Yours affectionately,
R.M.
20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1
10th September, 1951
Dear Father,
Thank you so much for your air paper posted 1st Sept. —most interesting to me, with your views about the dubious wisdom of the R.C. Liturgical Movement. I expect you must be right, about the majority of simple worshippers, though it might be very stimulating for educated young people; educated, but not perhaps knowing enough Latin to follow the Mass easily, and missing a good deal of it. Less and less, it seems, people do know Latin. And this might be a revelation to them. Of course a good deal of their missal is translated into English already. As you say, the translations will lose something, like so many of our collects. On the other hand, they will gain comprehensibility. I would much like to go to some Mass where they are trying it, if ever they do. Mightn’t it lead to a great revival of intelligent interest, and discount one of the advantages our Church has over the other, for which I should be sorry? I must try and talk to some R.C. about this. I don’t want us to forfeit any of our advantages!
I said to a young man the other day (a friend of mine, who is on the National Gallery staff) did he like clergymen? … He said promptly, “No, not much,” and added, “except Roman Catholic ones.” I asked why he preferred these. “They’re mostly more intelligent,” he replied. I said he didn’t know enough Anglican clergy, and probably had only met the average country parson, whereas the R.C. priests he came across were probably Jesuits, such as Fr. D’Arcy and Co., picked for their clever conversation. He agreed that this might be so. But I find this is a common view, and it’s rather a pity. There seems to be (I got this from Canon Hood) an Anglo-Catholic Progress campaign this October, for a week, when priests will travel the country brisking up the church and its members; I hope it will have results. I think … Canon Hood … [is] taking part in it. Another church event is, apparently, the jubilee of the Anglo-Catholic Ordinand Fund, when the Bishop of Oxford is to preach at 11.30 at Mass at All Saints. I might try and go and hear him; having read his Vision of God, I know I should be interested; having heard of him from you, too. Now there is the kind of highly intellectual bishop whom these young men ought to meet and talk with; it might change their views. I think I must try and be a go-between, in a slight way, between the clergy I know and the intelligent laity such as that. I was trying to explain last night, after dining with two young men friends (just back from Spain, where Fabled Shore had sent them), why I did believe in the Anglican church, and not only in the moral principles it embodies. Both are agnostics; but possibly the knowledge that a friend they quite like, and don’t regard as halfwitted, has such views, may be a tiny influence, who knows. One of them shares a house with a R.C. convert friend, of whom he is fond, but he shuts off that side of his friend as one impossible to hold intercourse with. Perhaps he particularly feels like this about the Roman church because he is the son of an Irish squire, who was shot by the rebels in 1921. And he mainly knows the protestant Church of Ireland in which he was reared.
11th Sept. Here I went to bed, it having become past midnight, and now it is next day, and lo, on my mat this morning when I returned from Mass was your air paper of the 7th. How nice. I’m glad you could make out my written screed begun on the Island. Good to be reminded that we have been corresponding now for a year. How right I was when I said I should always like to hear anything you said! I always have, and still do. Heavens, what results have followed! Not that I don’t feel just a little discouraged by your last letter for it makes me feel that you want me to behave as if I were very, very ancient. I am, of course; but I am really strong enough; I can walk for miles, go swimming every morning, even as late in the year as this (it was Jovely this morning), and get up early for Mass. Of course if I didn’t feel well enough, or had a cough or anything, I shouldn’t go out; I am pretty well brought up about such things, and fairly sensible. I hope the time for retiring into Religion-in-the-flat is still far ahead, even in winter, though of course if I am ill I should. Last winter was a bad one; I had flue twice, and it went to the lungs, and I don’t say I wasn’t ill. But I hope this winter nothing of that kind will happen, and that on Christmas morning you can think of me first at Mass [and] then breaking the ice on the Serpentine! As to a drink of tea first, I solve that question simply by having it, practically always; I wonder if I am wrong. … I don’t think I have ever thought it wrong, actually, though of course I know it is a church practice not to. And I can imagine how firm Dr. Darwell Stone would have been—no doubt was—about it. It makes a great difference to my powers of attention and alertness at the service, as well as physically. As to Religion-in-the-Flat, I know how important this is, whether one goes to church or not, and I am not good at it yet. Very bad at fencing off times; there always seems so much else to do. I see that Fr. Andrew says he values more than anything else his half hour of meditation after mass. I can’t get as much as that, either in church before going on to bathe, or after getting home, as it would throw my morning’s work too late. I suppose I spend about 10 minutes in church after the service, as a rule. Then the rest of the day is such a bustle; though I do try to get a little time in the evening, before going out to dinner if I am going; sometime between 7 and 9 if I’m not. I say prayers, and some psalms; and what riches to choose from! As I told you, I have a scrap book collected for use; a random collection of prayers in English and Latin, psalms or parts of psalms, and other things; and I try to read a bit of the N.T. appropriate to the general scheme. But it all gets crowded out too often; some days simply forgotten, other days put aside as too difficult, which is a mistake. When I have finished this very exacting book, I shall try and do better. And improve at mental prayer, I hope; I am very weak on this at present; scattered and shallow. I know I ought to practise it, both for its own sake, and in case I did have to stay at home through illness and join in Mass from a distance, though I should be very sorry for this….
Oh yes, we must be able to recognise one another in the street. I should you, in a moment. You have my passport photograph, my only quite recent one; but in case this isn’t enough for the purpose, I must look up some snap-shots, etc., and see if I have any (among my sister’s photographs) to send you; I am afraid [they are] over 10 years old—no, n or 12 probably—but better than nothing. Too sad if you met me walking down Memorial Drive and didn’t know me! Though, as I say, I should know you. And how lovely it would be to see you in the flesh again.
Yes, of course gender must come in to relationships; don’t you think it does even between parents and children, and brothers and sisters? Certainly it does between friends, I don’t think years make any difference to that; all they do is to get rid of sex in its strictly limited sense. I think it so happens that I have more men friends than women; and I am sure that their masculinity enhances the relationship. “Word after word has to conform”—yes, how right that is.
I have just remembered some photographs of myself taken about 1939, reading in my flat and gardening in my window-box outside it. I wonder if copies of these exist among my sister’s bundles of papers; I will look them up, and send them if I come on them. I have some of you that I value much. So expect a little packet some day. Meanwhile, if I am in Memorial Drive, or you in Hinde St. or its environs, I am tall, and (as you say) rather thin, my hair is still brown, and I will be wearing a brown suit with carnation in buttonhole, so look out for me. What a lot there would be to say. Not that we don’t get a good deal of it, on most subjects in heaven and earth, said in letters, at which I think we are both pretty good.
I shall think of you on Friday, tying up those children. I like these very young marriages; they can be boy and girl together for so long, which is fine. I do hope it will be very happy for always. As they are both Christians, it won’t meet with one of those early and piteous ends that come now to so many marriages happily begun. Anyhow, I hope they’ll never want this. “Two lovely children”—how nice that sounds. I was thinking whe
n first you told me of them, that girls now have more difficulties to contend with than I and my friends did when young. We, of course, had love affairs, flirtations, even broken-off engagements and such; and difficult it often was; but young men and girls for the last 25 years or so seem, from what they say, to go much further than we did, on quite slight acquaintanceship. I mean, some of them seem to mean by an “affair” nothing short of sleeping together, and this is taken, often, so casually, as lightly as we took a kiss. Two great friends of mine, now aged 38 and 35, and married 11 years, told me that they had quite a long “affair” before deciding to marry; and both had had others before. This is, or was, extremely normal; though never, I assume, among religious young people … Those I am talking about have no religious practice. It has been the great social change of the past 25 years or so. I suppose in America too. I wonder if you ever get girls who do that coming to confession; but I suppose if they did, it would mean they had turned over a new leaf, or wanted to. I mean, people wouldn’t just go on doing it and confessing it as if it was losing their tempers or fibbing, I suppose.
I can’t ever care a lot for Mary Webb myself, in spite of Mr. Baldwin. As you say, there is something unreal about her books. I like the descriptions of the country (Worcestershire), but the people are rather bogus.
Re Fall—I will soon know all about it, from that big book I have got from the Library. I will also read St. Augustine.
Now I must go out. I am reading Frs. Benson and Andrew with immense interest. It was good of you to give them me. Really, when I think of all you’ve done for me … [sic] Well, my love and thanks.
Always your affectionate
R.M.
20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.I
20th September, 1951
Dear Father,
Your air paper of 16th [has] just come, greeting me when I came in from an afternoon grubbing in the B[ritish] M[useum]; thank you so much for it. I had, by the way, a nice picture p.c. from Father Pedersen from Rome, saying Italy was a glorious land, and Florence his favourite city. Mine is Venice—or I think so. I don’t see how there could be another like it. Did you see the comment of the Russian ballerina (Stalin prizewinner) who was there the other day? There seemed, she said, to have been recent floods, and the houses still stood in water. Also, there were no vehicles to be seen in the streets, and all was very primitive. No doubt Pravda was delighted to print this account of a backward capitalist country. I am glad Fr. Pedersen is enjoying his travels; I expect he gets on very well with the people everywhere.
I am glad your wedding is safely accomplished; it must have been, as Fr. P. would put it, rather a chore, however delightful; all that journeying and bustle and strain.
I am glad you knew Fr. Andrew. He sounds the most delightful person; so ready to adapt himself to all kinds of correspondents, and give them advice of the most sensible kind. Real understanding and imaginative sympathy; and humour too. No wonder he was loved. It is interesting trying to construct, from his answers, the kind of situations his correspondents had written to him of. I don’t think I could have sent all those letters from him for publication in a book; some of them seem too private, and, though veiled by anonymity, one would know that some of one’s friends and relations would recognise things in them. But people feel differently about such things, of course. Fortunately; or we should have lost a great many valuable letters from spiritual writers in the past—St. Francis de Sales, Père de Caussade, Fénelon, and so many more.
So the election is now upon us, and will make a fuss and splutter for the next month. Rather a bore; but it’s time they threw in their hands.1 I think they’ll get in again, and probably with a good-sized majority this time; their propaganda will be that the Tories will whittle away at the Health Service, lower wages, raise dividends, spare the rich at the expense of the poor. And there is some truth in it, of course. Not that the Tories will dare (or want) to touch the Health Service, except perhaps by making a few things payable-for, or partly. But they will want to reduce direct taxation, and won’t be so indulgent to wage claims, and they’ll run the country at less financial loss. I don’t want them, or trust them. I want no one but the Liberals, and those I fear we shall never have again. I have a bet of 2/-with Mr. Jones, my dairy shop (of course an ardent Welsh liberal), that we shall send back fewer Liberals than last time; he thinks more. I think the great majority of working people will reject the Tories, and rightly, from their point of view. Except that I think Labour will drive on to the rocks our whole economy soon, and that will be bad for every one. I shan’t take any part in Liberal campaigning this time; I am much too busy, and anyhow have come to see Liberal candidates as mere deposit-losers. Now I have just heard a Conservative party broadcast from Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe; he talked about nationalisation, housing, ending the class war; all quite sound. The class war, such as it is, is a particularly unpleasant Socialist stunt. I wish Archbp. Temple was still at Canterbury; he was politically and socially so good…. And surely the Church should take some part in res publica.
I have been reading an interesting book; a new translation, by Father Caraman, the editor of the Month, of the autobiography of John Gerard the Jesuit,2 who was sent here on the English Mission just after the Armada, and related his experiences in Latin (MS. at Stonyhurst and Rome) at the end of his life. I remember the former translation, published about 1880; this one reads more briskly. It is a thrilling tale of secret going about the country in lay dress, talking about falconry, etc., to unsuspecting country gentlemen, living in Catholic houses, converting and. saying Mass, hiding in secret chambers when the pursuivants called and searched, being captured, taken to prison, and tortured, and finally escaping from the Tower by a rope over the moat. He must have been a very persuasive missionary, for he made many conversions, and induced Catholic squires and their wives or widows to give him hospitality for months on end, at risk of their own freedom. What is lacking in the book is any hint of the political background, of the papal bull absolving Englishmen of their allegiance to the crown, and of the fact that the persecutions were really started by that. I have been reviewing this book for the Spectator. If it would interest you to read it (the book, I mean) I will send it to you.
I have also been reading Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, which you mentioned to me some time ago, and which has now been published here. It isn’t good; much less so than The Heart of the Matter. The people are all rather low types, and not convincing. And the religion in it (such as it is) is brought down to a very trivial plane by two rather absurd miracles at the end, which are supposed to show the heroine’s sanctity, though there are no other signs of this. As … remarked the other day when I met him in the Times bookshop, she did not seem a promising candidate for canonisation. He doesn’t care for the book; I shouldn’t, if I were R.C. It gives a trivial picture of the faith. … I don’t think you’d like this book; I think you hadn’t read it when you wrote to me of it.
I looked up some photographs for you (snaps and others) and found a few duplicates, which I will send along sometime, if you’d like to feel more sure to recognise me. In any case, they might amuse you—if, among your many scrap books, you keep a scrap book of such oddments. I feel pleased that you would like to see them; I like to have yours, as you know.
I read in some book lately that one shouldn’t talk to people before Mass, but keep silence and think. And here have I, when I have driven Canon Hood (as I did 3 or 4 times last week …), been chattering brightly away to him all the way, about this and that. I hope he didn’t mind! He chatted back, but perhaps from politeness. I must ask him next time if he likes talking— no, perhaps not, it would look awkward, since we have been talking all this time. I won’t begin it next time, but will leave him to if he wants to. I feel I am such a raw recruit that I might easily blunder. Do you think people do mind? Well, at least he gets a lift. I like him very much. I wonder if that A[nglo-] C[atholic] Progress Campaign in October will be interfered with by the election.
/> I will get The English Inheritance1 from the library. I am looking about for a book of daily prayers (different ones for each day of the week), which is dignified, restrained, a mixture of collects, readings, ancient and new prayers (to which I could add some Latin ones and others). Prayers not too devotionally sweet, gushing, counter-reformationish, abject, popish, mariolatrous, Faberish—you know what I mean, and what I don’t like and find embarrassing. I wonder what the best book is. I remember of old one called Sursum Corda,2 which I think was good. Then it might have a few sign-posts for meditation, which I should find useful. … I have the offices, of course, and the arrangement for an order which I put together on your suggestions; but this other book would provide more prayers for different days. To-morrow is St. Matthew’s day. 21st. Or rather, to-day is. So lovely it was this morning early. The Serpentine very cool: but most beautiful; steel-colour blue, with great swans swimming about, sometimes raising their wings and half flying, half dashing, over the water; the trees tipped with gold; a cavalcade of black horses and soldier riders trotting in formation down the row; the sky pale grey-blue, the sun tipping the ripples with light; I can’t tell you; it was poetry, swimming alone there among the swans. I shall be sorry when it gets really too cold for this. To-day the sun shines coolly, but shines. I suppose you have lovely Fall weather now.
Those books: Fr. Pedersen didn’t say they were from him, but from you. I thanked him much for getting and bringing them, but not for giving them. Still, no matter; the behest was yours, if the cash his. He paid for that whole evening, theatre, supper and all, generous man. Has the S.S.J.E. ever produced a Father not generous, good and full of human kindness? Probably not; it probably can’t. It must be either the system, or the kind of character that takes to such a life. Both, no doubt.
Don’t mind about not commenting on all I say, ever. I just babble on, by way of talking, because I like to tell you things, and should never think that, because you didn’t comment, you hadn’t heard. It is the same the other way round.
Letters to a Friend Page 19