Letters to a Friend

by Constance Babington Smith

  Well, so much for family history. We are under snow here; not deep, but it covered the streets when I drove out at 8 this morning. But now the sun has appeared, and it should melt it. You, in your New England winter, wouldn’t hardly call it snow at all. I lunched yesterday with T. S. Eliot, of whom I am very fond; he has a great sense of humour besides his other gifts, and I always like seeing him. He was saying that he feels affected when he visits his American relations and friends, because he says tomahto, and they, of course, tomayto. But he was taught tomahto, he says, in his Philadelphian (or was it New England?) childhood, for some reason. Do many Americans, especially in New England, pronounce it in this English way, I wonder? He says, very few. His parents must have been aping the English. His family went to America in 1667, and perhaps never stopped “tomahto.”

  Later. By afternoon post has come your letter of 7th and 8th— good! So you remembered “Vaughan” for yourself. The only thing you didn’t remember was how “Rose” came in, and now I have told you that. But were you also related to the Vaughans? It seems like it; how odd, if so. But I would rather you turned out a Rose, please. “150 years ago” takes us back to the vicar of Carshalton, or perhaps only to him of Rothley; I don’t know their dates. I am sorry about that letter from Fr. Pedersen that I never got. Do tell him so. As to kindness when he was here, that was entirely his, and most generous it was, and much I enjoyed it. I am glad you and he are interested in what I reported from that Brittain book. If I can get a copy I will send it you; but it seems out of print; I will try and pick it up 2nd hand; it is quite small. Yes, he mentions that order from Rome about pronunciation. I have never learnt the old English way myself. I like to think of you struggling at Mass not to be a diabolo incarnato!1 I shall attend a service at St. James’s, Spanish Place, round the corner, and listen to those diaboli incarnati there pronouncing their stuff. The last ditchers as to talking anglicé will be the lawyers and judges, who are very staunch about it.

  What you say about our young Elizabeth shames my impatience with all this “inflation.” Of course you are right, and we do feel with her and for her, and certainly pray for her. Everyone feels so much attached to her that she will feel supported and loved. King George’s coffin now lies in state, and miles of queue trail along the neighbouring streets all day and night to see it. How cold they must be! No, I don’t think my sex is really as tough as yours (if one can generalize on so individual a point). I think the heavy, cold, exhausting work that many working men (including miners) do, and the life of soldiers in the field, would kill many women, and utterly exhaust most. Women live longer, for some reason, as a rule, but they are more often ill and absent from work, and get much more exhausted with standing, for instance. Schoolgirls can’t usually play games so hard and so much as boys without ill effects, I believe. Also they are nervously less tough, surely. But of course one can’t generalize. You were probably not tough at all; and lots of girls are. Girls are certainly on the whole much less brave about pain and danger; they seem to mind them more. But what a shame to give small boys such hardships at school. “Cold and starvation”—it makes me angry to hear of it. How can people be so cruel? Thank you for saying “Rose.” I like it, and, if we are cousins, it is more than ever suitable. Yes, you are quite right about my chapel … God must have directed me there. With it… here, and you there, I am indeed fortunate, and if I fail to thrive and grow, it will be no one’s fault but my own. However I pronounce Latin, I am Anglican profoundly —born and bred to it, the heir to it, and now well in it once more. Nothing else would do. And it must be of this particular type—no more “gew-gaws” and no fewer. All this dignity and beauty—plus the Latin prayers I owe to you—what riches!

  My love always,

  R.M.

  20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1

  19th February, 1952 †

  Dear Father,

  Now we really are getting on. Before your letter (posted 15 th) arrived this afternoon, to cheer my convalescence from slight and brief flue (I am up but not yet out) there came this morning a most interesting and gratifying missive from your cousin (and mine) Miss Barham Johnson of the Norwich Training College, enclosing an admirable genealogy of your Rose and Vaughan and Livius ancestry. I have written back sending her a copy of the one I had from Dorothea Conybeare, which I here enclose for you.1 It adds a little to the other; between the two, we now perceive and know that you and I are 4th cousins, which delights me. It doesn’t seem absolutely established that Canon Vaughan was related to his wife, or to you, but this seems probable; as Dorothea C. observes, our family has extremely often married cousins (tho’ not so excessively as yours). Anyhow, our relationship thro’ the Roses is firm. With your admirable memory of 1889, you are probably right in thinking that the old Canon told you about your Vaughan, as well as Rose, connections. And to think that we had all that correspondence about the Livii without realising that George Livius was my great-great-great-uncle by marriage! Your kind cousin says she will, when next in London, show me some letters from my great-great-aunt Charlotte Rose to her cousin Maria Johnson. In return, I said I would look up some letters from my great-grandmother Lydia Babington, of which there is somewhere a packet, and very nice they are. Some of them might throw a light on other of our common relations; she is, it seems, often mentioned in her sister-in-law Charlotte’s letters.

  Well, so there we are, and very nice too. Now for your letter, written before you got my air paper of 13th. Your letters are good for me in every kind of way. For one thing, you set me looking into interesting matters some of which thus occur to me for the first time, others on which I have speculated myself. “Compunction” is in the former class. I think your meaning of piercing or pricking was probably in Bede’s mind. After all, there wasn’t necessarily much contrition in C[aedmon]’s story of Genesis, Exodus, the Creation, the Fall, all the drama of Redemption, and all his other Biblical tales; tho’ of course there was that too. But they pierced the hearts and souls and consciences of those who heard them. And “compunction” had that active, sometimes physical, meaning in English, tho’ now no more. You mention a large nail puncturing my front tyre (not, I may say, an example I much relish), and I find in the O[xford] Diet., under “In physical sense,” another nail, also ill employed. “A sharpe naile, with which they prick the horse … such compunctions will even cause the best horse to plunge” (1617). And in Blount’s Glossography (1656) “A pricking, or stitch.” And Sir Thomas Browne, in Pseudodoxia, has “smoke of sulphur, that acide and piercing spirit which with such activity and compunction invadeth the brains and nostrils of those that receive it.” There was also the adjective “compungent”—as now we have “pungent.” Did you refer to Cassell’s? I see it has, under Compungo, “to prick, pierce on all sides,” and a quote from Cicero about “ipsi se compungunt suis acuminibus.”1 So perhaps Caedmon’s “carmina compunctiva” were piercing as well as contrite and suave. I have never actually found them so very much myself, tho’ they have charm. I prefer Cynewulf, who has more sense of a scene—green grass and birds and flowers. But it was a day when the great epic of Man’s Redemption held the literary field. I must look up the use of “compunction” in the Imitation. I think it is a very fine metaphor, that of piercing the conscience, for indeed that is what most poignantly occurs. So I am glad you have suggested that sense of the word; it gives it a new intensity.

  As to “Gentility”, the odd opposition of its meanings comes out well in Bishop Jewel’s2 remark that “The Heathens in their rude Gentility thought that Bacchus and Ceres had first found out the use of Bread and Wine.” “The Vaine opinions of the Gentilitee,” too. “Genteel” in English (not “Gentile”) has suffered some curious changes of meaning. It was, only a century ago, complimentary; “A very genteel young man,” or woman, meant, as it did with Jane Austen, one with gentlemanly or gentlewomanly manners and breeding. But now (largely pulled down by H. W. Fowler) it is applied to the class between high and low; it is “genteel ”to say “su
fficient” instead of enough, “serviette,” “preserve” for jam, “wealthy” for rich, “photo,” a thousand more such genteelisms; Fowler is full of them. (No, not “photo”; that is merely low.) A rather snob campaign of ridicule goes on against these, which, tho’ often amusing (I have often taken part in it, adding words and phrases to the taboo list —John Betjeman has lately composed a poem bringing in most of them), is really perhaps a pity, and only exacerbates class war. It isn’t, in fact, very good manners or gentle. And just now, when class feeling is rather irritable, and both the Poor and the Genteel are up in arms when they hear an educated accent (they think it “affected,” but never suggest what those brought up to use it should do about it—it really would sound affected to put on Cockney or Lancashire instead, even if we could), much better not make fun of one another’s phrases or accents or habits. Well, we are all Gentiles (except when we are Jews), and some of us are Genteel, and some Gentle (not that we don’t use “genteel” about the educated classes, in fun; you and I both do that at times).

  Thank you for that 1935 photograph. I like it very much; tho’ still not so much as that one (the good one) taken in the woods last year, which stands on my writing bureau. But I like to have this. The bad one in the woods I threw away, not thinking it like you. What I would like is a nice drawing of you. You would draw well.

  Thank you too for “Hora Novissima” which is a wonderful hymn. Did Neale translate the whole 3000 lines? Bits of it, of course, are in The English Hymnal—and how oddly jumbled up! Bits thrown in from other parts of the hymn—the order all wrong—and so much pure Neale added. I suppose he wanted just to get the general sense, and use the actual words as jumping-off grounds. How much better “Hora Novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus, Ecce minaciter imminet arbiter ille supremus, Imminet, imminet.…” is than “The world is very evil, the times are waxing late, be sober and keep vigil, the judge is at the gate.” It means the same, but lacks the majesty and urgency. I am very glad to have this hymn, and shall keep it with the ioo Best.

  I am glad to have that list of late Latin texts. Those I have already seen are Disciplina Clericalis, and the Travels of Silvia or Etheria,1 which are very pleasing; she must have been a most vigorous and eager and attractive tourist, and how she did get about! Now that I have the names, I shall easily find them in the Library when I am able to get there, which should be almost at once now. I ascertained that Latin in Church (Brittain) is out of print,2 but I asked Mowbrays to advertise for it, and if it should turn up I will have them send it you. There is, of course, a great deal in it that I didn’t refer to, and it all interested me. Yes, language as spoken changes all the time, and don’t you think specially English? … Now, not feeling too good yet, I shall retire to bed (it is evening). I miss my daily Mass, and have a superstitious feeling that anything may happen on the days I don’t go. However, nothing in particular has. Actually very nice things, like the discovery of our cousinhood, and today’s letter from you. Love from your affectionate 4th cousin

  R.M.

  I do feel pleased about that!

  20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1

  23rd February, 1952 †

  Dear Father,

  To-day came your letter posted 18th; thank you so much for it. I wrote last Monday to tell you that I had heard from your cousin that we are 4th cousins, which seems to me delightful, and enclosed a little genealogy sent me by Dorothea Conybeare. Now I have looked at her letter again, and see she says “Edward Vaughan’s father was Vicar of St. Martin’s Leicester, and was a brother of C. J. Vaughan, Headmaster of Harrow, etc.” So this last was Canon Vaughan’s uncle, not father.1 I have been remembering that I believe there was a photograph in my mother’s old family album of Uncle Edward Vaughan, as well as of Aunt Mary—did he, when you met him, wear a beard rather under his chin, not over his mouth, and a small skull-cap? I think this old clergyman in the album was Uncle E.V. Under him (whoever he was) my grandmother, who had an interesting habit of captioning her photographs with lines of poetry, had written two Tennysonian lines “Kind like a man was he, And like a man too would have his way.” Great-aunt Mary looked rather a charming old lady—as my grandmother also did. Of course you are related to all those Vaughans, or the old Canon wouldn’t have talked about them to you in the governess cart, nor Aunt Cecie about the Doves. And I think I must be too, so in that case we are doubly related (you and I, I mean).

  I don’t know why you call your 1st page garrulous and irrelevant; it is, as a matter of fact, all to our point, which is the investigation of these family matters, and which is developing so promisingly. Thank you also for your other interesting matters, about the S.M.T. books,2 for instance, which I can certainly now trace easily in the L[ondon] L[ibrary]. I haven’t been out yet since I got this flue, but am now up and busy, and (as you see) tapping away, and shall I think go to mid-day, tho’ not early, Mass to-morrow, Sunday. Quite time too. After that I shall start my early exits again. The weather has turned (unlike that of Cambridge, Mass.) mild and agreeable, and I feel really all right again, and can start Lent in a seemly manner. But no, I must own to you that I am starting it in an unseemly manner, by having inadvertently promised over the telephone a few days ago to go out to dinner with the Stephen Spenders on Ash Wednesday. I only remembered some time later that this was the date, and of course it is unseemly. They don’t know it’s Ash Wed[nesday] and wouldn’t care if they did, but I ought to have. No day for socialia gaudia. I must try and make amends and the sanctum Evangelium digne intimare.1 Yes, that is a good prayer to say; I think I must keep a copy in my car. Oh dear; this living life in two such different climates is complicated, and I don’t do it well. One is too much entangled in one’s past, and bogged in its ways. The wrong well. Please, dear Father, go on saying that prayer for me {in mantis tuas illam commendo, I mean) and I will say the other for myself. I need them all, so badly.

  Do you feel that people, particularly in crowds, are getting rather frightening? Or perhaps they always were. Mob hysteria seems to attack them so often and so violently, and they crowd round film personalities they see getting married, climb on to the bonnets of their car, shriek like Maenads, and block the traffic completely, so that police have to clear a way for the wretched victims. And the other day, when during the two minutes’ silence for the King’s funeral, two absent-minded people went on walking in Fleet St., the mob chased them when the silence ended, shouting “Throw him under a bus!” “Put him in the Thames,” etc., etc. I believe the two people were terrified, especially the woman, who finally called a policeman to protect her (we aren’t so tough, you see). But wasn’t such persecution shocking, and aren’t crowds rather dreadful. “Méjìez-vous de la foule! “said André Gide, and he was right. Are they as hysterical in your Continent? I suppose this mass hysteria has always been with us; it crops up all through history, and has taken many forms. The French revolution mobs shouting for the guillotine; the Jews shouting “Crucify Him!”; the wild religious revivalists of the Middle Ages; the Jacquerie; the anti-Jewish pogrom crowds yelling against Jews; to-day football crowds trampling one another to death at the gates; and all these terrible film fans screaming. I suppose there is a deep potential excitement in human nature, like a wild animal, and being surrounded by a crowd unleashes it, and out it leaps, feeding on the excitement of its neighbours and growing madder and madder, till people are chased and lynched, or chased and kissed, and there are yells for blood and war, and anything may happen. Yet individually the mob are probably ordinary quite decent and kindly people. How horrible a thing it would be to be at their mercy, when they turn into a pack of baying wolves. O Sapiential What are we made of? How can God endure us? And now we are preparing to try our ghastly new weapons of death somewhere, so as to perfect them.

  My thoughts seem to have foundered rather into uneasy and stormy seas. Perhaps it is flue, or rather post-flue. And now I had better go to bed.

  Sunday (Quinq[uagesima]). Well, I have been out to church, and it
is a nice bright mild day. I see that R. Knox translates agape (sorry my typewriter can’t emit Greek letters) by charity, like the Authorized] V[ersion]. I think the R[evised] V[ersion] is more accurate with “love,” according to modern usage; but the old sense of caritas and charity was, after all, just love; “God is all charity,” etc., and it seems a pity to abandon so good and lovely a word and its ancient meaning, just because the meaning has changed a little. I have just been reading that Chap[ter] in Greek, in the little Testament that is one of your most cherished gifts to me. But how many these are! Of all kinds, on all levels. I send you in return Caritas, and this air patter contrived between less agreeable works on the same typewriter.

  n Always yours,

  R.M.

  20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1

  29th February, 1952 †

  Dear Father,

  An untyped MS., not because I am ill still, but just feel a little tired, and am lounging in an armchair. I am going out and about now, and to-day a very nice spring day. And yesterday came your nice air letter written on St. Matthias Deferred1 and enclosing your cousin’s September letter, that I read with interest and return. What a life she leads! I do admire it. All that hard work during term, and in the holidays looking after a blind and deaf mother, and, in any intervals, doing research among old papers and writing books for children on music. Admirable. I see the name Castres got into the family—was that from the Lisbon Consul who was George’s godfather?

  I must see if any of our Lydia Rose/Babington letters have anything of family interest for her purpose, and will look at them before we meet (I think in April sometime, she said).

  Thank you also for letter of 21st, which crossed mine of 19th—both of us congratulating ourselves on the 4th cousinship, which I do like to have. Yes, dear Cousin Hamilton; but, though I do feel consanguine, and am proud to, I could never (as I said before) call you anything but “Father.” Should further research disclose that you are my brother, I should still call you this. I am glad you like it too. I must ask the Conybeares if they ever heard of the two Yaxham and Welborne cousins, through our grandmother; they might remember her mentioning them; she was great on relations and keeping in touch— much better than anyone in the family since her. But what fun all this is, don’t you think?