggie says that she had never been content in the order. ‘When I joined, instead of being sent to India, which I’d rather hoped, I was sent to teach at a boarding school in Matlock, and I hated and detested it.’ The dissatisfaction grew over the years, and reached a climax in 1953. This is how Peggie describes what happened:
It was very difficult leaving and I was entirely on my own. I had made final vows and I’d been seven and a bit years there. I taught for a year in Matlock and then I didn’t do my postgraduate diploma, and they decided that I ought to do my diploma, that the school inspectors expected it. I was sent to Newcastle for a year and I was very relieved. The Mother Superior in Matlock had been my Novice Mistress. She was a woman that I was in awe of. I still have nightmares – I literally still have nightmares – about her. So to get away to Newcastle was wonderful. But I had this terrible trapped feeling, which is difficult to explain. I had made my final vows, I had burnt my boats. Any chance of leaving was gone, so it appeared to me. I’d never heard of anyone who had made final vows leaving.
This is no exaggeration. It was extremely difficult for a nun who had made final vows to leave a religious order. The authorities made it as close to impossible as they could. The tactics at the Church’s disposal included outright refusal, which would leave the religious with no choice besides staying put in bitter misery or excommunication. For people whose whole lives were within the Church, that was – to use an overused but in this instance accurate word – unthinkable. It would leave the ex-religious with no structure, nowhere to turn (and in particular – since the ex-nun or ex-priest would usually come from a religious family – with no family support). On the way to that final sanction, though, the Church had an especially terrible weapon, and one it would deploy without compunction: delay. Priests or nuns applying for a final dispensation – the magnificently titled Indult of Secularisation, which had to come from the Congregation of Religious at the Vatican – would be stalled by their confessor, their immediate superior, the higher authorities of their order, and then by Rome itself. And all through this process they would be told that their vocation was undergoing a test and they would be invited to reconsider. They would be told to pray and meditate, to ask God for guidance. If they found the waiting a strain, they might be told that this was a sign that God did not want them to leave. They would be told that although they might have lost trust in God, He had not lost trust in them. The danger and strangeness of the secular world would be stressed, implicitly and explicitly. The magnitude of the choice they were attempting to make would be made all too clear, along with the unlikeliness that their wish would be granted; and all the while the delay would stretch. The act of leaving was made to seem impossible. But Peggie, and others like her, came to feel that their lives in the convent were even less possible. That desperation brought with it a kind of strength. Peggie remembers:
I was actually miserably unhappy. But in Newcastle I was in a college atmosphere, I could go and read in the library, there were other nuns from other orders who were great fun. I used to look at them and listen to them and they obviously hadn’t the same awe and fear of the Superiors that I had. It was different. I was in Newcastle, it was the 19th of November 1953, and I suddenly, out of the blue, thought I’m not trapped. I can leave. And I’m going to investigate the mechanism by which I leave. I went to the confessor there and talked to him. Fortunately he was an absolutely lovely, humane person. He said, can you come to the parlour privately and talk to me, so I did. He asked me how old I was, what age I was when I went in. I’d been eighteen and he said, you couldn’t really have known what you were doing. He said, the first thing you must do, you must write to your Superior and say this. And then you must apply to the Sacred Congregation of the Religious in Rome and ask for a dispensation. So I went through all that and I did it. It seemed like utter hell at the time, and that nothing else in my whole life could be like it again. But I did it and I left. I left in January ’54. I was twenty-six, just barely twenty-six – my birthday’s in December. And I felt very sorry for Julia. You see, I was never able fully to explain to Julia why I had done this. Julia must have been utterly puzzled. Also my own life was so complex at the time that I stopped writing to Julia for a time. I found it difficult to manage anything except my own immediate life.
With the arrival of this unexpected and very unwelcome piece of news, the dissatisfaction Julia felt with her life in the convent came out in the way that sort of unhappiness often does: as anger. She was furious with Peggie. She could not think straight about her. She thought what she had done was outrageous. Julia wrote to Peggie, a bitter, intemperate letter, the only one from these years that I don’t have in my possession, since Peggie kept neither it nor a grudge.
The letters for the next couple of years don’t give much away. At home, the main event was the lung cancer which weakened and then eventually took the life of Patrick Gunnigan, in September 1956. There is no mention of grief or a sense of loss about her father’s death in those of Julia’s letters that I have; but that probably reflects the fact that I have only some of the letters she wrote home. I suspect she was deeply upset by his death.
Peggie after leaving the convent
What there is instead of grief is a tremendous amount of Julia’s badgering her sister Bernie for help in getting hold of stockings – which she needs for occasional work-related trips outside the convent, it seems – and sheet music for the concerts she has to put on. Most of the music is sentimental and Irish. My mother was absolutely tone deaf, so I feel the pain of the audiences who sat through the ensuing concerts. None of these arrangements was made easier by the fact that ‘at the moment we are not allowed to send a halfpenny out of the country’. (Nuns had no money, not even a stipend, but Julia would have been allowed to draw on convent funds for expenses, and may have been able to squirrel away small amounts for emergency use.) She has hopes that she might be home in either 1959 or 1960. By that point it would have been a decade since she had seen her family. One lively moment is an encounter with the festival of Diwali: ‘The monsoon has broken here and so we’re having plenty of rain – torrential downpours at times. It is also approaching the big Hindu festival of Deepavali – which is celebrated with crackers and fireworks – the explosives are going off almost ceaselessly these days – the louder the noise the more fervent the celebration, evidently.’
In the summer of 1957 Julia took her MA in English, again by correspondence from the University of London. There was a reason she needed the additional qualification: she had been made principal of the teacher training college at Church Park. But there was a problem. As Julia rose in the hierarchy of the order, she grew increasingly unhappy; or increasingly aware of her own unhappiness. The two matters that pressed most heavily on her were ‘common life’ – the total lack of private space or private property – and obedience. Years later, the way she put it was to say that the sheer institutional weight of the Church began to oppress her. The further she rose up the hierarchy, the more she felt it. As a junior nun, she was so insignificant and powerless that the sense of her own insignificance and powerlessness made the weight bearing down on her easier to tolerate. As she began to have power and responsibility herself, the weight on her, paradoxically, began to seem all the heavier. Once she was running her
own part of Church Park, the burden was so crushing that at times she felt she could not breathe. The hierarchy was run by and for men, and women were less than nothing to it. The hard thing was not just endlessly taking orders and deferring to men who were less intelligent, less serious, who cared less and knew less, and who took the credit for things she did – it was the fact that these practices were structurally built into the Church. They weren’t accidents, they were the fundamental institutional realities of her world. At a meeting in Calcutta, after some particularly stupid and arbitrary imposition, Sister Eucharia lost her temper, slapped the table and announced, ‘This is a man’s Church!’
Sister Eucharia as principal of the training school
There was now, though, by virtue of the very same seniority, a crack in the edifice of obedience and common life. In Julia’s capacity as principal, she had the chance of opening her own letters for the first time since she entered the order. As a result she got back in touch with Peggie after a lapse of four years. By now Peggie had qualified as a teacher, thanks to her uncle Bill. ‘He used to know the Professor of Education at UCD [University College Dublin], he used to play golf with him. He said, is there any way at that late stage, I could get in to the course in Dublin and finish it? And he arranged for it and he paid my fee. And that was wonderful. It made a huge difference. It meant that when I did want to teach I was absolutely fully qualified in all respects.’ She had gone to teach maths at a London polytechnic, and had met and fallen in love with a sculptor from Dublin, Vincent Geraghty. They were married in December 1955. More than fifty years later, they are married still, and living at Nenagh in County Tipperary.
The marriage had an important consequence for Julia: it meant that she could write to a Mrs V. Geraghty, and no one would know she was in touch with her sister. Added to this was the fact that as principal of a school, she had contacts outside the convent, made through her work, to whom Peggie could write in return. The next letter is Julia’s first uncensored letter in thirteen years. As is immediately clear, it differs completely from those before, in that it frankly discusses her own feelings and is open about her situation in the convent.
Mrs V. Geraghty
134 Tachbrook Street
London SW1
England
Presentation Convent
Church Park
Madras-6
11 December 1957
My dearest Peggie,
I can imagine you hesitating to open this letter; in fact it wouldn’t surprise me if you returned it without reading it but I hope you won’t do that. I am really sorry, Peggie, for writing to you in the tone I did last time. I know I shouldn’t have and I regret it – I hope you will forgive me and put it down to the fact that I was at an extremely low ebb mentally, physically and nervously when I wrote. And I assure you it won’t happen again. So now I hope we are the same good friends and favourite sisters to each other that we always were.
I hope you and Vincent are well and I am very glad that you are so happy. Vincent is wise to be doing some study – you mentioned in your letter that he is. Are you teaching in the same place all the time? Bernie mentioned when she wrote that you live near your work.
As for me, I have just returned from Calcutta after doing M.A. I found it very hard indeed and a great strain, especially as I was tired out after the year’s work here. I hope I will get through – the results won’t be out until about March. Anyhow I wouldn’t like to have to go through it again – I am not as young as I used to be!
There isn’t much news here. Our annual retreat begins on Friday 13th. We are having an Indian S.J. this time [i.e. an Indian Jesuit priest]. We have a new Reverend Mother since September – Mother Magdalen – she was here when I came out in 1949. Then we had Mother Laurence (you met her in Castle Connell in 1952) – she was awful, Peggie, I will never forget what we went through. Mother Magdalen isn’t so bad but absolutely absorbed in herself and her own diseases and in all the work she did in her day. No one knows when exactly that day was, as she has spent most of her life in bed looking after herself!
You know you had great courage to do what you did a few years ago. I wish I had as much. I cannot do anything before 1959 – the year my ten years in India are up. Please pray much for me, and do, like a darling, write. I hardly ever hear from home. Maybe it is just as well.
By the way I have a certain raffia hat for you – if you are still interested. But I don’t know how to send it to you. I must see if there will be anyone I know and can trust going home this year. Of course it may not be much use to you in London – just let me know. I would send you a nice kind of gauze scarf instead – if you would like that better. That is all for now. I will hardly write again before Christmas, so I will wish you and Vincent now a very happy Christmas and every blessing in the New Year and always. Now do please write to me and don’t mention any of this to the others.
I hope you are not too mad with me, though goodness knows you have every reason to be. Bye bye now, my dearest.
Ever your loving
Julia xxxx
Peggie wrote back and the sisters resumed regular contact. This made an enormous difference to Julia. Her sense of her relief at being able to open up to someone is strong in the next letter.
3 January 1958
My dearest Peggie,
Thank you very much for your letter which I was delighted to get and for the snaps you sent. I think you are looking simply wonderful. Being thinner suits you – and slacks do too! and also happiness!! I showed the pictures to a few of the sisters and all agreed on how lovely you look in them. I think Vincent is grand!!
I am delighted to hear you are so happy, Peggie – I wish I could say the same for myself. I don’t know what to do. I made up my mind to leave in 1959, as there will be someone to replace me in College then, but I have been debating since – should I go ahead and ask for a dispensation before I go home or should I have a holiday at home first. It would be easier for me just to go but it might not be so hard on them at home if I had been home on a holiday – they needn’t make it public that I had left – I suppose you know what I mean. Please tell me what you think when you write. And please destroy this letter, Peggie, especially if Mammy is going to visit you – she always reads letters and if she heard of this she would make an awful fuss and that wouldn’t help things. Then, I know I am not getting any younger, but at least I can earn my living – do you think could I by any chance get a post in the school or college you are in? The fact that I have teaching experience in India might be a help? Is it a government school? If it is, my certificates would have to be checked in India – if it is under private management, that might not be necessary, especially since you are on the staff. Could you, by any chance, enquire if I could get a post there in 1959? or anywhere in London? My subject is English and I am M.A. and B.T. And could I stay with you until I got settled in? I would probably try to get a flat by myself. I have some friends who would help me. I realise, of course, that they will be furious at home and will absolutely renounce me, but if I can count on your friendship, then I can manage to carry on. I won’t tell them at home until it is all done – don’t you think that is better? When you write and give me your opinion, I shall begin putting a few clothes together. Of course I can’t get much here – I would have to wait to get woollens – coat etc in England. That’s why I thought that if I went home for a holiday first, I could use the money I would get there to buy clothes – it is a big problem, Peggie, and it is at the back of my mind, night and day.
I was wondering if I could ask you to send me a GOOD corset – bra and corset, combined with a side fastening. I have £3 here which I could send you BUT are the Marshalls reliable? I have heard of people offering to bring things out to India and never delivering them.† If you think they are to be trusted, and if you think you could afford to get me a good corset by putting the balance to the £3 I send you, will you please enquire at a shop and tell me what measurements I should send you. If I am
getting clothes – I must have a proper fit and for that I will need a corset. And there is this, too, Peggie. If I leave I will have people to help me but naturally I would rather be a bit independent, so I won’t be a burden on you. Please write and tell me honestly what you think. I will write an ordinary letter in a day or two. Reply, when it reaches you, but just to be sure, when talking of my problems refer to me as T. Leetch – just in case anything happens, but I don’t think your letter will be read. Don’t, I beg you, wait until the Marshalls are coming to write – I cannot leave in 1958 – no-one to replace me. Will you help me if I do? Talk it over with Vincent. He looks nice.
With much love to you both
Julia
Although this letter starts out by pretending to ask advice about what to do, it is clear that Julia had already made up her mind. She is going to leave the order and is thinking hard about how she is going to live once she gets out. For Julia, that meant worry – lots of worry. This was, and was to become, a dominant feature of her personality, and it is one which has a thorough airing in the letters as she lets her mind play over what life will be like on the outside. It is also clear that the worry is a useful thing for Julia, in that it gives her mind something to do with itself rather than face the blank magnitude of the change of life in front of her.
The stuff about corsets might seem frivolous or off-key, but it touches on one of Julia’s most traumatic memories. The emphasis on clothes, which runs through all these letters, can be directly attributed to Julia’s experiences on leaving the postulancy in 1938. Her parents’ refusal to let her wear anything other than the habit she came in was just about the single worst thing they did to her. No wonder she worries so much over what she is to wear. She kept returning to this worry in the letters to Peggie. It shows how deeply she was scarred by what had happened when she left the convent. It also made a very useful focus for displacement anxiety, and for general fussing.
Family Romance Page 11