“The Sun is lost, and the earth, and no man’s wit
Can well direct him where to looke for it…
No wonder that those who sat under him in St. Paul’s used to swoon with excitement and emotion. But what a bore he was about women—all that anger and hate and scorn; that eternal tendency to regard women as a peculiar section, instead of ordinary human beings. Language: how important it is. It’s partly what I like so much in the psalms, that you have started me reading a good deal; also, as the Dean and you say, “to make an application”; but if one didn’t like the language, one wouldn’t so easily be able to. As it is, they seem to fit almost everywhere, in one way or another—(except the few smug bits).
Thank you so very much for your letter posted on Christmas Eve; about being in the Church, or coming back into it, and the acceptance of the “author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.” You are so endlessly good to me; and your absolutiones transmarinae1 have reached me, I know, and I can’t see why they are nothae.2 In fact, I know they aren’t, whatever church law may say.
Speaking of church law, I am interested, and rather surprised, that Dr. Kirk says people mayn’t be refused communion at the rails. I thought ”notorious evil livers” had to be— though how evil, and how notorious, must be a delicate question to decide. My family was brought up on a story about a cousin of my mother’s who was a vicar, and the local squire was a N.I.L. [sic],3 who kept concubines at the manor—perhaps I libel him and it was only one concubine (at a time, anyhow)—and he was also a regular communicant (as people often were, especially squires, for respectability’s sake, in those days) and subscribed largely to church upkeep; and the concubines caused grave scandal among the villagers, so the vicar wrote to the squire and told him that unless he desisted from his notorious evil living he must warn him that he would be refused communion, and begged him not to make a scandal by presenting himself. The squire was furious, and dared the vicar to refuse him, on pain of having an action brought against him for defamation. But the vicar did refuse him, and won the action, since he was acting by prayer book instruction; but of course he lost all future subscriptions. Would the Bishop of Oxford say he was wrong, I wonder? Possibly he was. But his point was that the Sacrament was being brought into disrepute in the eyes of the village. Didn’t Conrad Noel1 want to do this to employers who sweated their workers? Rather a dangerous path to start out on; it might lead to all sorts of difficulties and delicate decisions, and insults! If ever I do meet the Bishop, I might ask him about this point. I hope I shall, one day. I shall get some of his books out of the library; they sound what I should rather like to read. Having Scottish blood, I am interested in Moral Theology. He might one day have a Quiet Day perhaps; or don’t Bishops do that? I do hope you don’t think I made a mistake in not writing to him; I really was too shy, though of course I should have found him tremendously helpful if ever I had reached him. Actually, I should have found it easier, and more helpful still, to go to Memorial Drive, but that could not be.
I have been reading again your earlier letters. I have them all except the one you wrote me about 20 years ago, which I valued, and kept till the Luftwaffe got it. How many people do you “change” a year, I wonder? I expect, a lot. Beginning with talk about things in general, sacred and profane, and largely in a profane language; sacred things coming in more as time goes on; fresh lights on all kinds of topics, “a rising and a growing light” as Donne says, and a stirring of the conscience —till, before one knows where one is, one is surrendering to a new (or old) way of life and wanting to lead it. And all in about 4 months. I am prepared to believe that this happens to every one with whom you correspond; on the other hand, I was in part hitched on to old memories, which came back—that Retreat in 1915 (I think), which influenced me a great deal. In the light of subsequent developments in my career, you may not think much of this, but it is true. I even wonder sometimes whether, if you had been at hand later, the developments would have occurred; or anyhow, whether at the time I tried to make a fresh start and later broke all my resolves, I should have broken them. Who knows? Things are as they are, and have been as they have been, and will be as they will be. But I should like to say thank you for everything … [sic] I can’t think why you bothered.
I’m glad ‘Here’s a Church’ arrived, though in duplicate. Dear old James Conybeare is a nice, simple person, very genial and kind. His father, my uncle, (about 14 years older than my mother, so we always looked on him, with his patriarchal beard, as an old man) went over to Rome about 1910 or so, which was rather trying for his family, as he was a Vicar and had to repudiate his Orders of course, and put a black handkerchief over his collar and stop being called “Rev.”. James was grieved by it; he is a very loyal Anglican. Writing, of course, isn’t really his strong suit.
I really shall be delighted to see Fr. Pedersen when he is here. Fr. Wilkins (with whom I had a moment or two of conversation, mainly about you) also said he was coming. I hope by then I shall have completed my Ruins book, at present I am living in a ruinous world of crumbling walls, broken arches, green jungle drowning temples and palaces in Mexico and Ceylon, friezes and broken columns sunk in blue seas, with crabs scuttering about among them. Such dreams of beauty are haunting, like poetry. If only I could see more of them, how lovely it would be! I am, by the way, grateful (perhaps I said so before) for your supplying of that letter to Cicero in B.C. 45, about the ruins the Romans had made in Greece. It is an earlyish indication of ruin-sentiment, which is just what I am looking for all the time. It is a fascinating book to work on, but a terrible lot of work. Next time I am in the Brit. Museum Reading Room I shall look at that Norfolk book you mentioned; it’s not, it seems, in the London Library, my other source of literature. I must remember John Bailey1 too, who probably is in the L.L. I must say I do like to take books home to my flat and read them in comfort, not to have to sit always at the B.M. desks, among learned foreigners who lick their fingers to turn the pages and are no doubt engaged on writing some new epoch-shaking work (do I mean making?) like Das Kapital (composed entirely at those desks). I must now go and entertain a Spaniard at my club to tea, and try to induce him to join me in the swimming pool, which I like. I wonder how long this letter will take in transit, and what it depends on. Sailings, I suppose. I had other things to say, but space (and time) forbid, for which you will perhaps be grateful.
Yours affectionately,
R.M.
(I hope you don’t feel this form of signature too familiar. I feel affection, and great pleasure that I know you, and a more formal adverb would seem inapt.)
20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1
18th January, 1951 †
Dear Father Johnson,
Thank you for your more than welcome air letter posted the 13th. How glad I was to have it, and am. I sent you a sea one on 14th, after all your barge, raft and trireme letters had arrived. Mine seem to have reached you almost at the same time. I’m so glad. I didn’t like to think them sunk, either yours or mine. And yours, as I told you, came in the nick of time, just when my morale most needed them. Morale now greatly improved; food better, as the prodigal son decided.
Fr. Wilkins was very kind and nice. He didn’t say anything; practically nothing but the absolution. Perhaps this is his way. I expect he thinks people should work out their own problems unaided, except for absolution when they work them out wrong. I’m not sure this isn’t a mistake. Perhaps priests don’t always realise the influence they could have at that receptive moment, and the good ideas they could put across if they chose; and one feels that Fr. Wilkins’s ideas would be all good ones and would help. Of course he may have been pressed for time. However, I got the main thing. But those who can’t see their way very clearly would be glad of a little expert aid. Thank God, you give this; if you didn’t I should still be sticking in the wrong treacle well like a fly. Thank you for indicating those two psalms. Both very apt.
I have sometimes thought that there might well be co
nsultant priests, like doctors, or like the hermits of past times, to whom one could take one’s problems and get advice. If you were at hand, I suppose I should ask you a lot of things, now and later, as they turned up. Indeed, you may think that I do. Well, having such a non-resident chaplain, who allows me (as I hope) to do this, do I need a resident one? What I mean is, should one go regularly to confession, at stated intervals, or only when one feels in a jam? This enquiry for the favour of your best consideration, please. I just don’t know. I do want to keep in touch, and not let that wall grow up again. But I want to ask things, not just tell them.
Am I “fundamentally religious,” I wonder? I suppose in one way it would be difficult for any of my family to escape something of this, with our long lines of clerical ancestors on all sides. I think I naturally believe in some kind of mysterious world, interpenetrating this world, in and out of it and all round its margins. Writing this makes me think that perhaps I will send you The two blind countries, a book of verse that I wrote, together with a few other poems published separately. Many of them seem to be about just that. They were written at different times; many of them quite young. I wonder if you’ll like them or not. I used to write a lot of poetry once; as a child it was my great outlet when things were almost too beautiful to bear; and I still write some. I like doing it; you can say things that way that don’t go into prose. Am I to infer that you have been reading Crewe Train? It rather alarms me, all those old books coming your way. I don’t remember them all very clearly myself, but suspect them of not being v.g. Have you come across Orphan Island, a novel of about 1924? A new edition is coming out this spring, and I might send it. It was the one of my novels I enjoyed writing most (except They were Defeated) because I indulged in it my morbid passion for coral islands, lagoons, bread-fruit and coconut trees, and island fauna and flora. You might get on with my Irish doctor, who, when inebriated, spouts Latin conversation. (I don’t, of course, mean to imply that most Latin conversation is similarly inspired.)
You’ll get soon after this, I hope, my sea letter of 14th, which answered your raft letters. I think the rafts must go quicker now; probably speeding along like the Kon-Tiki before the tides. I put in it some Donne that I like, complementing what you quoted. Dear non-resident chaplain, I would like to ask you, were it not so formidably vast a question, how people vitiated and weakened by a long course of knowingly wrong living, can become strong, intelligent, and moderately good. It really is a question. But I suppose I know the main answer, really.
Yours affectionately,
R.M.
20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1
22nd January [1951] †
Dear Fr. Johnson,
In one way, your letter of 18th, that came this morning, was the nicest to get of all your letters, because it reassured me that my letters aren’t a nuisance to you. (This one, hand-written, may be; I am laid up with flue, bronchitis, and penicillin, with which I went down just after writing to you by air on 18th, and can’t sit up in bed to type, tho’ writing is o.k.) I wrote to you by sea after seeing Fr. Wilkins, because it was a longish, rambling letter, and because I didn’t want to be a nuisance; you might well have said “what does she want now, after all is safely accomplished?” After your last letter, I see you wouldn’t have said that at all, and wish I had made it air. But you see the immense difference between my getting your letters, which are sustenance and nourishment and answers, and you getting mine, which are questions and tiresome—or so I should suppose except for your apparently exhaustless patience. Anyhow, you will soon get both mine.
Thank you too for your letter of 15th, which is stuffed with good things, and seems to answer a question I put to you again, after you wrote but before I got it (“wells of salvation,” and various psalms). I have looked at all your references except the Juvenal, which I am waiting for till I visit the London Library again.
Incidentally, you have the kindest impulses! To tell a person feeling dejecta, abjecta, indigna, ignobilis, that to some people (even to you) she may “seem to be somewhat” (tho’ heaven knows why) seems the height of courteous good will. In consequence of my reference-hunting, my sick-bed is strewn with Psalters, Bibles, etc., calculated somewhat to surprise my doctor as they lie about among volumes on Syrian castles, 17th and 18th century travels in Greece and Asia (so exciting to trace the progress of the ruins we now see, century by century). “Oh yes,” I shall say to the physician, “I am reading about the Palaces of the Ptolemies in Alexandria, and about the wells of salvation in”—where? He mightn’t quite understand, might even think my temperature too high. Ps. 119 I find more and more in. I care little about its acrostical aspects. What made the Jews like that, I wonder? An extraordinary gift of God-consciousness. Gould any other people at that time have so passed on their message? I think it was Belloc who wrote
“How odd
of God
to choose
the Jews”1—but of course it wasn’t in the least odd.
Please go on bearing me in mind at the altar and offices; it helps me a great deal to think that you do, and all helps me to circumvent the imposing stumbling blocks in the road.
What I don’t like to think of is your having hoped for a letter and not got one till so late—it seems so thankless. But you see my reasons. I am hoping that perhaps to-day (as I have yours posted 19th) you may have got my air letter posted same day. In it I didn’t mean to imply that Fr. Wilkins in any way fell short and only that I suppose I should have found useful someone more loquacious. This probably never occurred to him, and was probably just a stupid idea of mine.
Time I did this up, for posting. Your to-day’s letter is so cheering; I feel it might even improve the bronchitis. Now here arrives the Benger’s Food—very good stuff. I do apologise for this illegible letter: don’t try and grapple with it.
Yours affectionately,
R.M.
20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1
20th January [1951] †
Dear Father Johnson,
I am still not typewriter-fit, being still in bed, so forgive handwriting, which should, however, be better than last Monday’s was. This is a sea letter (not so1) to thank you for yours posted 23rd, which came yesterday. I like it so much; particularly the bit about being inside the house, and the growth possible there—the gradual appreciation of one’s inheritance. That comes home to me just now. I told you once that I couldn’t really regret the past. But now I do regret it, very much. It’s as if absolution and communion and prayer let us through into a place where we get a horribly clear view—a new view—so that we see all the waste, and the cost of it, and how its roots struck deep down into the earth, poisoning the springs of our own lives and other people’s. Such waste, such cost in human and spiritual values. The priest says “Go in peace, the Lord has put away thy sin.” But of course one doesn’t go in peace, and in one sense He can’t put it away, it has done its work. You can’t undo what’s done. Not all the long years of happiness together, of love and friendship and almost perfect companionship (in spite of its background) was worth while, it cost too much, to us and to other people. I didn’t know that before, but I do now. And he had no life after it to be different in, and I have lived the greater part of mine. If only I had refused, and gone on refusing. It’s not a question of forgiveness, but of irrevocable damage done. Perhaps I shall mind more and more, all my life. Is this what absolution and communion do to one? I see now why belief in God fades away and has to go, while one is leading a life one knows to be wrong. The two can’t live together. It doesn’t give even intellectual acceptance its chance. Now it has its chance. I don’t, you know, attach much importance to details of belief—I don’t feel they really matter (or do they?). But I hold on to your remark—“ we may be sure that at the bottom of the whole business there is a personal relationship,” which is possibly all that matters. After what has occurred to me lately, I know there is. Why this, why that, why the other? Little is answerable, nothing is solved; one
just has to leave it, and push ahead with what one has, hoping for more presently.
Did you mean, go to confession once a month? Isn’t that too often? I shall find out, as time goes on, if Fr. Wilkins is willing to be talked to and to talk. I don’t want to bother or embarrass him. He makes me feel rather shy, though I like him very much indeed; he gives such an impression of sincerity. But I think he would be a pocket-prophet not given to much prophesying. And I like prophecy. (Later: after your letter—I am convinced by all you say that he won’t mind talking (and I seldom do!) so I shall take your advice).
How I bother you. I fear there is altogether a surfeit of R.M. in your life, what with letters, and what with all these books turning up. Don’t let my poetry be a nuisance to you, or feel you must read it or comment on it. If I send it, let it be, unless ever you feel like glancing at it in an odd moment. But then you can’t have any odd moments. I am remorseful to have taken so many of them, though with such infinite advantage to myself.
Letters to a Friend Page 5