Yours affectionately,
R.M.
May
20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1
8th May, 1951
Dear Father,
How good it was to get your air letter of 28th April this morning! Of course selfishly I like to get air letters in answer to my sea ones, at least sometimes. A week or more ago (after I had posted a sea letter on 26th) there arrived a most delightful packet—the Vernal Breviary, which I love to have, the little Vulgate N[ew] T[estament], the Lucretius and the little Horace. And the 2 excellent little Latin books—Aulus Gellius and the stories from Phaed[rus]. Oh yes, and a lovely blank note book, beautifully made, which I am filling up. All are most valuable to me—and such a handy size—and my only doubt is if you could really spare them and still can, having yielded to a generous impulse and parted with them. Whether or not, to me they are delightful possessions, and I am most grateful for them. As, increasingly, for all the past books. I find more all the time in the little Scrap Book (accumulated for 3 or 4 years back). I continually read in it and pick out always something I want. It is an admirable collection, and I like that correlation of Christian and O[ld] T[estament] thoughts and prayers with the Roman poets. Yes: that American Lectionary calendar did reach me; didn’t I mention it? It interested me.
What interesting things emerge in our correspondence! I am much intrigued by your story of Mr. Livius and the Earthquake. I wonder if his father was that Dutch minister whom Mr. Castres sheltered. I can discover this, I am sure, and will do so. I have never seen Q’s book, and certainly shall get it from a library.1 His “documents” are quite correct. I read those very letters in the Record Office (State Papers, Portugal, 89/ 50) when I was writing They went to Portugal and was working a lot in the R.O. You will find them summarised on p. 277 of my book. You will also find an amusing answer to Castres from his friend Sir Benjamin Keene, ambassador to Madrid, to whom he must have written with more freedom than in his Despatch to the Foreign Office. Keene answered, “I am enraged at your Dutch guests,” and, “I assure you it never came into my imagination that the Dutch family should have the Dutch conscience to stay with you above a day or two till they could turn themselves elsewhere … I lose all patience with them … Indeed my friend, I would, after all this humanity on your part, send them and the horses of the Factory that are eating you up all together agrazing. …” The “horses of the Factory” were, of course, the British merchants and their families. Of these Castres writes, “the miserable objects among the lower sort of His Majesty’s subjects,2 who all fly to me for bread and lie scattered up and down in my garden with their wives and children. I have helped them all hitherto …” A complaint familiar to all ambassadors abroad at times of disaster. Castres emerges very well from his correspondence of which there is of course a great file in the Record Office. I liked him very much; he was humane, kindly, and humorous. I think you may find interest and entertainment in my chapter about him and Mr. Hay the Consul during the Quake, as also in the other two chapters in the Earthquake section, giving the accounts by a merchant and a young nun (this last I like particularly, if one can surmount the shocking spelling). I will let you know anything I discover about Mr. Livius. I hope he was the Minister; it would be amusing. I don’t know when you’ll get that book; I had it posted at the time I wrote to you (16th April). Sea letters seem to make v.g. time now; books much slower, naturally. But they get there in the end.
Now it only remains to discover that some of your ancestors were also some of mine; I should like that. But I didn’t have many in the eastern counties (except in Cambridge University); mine were mostly in Leicestershire, Cumberland, and Devonshire—my parsonic ancestors, I mean. Those were Macaulays, Herricks, Conybeares, Fergusons and Babingtons. And in the 18th century, before the first of the line (my great-great-grandfather) of Macaulays turned Anglican and became an English parson, the M’s were of course Presbyterians in Scotland and “damned Whigs.”
I am interested in the novels you are reading. I don’t much care for Hugh Walpole really, tho’ he wrote a capable story, I think The Cathedral is a better novel than The Prelude to Adventure; more mature. I wonder if you have read it, and what you thought of it as a picture of Life in a Cathedral Close. His father became a Bishop, of course. But I feel the picture is exaggerated. Graham Greene is somewhat different! I was dining with him last Friday. An amusing little company … It was in a restaurant, and … I was upholding the Anglican point of view against Graham’s assertions that only R.C.s were capable of real sin because the rest of us were invincibly ignorant. … I never quite know what is his view of sin; I sometimes get the feeling that with him it is largely a matter of absolution or the reverse, and that he doesn’t really think so much about the actual sin. But I may wrong him. So many questions that one would like to ask one’s not-very-intimate friends, and of course can’t. I told him what I felt about his position in my review in The Times Lit. Supplement (unsigned) of his last book. Someone had told him it was by me, and we discussed it.
You say you would like to understand what was in my mind in my poetry. Well, those poems were written at very different times, some when I was quite a young girl. I suppose I lived rather in a world of imagination and dreams; a good many of the poems deal with the feeling one has that another life, of shadows and spirits, presses about this one, breaking through now and then. Some, I think, are semi-religious— “Lady Day,” two missionary poems, and others. Others not that, but about foregrounds and backgrounds; see one called “Foregrounds,” if you still have the book. It meant that one hides among colours and shapes and beauty from the assaults and intrusions of the spiritual world that might menace one’s happy peace and enjoyment of this. Then one, (at least), called, I think, “Summons,” is an appeal to a dead beloved (killed in the first war) to return and communicate with me. And so on, and so on. All rather fanciful, I suppose. But don’t worry about them.
Of course I should, and do, write differently now. My outlook is different, as you can imagine. But also I don’t write so much poetry as when younger; one doesn’t, I think.
You must forgive my vain and profitless repinings for might-have-beens that I am afraid I gave way to for a moment in my letter. I have a bad habit of passing on to you my moods and thoughts, which isn’t fair. But I suppose I have a feeling that you will somehow throw light on them, and of course you do, by reminding me of the Remedium sempiternum (see “Scraps”), and of the faith into which I have been traditioned (a good word, I think; valid, but obsolete now in that sense of handed into). Don’t think too hardly of me. (An unnecessary request, to you of all people, who have always thought, said and done nothing that wasn’t far too generous.) The thought that you will sometimes say “in manus tuas illam, Domine, commendo”1 lights a candle in waste places of the spirit.
Talking of candles, I attended All Saints yesterday for High Mass; the first service, it seemed, at which the New Vicar preached. Such a forest of candles, such streams of incense, such beautiful choral and solo singing. A really magnificent service. Fr. Ross preached about why he had read the 39 Articles quietly to the churchwardens after the 8 o’clock Mass instead of to the full congregation now. He likes them very much, he said, but some of them need more explaining than he would have time for; such as the one about Christ not having ordained that the Sacrament should be reserved, lifted up, or carried about. That was because He was not going into details about it at the Last Supper, but left all that to the Church. And so on. Personally, I don’t like most of them very much. But I liked Fr. Ross—he seemed unaffected, able, sincere, and kind. What fine showy services they have there. But I really prefer the more quiet style of Grosvenor Chapel; no crowds, no choir (except a few singers up in the gallery), only one priest at a time (and sometimes a server); incense yes, and all very beautifully done. By the way, I wrote to Fr. Wilkins, and had such a nice, kind, understanding letter back. He says, come and see him any time, and talk about anything. I shall go soon after Whits
un, taking with me the Hour Book. I’m glad I belong to the S.S.J.E.
This evening I am going to see a performance of Samson Agonistes in S. Martin’s church; or part of it anyhow, as I have to go on to dinner somewhere before the end. For the same reason I can’t hear the Bp. of Oxford speaking at the Central Hall, which I should have liked. Always too many things to fit in, and I get little done. I am finding my way about the Breviary. And reading all sorts of things. And preparing a BBC talk about early bathing, sea and other. There is a nice letter from Cicero to his friend Trebatius, telling him that, enthusiastic swimmer tho’ he is, he presumes that he won’t bathe off the shores of Britain, where he is with Caesar. The Festival1 seems a great success. Fr. Pedersen must go to it. I go to-morrow. But the weather is vile; cold and wet. This note paper (off a block) is too small; I have to use too many pages of it! I must get a larger one. Yes, I must read the O.T. more, and shall: I am glad of Whitsun.
With love,
R.M.
20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1
11th May, 1951
Dear Father,
An air letter (dated. 7th) and that very interesting Manuale, and the very nice little Epistles, done up in a brown paper cover in your special manner, all have arrived in the last two days— how nice! I have read a lot in the Manuale, and shall read more in time. I copied a prayer or two from it last night into my Scrap Book, to memorize. Dear Father, how good you are to me. And your letters are the best of all. I am glad They went to Portugal has already reached you—creditably quickly—and that you like to have it. It is an odd coincidence that I had written about Mr. Castres, and possibly Mr. Livius. I am now almost as interested in Mr. Livius as you are. I wrote to the Dutch Embassy to ask if they could tell me who was their Minister in Lisbon in 1755; they reply that they have no such records in London, but have kindly written to enquire of their Foreign Office in The Hague, and will let me know. So then we shall know if your Mr. Livius was the Dutch Minister who, with his family and servants, encroached on the hospitality of our Envoy, or if he was merely a merchant in Lisbon. I hope he was the Minister; I naturally don’t feel your slight vicarious embarrassment at his having outstayed his welcome. But I don’t understand why, if he was the Minister, he was sent by Frederick the Great. Aunt Katie suggests he might have been the Prussian ambassador; in that case he isn’t mentioned by Mr. Castres, though as time went on a lot of people were sheltered by him whom he doesn’t refer to by name. A Moravian, I suppose, might be either a Moravian by race (part of Bohemia, and under Austria at that time), or more likely, by religion. A rather good religion, it seems, and got about everywhere. If Mr. L. was simply a merchant, how did the legend start that he was the Dutch Minister? I think he must have been this. But it is no use speculating, as I hope we shall know before long. In any case, Mr. Castres was Johnny’s half-great-great-uncle, so I suppose some kind of great uncle also of yours. And a very nice, humane, able envoy he was.
That Quake produced some wonderful and tragic stories. I read a great many of these, by various people, when I was writing that book. Little Kitty Witham’s letters, so ill spelt and ingenuous and vivid, have great charm; and Mr. Jacomb’s too is an excellent account. Thirty years later foreign visitors complained that the Lisbon streets were still (in places) piled with rubble, in spite of Pombal’s vigorous rebuilding. All the centre of the town is post-quake,1 and very regular and straight and unlike the medieval jumbles of old houses and squares on the higher parts of the city on either side, which weren’t destroyed. On one of these high parts, led up to by steep narrow streets of extraordinary picturesqueness, is the English College, the 17th century building where English seminarists have been trained for the priesthood since the days of James I, when they managed to escape out of England, and take up residence there. The Inglesinhos, as they call the college locally, has played a prominent part in Lisbon history. I wrote a history of them, but it was among the many sections which had to remain unpublished for lack of space. A chapter which interested me very much to write was the one about Floyd, the English Jesuit priest. Those English Jesuits were interesting studies; very conspiratorial and anti-English as a rule, and for ever busy with plots for invasion and conversion of their country, and with supreme courage, and spied cruelly on their countrymen abroad, ready to report them to the Inquisition authorities if they transgressed the Portuguese anti-heretic laws. They had a bad name among the English Factory in Lisbon—on the whole a very Protestant colony of merchants, though there were converts among them, often owing to the missionary activities of such as Floyd. One has to admire Floyd for his courage, but one can’t like him. There is a great deal of dislike of him expressed in the letters of the English consul of that time, Hugh Lee. How lucky we are not to live any more in times of religious hatred; it would be odious, and especially if one was abroad. Some tiresome newspaper here has been getting up a campaign against Princess Elizabeth visiting the Pope; but it is very rare for any one to object to it. And when we were children in Italy the old parroco used to be most kind to us, and come round at Easter to bless our house and give us a great coloured candle of twisted wax; nothing could have been friendlier.
Thank you for calling my attention to I Peter. As a result I read it through, and then the first two chapters in Greek, in your little Testament. I like doing this. This enlargement of the tongues in which I read the Bible is worth while; and this, like so much else, I owe to you. What a good Epistle that is. That S. Peter could write in that way, from having been so amathes1 a fisherman, so simple and rather crude—well, I suppose it was Pentecost that did it. (That is the day after to-morrow. I have already been shriven. I always find this a difficult business, but it seems to work.) Or did the Greek translators improve and complicate S. Peter’s letters? How good Chap, i of the 2nd Epistle is … [sic] “and beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge,”2 etc., etc.; what a fine progression to try for! Can Pentecost even do that for us? I suppose so—en hagiasmo pneumatos.3 (My Greek characters aren’t nearly as neat as yours; my typewriter ought to have them.)
The weather goes on coldly; but to-day at least there is sun. We are all agog with festival, Fun Fair, and Pleasure Gardens (this last not yet open). I took two small girls yesterday to the Fun Fair; it was much like others of its kind, but they hugely enjoyed themselves, and we came home laden with frightful prizes from coconut shies, dart shies, gambling games, and luckily none the worse (which I always used to be) after roundabouts and switchbacks, and sucking immense sticks of Festival Rock. I went another day to the South Bank, a very miscellaneous and experimental affair, some things worth seeing, others not. It might please more in warmer weather. It has had a very flattering press, I suppose to induce foreigners and ourselves all to visit it.
Queer things one gets involved in. I now have an invitation to a wine-tasting party in the cellars of the London branch of a Port Wine shipping firm of Oporto. This, and my having been asked to write a foreword to their brochure, is what comes of writing so eruditely about port wine in that book: a fascinating subject of which actually I know less than nothing. But I did like those Oporto wine shippers; I stayed with one of them, and every hour [or] so when I was indoors port was brought in on a tray; it wouldn’t do for long. Their Factory House (18th century) is a magnificent affair. (See my picture of the English wine shippers chatting in the street in 1834.) It seems to me the most romantic of the English colonies abroad.
I am going to ring up Fr. Wilkins after Whitsunday and go and call, as he said I could. How much difference is there between communicating and not communicating, when one goes to the service? Of course I know one sometimes does and sometimes not: but how nearly is it the same thing? This seems an ignorant and confused question; but then I am ignorant and confused still. I feel a difference between them; but could one communicate mystically? Then I suppose it wouldn’t be a sacrament. I am probably talking nonsense. Anyhow I must stop. Did I tell you I copy out some of those short
Latin prayers and put them in my prayer book and say them in church, which I like to do. It seems to link one with tradition and the whole Catholic church. Tho’ for sheer beauty, I think our own liturgy and prayers beat any, owing to the fortunate language-period of our P[rayer] B[ook].
Goodbye, dear Father,
R.M.
Long Crichel House, nr. Wimborne, Dorset
Trinity Sunday, 20th May, 1951
(Sorry about my writing— don’t try and read it!)
Dear Father,
I took away with me for the week-end your letter of nth May, but not my typewriter, so will write to you in my very best hand instead. I am sitting in a beautiful library, looking out on a beautiful garden, and beyond it to a beautiful buttercup field, and beyond that to a small grey perpendicular church, to which no one in this beautiful old house ever goes, and which I gather is almost pre-Tractarian in the rarity of its services. One of my 3 hosts is R.C., the other two are nothing—they are 3 friends (male) living together, very delightful people, their interests literature, architecture, art, and music. I am here to help them to entertain the editor of the Sunday Times and his wife, whom none of us know very well. We talk and read and write and play a little croquet, at which I am becoming rather a dab. But mainly we talk, and talk, and talk. Last night we talked about how nearly all specifically religious writers to-day (novelists, poets, etc.) were R.C. (“Catholic,” they all call it but me) and how few were definitely Anglican in tone and viewpoint. Why is this, I wonder? I think because people ’vert to the R.C. Church—the Anglican is what we were (mostly) brought up in, and many take no notice of it, or just lapse from it and don’t come back. So it doesn’t seep into their writing. If they begin to believe Christianity again, then they do something dramatic, like going R.C. I can’t help feeling that going Anglican is better; anyhow I could never have done the other myself.
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