Letters to a Friend

by Constance Babington Smith

  Love and thanks,

  R.M.

  What a nice letter from Mr. Armstrong, enclosed with the Norfolk cuttings.

  20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1

  27th March, 1951 †

  Dear Father,

  I have so many things I want to write about that I am making the return of Fr. Wilkins’s very kind letter an excuse for writing a proper old-style air letter. I have had 3 delightful letters from you lately—posted 20th, 22nd, 24th. These two last came this morning; the other I was just about to answer, but left it a few days so as to give you a little rest from my letters. Of course you can’t and mustn’t go on writing often; I shan’t expect it. It has been so endlessly good of you, and good for me, all this time, and I feel ashamed of taking so much of your time. I have now made good resolutions about it. At intervals, when I want your advice, or to tell or talk about something, or just to keep in touch, I shall write a (sea) letter (air if in a great hurry!) which don’t bother to answer until you really have time. I feel we can keep in touch without writing much—in fact, I see no way in which I could get out of touch, exploring, as I am now, this exciting country into which you have conducted me. When things occur to you that you think I might like to hear, save them up till you are at leisure. You are probably never this— but more at leisure than sometimes. You see, my excuse has been that it is a new country, and you have been, and are, my guide in it. That is my excuse; my reason, I am afraid, largely that I do like hearing from you, because your letters are (from any standpoint) so good. They have every quality—range, depth, breadth, humour, wisdom, interest, sympathy, even (I like to think) affection. So much for letter-writing. Before I embark on Class—to me always a most interesting historical question, and one on which I have often speculated—I will proceed to a matter rising out of your letter to-day, and Fr. Wilkins’s; Confession; about which I feel in some danger of getting into something of a muddle. You might gather from what Fr. Wilkins says that it was in conversation that something passed between us about confession; actually it wasn’t mentioned when I saw him. I had written to him, as you know, saying that you thought monthly confession might be a good thing and when could I see him therefore. I added, as a kind of apology for bothering him again so soon, that I felt it seemed rather often, and was afraid he might too, but thought I had better take your advice, as I had been doing so. He replied to this telling me of his illness, and about how any of the S. Edward’s House Fathers would be glad to see me, and gave me some times. I didn’t answer that, except a line of sympathy for the illness, or do anything about it. Then after hearing from you, he wrote very kindly asking me to come and visit him before he left, which I did. But, as I said, we didn’t speak of confession, except that he said, as we said goodbye, “I am so sorry to have failed you,” and I said I was so sorry he was ill. I don’t quite know where he got the impression that I had decided to come only before the Festivals, as these weren’t mentioned; or that I was going to S. Edward’s House; but I expect he thought that was what I wanted. And now, as I told you in my letter of 21st, I have been before Easter to Grosvenor Chapel, which seemed easier of access; and more given to regular times, than S. Edward’s…. So now, how do I stand? What do I do before Whitsun? Does Fr. Wilkins expect me, and do I go to him? A professional opinion, please! Of course in a way it is rather nice to be all of a piece, and go to confession where one goes to church; then, it occurs in church, and at set times … Oh dear, I don’t know. If Memorial Drive were round the corner, it would save me all this bother…. But, if I do decide to go on [making confessions at Grosvenor Chapel], should I write to Fr. Wilkins and explain? I like him so much, I should hate to seem off-hand or thankless. But I didn’t actually quite know when he would be back.

  I am so glad you took that cold (or flue?) to bed. I expect you should really have spent a week there, though. It is the best way of getting well, and of not having a relapse, or keeping a cough. And it is a rest. And a nice chance of reading and writing in peace, and thinking too; I did quite a bit of this last when I was ill in Jan. and Feb. I am so sorry your eyes are troublesome. I wonder if your glasses need changing? I wear them for reading and writing, and find I have to have them changed every few years, as the lenses get out of date. How nice you are to read and like Fabled Shore; I am glad you do. I think it is really rather dull for those who don’t know the places, or aren’t meaning to go there. It is so full of detail about the buildings, places, etc. I described it all because I loved it so much; it was like a lovely dream of beauty and interest, and I tried to put this across so far as I could. It was my first European travel since the war, and in a way lonely, because I used in old days to travel about Europe with a companion who liked all I liked and knew much more about it. He was very able. I think you would have liked him; certainly he you.

  Now Class. Your remarks and speculations set me thinking about it again. I’m sure you are right that the marriage of the clergy helped to create a new kind of middle, clerkly class, to which lawyers, university Fellows, the more educated schoolmasters, and such, also belonged; what the French call “les clercs.” It seems that the clergy social status went up gradually. Chaucer’s “poor parson of the town” was brother to the ploughman; though at the same time there were the prelates from noble families. In 17th cent., there were the George Herberts and others from the good families, and many from the poorer classes (like Laud) who went to the same grammar schools and universities as their social betters—I suppose this tended to narrow gulfs, this mixing up of classes at school and college, and now it is happening again. George Trevelyan points out, in his admirable English Social History (a book you perhaps know and would, I think, like), that the clergy rose very much in the 18th cent., when the close alliance with the squires began, and family livings, and this went on thro’ 18th and 19th cents., when the Hall and the Rectory or Vicarage were the social centres of country and village life, and close friends often. I think the clergy are now getting rather more democratic, on the whole, aren’t they? As to gulfs, social life in the Middle Ages seems to have been composed of land-owners and yokels and tradesmen and yeomen and farmers and “citizens.” In the Canterbury Tales they all seem to have mixed up without embarrassment—the aristocratic prioress who ate so daintily that she let no morsel fall from her mouth, the rather coarse Wife of Bath, who however had a high opinion of her social position, and was offended if any other wife preceded her to the altar. I expect there were Scenes in church, embarrassing to the priests who executed Mass (I looked up “executed” in the Ox[ford] Dictionary]; in that particular sense it is obsolete but was once quite common, it seems). Somehow one gets no impression of class feeling from the prologue. Class must have developed more later, in the 16th and 17th cents. The propertied classes address the unpropertied very rudely, as “knave, churl, sirrah, fellow,” etc., and regarded them as lewd fellows of the baser sort, no doubt; we have certainly improved in manners. All thro’ C. 16 and 17 there was a sensible habit of the younger sons of the aristocracy and landed gentry often being apprenticed to merchants and tradesmen or to learn a craft, which mixed them up in a wholesome way; no horror of “trade” till C. 18 at least. And, with such bad transport, gentlemen and yokels talked their local dialect together, before accent was standardised by the public schools. I suppose that school class-segregation didn’t really develop very much till late C. 18 and early 19th, when the poor boys were squeezed out of their ancient schools, such as Winchester and Eton, and these became class preserves. I think the extreme snobbism of the 18th cent, and of Jane Austen’s Sir Walter Elliot would have become quite impossible by mid-Victorian days, wouldn’t it? It gets less all the time, I fancy.1

  (I am shocked by the look of the last page, so closely written, and feel it will be bad for you to decipher. I won’t re-type it, but will this page use double-space instead of single, to make it easier.) G. Trevelyan says “The ideal arrangement, well established by the time of Jane Austen, was a good Rectory, with a bow window, b
uilt in a pleasant spot a mile from the manor house, and inhabited by a son or son-in-law of the squire. The religious needs of the village were served by a gentleman of education and refinement, though perhaps of no great zeal— for it was only after the beginning of the 19th century that the gentleman-parson was likely to be ‘serious,’ that is, evangelical.” How far back all that seems, recalling the water colours of the country rectories of one’s ancestors, and of the rectors, with their nice faces, curled hair, and high cravats. What a coming home it must have seemed, New College after those years among rather different accents and backgrounds.1 Mixing classes can be done, but it’s not so easy and free, there’s no doubt about it. Do you think the young man with great possessions felt snob about the fishermen and the other disciples? I think the Romans were dreadful snobs probably, don’t you? All the same, some of the more educated freedmen seemed to be quite accepted socially, on the whole. I think snobbism must always have been a natural human addiction; the Romans were snobs about the British, the Normans about the Saxons, etc., etc. Extended egotism, I suppose. I shall read and think about the Christian beginnings. I don’t want to be materialist about it, and I do see the cogency of the claims. I think my main point is that, to me, at present, it seems almost better and more congruous that God should have sent his Incarnation on earth in form fully human, with human birth and death. I would almost rather think He was born like us and died like us, and that it was His spirit only that lived after death, taking the form His friends would recognise. But of course this is no argument at all, and I don’t try to make up my mind about it. 1 don’t feel either way that it could make any difference to what I value more and more—the relationship that one tries to keep. But I will keep my mind open about it, and try and think it out. I felt, at the Easter mass, that here was Christ risen and with us, and I didn’t care how. Is this very muzzy and illogical? I am trying out the arrangement of lesson and psalm-reading you suggest, and like it. I have an idiotic tendency to forget to say prayers at all— hang-over from past negligences, I suppose; I am capable of tumbling out of bed (after breakfast in it) and into my bath, dressing, reading letters and newspapers, and sitting down to work on Ruins without a thought. Really shocking. I hope to get over this, however. Through Holy Week I went out early, but don’t do this every morning now. (Should you say Sundays and Thursdays, perhaps? All experimental, so far.) I am interested in what you say of the Carthusian rite, and wish I remembered better what they did in that Cartuja.1 I suppose the 2nd priest must have been serving. That is an interesting thought, the Elizabethan clergy inserting to themselves the bits of the Old Mass. I wish we had more light on what individual clergy felt about it all. There is a good novel there, if one knew enough. I am rather glad our Liturgy is now so flexible and susceptible to variety and additions. I myself add in pieces of your American P.B. pages that I like. The highbrows talking showily about the Trinity remind me of something I can’t quite place—is it Langland?2 Something about smart medieval table-talk—“They would tell of the Trinity a tale or twain …” So I suppose it was the fashion. No, it doesn’t seem so now; unless in clerical circles? I believe you are right, and that Thomas [à Kempis] was beneficial to the little girl in the tree3; he set a standard to aim at. At the beginning of the book her godmother had written, “Remembering always that Baptism doth represent unto us our profession, which is to follow the example …” etc.—and that too set an impressive standard.

  Yes, that was a bad lunar error, the Holy Week crescent. My uncle at King’s said all novelists made moon howlers; he used to correct mine. But harmless howlers compared with some made by R.C. novelists about sin— “all right except for R.C.s,” as you say. Such ungodly arrogance. At this point has arrived Sheed and Ward’s Own Trumpet? 4 competing with the air raid sirens that are practising at full blast! Both they and S. & W. can be heard indeed. Thank you so much for the latter, which I shall harken to with interest.

  Tho’ I said, don’t write, I should be glad of one letter about this confession business—as I see it, it is a (possible) obligation of courtesy, against what I believe to be greater benefit to myself. Which wins? However, Whitsun is not due yet. My sea letters will be better spaced and thicker paper. I am sorry about this one. It brings my love, and do let me know, when you write, how you are.

  Yours affectionately,

  R.M.

  April

  20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1

  8th April, 1951

  Dear Father,

  Thank you so much for your air letters posted 28th March and 3rd April, both full of interest and what I wanted to hear. This, as you see, is to be a sea letter, in accordance with my new plan for writing, of which I told you in my last. I am glad that you think it all right to go to confession at Grosvenor (anonymous and appointmentless queues), and still to go and talk sometimes to Fr. Wilkins, if he will let me. I will write to him and explain. I should like to keep in touch with him, if he wouldn’t feel I was wasting his time; I can tell him that I feel I belong to the S.S.J.E.1, which is true. And I think he would be understanding and kind, as indeed he already has been. And there are all sorts of things I could ask him, if he didn’t mind. As to “Staying with Sanctimonials,”2 I feel you should send me this work, considering the number of mine that I send you. It sounds fascinating…. [About] the Resurrection, … [what] slightly puzzles me is that St. Paul, in 1 Cor. xv, does seem rather to equate it with our resurrection, as if the mode was the same (e.g. v. 15, “whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not”) and yet he knew that our bodies stay in the earth (“thou sowest not that body that shall be … but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him … flesh and blood camiot inherit the kingdom of God,” etc., etc.) and, knowing this, and that for us there is no empty tomb, but that our bones are still there centuries later, he still does seem to analogize our rising again with Christ’s, making the one depend on the other. Which made me think that he perhaps didn’t himself believe in the empty tomb, but only in a purely spiritual presence of our Lord, clothed in the appearance which was familiar to the disciples, and which would convince them that it really was Him. Is this impossible—I mean, that S. Paul thought that—and does it impoverish the story? It doesn’t to me. I mean, if His [resurrection] was bodily (however transformed and spiritualized, as of course it was in the story) it doesn’t, to me, carry the same implication as to our immortality that it would if it was wholly spiritual, as ours, we know, must be. I wonder if this is nonsense. I never heard it or read it anywhere, so very likely it is. I expect Thomas à Kempis would condemn me for vain disputing! But you know I don’t mean to be presumptuous, or set my understanding up against church tradition; though I suppose to say “it seems to me” has a terribly protestant ring. I dare say I shall come to see and accept it in time; you must forgive my rawness in these matters. I shall very likely grow into it, and into the understanding of the cosmic intervention in which everything was possible and everything part of the whole. Not that I feel, at present, that it could mean more to me than it does as I see it. Except that I like to believe what the Church believes, the Church being what it is.

  What a heritage we have. I mean, we Anglicans. It is so incredibly beautiful. And such good fortune not to be an Anglican of a century or more ago, (or, indeed, a good deal less than that) or a Roman Catholic, or any kind of sectarian, or any Church without our liturgy, our particular ceremonial and dignity without fuss. I like it more and more.

  Thank you for your advice about prayer. I am compiling a kind of office (on the lines you suggested) that varies on different days; also, as I told you, a lot of scraps, all in one note book, so that all are at hand to select from as I want them. The ideas they give me expand indefinitely, one leading to more, and it is all rather exciting and enriching. I shall do all you suggest about prayer; I mean, I shall try to, and make it an aim. What is discouraging is the awful gulf between prayer and behaviour —not being able to “live more nearly as we pray.”

 
I liked your account of your Harvard servers. How good for them it must be. I have a young cousin there—son of a first cousin who married an American wife and lives in N. York. A charming boy; they want him to come and have a year at Cambridge (King’s), but don’t know if they can manage this. He enjoys Harvard. I don’t suppose his religious habits would lead him to the Cowley mission—indeed, I don’t know if he has any; on the other hand, he may be religious and High Church, for all I know. How nice if you came across him ever. I’m sorry Harvard is irreligious. They are said to be behind Oxford and Cambridge in learning, and that the undergraduates of each age don’t know so much, on the whole. I don’t know if this is really so.

  I am looking forward to my visit to Cambridge in June. I am staying at Trinity, with the Trevelyans; he is retiring from the Mastership at the end of the summer term. Yes, he is a cousin. And married to a daughter of that eminent Victorian novelist, Mrs. Humphrey Ward, who wrote so earnestly on Doubt. She knew all about that, as her father, Tom Arnold (from whom I drew, rather sketchily, the idea of my Mr. Garden in Told by an Idiot) spent his life migrating from one church or no-church to another and back again. My mother was brought up on my grandmother’s stories of him; she (my grandmother) would come in saying, with sympathetic interest, “Poor Tom Arnold has lost his faith again” and so he had. Mrs. H. Ward was, according to my mother, a rather dull and ponderous woman.

  Monday. This is Census Day, and soon the collector will come round for the forms, which ask all kinds of odd things, about bathroom taps, number of rooms, servants, occupation, etc., etc. They tell us it is all absolutely private, so that burglars can put “Occupation: burgling,” without the least apprehension. I wonder if they do. It would be interesting if they enquired about religious beliefs and church attendance, but they don’t do this.