These 10-centers are intriguing; I look round corners and find a fresh bit; you have 4 little leaves in yours, unlike our kind. The Greek Test [amen t] occurs on one of them. If you have a spare one lying about ever, I should love it. But I can and should buy one here, of course. I used to read in it long ago.
Bailey is crammed with interesting and suggestive remarks that set one thinking, wondering if one agrees with him, etc. I usually do, I find. Tho’ some of his views on literature belong rather to his generation. But such a good and roving mind.
To-day there is actually some sunshine, tho’ cold sunshine, I must now go out into it. It now looks as if spring might sometime come. Did I tell you I had sent you my Spanish travel, Fabled Shore? Rather tedious really.
Yours affectionately,
R.M.
20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1
12th March, 1951 †
Dear Father,
Your air letter of 6th and 7th came to-day; thank you so much. I am glad you like the idea of Grosvenor Chapel; I like it very much. The liturgy is varied on different days (I mean, the additions to the P.B. service are), and all good. It may, as you say, be Sarum.1 I think the 1928 book is partly used. What I wish could be inserted into the prayer for the Church militant is the clause in the American version that you sent me, after “departed this life in thy faith and fear,” about growth in love and service. They don’t have that; in fact, they don’t depart from the P.B. prayers, except for extras and a lot of v.g. semi-sotto-voce prayers, and responses; I must try and get hold of the missal used…. They do have a number of mid-day communicants on Sundays at the sung Eucharist, so I could do that if I felt unlike the 8.15 one. But I now am quite up to the 8.15; I get my car out, and it is only about 5 minutes’ drive. It is every weekday as well as Sundays, so one can go any morning. It is really rather a beautiful service, I think, in that small 18th c. chapel, and very well taken. Should I make a confession before Easter? If I do, I might go there. I suppose I had better. I used to know (socially only) Christopher Cheshire, who was Warden of Liddon House1 once, and have been to tea there. I remember (I think in the twenties) being embarrassed because he hadn’t warned me who was coming, and there was an elderly lady whom he addressed as “Mam,” and I thought she must be his mother, and greeted her in the ordinary way and sat down by her and chatted, and it turned out gradually that she was Princess Louise (I think) to whom I should have curtsied and waited to be spoken to first, etc. I apologised afterwards to my host, who said cheerfully, “That’s the stuff to give ’em,” but of course it wasn’t at all! I think he is now a Prebendary. I never knew Fr. Underhill, though I met his sister Evelyn, who wasn’t quite so good as her books. I don’t know who is at Liddon House now…. The new All Saints vicar sounds very able; I might go and hear him preach some time. I have never known anyone there.
That Retreat that you have forgotten was very good. I kept notes of it for many years, till they got burnt in the ‘41 conflagration. I hadn’t then looked at them for a long time, having been off the track of such things. But they had impressed me very much; they were about prayer, and goodness, and not getting separated from God. I remember I came away resolved to try to be good for ever; and I was rather in the middle of counter-pulls just then. Well, it didn’t work out like that. But I seem to have met it all again now at last.
At Oxford I took the whole of English history (one has to) beginning with the Anglo-Saxon Charters, Villeinage, Sheriffs’ Courts, etc., etc. (these bored me rather) but my Special Period, and my Foreign Period, was the 17th century. We had to do Political Science and Polit. Economy, too. I was much interested in most of it; unfortunately I fell ill at the wrong moment and got an Aegrotat which was disappointing. I liked Oxford; the river, work, people, Oxford itself, even hockey, at which I was good. I wasn’t much of a church goer in those days, so never got to Cowley, which later I regretted. Yes, we went to all kinds of lecturers and coaches; I remember particularly Dr. Ernest Barker, who coached me in Aristotle and Political Science; he is now at Cambridge. It was all fun. I never returned to collect my B.A., as many people did; (women didn’t get them till 1921). I am reading some interesting books, among them Dr. Kirk’s Vision of God; what a stupendous learned work! I like best the early part, about the pre-Christian pagan’s thirst for God; and then Philo and the Alexandrians. I read it in bed, and its only fault is that it is rather heavy to hold. The whole business of communion with God, so age-old, so irrepressible, so partially achieved, so always sought after—it sheds such light on the Gospels, and on the sacrament of Holy Communion. I am glad you are sending me some notes on prayer; I rather need them. I see what you mean about fasting communion. Instinctively, I feel the early one is better, and seems to mean more to me. I don’t think, do you, that I ought to wrestle with the Resurrection (as told in the Gospels) and the Virgin Birth, both of which are rather outside what my brain can easily take. So I just leave them in the neutral country beyond the processes of thought, and don’t find they matter to my personal attempts at realisation of Christ and of God and the Incarnation. My brain being rather frail, had better not be strained. Or should it?
All Saints has notices outside saying it is full of “thieves, male and female,” so I am loath to enter it, for fear of encountering these and being robbed, or of being taken for one and being arrested. Perhaps the new Vicar will clean it up. I lunched at a Cypriot restaurant the other day, and talked to a waiter about paximatia; as you said, it is toasted bread, and has caraway seeds, and is popular at Easter. So the eunuch didn’t eat badly. I look forward to the next Abbot Daniel story. Did you ever get a long MS. beautifully written sea letter that I wrote you from bed during my 2nd illness? Perhaps the sea letter you say you have sent was in answer to it. I read in some notice that Fr. Wilkins was to take a Quiet Day in Philbeach Gardens on 17th, and wrote to the church to ask if it was true, but of course it was a mistake, and he is still at Hastings recuperating. I thought I would go to it if he was taking it. Perhaps he will take one later on, after Easter.
Now I am off to a political meeting got up by Victor Gollancz, which may be interesting—he is a stimulating creature, of immense energy. I am recovering my usual bounding health, and the weather is, suddenly, less bitterly cold. I do hope you are well? I take iron, and codliver oil. Do you realise how your letters are to me the mental equivalent of these—only much nicer to take! A bad comparison really—I only meant that they stimulate and help me.
Yours affectionately,
R.M.
20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1
16th March, 1951 †
Dear Father,
Thank you for your very pleasing letter of 9th, posted 10th. I got out Darwell Stone1 yesterday. Those spacious “Religion and Philosophy” shelves on the London Library’s top floor, divided into so many sections, “Rationalism,” “Judaism,” “Metaphysics,” “Biblical Criticism,” etc., etc., etc., are nice to rummage about among, and I come on all kinds of things that I look into while there or take home if they seem worth it. Shall I like D.S.? He seems hugely learned; perhaps over legalistic and patristic for the layman; and, as you say, what undreamt of questions he answers! He distrusted Lux Mundi,1 I see; thought it didn’t square with Revelation. But all very interesting and instructive. Fr. Andrew2 I didn’t find, but think I may have looked for him stupidly under “Andrews,” and shall try again. He must have been delightful. I love that answer to the worried Anglican. I was interested yesterday, in reading Dr. Inge’s Diary of a Dean (full of amusing acidities, inter alia, such as that he felt when made Dean of St. Paul’s “like a mouse watched by 4 cats,” the cats being the 4 canons) to come on an entry by Mrs. Inge for 29th Oct., 1925: “One of our most successful little dinners. Lady Sandhurst, Mr. A. L. Mumm, Rose Macaulay, Sir Maurice de Bunsen, Sir Ernest Wild, Lady Burghclere, John Bailey [sic].” So I did meet J.B. I have quite forgotten doing so, and indeed that particular dinner; I obviously wasn’t next him. I wish I had been, I should have enjoye
d it. Yes, he was wrong, had got hold of the wrong end of the Christian life (as from the opposite angle T. à Kempis in some moods had). He should have read a v.g. book I am now reading, by the 18th c. Jesuit Père de Caussade, which is full of illumination and wisdom.3 He speaks of “un Dieu toujours reçu dans tout ce qu’il y a sur la terre … Ce qui nous instruit, c’est ce qui nous arrive d’un moment à l’autre … Il faut donc écouter Dieu de moment en moment, pour être docte dans la théologie vertueuse, qui est tout pratique et expérimentale. … Le moment présent est toujours comme un ambassadeur qui déclare l’ordre de Dieu … toutes les routes et toutes les manières Y avancent également vers le large et infini. Tout lui est moyen; tout lui est instrument de saintété, sans aucune difference.” I like that idea, of each moment being an ambassador accosting us from God with a message how to deal with it. Of course it enlarges life; I don’t need to tell you how much. It adds another dimension to everything; or lights a candle behind things; both. I wonder if this will go on, in spite of the drag and suction of the hampering, corrupting past. One can’t, of course, go on year after year, so many years, doing what one knows to be wrong, selfish, dishonourable, deceitful, unfair, against God’s will; without being weakened and corrupted and partly blinded, and this must hamper and clog, perhaps prevent one ever becoming what one might have become. I really am trying; though of course not enough. But it will be a poor job at best. But never never shall I be tempted to think that religion doesn’t cover and include everything, or could be narrowing. The Imitatio,1 of course, is monastic in angle. I have only the English translation, which was given me by my godmother when I was 13. I was, I suppose, in some ways, an odd child; for I fell for this book; I remember sitting in the top branches of trees and reading about how I ought not to dispute about the Trinity, and how it was vanity to hunt after honours and climb to high degree (but I did aspire to being head of my form as a rule), and that I should withdraw my heart from the love of visible things (which was quite impossible, and he shouldn’t have suggested it) must shun familiarity and company, and not be drawn by one’s sensual desires to “rove abroad,” for, “what earnest thou home but a burdened conscience and a distracted heart?” None of these precepts did I follow; indeed my mother threw cold water on them; but of course he is also full of excellent moral teaching for anyone. Yes, I agree about many de-Christianised novelists. I have just been asked to review Graham Greene’s new book (not a novel, but a collection of essays, old and new, called The Lost Childhood) for The Times Literary Supplement. It may be interesting. He, of course, is not de-Christianised, but Romanised…. He has a great natural sense of guilt, I think. Did you read The Heart of the Matter, his last novel? … One sometimes wonders if Roman Catholicism is very good for the moral sense, with its almost mechanical view of the wiping out of sin by absolution. But of course this doesn’t apply to the well instructed. All the same, how much I prefer Anglicanism! (If you read it, tell me some time what you think of it.)
I think these sea letters are very dilatory, except sometimes. I sent you mine (from bed) on 18th Feb., and it hadn’t reached you by 10th March. Not that it had anything of importance in it, I think it was just chat, about books I had been reading, etc. But it seems absurd to take all that time crossing the Atlantic; we don’t.
Later. What extraordinary things clergymen sometimes want to know, and worry over! But it would have been worth while to write and put any question to Dr. Stone, to get such marvellous answers and learn so much about church law down the ages. The Resurrection bodies of the Patriarchs, should a baptized person marry a catechumen, did Dr. Pusey invoke the saints, are the Channel Islands in schism … [sic] all these queries evoking such a flow of profound knowledge. I am enjoying reading it, and, should anyone ever ask me any of these questions, shall be in a position to impress them greatly with my erudition. I fear I can’t hope to impress you, as you have access to the book and would know where I got my information from. Goodbye.
Yours affectionately,
R.M.
20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1
21st March, 1951 †
Dear Father,
The most wonderful posts yesterday and the day before— first (early post on 19th) that delightful book parcel, viz. the charming little selections from Lucretius, Ovid, Propertius, etc., with just the bits from the Tristia that I chanced to be wanting to refer to just now, and so much else; then the dear little Catullus (what a handy book for bag or pocket on a journey); and the Greek Testament, also handy in size, which I am really delighted to have, and shall read it a lot. I hope you can really spare all these; they arrived so beautifully done up, packed with efficiency and skill well beyond my range, and must, I fear, have been troublesome and time-taking. You are endlessly good. By the same post came your letter of 12th. Then in the afternoon I came in to find another lovely packet—Margery Kempe, Horace, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and that very nice little book of psalms for offices and festivals. I am gradually committing passages from the psalms in Latin to memory. I expect you know most of them by heart already. Some, one prefers in English, some in Latin; none in metrical versions! Again, this is a very handy pocket book. Thank you immensely for all these books. My Latin volumes now make a much better showing in my shelves; I only hope they haven’t left gaps in yours. Then yesterday afternoon came your air letter of 17th— a particularly good one—and the big envelope with the Abbot Daniel story and your notes and letter inside. The story is delightful; I like the Abbot’s exquisite courtesy in thanking the Abbess for his unsatisfying meal—and how hungry he and his disciple must have been by that time! The inebriate must be related from life; indeed, the whole nunnery must. It is remarkable, the absence of specifically Christian devotion. Is it the effect of desert monastic life (or hermit life)? If so, it must have prepared the Thebaid desert monks and hermits to come under the Arabs with less difficulty; in fact, later they did, didn’t they, become cut off from the rest of Christendom and form the Coptic Church. And many of them submitted to Islam. But one doesn’t—I mean I don’t—know nearly enough about it; I wish I did. The Byzantine period, in all its aspects, is so fascinating. I have read all your notes, with great attention and interest. They suggest all kinds of good ideas to me. One is that I shall get from Mowbrays The Hours of Prayer.1 Another, to make an arrangement of Morning and Evening Prayer to say, bringing in the psalms for the day. The psalms are quick with meaning; more and more, I find. The 119th stupendous. (Would you think the Abbot Daniel said them?) That is interesting, about the neglect of the Eucharist leading to forgetfulness of Christ. To set against this, I suppose the Wesleyans, and later the Evangelicals, had a very fervent Jesus-worship, with very scarce sacramental life. But they, the best of them, had an intense personal faith in redemption that short-circuited sacraments. Odd, rather; I mean, to read those intimate appeals and prayers to Christ, in the most ardent language, from people —some of them clergy—who weren’t moved to more frequent communion. Then, of course, the Quakers … [sic] Did you ever read the Life of George Eliot? She grew up in that fervent Evangelical piety, which completely captured her, before she became an agnostic, yet never losing that moral earnestness. But the Evangelicals thought that “This do …” meant only occasionally; it must have been impoverishing. One beauty of “This do” is that here is something that can be done, something definite and surrendering. And handing down a tradition: I tend to overlook that side of it, and to be too subjective, taking it as a means of learning what God wants me to do, rather than as a proclamation of faith. But I like to feel that we are helping to carry on the business too.
Thank you very much indeed for your letter of 17th. I turned to Catullus after reading it, and read that melancholy and moving lament of Attis, and a lot of 64. He is so lovely; so much the loveliest of the Latin poets. The mere sound transports one. He commands emotion more than any of the rest.
In one matter your letter came too late. Due to your having said to go fairly often to confession for the pres
ent, and to my firm persuasion that what you say must be right (it having worked out so), I thought I had better go before Easter, so did so on Monday, at Grosvenor Chapel. … I mentioned the long interregnum. I think perhaps it was a good thing to go. Thank you for your answer about the other thing I asked you, about not believing things. I am so glad you say that. It is what I think is best, too. To strain after conviction about things one doesn’t easily believe worries and distracts, and tends to shift the emphasis from the things one does accept. As you say, it may all arrive later. Or never. I was interested in that “Christian Novelists” article. I think what one misses in most novels is a sense of right and. wrong and the conflict between them. Compare the great 19th cent, novelists, such as George Eliot, whose chief characters are at perpetual war with themselves. The people in so much fiction now seldom appear to be this. Yet every one, almost, must be, I suppose, anyhow at intervals, however subconsciously and weakly. A good novel can be written without this, but the people in it seem to lack one dimension. One doesn’t want preaching, but just a hint of that motive in life, to make it a true record of the “condition humaine.” Those two Note Books1 being written for me are a very pleasant thought; how much I shall like to have them! But I am very sorry about your cold; I hope it hasn’t turned into anything very bad. You know, I sometimes feel remorse that I have pestered you with questions and remarks that may seem to want comment, when you have so little time. I do so hope you wont feel you must answer always; otherwise I should feel I was the last straw. Follow T. à Kempis’s advice and commit me to God, as you anyhow do. I maunder on, making you the recipient of random speculations and problems, just because you have been so good to me, which is unfair. Unfair too is the abrupt close of this letter, when I have lots more to say. About Grosvenor Chapel, Mr. Wilkes, Lady Mary, etc.2 I get there every morning now at 8.15. This won’t last beyond this week! I know … and like her; tho’ she has that confident, religious superiority so many R.C.’s have, as if they were in the best church, which they are not; we are. (How is that for religious superiority?)
Letters to a Friend Page 9