Letters to a Friend

by Constance Babington Smith

  Don’t be concerned for my health. The Chapel isn’t really so cold; and anyhow I am as well qualified to bear it as anyone else, and very warmly coated. I am already going to it again. While I couldn’t go, I tried to follow it in imagination (which I very much prefer, and always should, to having it brought me, which always seems to me to make rather a fuss, besides infecting other people with one’s germs). Of course if one was really laid up for a month or two, or more, it might be worth while— but still troublesome. … I should feel more peaceful just following the service in my mind. Yes: I like your widening of “this congregation here present” (which is often so extremely small!) to include others—and to include oneself when absent, “et pro omnibus jidelibus Christianis, vivis atque defunctis.”1 That is a good sequence of prayers—and I should always add my favourite, “Quid retribuam Domino …?”1 The trouble is that, when ill, one often feels headachy and bemused in the morning early, and can’t follow or read with much attention. Then one has, I suppose, to fall back on saying by heart the prayers one already knows. But it is happier when one can say “in ecclesiis benedicam te”2; happily I can now do that again. How incredibly good, to be borne up and sustained daily like that. And before so very long, I suppose, I can be like Charlemagne again—“frequenti natatu corpus exercens”3 after Mass. But not quite yet! I was telling T. S. Eliot of this custom of mine; he said, “Well, I hope you go home after it to a really good tuck-in.” So I do. I devour my bacon ration after bathing, which I never do at other times, but hand the coupons to my porter, who values them, and doesn’t really approve my new ecclesiastical-aquatic beginnings to the day. You know, I add all your suggested prayers, etc., to my private collection.

  I was much interested in Peter Livius’s statement. (I am returning it, in case you have no copy.) How careless they were about their children, letting them die like that! Everyone says Lisbon was unwholesome then—hot, dirty, undrained; no place for children. The Great Quake really cleaned it up a bit, for they built Pombal’s fine new town where the ancient slums had been. I wonder how long George stayed in Lisbon after 1758. And who first introduced Moravianism into the family? I see that Wesley introduced it into England, having met some Moravians in Georgia (German immigrants). I don’t know how the Livii picked it up. I don’t think any Rose had it?

  I am drowning in a storming sea of books, papers, work, that I can’t make headway against; and now this wretched disease has thrown me back by several days. Oh for more time! Sometimes I feel altogether crazed with the amount I have to do, and the little I am doing. However early I begin, however late I work, I can’t keep my head above it. I expect this drowning feeling is partly the after effects of flue; I feel no strength to tackle anything—I mean, mental strength; physical is coming back. A greater calm should be arrived at. And, oddly, tho’ church takes time, it does help a little towards calm. (Of course it doesn’t actually take time, because I should only be in bed, not working, at that hour.) Peace and strength are what one wants, and a little less time-wastage. I think there are plenty of collects about this; I must look them up.

  I am right, aren’t I, to return you these letters?1 I thought you would probably want to keep them: I have been looking up one of our family genealogies, in an old family Bible, but no fresh light is thrown; it only traces back our descent through many generations of Babingtons of Rothley (which they got in 1544) to, of all people, Alfred the Great! I fancy he is the ancestor of most English people, tho’ they can’t always trace it.

  Much love, dear Coz. and Father.

  R.M.

  March

  20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1

  6th March, 1952

  Dear Father,

  This is to go by sea, in the old-fashioned manner, and will enclose various documents you have sent me; you say don’t send them back, but you may want them later on. I perused all with interest. Though slightly bemused with the forest of relations of both mine and yours, I try to hold on to the main clues in the labyrinth, the ones which lead us out into our 4th Cousinship; but I am a less skilled genealogist than you Johnsons and Barhams and Cowpers, and am sometimes rather bushed. Never mind, it is all great fun. If I come on any Fludd ancestors for you, I shall be delighted. But that, I fear, is on the Macaulay side. I am glad my description of the photograph reminded you of great-uncle Vaughan; I am almost sure it was him. I wish we still had that old book, but, after removing from it the photographs of the people we knew or knew about—uncles and aunts, grandparents, etc., etc.—we threw it out with much else, when my eldest sister’s house in Hampshire broke up at her death. Really, it is more interesting to keep all photographs of relations; you never know when you may want them. If I had great-uncle Edward, I would send him to you….

  Now I shall write you an air paper, as you won’t get this budget for so long. I think, after all, I will keep Peter Livius’s notes with the family tree on the back, and only enclose the letters.

  Much love,

  R.M.

  20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1

  6th March, 1952 †

  Dear Father (Father Hamilton, if you like—or Cousin, or just Hamilton),

  I have just been putting up some of your papers and letters (tho’ you say don’t return) in a sea letter, which won’t be overweight, and which you’ll get in the ocean’s good time. In my letter I commented on … the genealogies. This air paper is to fill the gap. Thank you very much indeed for your two of 28th and 29th Feb. You enquire about my health. My doctor has just sent me to have a blood test taken, as he is puzzled by these intermittent (tho’ slight) temperatures, persisting so long after flue is over. It isn’t important, and I don’t feel ill, only a little tired, and feverish by night. I fully expect that the quinine I am now taking will effect a cure shortly. I ought to chew fever bark, or the laurel leaves that so went to the heads of the Pythian priestesses at Delphi, inducing such frenzied utterances. I am really quite all right, so don’t be concerned about me; it is only that you said you would like to know how I am, so (always strictly truthful) I am telling you. After all, I didn’t dine with the Spenders on Ash Wednesday, as I didn’t feel well enough. I am sure your advice is right, and that I might have gone with perfect seemliness; it was just for a time that the idea somehow seemed jarring. But one mustn’t turn into a prig!

  I think “charity,” using it in its earlier English sense, is the word I like, and I think the Authorized] V[ersion] was right. You know, I don’t try to feel “love” for God; only the desire of the spirit and will to do His commands; Wm. Law says that is “the spirit of prayer and love,” and that if we really have that then we are in a state of salvation. Only of course one doesn’t have it, only very seldom, and when one’s will and desires are directed quite elsewhere, God can do nothing with us.

  Did you see an article in the Church Times last week advocating that a parish priest should, entirely on his own, refuse people communion, if he thought they were not in charity with their neighbours (or, of course, grosser sins). He said scandal was caused in a congregation when two families known to be quarrelling turned up to communion on the same day. His idea seemed to be first to warn them not to come, then, if they did, to pass them over! Talk of scandal! That would be a much bigger and better one in the parish. What extraordinary ideas people do get. I know Dr. Kirk says, refuse no one, neither the divorced re-married, the livers-in-sin, or the quarrellers. My sister says people should be refused if they have infectious diseases; she (as a nurse) is all for the en tinctured bread and no chalice, which certainly seems more rational, though one likes the symbolism of the chalice.

  I am interested in your account of your mother and aunt, and their so different ways. My mother too was prejudiced, both about ideas and people; certain people she could not and would not like. This often made life difficult, as she couldn’t hide it. She was so charming and friendly and expansive to those she did like, that the difference was painfully obvious. Temperamental she certainly was! She could never get on
with my father’s youngest sister (now 84 and hasn’t much longer) —but then no one could, she was a termagant.

  I can’t say our home was ever “beautifully run”; both my parents and all of us were naturally untidy; and Italy was a bad training. But my mother did amuse every one, as did my grandmother before her, and that is a great gift.

  I feel pleased that you like to read Volup. Min., R.M.1 in bed. You must get down to Howards End sometime. If I can turn up a copy of my Forster book,2 I shall send it you; it would show you, anyhow, how I view his aims and interpretations of life. At the moment (did I tell you) I am reviewing a life of Hugh Walpole, mostly from his journals and letters.3 I find it a fascinating lifting of the lid from someone I knew, tho’ never intimately. He knew himself very well, and criticizes himself. I must send you my review when it comes out.

  Gerard Irvine has persuaded me to go and hear him preach on Sunday night. He is doing nursery rhymes as applied to the Christian scheme. On Sunday it is “Jack and Jill,” and treats of the Fall, on which he knows I am not really sound. He thinks there came a moment in the upward climb of the anthropoid when he became responsible enough to sin, and that was the Fall. My view is that the anthropoid, and the ape, could always sin consciously, and did so from the first, tho’ of course not with the full moral consciousness that developed later. But at what point are we to say “This was man; he can sin, though he couldn’t before?” These problems are very difficult, and I don’t bother my head with them much—nothing like as much [as] I did when you first knew me, and long before that. The affair has ceased to be an intellectual problem, I suppose; I approach it otherwise, and leave what I can’t take. I think, in my advanced years, that is the wisest way, don’t you. So long as one knows the truth of the vital things, and so long as they mean what they do.

  No; E.M. F[orster] won’t come to it, I am afraid. On the other hand, Christopher Isherwood, who has been over here from California for the winter … made friends with Gerard Irvine … which sounds hopeful. He is nice, clever, unselfish, rather sweet and touching.

  No: you will never be “a mere relation” to me, whatever the kinship. Now I must put this up, and the sea letter too. My love with both, dear Fr. Hamilton.

  R.M.

  20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1

  12th March, 1952 †

  Dear Father,

  How well you understand things! Which means, at the moment, your letter of 4th March, with its agreement with my feelings about having Holy Communion brought to one’s home. You describe the situation exactly: the lack of energy to tidy up, the lack of place among the books, etc., the general mess, so unseemly! I suppose in a nursing home or hospital it might be different, one wouldn’t feel responsible. But even so I think I would rather join mentally in the service going on in ecclesiis. Largely thanks to you, I have now a lot of admirable bits and pieces, preces privatae, to say, which do me great service, both in and out of church. Is there a moment when Mass is not being said somewhere? I dare say there is: I haven’t thought it out; but it may be so that there isn’t. In Latin, in Greek, in whatever vernacular is used. It’s a sustaining thought.

  Thank you for your wise advice, and for understanding that drowned feeling under waves of work. I can cope better now that I feel better; my temperature is now quite normal and I get about as usual, and feel more vigorous daily, both in body and mind. You see, I have to get this Ruins book done; it is a commitment, and my publishers have been very patient, but I can’t keep them waiting for ever. I think I see the end in sight now, but there remains a lot to be done. I must finish it before May, for then I go for a few weeks to the south of Italy, about which I have some articles commissioned. It will be lovely and exciting there; the Campagna and Calabria (the Gulf of Taranto, round the instep, between toe and heel, full of ancient, mostly vanished, Greek settlements). I shall have a friend with me, to share the driving. I shall write to you from there, but don’t know about the time letters take between so ancient and so new a world.

  Thank you too for your letter of 2nd March, enclosing the two about your mother’s funeral, which moved me very much. I think you may really like to have them back, so I will enclose them, as I did the others, in a sea letter. All your family matters interest me greatly. I am going, when I get a moment, to write to Dorothea Conybeare asking if any of the family remember our grandmother ever mentioning those Norfolk Johnsons. She wrote so many letters, full of family and relations; I dare say if I still had those drawers full of her letters to my mother, I should find some references. But some of her grandchildren may remember some names; perhaps old James,1 who is much older than most of us. You mention “Eliza and Marv Rose”; but they had many brothers and sisters—Edward (Canon) who was rector of Weybridge for very many years; Lydia, who married an Oxford don, Bonamy Price; Henry, who was a general; and I think others too. What families people had in those days! And now your air paper of 9th March. I looked up Wm. Bodham Donne in the D[ictionary of] N[ational] B[iography]; he was the Librarian of the L[ondon] L[ibrary] 1852-7, besides all his other activities and works. I read that book about him and his friends last year.2 The DNB says he was descended from the poet Donne; but I think you told me this is wrong. I also read about C. J. Vaughan of the Doves, my great-uncle’s brother (not of course uncle, as I rather foolishly said, I think).3 Don’t you think all those old relations of ours were very nice people? I feel they were, and that we may be proud of them. The only one I knew personally was my grandmother, unfortunately. And she was delightful; very racy and unconventional and loquacious. I love the picture of your grandfather psaltering and gesticulating on the terrace.

  Thank you for the piece from Asser. What a king!1 One of the more foolish things said in eulogy of our late King George was that he resembled Alfred the Great! Our nice late monarch was no scholar. How very good it would be if we should ever have a monarch who was, and who set himself to raise the level of taste by going to the best things, not only to the musical comedies and racing and the low-brow books. I suppose Wm. Ill was our last highbrow sovereign; Albert, of course, was only a prince consort. Perhaps little Charles will be highbrow; but I fear little chance.

  How nice to have (when it comes) that Primer; I have looked for one in vain here, and should particularly like to better my understanding of medieval Latin. Now I have to go to the National Gallery, to be shown some drawings of ruins not on view, and will take and post this, so as not to miss a post. It is so nice to feel well again. But I’m sorry about your tooth, and hope it won’t cause a lot of bother and fatigue. Goodbye, my dear cousin and Father, and my love.

  Your very affectionate cousin,

  R.M.

  20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1

  17th March, 1952 †

  Dear Hamilton,

  This is the outcome of your letter of 10th and nth March, which came to-day, thank you so much. Yes, I certainly like to call you this, and I don’t feel that it interferes with or takes away from our other relationship as it has been for so long. We are now relations in another sense also, that is all. Anyhow, I rather like your name! It has dignity and a certain stateliness. (What is that poem of A. A. Milne’s about a boy called Hamilton?)

  I was thinking, wouldn’t it be interesting suppose there turned up an old letter from my great-aunt Mary to my grandmother, mentioning that Hamilton Johnson, a charming little boy, had been to lunch, as he was at school in Harpenden. Better still, suppose my grandmother had chanced to be paying a visit to her sister when little Hamilton came, and had mentioned it in one of her (daily) letters or cards to my mother. But I fear you have no memory of this old lady stopping at the rectory when you went there. Dear me, how surprised I should have been at that retreat nearly 40 years ago had I been told that in the year 1952 I should be writing to Fr. Johnson, then become my 4th cousin Hamilton, about these family matters!

  Yes, haven’t habits about the use of first names changed. My father and his lifelong men friends (school and Cambridge) retained surnam
es to each other all their lives. I think it is in one of Angela Thirkell’s books that a small prep school boy is asked by his parents what is the surname of another boy whom he always calls Philip. “I don’t know,” the boy replies. “You see, I don’t know him really very well.” A remarkable change in social habits. Now people, men and women, but especially I think men, seem to use first names about the 2nd time of meeting, very often. I like it, it is friendly and matey. Those old Edwardian novels, in which men call women, even while courting, “Miss so and so” read oddly. (By the way, have you tackled Howards End yet? I am longing to know what you think of it.)

  My health is really all right now. The work remains, of course, but now that I feel all right I am not letting it get me down. I want to finish it, if possible, next month, before I go to Italy in May; but I won’t get worked up about it. If I have finished it, I shall start for Italy with a heavenly feeling of freedom from care, and the new novel can begin to take shape in my mind, which will be a nice change and release. And Italy itself will be the best kind of nerve-rest; so many beautiful and interesting things to see all the time. So you must wish me well on my travels. Indeed no; staying with friends in the country is not a rest; far too sociable and gregarious and having one’s activities arranged for one by kind hosts.