Do you know The Broadcast Psalter, the revised versions of many of the Psalms that they use in broadcast services? I think many of the revisions are good. “O how lovely are thy dwellings,” e.g.; and they make sense of what Coverdale rather left sometimes in a mess. They broadcast a morning service (10.1510.30) daily, and I often make a pause in my work and hear it. The BBC does a good job for religion, on the whole; with scrupulous impartiality they try to allot equal time to all the Christian sects—but not (to the disappointment of Unitarians) to the non-Xian ones. For my part, I would very much rather have a Unitarian service than a Salvation Army one; it is a civilised kind of service, and I don’t see why not.
On Tuesday evening Fr. Pedersen and I have our jamboree. I am interested in what you tell me of him; I must draw him out about his English experiences. He struck me as enjoying it all immensely. I shall be amused to note his reactions to the play; I expect he will be enthusiastic, as about most things.
I don’t know if G[raham] G[reene’s] The End of the Affair is a new novel, now just out in America and soon to appear here, or if it is one we know here, under a new name. But I expect the former, and I shall like to read it when it is published here. He and Evelyn Waugh always praise each other of course. I enclose a column of an article on “The Temper of Modern Fiction” (in all countries) in this week’s Times Lit. Sup., that refers to those R.C. novelists.
On Sunday my Chapel functions again: I shall be very glad. I am wondering how much of the daily mass habit I shall be able to keep up through the winter, or how far coughs and colds and flue and weather will interfere. I don’t want to be stupid and rash about it. On the other hand, I do miss it when I don’t go. I must see. But anyhow there is a long time before the winter. Our ancestors were wise to have private chapels and chaplains, tho’ the chaplain was often a nuisance. This [is] a shockingly long and ill-writ letter; forgive it. My love always, and my most grateful thanks.
R.M.
PS. Just found the little map diary, which had slipped down among the wrappers!1
20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.I
29th August, 1951
Dear Father,
I must write at once to thank you for sending me, by Fr. Pedersen, those two delightful books—Fr. Benson’s and Fr. Andrew. It was good of you. I feel I should have got them for myself, and it is a shame, but I love to have them from you. I have dipped into Fr. Andrew in Mowbrays, and can now read him at leisure. A wonderful person he must have been. I haven’t yet begun Fr. Benson, but shall to-night in bed. If I went to retreats, it would be a good book to take there; but I haven’t this in mind at present. What a pity I lost those notes I took long ago of good retreat addresses!
Fr. Pedersen was so nice. We went to Waters of the Moon— Edith Evans, Sybil Thorndike, etc.—very amusing, and we both enjoyed it. Afterwards I took him back-stage for a word with Edith Evans, her face covered in grease. She really is a superb actress, and this was just the part for her. Then Fr. P. and I went to Soho and had a bite of supper and conversation. He does seem to have a good time here—rather a busman’s holiday so far, full of retreats, missions and what not; but is now off to Italy for a few weeks’ real holiday, which is very spirited of him, all alone; he seems to have planned to see every place—Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, Siena, and bathe at Viareggio. He is great fun, isn’t he. Just going to have his 40th birthday, he told me. He seems (I suppose all the Society is) quite in agreement with us about Anglicanism, the P[rayer] B[ook], etc., and doesn’t care for excesses. I liked very much to talk with him, and hear about Boston, the Monastery, and you. He says you have been pretty well lately; I hope he is right. He also brought me a kind note from Fr. Wilkins, thanking me for some service I had done to a writing friend of his, and saying what an excellent retreat Fr. Pedersen had given them at Oxford.
Now I am busy writing on the ruins of Corinth and what they all said about them in the next century. They must have been the show ruins of the time, until J. Caesar built them up. Cicero deplored them; and his friend Servius Sulpicius Rufus, about whom you once wrote to me, used them (and others) as a text for preaching patience to Cicero about the death of his daughter. And Antipater of Sidon wrote a lovely lament, soon after the destruction of b.c. 146, of which F. L. Lucas, of King’s, has lately published a good verse translation, beginning,
“Where are the towers that crowned thee, the wealth that filled thy portals, Thy beauty, Dorian Corinth,
whereon men stood to gaze? …”1
Polybius’s eye-witness description of the Roman Soldiers playing dice among the ruins, using the fallen pictures as tables, is very vivid and dreadful; though less dreadful than his account of the destruction of Carthage.
At this point the gay and Rev. Gerard Irvine rang me up, informing me that to-morrow is the day of my name-saint, St. Rose of Lima,1 and suggesting that, as my chapel is still shut (opens ist. Sept.) I should come to Mass at St. Thomas’s. I might go, I suppose, though it rather fidgets me, but it is a friendly invitation.
Fr. Irvine read me an account of the achievements of my patroness, a poor little self-torturing Peruvian product of the Counter-Reformation, who slept on potsherds, wore a crown of roses with the thorns turned inwards, a girdle with nails, a hair shirt, etc., etc.; all the accompaniments of decadent sanctity. She wouldn’t approve of my habit of bathing after mass; a firm hydrophobe, this was a practice in which she would have hated to indulge. Why did the Church canonise these poor little neurotics? On the other hand to-morrow is also the day of St. Pammachius,2 a much higher type, who translated Origen and was a friend of Jerome’s, and renounced his wealth to the poor, so I can think of him at Mass instead.
This is the last week of no-Grosvenor (it functioned on Sunday, but not yet on weekdays). I shall be glad to have it back. Here is a cutting about the Anglican Society, which seems a good Society. If one talks to R.C.s (intellectual ones) about the vagaries of their Church (very politely, of course), they say “the Church can carry all these things; it’s big enough.” Well, but why should it have to carry so much nonsense? Answer, because past and more credulous ages believed a lot we don’t, and the Church (the Roman Church) can’t go back on its past, except in private. Surely a fatal flaw in a moving, driving, upward-growing religion such as Christianity should be. The enlarging work of the Holy Spirit—they don’t seem really to believe in this, but only in looking back at tradition. How dispiriting it must be. More and more I rejoice to be an Anglican. Oh dear, am I becoming like the Pharisee, who thanked God he was one? But then it’s the Church I am glad of, heaven knows not myself, except for my good fortune and good guidance.
I want to get this off, so must stop. My love and so many thanks for those valuable books—also for sending me nice Fr. Pedersen. As you know, he is tremendously attached to you, and will consent with pleasure to these embassies you send him on (book-buying and carrying) for your sake.
Yours always affectionately,
R.M.
September
20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.I
3rd September, 1951
Dear Father,
Your air paper posted 29th Aug. came to-day, just when I was going to write and thank you for the lovely book packet that came two days before—I am particularly pleased to have the Latin Imitation; it would have been good for my Latin to have it when I was 13. Then, the very nice little Bible booklets—Job, Ecclesiasticus, Acts, Romans, Revelation (pretty picture of Patmos) and Corinthians (I have just finished my section on the ruins of Corinth and the effect they have had on people). And the Latin Literature primer—really admirably useful and compendious, and well written too. Thank you very very much, Pater large et liberalis; how good you are! I really do love to have these little books. As for the two larger ones sent by Fr. Pedersen, I have read quite a lot of Fr. Benson, and am very much interested. I like too Fr. Cary’s introduction. More and more I marvel that any one should be found to enter into such an exacting life, and carry it through to the end; it s
eems one of those impossible careers, that any one would shrink from in prospect and fail under in practice; and yet it isn’t so. Perhaps (as Fr. Cary suggests) the rule has been a little modified since then; I wonder how the Father Founder would have looked on the freedom and enjoyment of Fr. Pedersen’s time in Europe; and, indeed, Fr. Waggett’s social life in London and Cambridge, which did such immense good to people he met. And dear Fr. Cary I remember, years ago, going off for a holiday in Italy at Christmas time with two cousins of mine who were devoted to him; and how much they all enjoyed it! … But, as I say, the Rule must have been enlarged a little since the first, and I suppose became much less strict about such things as talking to “externs,” looking at Nature, etc. But what a standard it holds up to poor selfish human nature! It makes one feel very much of a homunculus (or muliercula, as the case may be). Fr. Andrew I am enjoying very much; much more within one’s grasp, of course, spiritually; I don’t mean one can grasp it, because it is much too Christian and fine for that; but one could try after it. I should like to have known him. I wonder if you did. He would take a v.g. retreat, wouldn’t he. As to a retreat by Fr. Benson, one would be terrified by the demands one would feel he was (even if unspoken) making on one’s life. Did I tell you how good a retreat Fr. Wilkins said Fr. Pedersen took at Oxford? But what a “chore,” as he says, it must have been! All those days; and speaking not to the laity, or even to secular clergy, but to Religious, and his own colleagues; and of course many of them so much older than he is. I expect he was excellent. A most likeable person.
I was pleased by your account of the little English girl (why did she stay on after the war, by the way?) and her catechumen lover. I should like to have seen you getting him ready with the swiftness of St. Philip! Why hadn’t he been baptized before, though? I shall think of the wedding on the 14th. I like the way they all come to you to marry them. You ought to baptize their children too. Do you suggest a pre-baptismal general confession, or would that be too startling for him?
My last letter to you (sea) was posted on 29th, I think. But you should perhaps have got, by the time you wrote your last air paper, my sea letter of 16th; I hope it came soon after that. Then I wrote again from Vectis,1 but didn’t finish or post it till my return, when I had got your letter of 21st. I think in my last letter I mentioned that Fr. Gerard Irvine of S. Thomas’s had just rung me up inviting me to attend his Mass there on the feast of St. Rose of Lima—he thought my patron saint, but I have discovered a much better St. Rose (of Viterbo) of the 13th century; this prodigy raised her maternal aunt to life at 3 years old, at 7 she was living like a recluse, devoting herself to penances, at 12 she preached to and converted Viterbo, including a sorceress, whom she impressed by standing unscathed in a fire for 3 hours. Much better than anything done by her namesake of the Counter-Reformation. Well, I attended the S. Thomas’s Mass, and managed this time to catch the right moment to [go] up to the altar; in front of me was one of those helpful women who know all the answers to unspoken versicles by the priest, and she even rang a little bell at the right moments. When I came out, another woman who had been there accosted me, with some ferocity. The dialogue ran like this:
“Is this a Roman church?”
“No, it’s Church of England.”
“What about the 39 articles?”
“Well, how do you mean what about them? They never say them at early service anywhere, I think.”
“And what about all those images?”
“Well, churches do have images, don’t they.”
“Not Protestant churches. This is more like a Catholic one.”
“Well, the C. of E. is both, I suppose.”
“I call it a SCANDAL. Something should be done about it.”
She departed in dudgeon; but what can she or will she do about it? Inform the National Union of Protestants, perhaps. I’m sure Fr. Irvine and the others would be delighted if they sent a spy along and had a protest in church…. Poor old C. of E., with Romans to right of it, Protestants to left of it, volleying and thundering. It does indeed stand to be shot at.
To-morrow I call for and drive Canon Hood to take Mass at Grosvenor. When he stays in London he has a house near me, so I have undertaken to do this on the occasions when he helps at Grosvenor. I might ask him about the Annunciation, where I believe he also helps sometimes, and discover how far he likes its ways. I don’t think Pusey House is very extreme or “fancy,” is it; though I am sure much more so than Dr. Pusey ever was or would have thought of. Or Fr. Benson either? My grandfather, W. J. Conybeare, wrote an interesting article in the Edinburgh Review (1853) about the “three great parties which divide the C. of E.”—Low, High, and Broad. He finds good and bad in all three; but prefers the Broad. He did not like the extreme Low Church; he quotes with ridicule such verses for children as “Haste, put your playthings all away, To-morrow is the Sabbath day…. Because, you know, you must not play, But holy keep the Sabbath day”; and “We must not laugh on Sunday,” etc. The High Church he likes much better, and thinks they have done excellent reforming work in church services and buildings and the lives of the clergy. But he has some acid words on the more advanced section, who “pressed recklessly to the front, and soon left the mass of their troops behind them, and abandoned one by one the traditions of the Anglican divinity from which they started. After they had advanced beyond the High Church camp, they continued for nearly 10 years members of the C. of E., and formed a new party, which took from their writings the name of Tractarian…. Presently their leader, renouncing for ever the Anglican allegiance, passed over the Rubicon, and rushed into the heart of the Italian territory. But not all who advanced to that fatal frontier had courage to cross with Caesar; the rabble of his army remained shivering on the brink. …” The customs of this extreme party are described; and they seem all customs that are now usual in moderate Anglican churches, and throw a light on what was usually done then in those churches. Bowing to the altar is mentioned, talking of “the holy altar,” “the blessed Virgin,” having the offertory after the sermon, with little bags on poles, blazing candles on the altar, wreaths of flowers changing their colour with feast or fast, medieval emblems on the altar-cloth, genuflexions without authority of Rubric, credence tables, a novel usage in the reception of the consecrated bread (would this be wafers?) which sometimes caused a disturbance in church. And yet, he says, these very clergy would often omit morning and evening prayer, which the P[rayer] B[ook] orders them to say in church daily. Their main energies they devote, he says, to fighting Puritanism. They attack Bishops. “Greenwood and Penry were hanged by Whitgift, Leighton was whipped and mutilated by Laud, for the use of language against bishops mild in comparison with that which every pamphleteering curate now uses with impunity.” My grandfather’s hopes for the Church were certainly most with the Broad party, which was the most intellectual then; though he disapproved of extremes there too, and quotes as a scandal a clergyman of 1780, who, at his induction, read the 39 articles, then “addressed his rustic congregation as follows—‘My brethren, I have obeyed the law by what I have just done; and I now beg God’s pardon and yours for reading to you so much nonsense.’” But the best Broads, such as Maurice and Arnold, and a number of bishops and writers, were the strongest force for enlightenment and progress in the Church, he thought. The whole essay is interesting, as showing one view held by an able clergyman of the C. of E. a century ago. Well, I am glad those Tractarians won so much of their cause, so that usages then extreme are now generally accepted. When did the Church Times begin, I wonder? Not so early as my grandfather’s essay, as be enumerates some church papers, but not that. He wouldn’t have cared for it! Do you mind these divisions in the Church? I don’t think I do, so long as people are polite and tolerant and courteously anxious to make the best of other parties and not set themselves up. (It seems that some very High clergy—anyhow one—used, whenever they passed a dissenting chapel, to make the sign of the cross, as if they saw the evil one at hand. Not at all Christia
n.) But, apart from intolerance, people are so constituted, by nature and upbringing, that they must want to worship in different ways, as they want to read different books and hear different music; and heaven forbid that one should disapprove seriously of any serious worship, either the Quakers at meeting, or St. Thomas’s, Regent St. But one can greatly prefer one’s own type, and be grateful to my grandfather’s contemporaries who did so much to bring it about and make it accepted. When one thinks of the bad press they had then…. [sic]
4th Sept. (Feast of St. Rose of Viterbo). And I never reminded Canon Hood of her while I drove him to Mass! Nor, I fear, gave her a pious thought in church; how forgetful of me. It is a nice sunny warmish day; the Serpentine this morning was divine, with its smooth shimmer under the trees and soft sky, and its satiny ripples as I swam. How lovely September mornings can be! Can Father Benson really have meant that the Religious shouldn’t look at nature and like it? I don’t think he can.
I am looking at a Bampton Lectures [sic] about the Fall, trying to discover that doctrine’s career in the Church, and pre-Church. I suppose it arose out of the theory that God must have created man perfect. But how illogical, surely. If one held that, why not hold that he must still be creating men perfect. It all seems so divorced from reality. Shouldn’t there be more discarding and pruning of ancient beliefs, things believable by the Babylonians, Persians, Jews, and early and medieval Christians, but not really to-day? Our Lord doesn’t ever imply that man’s evil nature and deeds are due to a “fallen” state; man, he implies, must be redeemed from himself, not from the sins of Adam. Oh, if only He could come back to these spaces of the moon, just for a while, and clear things up!
On this wish I had better stop, and send my love.
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