Letters to a Friend

by Constance Babington Smith

  My dear Hamilton,

  Two grand letters from you, of 11th and 17th, both stuffed with interesting things. I forget, by the way, what I said about your review of K. Adam; but I thought it admirable; the only thing I a little regretted was that you seemed to accept the place of the unwilling exile, which I feared might stick him up rather. How interesting if he was to see the review and answer it. I get letters from R.C.s who are already stuck-up, and silly too— I meant to send you one, which mentioned Fr. Andrew’s position with scorn (you remember—about “do you ask me to believe in a God who,” etc.).1 But I have retired to bed with a slight temperature, so will only write this air paper, and leave enclosures for another time. I think I shall be all right to-morrow. But I am working too hard; this can’t be helped at present; but I hate having so little time for letters, seeing people, reading, etc. This stupid, stuck-up R.C. says “Either the Pope is the one and only Vicar of Christ, or he is a damned liar and the father of lies.” So silly: all black and white. Why shouldn’t the Popes have been genuinely mistaken all the time, in their view of the Christian Church? I think they were, and are; but that doesn’t make them liars. I hate these crude dilemmas which some people create. “Either Christ did say precisely what the Gospel says he said, or the evangelists were liars.” Good heavens, do people know nothing of how history is made and developed? And “either Peter is the one rock, or Our Lord was a liar.” (I note that Fr. Palmer says it’s “a rock”; and that Knox has this rock (but surely the Rock was the acknowledgment, not the man). I’ve not looked up the Greek. Oh yes; how I agree with you about the diversities of the gifts to the church that can be provided by different cultures within it; and “every spirit that confesseth …” etc. Just what these bigoted people won’t or can’t believe. As to the Pope’s supremacy, I say with Fr. Palmer nequaquam.1 It is all so unnecessary. (… said to one of his own confession lately, about recent Papal pronouncements— assumption, midwifery, etc.—” they certainly don’t help at all.”) This, I think, is what many R.C.s feel. We are fortunate to have no Dictator in our Church, only the Spirit of God to guide it and check excesses and animate it. I am delighted to see that my friend … has re-appeared in Grosvenor Chapel, after some months’ absence during which she was, I believe, looking into the Roman claims. She even went to Rome (the city). She will perhaps tell me soon what she feels about it all. I am to dine with her, and she has also asked … a great friend of hers (and mine), who is R.C. So he and I can fight for her soul across the dinner-table. Oh dear, ought one to try and influence people for their good? I don’t mean … who isn’t at all my responsibility; but a much younger friend of mine, whom I have known since she was a child and [who] … has long affairs with men; she is in one now; they are away for a week together. It’s not a case of profound love, but just of wanting a companion of that sort and sex. He is married, and it all has to be very secret and furtive. I wish she would get married; …. She is really nice: frank, honest, intelligent. What ought I to say to her when she tells me about it? I don’t think anything I said could have any effect; but perhaps one should try…. She was once a churchgoer … but that was long ago, and now she has no beliefs. But she’s socially good; … wants social justice; … [and] wants better living conditions for the poor. She is not really “in love.”

  23rd June. I seem recovered now; temperature gone. I will write a bigger letter soon, with enclosures.

  Meanwhile, I read, mark, learn and digest every word in yours, even when I have no time to comment on them. My love always,

  R.M.

  20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1

  25th June, 1952 †

  My dear Hamilton,

  What do you think? Coming in this afternoon from my labours in the London Library, I found, beautifully shop-done-up in Vandam St., N.Y., your noble gift The Christian Sacrifice. I have only had time to read a little in it so far, while I had my tea. It seems to have everything, all the meanings and aspects and their development, and I shall read it with great care and attention and interest…. Turning the pages, I note with approval “One of the unfortunate accompaniments of the Catholic revival in the Anglican Communion has been the way in which the degraded piety of much post-Tridentine Romanism has been taken over by some Anglican leaders…” (p. 177 and 8). I am glad to see that he adds that Romans themselves are now mending their ways. One beauty of Cowley and Grosvenor is that one meets nothing of that kind there. And possibly not in the American Episcopal church either? But many R.C. and some A.C. devotions are what one can only call sissy: “degraded piety” is possibly an apter expression. Oh it was nice of you to send me this good book.

  Since I wrote you an a[ir] p[aper] on Sunday, I have an a.p. from you dated 20th. In it you say more of that horrifying decadence of the roof of S. John’s church. It makes one cold with horror, to think what might have happened. It would have been more dreadful for you than for those killed, actually. Thank God indeed. These disasters take one back to 10 years and more ago, when everything was tumbling around us in that horrible and fantastic way, and one said to friends, “Meet me for lunch at such and such a restaurant—if it’s still there to-morrow.” And now you are in the peace of a Retreat. I’m glad Fr. P. is so good. I should have supposed he might be. Talking of 18th century confession, I see that all Fielding’s novels, not only Tom Jones, refer to it; probably Fielding practised it. It does seem to have been widely recommended in the devotional books of the time. What can Sir Henry Slesser (A[nglo-] Cjatholic] nearly all his life) mean by now saying that the C. of E. doesn’t provide for it in its system? … One likes to think of its having gone on all down the Church’s history, however much abused by my Fludd uncles and others.

  My enclosures are (a) a foolish R.C. correspondent, whom I have no intention of answering again, but I thought might edify you to see; (b) a rather anti-episcopal comment from the Observer on Canon Ramsey’s appointment to Durham. I believe it was inspired by … who obviously doesn’t care for most bishops. I’m not sure how fair it is; they are surely rather less unscholarly than that? Not that at the moment I recall many weighty works by them. But after all their main business is to direct and administer, not to study. Oh yes, and what about Dr. Kirk? I think “Pendennis” of the Observer should have excepted him.

  That running water of Horace’s: yes, and he had it, in the stream Digentia (now the Licenza); and the Jons he had too, in the spring he called Bandusia, not far from his farm. These things I had meant to see in May—but instead lay and undulated. However, I shall some day, and hope to bathe in the stream and drink of the fons.

  Between the Armada and the Powder Action? I think my well would have been that of the Recusants and the destroyed abbeys; especially if one was too young to remember the Marian persecutions, but heard often of the Tyburn ones. But it is very hard to say how one’s mind would have been conditioned, in such a different set of circumstances, such a different climate. My only Elizabethan ancestor we know much about —one John Conybeare, a rather learned schoolmaster—was a Protestant; and the Macaulays were certainly Presbyterian clansmen; what the Roses were I have no notion; the Herricks were, I am pretty sure, Protestant (i.e. the ancestors of my father’s paternal grandmother); the Fergusons too. So, if we had no R.C. unreformed Elizabethan ancestors, how should I have been one? But I feel I should have joined that church, and perhaps given shelter to priests such as John Gerard. And, looking on the destroyed and abandoned abbeys (even though one1 was already the fine mansion of my Babington relations. I forgot the B’s—there was Anthony B[abington], of course, who was a Cath[olic] conspirator; perhaps I should have joined him)— well, looking on the abbeys, even at Rothley Temple, I couldn’t but have sided against those who had thus destroyed them. Could you? And it would have been very inspiring, despite the “degraded piety” of many of the prayers and most of the relic-worship (such as curing your illnesses by keeping in touch with the skulls of executed martyrs). Yes, I feel I should have been well in. The judicious Hooker migh
t have influenced me the other way, and (later) Lancelot Andrewes. But oh those repugnant Puritans! Nevertheless, I dare say Anglicanism and the P.B. and the pleasing dignity and moderation of it all would have claimed me, despite the abbeys.

  No I scarcely knew Q (who only came to Cambridge to deliver his few official lectures; he never lived there).2 But such a likeable person; a critic of no profundity, but one of the now old-fashioned school of humane, urbane, cultured, widely-read (tho’ never quite widely enough—he had little acquaintance with foreign letters, unlike Desmond MacCarthy) literary writers at large, of whom there [are] now too few of any eminence. He made mistakes and could be diddled into putting into The O[xford] B[ook of] E[nglish) V[erse] poems by Quarles that had been appropriated by Rochester; and a great deal of that anthology is very poor stuff; but it is a great work; and how one loved it when young! I see it has only one Traherne— “News from a foreign country came.” I must look up that Daniels3 poem; I remember it only vaguely, but like what you quote, it is very impressive.

  Apropos “wells,” and early Anglicanism, I should like to read a book like Wickham Legg’s English Church Life from 1660 to the Tractarians1 extended back to the 16th century and early 17th. Do you know this book? I am reading it from the L[ondon] L[ibrary] (pub. 1914) and it is full of extraordinarily interesting details from contemporary sources about the religious life of the times, under such headings as: The Eucharist. Early celebrations. Daily celebration. Reverence to altar. Reservation. Daily service. Church Furniture. Manners and Customs. Confession. Books of prayers (many adapted from the Roman), etc., etc. All very interesting to those studying the periods in question, or the continuity of church life. But I would like to read an earlier one, say 1562-1662. I have a notion one might find a lot of Elizabethan High Churchery (of course Queen E. herself)—as there certainly was Jacobean. I think the suppression of the Church and P.B. under the Commonwealth probably gave Anglicanism a kick and a secret underground stimulus. But we know a good deal about that; what I, anyhow, am ignorant about is the later 16th century Anglicanism. What learned ecclesiastical historian can we get to write it for us? I should suggest it as a theme, if it hasn’t already been done.

  Nice fine weather now, and I, being recovered, bathe again after Mass—so lovely!

  Well, much love, and all my grateful thanks.

  Your affectionate

  R.M.

  July

  [Postmark: London, W.I]

  5th July, 1952 †

  My dear Hamilton,

  Moved by your full and interesting letters posted 25th and 30th June, I had it in mind to write a full (if not interesting) a[ir] l[etter] in reply, and had jotted down things I wanted to say. But (as you know) I am approaching D-day with that wretched book, and simply have no spare moment—indeed, I have no business even to be writing this paltry a[ir] p[aper]. But never think I don’t absorb and prize and ponder over every word in your letters, even when I haven’t time to write. The fact is, I am leaving everything undone just now. How happy I will be when I have finished that opus, already far too long!

  I thought that half-baked R.C.’s references to Fr. Andrew (who had said a very logical and good thing) quite intolerably muddled, and even rather rude. Why drag in the Crucifixion? But then he is half educated (if as much) and they cant think clearly or straight, I find. I didn’t answer his letter—one can’t argue with people who can’t see a point.

  I think you must be right about “felix culpa”1 I see, in The Oxford Book of Familiar Quotes, the reference to the Exultet is given, as if that was the 1st one they knew about (not that they are infallible).

  And now here we are again at the collect for Trin. 4—things temporal and eternal. I certainly like the Latin version better than ours2—”sic transeamus per bona temporalia, ut non amittamus aeterna” I like the good things, which our P.B. has cut out, and I prefer not to lose “finally,” implying a looking to the end rather than the day-to-day struggle to keep the bona aeterna always with us. It’s one of the best collects, I think, and so difficult an ideal.

  That’s what I am feeling about …, whom I mentioned to you as having affairs with men that don’t go deep and that she would be better without. Very dubious bona temporalia, and must hide the bona aeterna. I will try, sometime, to tell her what I think about it, in general terms…. But I don’t believe I should, at present, have any effect on …, who knows what she wants, and is very strong of purpose. Oh dear, I wish she would get married to someone.

  I have read most of Pittenger, with great interest, a little at a time. I find the last 3 chapters particularly good. I like his moderate, tolerant, civilised attitude; and what he says about modes of celebration is very instructive. I got a little bogged in the “modes of Presence,” but then that is always beyond me. Do you know, I can’t feel that it really matters, so long as the Presence is there. But that is, no doubt, my weak grasp of Metaphysics. Anyhow, what an excellent work!

  Your suggestion for a work of mine, that should travel with its characters down history, making them react to the changing periods as they would, with their characters, have done—is a v.g. notion. I would take a group of people—clargy and laity, high and low, and try to imagine them confronted with the circumstances of each century in turn. What fascinating speculations it opens. Keeping all through the running thesis that individual character is the axis on which lives move. I doubt now if poor … will ever be anything religiously intelligent, either R.C. or C. of E. It seems that she does half mean in the end to join the R.C. church, but (like St. Augustine) not yet … so perhaps the poor old C. of E. will retain her to the end, who knows? She doesn’t grasp a thing about it….

  I like that Faber hymn. By the way, did you ever consider Rome, in 1899? No more space, but much love.

  R.M.

  20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1

  11th July, 1952 †

  My dear Hamilton,

  I am having a slight relapse into Undulant Fever (only slight, I’m sure) and am spending to-day in bed, which takes me from my work and my typewriter but gives me a chance to write a letter (no such chance in my normal days just now). So I will amplify my last a[ir] p[aper] by an a[ir] l[etter] and answer also your two last a.p.’s of 3rd and 7th July, which I was delighted to get. I had meant to send you one or two reviews of various Powys works that I had seen—but, being in bed haven’t now the energy to look for them. I gather your Retreat is now over: I am glad Fr. P[edersen] was so good. I wonder exactly what particularly moved him, years ago, to forsake Baptism for the Episcopal Church, and how he came in contact with it, and what points of difference specially struck him. I expect you remember it happening. Of course I find it easy to believe that any contact with a branch of the Catholic Church should move a Baptist to join it: but then Baptism, or any kind of Protestant nonconformity, is antipathetic to me—too much so, for there is so much real Christianity there. I would except Quakerism from this distastefulness—I suppose because they say less, are not dogmatic (in these days) and do wait on the Spirit. I see that Pittenger is broad-minded about Dissent. I was interested in your young paragon’s views on Pittenger. I do see what he perhaps means about the Holy Spirit: would he mean that there is too little about the H.S. leading the Church into further truth, into progressive illumination? That he is (perhaps) too much tied up with tradition and the past? For my part, I never find as much as I should like about the H.S., in any theological work—except perhaps Wm. Law and Jakob Boehme. And I do feel that the Church hasn’t yet fully enough adopted or realised that amazing progressive illumination. The R.C. Church in effect denies it altogether (do they know that they do? Probably not). But how can they hope to be “led into all truth” when they believe that they have the truth, all discovered and crystallised and unalterable? (As one of my R.C. correspondents informed me.) That seems to me to be the major heresy, because it denies hope. Here we are, they say, and here we stay, in spite of all our horrible defects and sins (cruelty, intolerance, refusal to p
ray with fellow Christians, etc., etc.). They do deny the Spirit, utterly.1 But not Pittenger—goodness no. But your young man may have thought he didn’t stress it enough. Or did he mean something quite other? What does Fr. Williams1 think about this? When he said (about the young man) “He thinks the Holy Ghost can’t be shut up in any church.” Well, no more do you—Nequaquam! Of course we all believe the H.S. is working everywhere. But I suppose it’s a question of emphasis. It is possible that I am nearer the young man’s standpoint than you are, with your lifelong experience of Catholicism. You know, I didn’t even feel that Pittenger goes far—not really far—with the Biblical Critics. But then, I read The Modern Churchman,2 which really does! Anyhow, P[ittenger]’s book is of great interest to me, and value. One wants to get the right balance between Protestantism (the individual seeking after God) and Catholicism (the seeking through the Church), neglecting neither. This is what I keep trying to do, and P. helps me to it.

  I am greatly interested in Wickham Legg’s book about Church practices 1660-1830—fascinating side-lights on the past. So, indeed, is Mr. Thwackum—who’d have thought to find in him a sacramentalist and an advocate of Private Absolution? It shows the Church atmosphere which must have been Fielding’s background, and obviously was. Do you know Wickham Legg’s book? It is really most enlightening.

  Do you ever come across or read any of those huge American novels—The Sheltering Sky3 and others, which are full of horrors and obscenities and the nasty talk of the Common Man (usually a soldier). You wouldn’t like them—but their popularity is a portent. Actually I don’t read them myself, but I am told they are very “powerful” and impressive. So is G. Greene. I half forget The Ministry of Fear.4 But how completely those war years were his milieu. He loved walking the bombed streets, wrapped in a shabby mackintosh, admiring the craters, the fires, and the tumbling buildings. It is his setting. But to him the world was always horrific, squalid, sordid. No, he would have no affection for the C. of E. of his childhood; it was much too temperate and mild and benign for him. The R.C. church broke in his ears with a darker, more catastrophic thunder, and caught him up in it. Had he lived in Van mil, he would have lived daily in expectation of the End of the World….