Letters to a Friend

by Constance Babington Smith

  1 St. Rose of Lima (1586-1617) was the first canonized saint of America.

  2 A Roman Christian (c. 340-410).

  1 Latin name for the Isle of Wight.

  1 The Labour Party had been in office since the General Election of 1945.

  2 John Gerard: The Autobiography of an Elizabethan; translated from the Latin by Philip Caraman with an introduction by Graham Greene (1951).

  1 G. S. R. Kitson Clark, The English Inheritance: an Historical Essay (1950).

  2 Sursum Corda: a Handbook of Intercession and Thanksgiving arranged by W. H Frere and A. L. Illingworth, with a Preface by the Bishop of Southwark (1900).

  1 Mary Macaulay.

  1 N. G. Annan, Leslie Stephen, his Thought and Character in Relation to his Time (1951).

  1 Virginia Paine and her family had known Father Johnson, as a priest and a friend, for over 25 years.

  1 The convent of the Sisters of St. Anne in Craigie Street, Cambridge, where Father Johnson often celebrated Holy Communion at 7.0 a.m.

  2 Two articles, entitled Cowper’s Last Years, were published in The Times Literary Supplement of 5th and 12th October, 1951. They consisted of extracts from a manuscript of the diary or memoranda of the Rev. John Johnson (“Johnny of Norfolk”) giving details relating to his cousin William Cowper, during the period 1795-1800 when the poet was suffering from melancholia and madness.

  3 Mary Barham Johnson.

  1 Eliza Conybeare.

  2 G. Orwell, 1984 (1949).

  1 The Malines Conversations, between Anglican and Roman Catholic theologians, took place between 1921 and 1925 under the presidency of Cardinal Mercier.

  2 Louis Duchesne (1843-1922), French historian of the early Christian Church.

  1 “The exercise of (Thy) compassion.”

  1 “Grant us, O Lord, thy light, so that the darkness of our hearts having been driven away we may be able to attain to the light, which is Christ.”

  1 Simone Weil, Waiting on God (1951).

  2 Kathleen Raine has explained that her reason for withdrawing from Roman Catholicism at this time was not antipathy towards the Church, but doubt as to the usefulness for her of any formal religious tradition.

  3 R.M.'s And No Mans Wit.

  1 Kate O'Brien, Farewell Spain (1937).

  2 The Thirty-Nine Articles.

  1 See above p. 203n.

  1 R.M. has added a further note on back of envelope: “I have been reading Kitson Clark, with interest.”

  2 This probably refers to The English Inheritance (see above p. 197).

  1 Jolin Cowper Powys, Autobiography (1934).

  1 R.M. means St. Cuthbert's, Philbeach Gardens.

  1 H. V. Morton, In Search of London (1951).

  2M. B. Cropper, Flame Touches Flame (1949).

  1 The Church of St. John the Evangelist, Bowdoin Street, Boston, which belongs to the S.S.J.E.

  1 Augustine Baker, Holy Wisdom or Directions for the Prayer of Contemplation (1657).

  1 Richard Challoner (1691-1781).

  2 “What reward shall I give unto the Lord: for all the benefits that he hath done unto me?” Ps. 116. 11.

  3 “I will receive the cup of salvation: and call upon the Name of the Lord.” Ps. 116. 12.

  4 “And make us ever to abide in thy commandments.”

  1 Lord David Cecil, The Stricken Deer; or the Life of Cowper (1929).

  1 Professor S. T. Bindoff, author of Tudor England (1950).

  1 Formerly the name of the American R.C. liturgical journal Worship.

  2 H. H. Milman prefaced his edition of Horace's works with a life of the poet (1849).

  1 E.M. Forster, Howards End (1910).

  2 She figures in many of the poems of Propertius (b.c. 50 B.C.).

  1 Soft whispers.

  1 His brother, Llewelyn Powys.

  2 “Alas, the fleeting (years glide by)”; Horace, Odes 2. 14.

  1 “So that [we may] enter into the holy of holies.”

  1 This book was later published (in 1955) under the title Scotland under Charles I; it has the following dedication: “For Rose Macaulay in memory of a long friendship.”

  1 Holy Wisdom (see above p. 221n.).

  1 Margery Kempe.

  1 Northwold Rectory (near the River Wissey) was the Norfolk home of Rather Johnson's paternal grandparents when he was a boy.

  2 A weekly Anglican newspaper, founded in 1846, which ceased publication in 1951.

  1 “Praised be the Lord daily:... God is the Lord, by whom we escape death.” Ps. 68. 19, 20.

  1 The O-Antiphons (or Greater Antiphons), often sung before and after the Magnificat in the seven days preceding Christmas Eve.

  1 Probably the photograph reproduced opposite p. 32, which was taken at the S.S.J.E. cemetery near Foxborough, Mass.

  2 Pax, the Roman Catholic quarterly review of the Benedictines of Prinknash, is published at Prinknash Abbey, Gloucester. The editor of Pax resides at St. Michael's Abbey, Farnborough, Hants (since 1947 a subsidiary house of the same order).

  3 Dom Gregory Rees, O.S.B., “Eirenicism in the Seventeenth Century an article published in Pax (Autumn-Winter, 1951).

  4 English Benedictine monk, d. 1661.

  5 Ralph Weldon (1674-1713) became a Benedictine monk in 1692, whereafter he was known as Dom Bennet Weldon.

  6 Obadiah Walker (1616-1699), Master of University College, Oxford.

  1 Included in Selected Mystical Writings of William Law; edited by Stephen Hohhouse (1938).

  1 Sir Leoline Jenkins (1623-1685), civil lawyer and diplomatist.

  2 Presumably Augsburg.

  1 Donald Attwater was editor of Pax, 1922-28. Publication began in 1904.

  2 Michael de la Bedoyere, The Life of Baron von Hugel (1951).

  3 Catharine and Anne Cowper Johnson, daughters of Rev. Wilfred Cowper Johnson.

  1 See above p. 248n.

  2 Liberal and Mystical Writings of William Law, with an Introduction by W. S. Palmer and a Preface by W. P. du Bose (1908).

  1 Mispronunciations of suaviter and jortiter.

  1 See The English Hymnal, Hymn 104: “Servant of God, remember The stream thy soul bedewing,” from Cultor Dei memento of Prudentius (348-i. 410); translated by T. A. Lacey (1853-1931).

  2 “God, creator of all things,” hymn by St. Ambrose.

  3 In the Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse (ed. I, 1928) line 127 of Cultor Dei included the words “totum subisse sanctum.” Subsequently, in an Errata slip, the compiler, S. Gaselee, replaced the proper word “rorem” (dew).

  4 The Indian-Troad Folly at Benington, Herts.

  1 R.M. was apparently unaware that L. P. Hartley, a practising Anglican, has always been much concerned with religious problems.

  2 “O God, who dost [gladden] us [by the yearly expectation] of our redemption.”

  1 “The Latin language itself varies daily with places and times.”

  2 “Concerning the right pronunciation of Greek and Latin.”

  1 Footnote by R.M.: “I see you have answered this—you say them anglicé.”

  2 They Were Defeated.

  1 The abbess or nun (probably Spanish) named Etheria or Silvia, whose travels are recorded in the Pilgrimage of Etheria. English translation byM. L. McClure and C. L. Feltoe (1919).

  1 Hymn 49 in The English Hymnal: “Creator of the Earth and Sky” (a translation of St. Ambrose's Deus Creator omnium).

  2 The Hundred Best Latin Hymns; selected by f. S. Phillimore (1926).

  3 Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861).

  4 The English Hymnal includes two versions of “O Come, all ye faithful.” Hymn 28 is a shortened version; Hymn 614 gives it in full.

  5 “The Magi, led by the star, adoring Christ.”

  6 John Mason Neale (1818-66) made only one translation of Urbs Sion aurea, which is Hymn 412 inThe English Hymnal, “Jerusalem the Golden”. Hymn 376 in Hymns A. &M. was based on Neale's translation, but amended by the editors.

  1 Novel by E.M. Forster (1908).

 
; 2 Novel by E.M. Forster (1907).

  1 Rev. Edward Joseph Rose, Rector of Weybridge, 1855-82, Hon. Canon of Winchester, 1878.

  2 King George VI died on 6th February, 1952.

  1 The Latin texts in the series Sammlung mittellateinischer Texte (Heidelberg) which include Die Disciplina Clericalis des Petrus Alfonsi (1911), Die Exempla aus den Sermones feriales et communes des Jakob von Vitry (1914), and also Johannes Monachus; Liber de Miraculis (1913).

  2 The sermons of James of Vitry, cardinal bishop of Tusculum (d. 1240), often contained stories “for the entertainment and edification of his hearers.”

  3 The Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alfonsi, a Spanish Jew who had been converted to Christianity (1106), is a collection of Oriental tales, proverbs and fables.

  4 Charles H. Beeson, A Primer of Medieval Latin (Chicago, 1925).

  1 Paul Claudel et A. Gide; correspondance, 1899-1926. Préface et notes par R. Mallet (Paris, 1949). An English translation by J. Russell (with preface) was published in 1952.

  2 Waiting on God.

  3 “Look upon [us] with favour.”

  1 R.M. here means to refer to the Rev. Joseph Rose (1783-1823), see below pp. 305 and 308.

  2 R.M. here means to refer to the father of Canon Edward Vaughan, Rector of Harpenden; but Charles John Vaughan (1816-97), Headmaster of Harrow 1844-59, Dean of Llandaff 1879, was Canon Vaughan's brother, not his father or his uncle (as R.M. herself discovered, see below p. 286).

  3 Canon Edward Vaughan of Harpenden.

  1 From the 16th century proverb “The Englishman Italianate is a devil incarnate.”

  1 This genealogy was removed from the letters by Father Johnson. He substituted a note as follows: “R.M.’s great-grandfather E. J. [Joseph] Rose was 1st cousin of my great-grandmother, Maria Livius. R.M.'s grandmother, Eliza Conybeare, was 2nd cousin of my two grandfathers at Yaxham and Welborne and they were probably aware of one another's existence as relations. 'Eliz' Rose of Carshalton (of whom R.M. has a portrait) was actually the sister of Mary (Barham) Livius, the wife of George, the son of Peter the German!”

  1 “They prick themselves with their own stings.” Cicero, De oratore 2. 38. 158.

  2 John Jewel (1522-71), Bishop of Salisbury.

  1 See above p. 262n.

  2 A second edition, revised and enlarged, was published for the Alcuin Club by Mowbrays in 1955.

  1 See above p. 269n.

  2 Sammlung mittellateinischer Texte.

  1 “Holy Gospel worthily proclaim.”

  1 The feast day of St. Matthias, 24th February, is celebrated, in leap years, on 25th February.

  1 “And for all faithful Christians, both the living and the departed.”

  1 “What reward shall I give unto the Lord...”; see above p. 222n.

  2 “I will praise the Lord in the congregations.” Ps. 26. 12.

  3 “Exercising my body with frequent swimming.”

  1 R.M. means the letter from Mary Barham Johnson and the “Peter Livius statement”. But on the back of the envelope she has written “The Sept. letter made it overweight, so I have abstracted it. Also Peter Livius!”

  1 R.M.'s Minor Pleasures of Life.

  2 R.M.'s The Writings of E.M. Forster.

  3 Rupert Flart-Davis, Hugh Walpole; a Biography (1952).

  1 William James Conybeare.

  2 William Bodham Donne and his Friends, edited hy Catharine B. Johnson (1905), see above p. Son.

  3 See above p. 276.

  1 The earliest life of Alfred the Great was by Asser, Bp. of Sherborne (d. c. 909).

  1 Father Johnson's parents.

  1 “O how amiable (are thy dwellings).” Ps. 84.

  1 “I see the better course and I applaud it, but I follow the worse.” Ovid, Met. 7. 20-21.

  1 Father Johnson had ordered Beeson's Primer of Medieval Latin from the books department of the Harvard Co-operative Society.

  1 A periodical published by the Monks of St. John's Abbey, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minn.

  1 Dr. G. G. Coulton (1858-1947), medieval historian.

  2 “The Lord himself is my keeper: the Lord is my defence upon my right hand.” Adapted from Ps. 121.5.

  3 See Ps. 20.7: “Some put their trust in chariots, and some in horses...”

  1 Rev. George Crocker Gibbs, S.S.J.E. (1878-1952), was stricken while saying Mass at the Church of St. John the Evangelist, Boston, on 30th March, 1952. He died the following day.

  2 Anglican monthly journal published by the S.P.C.K.

  1 ElizabethM. Delafield (1890-1943). 303

  1 C. C. Martindale, The Words of the Missal (1932).

  1 H. W. Longfellow, “Paul Revere's Ride.

  1 Thomas Babington Macaulay (Lord Macaulay).

  2 T. B. Macaulay failed in the Mathematical Tripos and had to take a Pass Degree.

  3 W. H. Macaulay.

  4 The 7th Earl of Shaftesbury (i801-1885) sent his eldest son to Rugby in 1845.

  1 “Deliver us indeed—secure from all disturbance.”

  2 “In the light of faith and in peace of mind.”

  3 Gertrude Powys, eldest sister of John Cowper Powys.

  1 George Tyrrell, External Religion: Its Use and Abuse (1899).

  2 “For a man departed.”

  1 “Thou dost show forth the light of thy truth.”

  1 “That unto us it may become the Body and Blood of thy most dearly beloved Son.”

  2 E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905).

  1 “Will” (W. J. C. Macaulay).

  2 Physiologus was the title given to a collection of some fifty Christian allegories, also known as the Bestiary. It was a combination of Natural History with allegorical interpretations of animals real and imaginary.

  1 “Prayer at the gathering of people.”

  2 A capitulum was a short lesson from the Bible suited to the Office of the day.

  3 Littleton C. Powys, The Joy of It (1937). His second book of autobiography, Still the Joy of It, was published in 1956.

  1 R.M.’s reference is to two of the Thirty-Nine Articles: Article 17 “Of Predestination and Election” and Article 9 “Of Original or Birth-sin.” The teaching of the Pelagians (followers of the 5th century heretic Pelagius) included the denial of the transmission of Adam's original sin.

  2 See Cowley (Winter 1951).

  3 Note by R.M. on back of envelope.

  1 William N. Pittenger, The Christian Sacrifice; a Study of the Eucharist in the Life of the Christian Church (New York, 1951).

  2 “We also pray thee.”

  3 The invocation of the Holy Spirit upon the bread and wine.

  4 “The memory of His Passion is renewed.”

  1 Mother Rose Anne, then Superior of St. Anne's House in Boston, Mass.

  1 Review by Father Johnson of Karl Adam's book One and Holy (New York, 1951), published in Cowley (Spring 1952).

  1 In his book The Mind of the Missal (p.22) Fr. C. C. Martindale states that he is “not disinclined to think” that Communio Sanctorum [' the Communion of Saints'] may mean “participation in the Holy Things, that is, the Eucharist.”

  2 “Let the partaking of thy body... turn not to my judgment)...”

  3 The Letters of Elizabeth Myers; with a Biographical Introduction and Some Comments on Her Books by L. C. Powys (1951).

  4 Llewelyn Powys; a Selection From His Writings Made by K. Hopkins (1952).

  1 Novel by V. Sackville-West (1930).

  1 See Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Johnson first met the politician John Wilkes at a dinner given by the brothers Dilly, the booksellers, on 15th May, 1776, when they discussed “the contested passage” in Horace's Art of Poetry, “Difficile est proprie communia dicere.”

  1 The friendship between Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Alexander Pope was broken off c. 1730.

  2 William Wordsworth, “Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.”