Letters to a Friend

by Constance Babington Smith

  I tried again this morning to get Tudor England, but they’ve not yet got it in. It will be here before Christmas, though. Meanwhile I am reading Ronald Knox’s Enthusiasm. A good account of religious queer sects; written with sympathy and a lot of knowledge. But I can never be deeply interested in Shakers, Muggletonians, and their kind. He begins quite early, and includes the Catholic heretical sects of the Middle Ages. Not Margery,1 though she was certainly an enthusiast in his sense; but not a heretic, of course. I don’t feel attracted by any of these people, they all seem rather too hysterical.

  I hope you are going to have a nice Christmas, like me. I suppose, unlike me, yours will be all snow, like a Christmas card (at least, we hope unlike me, but there are still 10 days to go), I hope this letter won’t be over-weight; because, besides the Xmas card, I am putting in yet another little photograph, as you collect them. This pudding-faced tot (of which there are several copies in my mother’s old album) seems to be 14 months old; no help in recognising to-day (if she should walk by).

  Your affectionate

  R.M.

  I am being given a pair of rubber swimming fins—they shoot you through the water at a great pace, fixed on the heels. Wont that be nice!

  20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1

  Christmas Eve [1951] † [Postmark: London W.I. 27 Dec]

  Dear Father,

  I am writing this before the midnight Mass, having put off driving down to my sister’s till to-morrow morning, owing to it being a very dark wet evening, not too good for driving out of London among Christmas Eve traffic, with the dim lighting the streets now have. So I am staying here to-night, going to Grosvenor Chapel for midnight Mass, and driving to Essex in the morning. It is a very cool, wet, gusty old English Christmas. Probably you have crisp snow and low temperatures, and a real New England Christmas.

  Thank you so much for your air paper of 14th, which was your Christmas letter. Mine was posted to you about 15th Dec, I think; (air). Yours (posted 15th) arrived this morning, and interests me much. I read all J. C. P[owys]’s autobiography, with great interest. Yes, he certainly had, and felt he had, a mission to the world. (Why do I put it in the past? No doubt he still does.) Now I should like to see a Life of him by someone else, someone who knows him well, and get another view of him. It is interesting, that contrast between people’s own view of themselves and the view of them held by other people. (See Oliver Wendell Holmes on The Three Johns—the real John known only to his Maker; John’s John, never the real one; and Thomas’s John, never the real one either. All 3 are important.) I loved to hear of the “little river” at Northwold1, and the boat. There were both in the garden of my Conybeare uncle and cousins at Barrington, near Cambridge, and when we stayed there it was as romantic as you found it; I fell in, I remember. Nothing is more glamorous than a bit of river running through the garden. Horace had the Digentia. I expect he had a boat, too. I’m glad J.C.P. wasn’t really unkind about the nettlebed.

  I wonder so much how you are spending Christmas Eve and Day. I suppose you are 3 or 4 hours behind us, and are perhaps now having tea. Or perhaps hearing confessions. I got mine over last Friday. And for a week have been running round with cards, parcels, all the Christmas litter. The jam in the streets has been terrific. Why is humanity so excessive in the way it does things? The golden mean seems out of fashion. Hence the decease of the Liberal Party, and also of the Guardian,2 which kept, I suppose, the via media between High and Low Church … The Modern Churchman was deploring its death; of course it prefers it to the Church Times, with its Anglo-Catholicism (“sometimes disloyal,” theM.C. points out); still, I fancy the Guardian was a little dull, perhaps.

  This letter is really to wish you a happy New Year, which I do, so much. And so many more of them. I do like to know and feel you there, across the dividing salty sea, taking me sometimes with you into the sancta sanctorum. So long as you do that, I don’t feel very much harm can hold me for long together. I am reading The Problem of Pain, which interests me. C. S. L[ewis] is a little slapdash, perhaps, but vivid and impressive, and has good images. Now I must pack my bag for to-morrow, and get some supper. Good night. Thank you for a wonderful year, dear Father.

  Yours with my love,

  R.M.

  1952

  January

  20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1

  2nd January, 1952 †

  Dear Father,

  Thank you so very much for your air letter posted 27th Dec. and begun on Christmas Eve, acknowledging mine that enclosed my Xmas card, infant photograph, and Ch[urch] Times Gerard review. I sent you an air paper from Romford, where I spent Xmas and Boxing Day. It is rather restful to have Xmas over, it is such a rush; but I was very happy. It was such a good midnight Mass. Why, by the way, don’t churches that are at all high have New Year’s Eve Mass—watch night, they call it at the churches that have it? Some ecclesiastical principle seems to be involved; but I can’t think what. I think it is a pity. People like New Year’s Day, and take it seriously, often, thinking things over and taking stock and making resolutions. We always did this in my family, and I certainly do now. It seems one of those natural, as distinguished from church, seasonal days, that have deep roots, and I think should be used. Of course a lot of people prefer to merry-make, and see the year in with babble and revel and wine; but many others like to pray. I suppose Anglo-Catholics don’t have watch night services because R.C.s don’t; but why don’t both? … Did you have it as a boy in Norfolk? When we were children in Italy, we didn’t, of course; anyhow we were sent to bed before midnight. But my father always read aloud the part of In Memoriam about “Ring out, wild bells.” Then, after we lived in England, the waits came round and sang and rang handbells, and all the bells for miles round rang. It really is an occasion. … I see you say you don’t really like even Xmas midnight Mass. I do; there is something beautiful and mysterious in its being at dead of night, and the new year stealing in. And now it’s well in, and I wish you such a happy one, with all my heart. Health, and joy, and every good thing possible.

  I am interested in what you say about Fr. Wilkins’s suggestion that I should compile a collection of Brief Prayers. If ever I did, it would have to be anon. … I could only compile such a book freely if I was Anon. Perhaps, after some years of collecting and sifting, I could. I absolutely agree with all your views as to what such prayers should be. Dignified, finely worded, often Latin, often archaic; when modern and vernacular, very restrained and austere and elegantly put. How interesting it might be, choosing prayers for occasions—as you say, not specifically mentioning the occasions, but suited to them. Yes. Ps. 119 could alone almost meet most occasions; what a treasure-house it is. I shall now add to my Scraps “Benedictas Dominus die quotidie … Domini, Domini, exitus mortis.”1 It is more interesting and beautiful than the English “escape death”; because it includes the exit of death in what is His, not merely the escape from it. Your rendering turns it a better way up altogether, and I shall say it like that; it has more religion and more poetry. You know, that verse is one people might say when in danger —one could have used it during the bombing; when driving one’s car or ambulance along dark streets with those things thundering down and flames leaping to the skies. I was frightened once or twice; but not often or very much, not, I suppose, being constitutionally particularly nervous about such things. I know some people were far more frightened—and therefore, of course, braver in enduring it. But the exitus mortis would be good in any case.

  Do you believe that it is any use praying that someone (such as my friend who had her cornea changed for another) may see again properly? (She is progressing quite well, I think.) I mean, can one pray for purely physical results like that? I know they did in the Gospels, but then physical cures were then part of the business of showing that He was Christ. I do pray about such things, illness, etc.; one can’t help it; but I wonder how much use it is. Perhaps one can’t know that. Anyhow, one has to do it, for one’s own comfort. But there are, of
course, all sorts of “emergency” prayers which one can use, which don’t ask for specific results.

  I often wonder what was the state of mind of those Catholic secular priests under Elizabeth, whom you speak of. I suppose some of them were left pretty much alone, in country districts, so long as they didn’t obtrude themselves. Certainly some were kept as chaplains by the recusant gentry. But sometimes they would get into trouble. They were much put about, no doubt, by the Bull of Excommunication, which made their position so difficult. And I expect they looked rather doubtfully on the “Jesuited Papists,” as the missioners from abroad were called, with their Roman rites and even new pronunciation of church Latin, and transmontane views on church government and pro-Spanish bias. I suppose the more prominent Catholics were imprisoned (if Bishops) and weeded out from the Universities, and those who were left unmolested would be laxer—often not even recusants, but conforming Church Papists, believing in the old religion but not bothering to sacrifice much for it. Perhaps, do you think, the zealous seminarists on their Mission woke the consciences of some of them, and exasperated others. What one would like to know is how long it took Catholics to be absorbed, as most were, in the new church, and what they really felt about it. Sometimes it took two generations, sometimes more. How exciting a flashback to Elizabethan life would be; and the religious aspect most exciting of all. Could one have joined the Elizabethan church, or wouldn’t it have seemed too desolately impoverished? Later, in the 17th century, it would have been possible. And of course there was always Cranmer’s Prayer Book with its translated liturgy, which must have seemed beautiful, surely, except to those invincibly set against the vernacular….

  Yes; the Great O’s1 certainly should be among our Brief Prayers. Or some of them. O Sapientia, O Clavis David, O Oriens (the best, I think). I only know by heart O Oriens; that I often say.

  I don’t know where those words of S. Augustine are; they are in the best classical tradition—Cicero or Marcus Aurelius might have said them. I must read De Civitate again. The Confessions I read through early last year while in bed with flue. I think many Brief Prayers might be got from him. (You see I am becoming rather taken by this scheme.) But would Latin do for the majority of possible users of the compilation? It seems less and less known, unfortunately. I was shocked to hear even a young priest, who sometimes helps at the Chapel, say lately that he scarcely knew any. How did he get where he is, or through his examinations? On the other hand, I met last night a most cultivated young ordinand … who knows all he ought. Cuddesdon seems to produce the best types, don’t you think? Before that, he was Trinity, Cambridge, before that, Eton. His parents live in a beautiful medieval house in Majorca.

  Is Bright and Medd’s Latin trans, of Lighten our Darkness the same as the original in the Sarum office? I haven’t got the latter—and I don’t know if this collect is in the Breviary. The Breviary Epiphany collect is better than the P.B. trans. Trouble with the B. is that it has no index and takes a lot of hunting to find a particular thing—unless I have one of your admirably accurate signposts (such as you gave me to find the O’s). I think

  I shall index my 4 little vols., by degrees, entering things as I find them. I wish I had more time for things. I am pressed on by my Ruins book all the time. Resolve for 1952 to finish it within 2 months!

  My love for 1952 again. Thank you for making it to be what it is to me—this beginning of another year.

  Always yours,

  R.M.

  (Mathew has a short a.)

  20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1

  12th January, 1952 †

  Dear Father,

  Thank you for your delightful letter begun on New Year’s Eve and posted 3rd Jan. And for sending me that really lovely photograph of you standing in the forest glade at Foxborough1; I like it better than any I have of you, and have stood it on my bedroom bureau; later it shall have a little frame to keep it clean.

  I can’t pretend to explain the date on the postmark of my air paper written on Xmas Eve. I don’t now remember when (or where) I posted it; but I agree with you that a 2-days’ passage seems incredible. Yours, posted on 3rd, reached me, I think, on the 8th. Life in the air is highly unreliable, it seems.

  You drew my attention to a lot of interesting matters in your letter. I sent for Pax from its publishers (at Prinknash— now, it seems, called St. Michael’s Abbey, Farnborough—no, I see it can’t be, since Prinknash is in Glos.; but anyhow Pax is now published there.)2 I found the Eirenicism article3 v. interesting. Searching about for more about John Barnes,4 I found an acid comment by Dom Bennet Weldon,5 saying that Barnes’s project was “to mince the Catholic truths that the Protestants might digest them without choking; and so likewise to prepare the Protestant errors that Catholic stomachs might not loathe them. He was hard at work on this project 1625-6.” It seems that Barnes died a prisoner of the Inquisition, in Rome. Obadiah Walker,6 on the contrary, died a prisoner of the English gov[ernment], in the Tower. So both these mediators copped it, from opposite sides. Walker, over whose rooms in Univ. undergraduates wrote,

  “ Oh old Obadiah

  Sing Ave Maria,” etc.

  maintained that “my principles are not wholly agreeable with the doctrine of the Romanish church”—but they were certainly much less so with the C. of E. It is interesting that people on both sides were at work even then to reconcile the two churches. Laud, of course, would have liked to; but he didn’t get down to it, he was too busy reforming the C. of E. at home. I am glad Dom Gregory Rees thinks “Roman fever” abated; I don’t notice it myself, anyhow among the laity; but I expect he means among clergy, and I think here he is probably right. My experience is very little use, as it is only lately that I have mixed much in clerical or church circles and heard talk about it; but it does seem to me that there is an increasing self-confidence and independence among High Church Anglicans, and an increased pleasure in their own way of worship. I wonder what you think, and what all these Fathers who visit you from Cowley think, about that. Novels are still largely full of the view that if its characters turn religious, it must be R.C. they turn. But novels are mostly written by very ignorant people. Oh dear, ignorance is so odd, I mean it is so gross…. And a R.C. friend of mine who lives in Madrid, and whom I have been seeing lately here, assured me that we didn’t [have a form for private absolution], and [that] the C. of E. never had, since the Reformation, believed in valid sacraments, e.g. Communion. I quoted what our catechism says about it, “verily and indeed,” etc., and indeed what is to be found even in the Articles, and showed him a passage I was reading in Law’s “Spirit of Prayer”,1 which asserts very uncompromisingly that we receive the Body and Blood of Christ; and he was convinced, but surprised. We know much more about their church than they about ours.

  I too read that C[hurch] T[imes] article about C. S. Lewis, and was induced by it to get some of his books from the Library. I found them interesting—more so than I had thought. He is very much in earnest about goodness. He certainly has no “Roman nostalgia.” My own is very superficial, and wholly connected with memories of the dear Italian churches of my childhood, processions, etc. I know that I couldn’t be happy, or honest, or religious, in the Unreformed Church; there would always be too much of what it teaches that I simply don’t can’t and don’t want to believe. I notice this when I follow Mass in The English Missal, which is really a translation from the Breviary, I think; it has so many prayers, secrets, propers, saints, expressions, which I don’t really say, nor could; they seem—what shall I say—overdone; excessive, sometimes sentimental. What I like is the large altar Missal used for Mass at the Chapel (of which there are no small copies, I think) and of course the P[rayer] B[ook], on which I agree with Sir Leoline Jenkins,1 who wrote in the reign of Charles II “How excellent the composition is … how excellent the matter, the method, and the decorum of the whole liturgy. So that neither Rome nor Muscovy, Osburgh nor Amsterdam, have anything in the public services that can enter into comparison with it.
”2 Though when I am abroad and go into churches there I do feel a certain wistfulness. But nothing to what one would have felt a century ago, of course.

  I don’t want a celibate clergy. Not only for selfish reasons— the self-preservation you suggest, for, as you say, you and I wouldn’t be here—but I don’t think it would be so good. It would keep the clerical element too much segregated, not pervasive, as we have always had it here—and when one thinks what the clergy families have supplied to the national life…. [sic] I think the celibate English clergy are the salt of the earth—but there is also the earth, which needs leavening. As to gentility, I fear that minishes decade by decade; fewer and fewer of the genteel seem to take orders; and perhaps in 50 years (unless the wheel turns) they will be a democratic company like the apostles, with never an “Oxford accent” between them. Who knows? No, I suppose there will always be some. But on the whole we should be like the Italian or Irish priesthood in class. And what about in morals? That would depend, of course, on how many became priests from real vocation, how many just for a job.