Your phrase “nowhere to come back to”: it called up a vision of desolation, of perpetual wandering homeless o’er moor and fen and crag, with no kindly light to lead: a kind of waste land. Yes: I am glad I didn’t reject confirmation. I was “a child that was an intemperate sucker” (a 17th century quotation) of all that came my way, and not only honey from the rocks: but I’m glad I wasn’t such a silly little sucker as to do that.
Your letter was a rather especially good one. I haven’t yet heard again from the Dutch Embassy about the name of their Lisbon Minister in 1755, but hope to soon. If it wasn’t Peter Livius, there might still be ways of finding out, from Lisbon records, who P.L. was. But I hope he was the Minister with “the Dutch conscience” who so enraged Sir Benjamin Keene.
I should be rather interested to read that history of the U.S. Episcopal Church, and shall get it from the Library. I know very little of it. I suppose Maryland and Virginia were the Church’s main homes originally? New England was where the Puritans fled from Laud, and I suppose remained predominantly Puritan. I should like to improve my knowledge of it; when and why they altered the English P[rayer] B[ook] a little, etc. Another thing to discuss with Fr. Wilkins when I go and see him, which I shall try and do, if he is available, later this week. I suppose such as Fr. Pedersen would be born into the Church. How many New Englanders are this? Do the same dissensions rend them as us? Just now there is one about a United Church’s Rally in Hyde Park (yesterday afternoon), led by the Arches of Canterbury and York, Bp. of London and other bps., and a great many prominent clergy, and strongly objected to by the Church Times and many Anglo-Catholics, who held, I believe, a protest meeting yesterday in the vestry of the Church of the Annunciation, Bryanston Street. They wrote a letter about it, signed by many protesters, clerical and lay, and 65 unnamed London incumbents, among whom I dare say were the incumbents of All Saints and Grosvenor Chapel, though I don’t know. I don’t myself see anything compromising in “rallying” with the free churches—it doesn’t imply any abandonment of church principles, only Christian fellowship. People wrangle too much. It seems a mistake. Walking in bluebell woods, with cuckoos and wood-pigeons uttering their May songs, makes me feel very peaceful.
Yes, I shall write more novels. I want to begin one directly my present book is done. I like writing them, and one is independent of books and libraries, which is convenient. And one can say one’s own things, and isn’t tied to history, or geography, or anything else. One can let the fancy roam. How lucky I am, to have work I like, instead of having to drudge away at some job that bores me! It is unfair, really.
Later. A discussion occurred at supper to-night about whether Corpus Christi was (a) a feast in the P[rayer] B[ook] calendar (b) a feast commonly observed in the Anglican Church. I thought it was in the P.B., and knew it was kept in the Church. One of my hosts swore it was neither.1 So we rang up the Dean of Winchester, E. G. Selwyn (a cousin of mine)2 and asked him, and he said it was not in the 1662 book, but was (of course) in the 1928 Revised one, which is always used in many churches, and in his Cathedral. And he said it had been celebrated at Corpus (his college) for innumerable years. So I think I won the bet, and Raymond Mortimer thought he had. The argument began because I went to evensong in the little church and heard the Feast of C.C. announced—quite an ordinary, moderate village church, with a congregation of about 10 people.
I am driving back to London in the morning, and must now go to bed.
21st. Just home, and find a note from the Dutch Embassy, which says their Minister in Lisbon from 1753-8 was called Calmette. So Mr. Livius wasn’t that, tho’ no doubt was sheltered by Mr. Castres in his garden. I am rather sorry. Perhaps he was not Dutch, but really was a German sent on some mission by the emperor Frederick.3
I think I may have read that Oxford Movement book at some time. The Rev. T. Mozley, and Newman too, were great uncles of a cousin of mine, Canon J. K. Mozley of St. Paul’s (now dead), and he always talked of them. But I think I will read it again. An interesting thing about them is how little they were ritualistic, in the modern Anglo-Catholic sense. Did they ever use incense, e.g.? High doctrine, but what I suppose we should think rather austere ceremonial.
It is a lovely day, with that incredible bright green of May everywhere, and the gorse and chestnut tree candles all flaring —so beautiful, as I drove up from Dorset.
With my love,
Yours R.M.
20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.I
25th May, 1951
Dear Father,
It was nice to get your air paper of 18th; and with it that extremely pleasing postcard photograph, which I can’t say how much I like to have. I wrote to you last Sunday from Dorset, an MS letter I regret to say, but I hope it was legible without strain, or, if not, that you didn’t struggle with it. Now I am home with my typewriter again, and, having just finished, with immense labour, a review of a book, turn with so much relief (at 10 p.m.) to writing to you; with the reflection that I so often have, how enormously fortunate I am to be able to, and to get your letters—I can’t think what I have done to earn such good fortune as I have had during the last year. Nothing, is the answer. And now this splendour coming down every morning (every morning that I don’t oversleep, that is). I do go to church most mornings now, actually; it is such a very good place to say one’s prayers in after the service; I can there, when I can’t at home. Thank you for pointing out “Suscipe, Domine”1; I have copied it out on a paper I keep in my prayer book, with some other Latin prayers from the Missal and Breviary. It is a very good one; and good, I think, especially for me. After church I now go and bathe in the Serpentine often, the weather now being less frigid. It is lovely there in the mornings at nine; very empty, and smooth and green—and rather cool, of course. The shadows of the may-green trees shine in the water, and the cuckoos cry, and the smaller birds warble, and all is peace and joy. Occasionally I meet some friends there who like bathing too; they haven’t been to church, though, the heathen creatures. Grosvenor Chapel is just about half-way between Hinde Street and the Serpentine, so it is very convenient. A kind of shining peace prevails in both places. I felt this particularly yesterday morning, which was Corpus Christi; it seemed possible the sacra mysteria verierari1 in the Serpentine as well as in church. How wretched it would be to have to pray and worship in an ugly church, or in one of those green painted chapels. One would need to be very spiritual and to have a very vivid sense of God’s presence, and then, I suppose, one could forget the surroundings. Many people have to. St. Paul and his colleagues must have had a very wonderful time voyaging about those islands and places. I have a large edition of my grandfather’s book about it, with lovely engravings. Imagine landing on Cyprus—perhaps Famagusta or Vounous—and preaching the Gospel there. And Antioch. And then Rome. And all about Greece. It must have looked so lovely that they must have sometimes forgotten their job of making Christians and just wandered about and gazed. Then they would have to pray “suscipe, Domine, universam meam libertatem.”2
I wonder if you have yet finished Brighton Rock.3 The end is horrifying; the suicide pact, the horrible death, and then poor little Rose left alone with that awful gramophone record. In the film of it, which I once saw, the horror of that record is softened; the needle sticks, and goes on repeating “I love you, I love you, I love you,” and never gets further. Film goers, it seems, demand a happy ending, or anyhow an ending not too unhappy and dreadful. But Pinkie is allowed to die in mortal sin, without time to save himself by absolution as he had counted on. This is certainly poetic justice.
I am sending you the Spectator, with a review by someone of a rather interesting new book about Cowper.1 In the same number is a very kind note by the editor (see “A Spectator’s Notebook”) about my Cambridge Litt.D. It is nice of him to be pleased, though I don’t deserve the kind things he says. As the Cowper book perhaps won’t be published in America (I don’t know if it will or not) I thought I would send it to you, because I think you might like to h
ave it. I rather like it when a book comes my way that I feel you might like, and that I can send you; a very small return for all you have sent me.
On Monday I am going to see Fr. Wilkins which I shall enjoy. I think he will be very easy to talk to about anything I like. It is good to have such good prophets at hand….
Thank you so much for offering me an Apocrypha. I have one, actually; my mother had a nice large-print one (she was very fond of it) and I have it now. It is a most valuable collection of books, and there are so many beautiful things in it. For sheer beauty of language and imagery, there are few writings to touch parts of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus. I was discussing Bible translations the other day with a R.C. friend. He prefers the Authorized] V[ersion] to the Douai; I should think any one would. He also supposed the A.V. to have been translated all new in 1611, which seems an oddly implausible idea, considering the very Tudor—and earlyish Tudor at that—language of most of it. They wrote quite differently in 1611. By the way, you allude to Kitty Witham’s spelling. I think girls and women, even of the upper classes, often did spell atrociously, even so late as that. Of course in the 17th century it was worse. I think the letter I composed for my young Meg Yarde to write to her brother at Cambridge, in They Were Defeated, is fairly typical of the ordinary upper class young female. Of course there were better educated girls and women, who didn’t spell much worse than men; Lucy Hutchinson in C. 17, and many others; and more still in C. 18. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu spelt as well as her husband; I dare say better than her co-interee in Grosvenor Chapel, Mr. Wilkes. I remember some phrase of Steele’s in the Tatler, early in the century, about a poem by a woman—” By some negligence in the spelling, I perceived it to be a female sonnet.” And young Kitty Witham, obviously coming of an old Recusant family, probably hadn’t even had a very adequate governess, and no [doubt] read little. But she wrote with great spirit and spontaneity. The more I muse on Mr. Livius, the more I think he was a German, sent to Lisbon in some official capacity.
I went to an Oporto wine-shippers’ wine-tasting party the other day. Such nice people. They were most kind to me, and are sending me 6 bottles of port as a reward for the short foreword I wrote for their brochure. What does one do with port? In old days I think people took it to the Poor, along with soup, jelly, and flannel. I doubt if the Poor get any of these luxuries now, being so well cared for by the State. Perhaps I’ll ask Fr. Wilkins if he would like a bottle.
I am going to an Oxford lunch next week to talk about Liberalism. I have no notion what to say about it. One can praise it as an ideal, elegize it as a deceased political party, tell stories about Liberals and Whigs of the past, talk about what it means in different countries (often so different from what we mean here), or just say how nice to be a Liberal because one can then be in opposition to any government that gets in, a healthy and profitable attitude, both for the government and oneself. One should never feel submissive to any government; bad for them and bad for us. They go blundering along, and it is our part to deride and criticize. That will in future, I fear, be the solitary function of our once-great party. That, and to try and spread a little light in darkness among Tories and Socialists. Well, they all have something, of course.
Now Fr. Gervase Mathew, a Dominican priest, is coming to call on me, with messages from his brother David, the R.C. Archbp. at Mombasa, who used to be a friend of mine. A very broad-minded R.C.; they both are, I think—unless they modify themselves for my benefit, which perhaps they do. But I think the Archbp. really likes the Anglican Church; he is certainly much interested in its history, and writes of it with great impartiality and respect. He (in fact both) likes They were Defeated. I always feel moved now to say to R.C.s “I have something as good as you have, now. In fact, in my view a long sight better.” Time was when I only had Anglo-agnosticism to put up against their great Church. But I don’t really ever talk theology or churches to the brothers Mathew. They have a wide range of interests.
I must go to the library before it shuts (for it has now become Sat. morning). I must put my potatoes on before I go, so goodbye for now. You might be pleased if you could see me making frequent use of all your books, and of that nice note book. Nothing you have sent me is wasted, and all are loved and used.
Your affectionate
R.M.
June
20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1
1st June, 1951
Dear Father,
Thank you so much for your letter of 27th May, which came yesterday, just as I was going off to Oxford for the day. So I took it with me, and read it in the train when I ought to have been stringing together some remarks on the Function of Liberalism To-day for a lunch address to the University Liberal Society; I found your letter much pleasanter and more interesting than any such nonsense. However, I had a nice time at Oxford, first at this lunch, then going up to Boar’s Hill with Gilbert Murray and strolling about his lovely garden, then being taken from one college to another by Gervase Mathew (a R.C. Dominican, an admirable Byzantine art scholar, and an archaeologist, who has just been digging up a ruined town in N. Africa). He took me to tea with a Balliol don, then to sherry with the Oriel chaplain, Austin Farrer,1 whose Bampton Lectures, The Glass of Vision, are interesting. So it was a full and entertaining and profitable day, and in the train home I talked with a nice American woman over here on a visit, who likes everything she has yet seen, even the weather; she had just been shown round Oxford by her son there. On the whole, I find Americans attractive.
But your letter. As always, it rejoiced me. And I shall love to have the Vincent Bourne1; I haven’t got him, and never had. My father enjoyed him; he was a Trinity (Cambridge) man; my father’s college. A most ingenious Latinist. That kind of Latin skill has sadly languished. I am pleased to be reading so much church Latin as I am just now, and learning some by heart. I know easily now several of those prayers. I say every day “Domine Jesu Christe … et a te nunquam separari permittas”2 Thank you for saying it for me sometimes. It is the perfect prayer for Mass, whether one communicates or not. So is “Deus, qui nobis sub sacramento mirabili passionis tuae memoriam reliquisti,”3 which we often have in English at Grosvenor. I did look up Darwell Stone in the Library this afternoon, on non-communicating attendance; I see he says we can’t “sharply distinguish” between the power to join in the offering when we communicate, and the power to do so on later occasions when only present, as the eucharistic life goes on from one occasion to the next, without break. Which is really what you too say. Actually I rather like only being there; it is so undistracted and uninterrupted. And after it is over is a wonderful time for thinking about something one has selected to read (prayer, psalm, a bit of the Gospels or epistles). It is so much easier in church. There is such [a] tremendous field of things to pray about, and it grows all the time. I rather want to get hold of a good Bible commentary, with the best scholars’ views on meanings and authorship, etc. I am much too ignorant. Karl Adam doesn’t seem to be in the L[ondon] L[ibrary] catalogue. Nor does that American Church history, which I think I will suggest that the library gets. They are quite good about acting on suggestions. You see how I rush off at once to look for any book you mention. Another one is T. Mozley’s reminiscences,1 which you started me looking at again; I got that out of the Library to-day. I read it once before, or part of it, but it is full of interesting things and people and repays looking through.
I agree with you about Brighton Rock. It is damaged by the extreme lowness of its characters. Not the girl, of course; she is a different type. But he is obsessed by evil, as he says himself in his last book of collected articles. He has a new novel coming out soon; he told me something about it. Have you read The Power and the Glory, about a drunken priest in Mexico and the persecution of the church there? It is interesting. But works too far his theory about goodness having little or nothing to do with the grace of God and of the church, which redeem the wicked not by making them better but by saving their souls in spite of their badness. This does
seem unsound. Somehow it premises, or seems to premise, an almost mechanical view of salvation, as if the operations of redemption worked not on evil but almost ignoring it, provided the faith is there. Rather Calvinistic, surely. All faith and no works—that is, no human works. A most dangerous view….
I went to see Fr. Wilkins last Monday; he was very kind and nice. He cleared up some of the puzzles of the Office Book, and is going to send me the new Ordo he is working on. He also gave me The Trumpet shall Sound, which I like very much. They are expecting Fr. Pedersen very soon now, and he will let me know when he arrives and will be in London. He says he thinks the Scotch P[rayer] B[ook] contains that clause “that they may grow in thy love and service” too; I must get hold of one. Fr. Wilkins didn’t mind a bit about my defaulting to Grosvenor Chapel, as you said he wouldn’t. He thinks it good to go to confession at one’s own church. Did I tell you the Grosvenor exterior and tower is in a very dangerous state, and is having to be repaired. I should hate it to fall down! Apparently much of the work in it was very shoddy, especially what they added at the end of the 18th century.
I like to hear about your book-binding and mending. I think your craftsmanship is rather like that of the Balliol don I visited yesterday; he spends some of his time making wonderful little models of period buildings of slabs of wood joined by putty, wonderfully neat; he shows you a Georgian house, then lifts from it one layer of exterior, and underneath there is a Stuart house, and below that an Elizabethan one, and then a medieval one. All very beautiful and clever and delightful; if I could do that I should do nothing else. I expect your book-binding is the same kind of pleasure; the covers you have sent me are very good. I wish I had some kind of handicraft; but if I had I should have no time for it, I can’t as it is get much done of the work I am supposed to be doing, so perhaps it is as well that I am stupid with my hands. What I have always been good at is anything with my legs and arms, and I don’t get enough time for that really; though naturally most of the active pastimes are a thing of the past. But I still like walking and bicycling and swimming—and even, in lonely and unobserved country, climbing up trees and sitting there. And rowing, gently and in moderation. I was teaching a little girl of nine to scull the other day, on the Fun Fair lake. But how one used to think one would miss running and active games—and one doesn’t a bit when the time comes.
Letters to a Friend Page 13