Letters to a Friend

by Constance Babington Smith

  Just after I last wrote to you, news came from India of the very sudden death of my sister1 there. It was a bad shock to us. She was a splendid person; we have had the most wonderful letters about her and her work there. One from the Bishop of Chota Nagpur, her diocese, saying “My heart is heavy with grief at the thought that one of my best friends and most devoted fellow workers has gone from us.” He is in England now; he came to Mass one morning, and when … [he heard] afterwards who I was, he said he wished he had known, as he would have waited and spoken to me about my sister; this was a month or two ago—we haven’t yet had letters from Ranchi, giving details; but we assume it was her heart, which was poor. Anyhow she would have wished to go suddenly, while at the job, and among the people she loved and worked for. She was a v.g. linguist, and knew Hindi well, and did excellent translations into it of hymns, etc. She really had literary gifts, as her friends all say. It makes one heavy-hearted; she was to have come on leave next year. She wasn’t a close companion and friend, like my other sisters and brothers—she had lived so much away—but I feel now that I should have put more into our relationship, written more often. She wrote more than I did; and 1 wish I had thanked her for a Kashmir dressing gown she sent me, in time for her to get the letter. Alas for chances missed, that can’t return; they are bitter in retrospect.

  I am sorry to miss Mrs. Paine. She says she will try again when next she comes over. She seems such a real person to me, after all you have told me of her.

  I won’t write on this side of this thin paper; it isn’t good enough. Thank you for “Per signum Crucis …”1 which is very good to use. Much love. I shall be home in 10 days.

  Your loving

  R.M.

  I am telling Bumpus to post you Noughts and Crosses, that novel I spoke of….

  20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1

  22nd August, 1952 †

  My dear Hamilton,

  I have got home, and got your a[ir] p[aper] of 15th; thank you so much for it. It relieved my mind, because I felt I had been a little less than courteous about the B.V.M. (on whose assumption day you wrote). And you say you don’t mind. You know I don’t mean any discourtesy (and you should see me when, as last night, I am talking with convert cousins and have to watch my step). But I say to you what is in my mind, that ill-informed religious mind which is all I have in such matters. I expect, if you ever feared I might move Romeward, you have long ceased to do so! I have never been in danger of that. By no means only, or mainly, because of their (what seems to me) mistaken view of the B.V.M., but because of so much that they accept in the way of beliefs, and their intransigent attitude. Yet there is a small section of them that I am in great sympathy with; and, of course, much of their worship and ceremonial. I was wishing the other day that the Welsh had stuck, as their fellow-Britons in Ireland did, to that Church, instead of going over to Methodism, which I don’t think suits them (? does it suit any one? One respects so much in it; but it is unlovely). The C. of E. could never have won the Welsh; they connected that (and still do) with the disliked Ascendancy (as the Irish do); but R.C.s they could well be. I haven’t yet got hold of Letters to a Layman; the L[ondon] L[ibrary] copy is missing (but unentered, so must be stolen, I fear). It is out of print, but may turn up when advertised for, say Mowbray….

  The Monastic Orders, by David Knowles [is] a very interesting 2 vols, of historical research.1 And another book by Knowles is just out—Abbeys from the Air, also a large book, illustrated with excellent photographs;2 I must get hold of this at once, as it bears on my ruin book—what my sister calls “the valley of the shadow of ruins,” in which she feels I have walked far too long. I would like to review this, and so acquire it, but haven’t any time for this at present. But no doubt I shall get hold eventually of the Dix book, in which there is obviously a lot I should like to read, and prayers to transcribe too. Have you seen the Church Times letters from his brother and the Abbot of Downside, about the rumours in the R.C. press that he had been converted on his death-bed? Simply because the Abbot, an old friend, went to see him just before he died. The Abbot, as well as the brother, write denying it; indeed it would seem most improbable. I suppose “sacramentum” in the prayer you quote would be used in the sense of “pledge,” wouldn’t it? I like it; it calms fretting and striving too much, and tells us it’s all there for us to appropriate if we will. I ordered you to be sent Noughts and Crosses; when you’ve read it (in bed after the bath) tell me what you think of it. It’s not a profound novel, of course; but it amused and interested me, especially the heroine’s interviews with the priests….

  Well, here I am back from Wight; I enjoyed my drive back seeing en route several abbeys—Beaulieu, Romsey, Malmesbury, Lacock, Abingdon, Dorchester (Netley I visited on my way to the island). On the island I saw again the ruins of Quarr—very touching and wild and neglected in their fields above the sea, a little way from the brand-new pink abbey full of monks and seminarists (I think). Abingdon is enchanting, of course; I expect you know it well, and Dorchester. I passed a night at Dorchester, and went to Mass in the Abbey at 7.30; a grand place. It wasn’t v.g. bathing weather on the island, on the whole; still, I bathed each day, being something, as you know, of a Hemerobaptist,1 and holding with them that “homo non posse [sicj vivere, nisi singulis diebus in aqua mergeretur, ac ita ablueretur et sanctificaretur ab omni culpa”2 Cornelius à Lapide3 comments on this view, with something of a shudder, “Verum haec est anatum potius et piscium vita, quam hominum”4 However, with the fishes I immersed myself, and shall soon be doing so with the ducks in the Serpentine, as it seems to be getting warmer again. Oh thank you for those papers; I have only had time to glance, so far, but shall look through them later. Now I am back at work, I must set to and finish this book if I can, trying tranquillius operare, but I don’t find this easy. Since I began this letter I heard from the L[ondon] L[ibrary] that they have discovered who has Dix, and as it only went out yesterday, just before I asked for it, it can’t be sent back for a month; but I shall have it then. Oh what happens to the dead? Lux perpetua, we pray; but in what mode, and what individual consciousness do they have of us? We can’t know. I’d like my sister to know I was just going to write and thank her for the present she sent me, and that I value it. But apparently we aren’t meant to know about them, or about what chances we shall ourselves have in that veiled future. One can only hope. Death is in one’s mind, after that disaster at Lynmouth, which swept families apart so suddenly and terribly. Not as bad as the bombing, of course, but so unexpectedly. Though we should by now be used all the time to nature rounding on us in some horrible savage way, the old tiger. We walk precariously upon an earth that may open and swallow us, among waters that may rise and drown us, with the chance of lightning that may strike us dead. As good ways of dying, I dare say, as any others; but shocking to those left behind, who like warning and preparation. Now I must stop and work. Much love always from your coz.

  R.M.

  20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1

  29th August, 1952 †

  My dear Hamilton,

  Your letter of St. Bartholomew’s Day came yesterday; thank you so much for it. I’m glad you like The Sea around us,1 for it has been giving me a lot of joy since I was sent it from America early this year. You are quite right in thinking it is my kind of book. Ellen Green’s too;2 only all the learned, informative part would be far above her head; she would just know what was in the sea, but not why, or when the different things arrived, or anything of that kind. I don’t suppose she would get through it, as she was no reader. I, on the other hand, peruse every word with interest and pleasure, and I am glad it has come your way, even though you have so far only heard isolated sentences read too faintly by your inaudible brethren. For my part I am reading a book by R. A. Cram3 (1906) called The Ruined Abbeys of Britain, which is good and vivid and informing; but his reading of history is rather odd and piecemeal, and he seems to consider life in the Middle Ages a very perfect business, when every one was
good and learned and civilized, and life after the Renaissance and the Reformation (which seem equally anathema to him) one of rapacity, villainy, ignorance, barbarism, cruelty and irreligion. It would be good for him, and enlarge his point of view, to read some well documented and detailed and unbiassed history of the centuries between the 9th and the 15th. One could hardly find later more anarchy, barbarism, intolerant cruelty, ignorance, murder, serfdom, or greed. He should see (as I did yesterday) Ivanhoe in technicolour, and consider the goings on of Norman barons in England, Templars, crusaders, kings, even monks. He should read a detailed story of some of the crusades and the cruelties practised on them— while as for ignorance and vandalism, look at the way they sacked Constantinople in 1215 (was it?). You might guess Mr. Cram R.C., but he says he is Anglican, and indeed he went to Mass at Dorchester Abbey, with delight, after leaving the restored and rather Protestant Malmesbury Abbey in rage and disgust. What makes him angriest is the treatment of the Scottish abbeys by the reformers, and indeed it was detestable, the way they mutilated them and put up their hideous kirks in them. Henry can be understood, as he wanted money, and the abbeys had it; but the Scotch reformers were merely full of odium theologicum. I think Cram is American (or was). I am also reading Dom David Knowles’s The Monastic Order in England—very interesting; this was lent me … I think I shall get it in the end, either from advertisement or the L[ondon] L[ibrary] copy when returned.

  I do agree with you about the uninspired English of most translated Missal (and Breviary) prayers. The translators should take hints from Cranmer; but they write in a different and less beautiful linguistic age, and I suppose don’t want to be archaic and affected. All the same, they could, while remaining modern, be clear and harmonious. Cranmer often deviates from the exact meaning, either from reasons of sound or of sense, but he is always good. By the way, where does that “Respice” prayer you quoted in an earlier letter come from? I wasn’t clear if you copied it from Dix’s collection of prayers, or from the Missal—the one with “sacramentum” in it, which I suppose means “holy mystery,” as applied to the Church. I have no time just now to dig for it in the Missal, being busier than ever.

  There is such a nice notice of my sister Eleanor in Overseas News written by one of her colleagues in the Ranchi mission. I think I would like you to see it, to show you a little of what she was; so, when I get hold of more copies of the O[fmeas] N[ews] I will send you one. It makes me cry a little; but I like to see it. The S.P.G. are having a Requiem Mass for her in their chapel in Tufton St. on 18th Sept., to which I shall of course go. The Bishop of Chota Nagpur, a splendid person, is still in Sweden conferring on Faith and Order, I believe; but I shall see him later. A letter I had the other day from Ranchi repeats what a great affection and friendship he had for her, and how much he valued her work and her advice. It is all good hearing. It makes one feel very small and trivial by comparison, and selfish….

  Cram ends his book with an interesting suggestion for putting some of the abbeys in commission again to harbour a supply of mission priests for the under-priested parishes; to work not permanently in one place, but in turns. He is right that there aren’t enough would-be monks and nuns to fill them, even if workers could be spared from the national life. But how carefully the buildings would have to be restored! They might be modernised in an ugly way, or in bogus Gothic. There are many pitfalls; and some must be kept as ruins. Are there any American ruined abbeys? Plenty of ruined Spanish mission churches, of course; but abbeys probably not. I do wonder if we shall ever have a real revival of Anglican monastic life, beyond what we have already had. Dear me, this seems the end!

  Much love,

  R.M.

  September

  20, Hinde House, Hinde St., W.1

  7th September, 1952 †

  My dear Hamilton,

  I am spending this Sunday morning in bed, with a slight temperature (I get these little undulant come-backs, but they’re not prostrating me; I will be up this afternoon) so am writing to you in my beautiful hand instead of typing; forgive it.

  Thank you so much for a[ir] p[aper]s of 29th Aug. and 3rd Sept., I gather you must now be in the turmoil of putting up the visitors to the American Church Convention—I shan’t expect to hear until the Bishops and the priests depart, the tumult and the shouting dies.

  I am much interested in what you say of R. A. Cram.1 It confirms what one gathers from his book; that unbalanced and child-like enthusiasm—even fanaticism—and idealism, combined with such good architectural knowledge. He published it in 1906, and prints as a foreword a quotation from Dugdale’s preface to his Monasticon2—“I humbly crave leave, before I advance any further, publicly to profess myself to be a sincere, tho’ very unworthy, member of the Church of England, and that I have as true and hearty affection for her interest as perhaps any other person whatsoever. And yet I cannot but here publicly declare that I think it would have been more happy for her, as well as for the nation in general, had K. Henry VIII only reformed and not destroyed the Abbeys and other Religious Houses: Monastic Institution is very ancient, and it had been very laudable had he reduced the manner and worship to the primitive form.” So at that date Mr. Cram was a loyal Anglican, though may have had yearnings. Anyhow, it is a good and vivid book.

  I heard this morning a reading from John Inglesant,1 announced by the BBC announcer; who said that J.I. belonged to “an old Roman Catholic family.” This struck me as very odd. I’ve not read the book for years; but surely John, a firm Anglican, was not a member of an R.C. family? Or was he a convert from that faith? I expect the announcer was just ignorant; I must look it up. People to-day are so ignorant!

  I am going to send you Overseas News, with the reference to my sister—or else cut it out and put it in an envelope. Her Requiem Mass is on the 18th.

  My sister Jean, alas, can’t come up for it; she says the mornings are stiff with work, which she mustn’t leave. She is just back from a Retreat (the last few days of her holiday) taken by Canon Browne-Wilkinson, who she says was v.g. She says he gave her absolution without his stole—can this be? I told her that, in that case, her sins were yet upon her, and she had better get done again at once. I believe he’s not an extreme A[nglo-] C[atholic]; he told them a story of how he had gone to see a parish priest, who had greeted him with “Alas, we haven’t got our Lord here,” to which the Canon exclaimed, “My dear fellow, what can you mean?” What he meant, of course, was no R[eserved] S[acrament] in the church—I think the story was told to the retreatants (at Clewer) to warn them against taking a materialistic, R.C. view of the R.S. — God localized and enclosed. My sister isn’t tempted to this, and nor am I, but I daresay some Clewer retreatants might be…. Did I tell you I got Letters to a Layman at last from the L[ondon] L[ibrary] and read it. I thought it quite interesting; though for me aimed at something irrelevant, as the question of “validity” never bothers me at all. Indeed, what mainly interested me was the insight it gave into the minds of the two correspondents—the very able and fine one of Dom G[regory] D[ix] and that of his friend, of whom nothing much is revealed but that such questions did bother him, and nearly (if not quite) drove him to Rome. All that could drive me there would be a belief that it is the most Christian of the churches (incredible to me at present) or that God meant us all to join it (still more incredible), or a feeling for its traditions and liturgy, which I have. But “validity” no, the word has no meaning to me.

  I’m glad you like to have my letters. Really 100? I think you’d better get rid of them, of any you have kept, in that incinerator! I own I have kept yours—but that is another matter. They are full of such good stuff—how good you have been to me these 2 years! But I will burn them before I die; they’re not for other people to see. How I value all that liturgical world you have opened to me.

  My love always,

  R.M.

  1 W. H. Macaulay, Vice-Provost of King's College, Cambridge, 1918-24.

  1 Rev. Henry Lucius Moultrie Cary, S.SJ.E. (d. 8t
h Jan., 1950).

  2 See R.M.'s Personal Pleasures.

  1 Father Johnson had sent R.M. some of the celluloid “cards” printed with Latin prayers distributed by the Mack-Miller Candle Co. Inc. of Syracuse, N. Y.

  2 Rev. Bernard Dashwood Wilkins, S.S.J.E. (d. 7th June, i960), one of the Cowley Fathers then at St. Edward's House, Westminster.