The Eagle and the Dove

by Vita Sackville-West

  In the library at the Escorial is preserved the most touching and vivid token of her industry. It pretends to be a large leather-bound book; it opens out to reveal in the interior a little secret desk and ink-well, and could be closed again in a moment when Teresa, who for reasons of fatigue or ill-health had been forbidden to carry on her correspondence, was caught in the act by a well-intentioned intruder. The travelling writing-case, as she slammed it to, would then quickly resume the semblance of a Bible or other holy book. By a legitimate stretch of the imagination we may picture the saint, looking innocently up over the rims of her big spectacles, to enquire what might be wanted of her.

  One of the most charming aspects of Teresa’s nature is revealed through her relationship with children. Reading through her letters, one gets the impression that a lot of little girls were always clinging round her skirts. There were Elenita and Isabelita and Teresita, and whenever the saint writes about them she does so with the amused indulgence of a favourite aunt or grandmother. The note which then comes into her letters is gay, tender, and good-humoured indeed. To Elenita, whom she calls “my little chubby” (mi gordilla), she sends a joking message, “Tell my Elena not to stay away from me.” Immediately the child threw on her cloak and started off. “Hola, senora?” her mother cried, “is that the way girls leave their mother’s house?” “The Mother Foundress has sent for me,” Elena replied. “I can do no less.”

  Isabelita, who was Father Gracian’s little sister, aged ten, evidently filled Teresa’s life with delight. Busy woman and great saint though she was, she could unbend entirely in the rare moments she was able to find for “this Bela of mine,” and the little childish anecdotes come with evident pleasure from her pen even in the midst of the most serious matters. “The other day, when I gave her a piece of melon, she declared it was so cold it froze her throat. She says the quaintest things and is always merry.… The little creature’s wits are extraordinary. There is only one thing about her that troubles me. I do not know how to manage her mouth, which is very prim; she laughs very primly too, yet she is always laughing. Sometimes I tell her to open it, sometimes to shut it, and sometimes not to laugh. She says it is not her fault but the fault of her mouth, which is true. Anyone who has seen her wishes to see her again, though I do not tell her so. You would be amused to see the life I lead her about the expression of her mouth. I think it will not be so prim when she grows older.” But alas, although “she affords me the greatest amusement, I have so much writing to get through that I can spend but little time with her.” In such little time as Teresa was able to give her, however, she managed to win the child’s devotion even as she won the devotion of everybody else. Isabelita made up a verse which she sang whenever Teresa appeared at recreation :

  Oh see to recreation

  The Mother Foundress enter!

  Then let us dance and sing her songs

  With music to content her.

  An imaginative little inmate of the Toledo convent. Teresa gives also a sketch of her at play: “She has a few poor little statues of some shepherds, some nuns, and a figure of our Lady, and not a feast-day comes round but she invents some little scene with them; she composes verses, and sings them to us so well and to such a pretty tune that we are astonished.”

  These flitting children were the gaiety of the monasteries and their foundress. Teresita, aged eight, was Teresa’s own niece, given into her care as soon as she reached Spain from the New World. “She seems the sprite of the house and knows how to amuse us, telling us about the Indians and the sea voyage better than I could.… You are more just than Teresita who approves of no one but the sisters at Seville.… She is not writing to you because she is busy: she says she is Prioress and sends you her love.” By such touches, which she little thought would survive and glisten into a distant century, she registers no less actually than a painter the intimate scenes with the confiding children grouped round her in the centre.

  XIII

  IT SEEMS SOMEWHAT hard that Teresa, as a consequence of undertaking those trying journeys, should have been described by an angry Papal Nuncio as a restless gad-about (femma inquieta, andariega). “Do not mention her name!” he exclaimed, continuing with a fine indignant rhetoric, “She is a disobedient contumacious woman who promulgates pernicious doctrine under the pretence of devotion; leaves her cloister against the orders of her superiors and the decrees of the Council of Trent; is ambitious and teaches theology as though she were a doctor of the Church, in contempt of the teaching of St. Paul who commanded women not to teach.” Teresa, secure in her conviction that her work of reform needed doing and aware also that she had proceeded most cautiously with the proper authorisations, received all such assaults with calm. “I am amused at the plan of sending me to the Indies,” she wrote on hearing that the Mitigated friars were plotting to get rid of her by those means; “God forgive those people! However, it is best for them to make so many accusations at once, as no one will believe them.” She was quite alive to the fact that she herself had produced all the turmoil, remarking that she heartily regrets being a stumbling-block and thinks that the best remedy might be to throw her, like Jonah, into the sea, but so long as she did nothing against her own conscience, or against her most sacred vow of obedience, she could sail undisturbed over the stormiest waves.

  In the very midst of her occupations and difficulties she received instructions to return to Avila, there to become Prioress of her own convent of the Encarnacion. The convent had gone from bad to worse, and now provided nothing but a dismal example of how necessary her Reform had been. Teresa was most reluctant to accept this office, and even wrote to her friends there asking them not to vote for her, for she was anxious to continue with her own work which she saw would be seriously interrupted by three years’ detention at Avila, but Christ spoke to her, saying that it was His will. Unfortunately the nuns of the Encarnacion remained uninitiated to the divine intention, and Teresa’s reception was turbulent to a degree. Humanly speaking, one must have a certain sympathy with the self-indulgent community: Teresa’s departure from their midst had been in itself a criticism of their way of life, the establishment of the Reformed houses had carried that criticism further, and now to cap all they saw themselves threatened with the very rule that had so disquieted them. When the Provincial, accompanied by Teresa, entered the choir and read the letters patent confirming her appointment, he was met by an outcry from the mob of shrieking and hysterical women. Some of them even fainted, so great was their resentment and emotion. Teresa took a calm control. Apologising to them for her unwelcome arrival, and expressing her sense of her own unworthiness, she silenced them for the moment and later addressed them in words full of dignity, firmness, and conciliation. “My sisters, our Lord has sent me to this house to undertake this post by reason of my obedience, one which I as little expected as deserved. This election has given me great distress, not only because it has forced on me duties that I may not be able to fulfil, but also because it has given you a Prioress against your will and taste. I come only to serve you, and to administer to your pleasure so far as I am able. There is no reason to dread one who is so entirely yours. Do not fear my rule, for although I have lived until now and ruled amongst Discalced nuns, I know well enough how those who are not should be governed.” The visionary certainly knew how to deal with human beings, and before very long the subdued sisters were offering her the keys of their own accord. When more serious troubles came upon her, and she found herself threatened by the Inquisition itself, she accepted the situation boldly and without discomfiture. Her friends in alarm tried to frighten her; they came to her saying that the times were dangerous, that something might be laid to her charge, that she might be taken before the Inquisitors. Teresa “heard this with pleasure, and it made me laugh because I never was afraid of them. I knew well enough that in matters of faith I would not break the least ceremony of the Church, and that I would expose myself to die a thousand times rather than that anyone should see me go against
it or against any truth of Holy Writ. So I told them I was not afraid of that, for my soul must be in a very bad state if there was any thing the matter with it of such a nature as to make me fear the Inquisition.” This was her invariable attitude. On one occasion a rebellious novice, anxious to quit the convent in Seville, denounced the nuns with accusations of heresy, and poor Father Gracian going to visit Teresa was terrified to see the carts of the Inquisition waiting to take away the nuns, while their officers were searching the convent and a priest was watching from the corner of the street. Teresa only laughed, saying “Well and good, Father! let them burn us all for Christ’s sake, but never fear lest any of us should err from the faith, for by God’s grace we would sooner die a thousand times.” Not content with reassuring her friends, she went off to find the Inquisitor in person, and informed him that although she was subject to certain extraordinary processes in prayer, such as ecstasies, raptures and revelations, she did not wish to be deluded or deceived by Satan or to do anything that was not absolutely safe. Sooner than that, she would give herself up to the Inquisition for them to try her and examine her ways of going on. It was in reply to this declaration that the Inquisitor commanded her to write the history of her life, and to submit it, not to the Inquisition, but to a priest known as the Apostle of Andalusia. In justice to the Inquisition, this command may be signalled as an example of their genuine desire to protect rather than to persecute souls against the mortal peril of heresy. The Inquisitor made no attempt to destroy Teresa; he merely put her on the road to find out for herself whether her “extraordinary processes” proceeded from Heaven or from Hell. She must have felt grateful to him, for it was a subject which owing to the bewilderment and spiritual incompetence of her confessors in the past had always much troubled her.

  It will probably never be known beyond doubt whether the Princess of Eboli was really responsible for bringing a copy of Teresa’s autobiography into the hands of the Inquisition. It is certain that backed by her husband, the attractive Ruy Gomez, she importuned the reluctant Teresa into giving her a copy, under promise of secrecy, but within a few days Teresa heard that the promise had been broken, the book had been left lying about, the servants had got hold of it, her revelations were a matter of common talk and jest, she was being compared with the fraudulent Magdalen of the Cross, and was the subject of gossip in the drawing-rooms of Madrid. This was vexatious enough, but fortunately it had no serious consequences, for although the Inquisition eventually obtained a copy, sent directly, it is said, by the Princess, with a denunciation of its dangerous doctrines, the report given on it by a Dominican friar appointed as censor was so favourable to Teresa, that in the end the episode did her more good than harm. She was declared no deceiver, and the dozen convents of barefooted nuns which she had already founded were pronounced models of austerity and perfection. Further, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, President of the Supreme Court of the Inquisition, received her warmly, saying that he was glad to see her, had read the book himself, regarded it as containing sound and wholesome doctrine, and would grant her the licence she then required for a new foundation. Teresa had triumphed. The manuscript of that controversial book, in her own handwriting with few erasures, no punctuation, no division into paragraphs, and no title, on yellowed paper bearing the water-mark of Valladolid and Salamanca, now lies bound in crimson velvet by order of Philip II in the innermost sanctuary of the Escorial.

  XIV

  THIS PRINCESS OF Eboli was only one of the strange characters that populated Teresa’s life. The saint’s range of acquaintance was extensive, partly thanks to her faculty for acquiring friends and retaining them; partly to her own noble birth which enabled her to consort on easy terms with the proudest names in Spain; partly to her profession and the activities connected with her Reform, which brought her into touch with Cardinals, Archbishops, and other high dignitaries of the Church, as well as with the most ragged of friars. She wrote frequently to the King, to whom she used to refer as “my friend the King,” and met him personally when after their interview he made her “the most courteous bow I ever saw.fn12 With the Duke and Duchess of Alba she was on really intimate terms, interested in every matter connected with their family life, and sometimes their quest in their castle above the river Tormes on her way to Salamanca. The contrast between the ducal castle and the dirty lodgings of the wayside inns, which were her usual lot, may strike us as forcibly as it struck Teresa herself. Fond though she was of the duchess and that great soldier her husband, she did not wholly approve of their establishment. “Imagine,” she wrote, “that you are in an apartment,—I fancy it is termed a private museum,—belonging to a king or great nobleman, in which are placed numberless kinds of articles of glass, porcelain, and other things, so arranged that most of them are seen at once on entering the room. While on a visit to the Duchess of Alba I was taken into such a room. I stood amazed on entering it and wondered what could be the use of such a jumble of knick-knacks. Although I was in the room some time, there were so many things in it that I forgot what I had seen and could no more remember each object, nor of what it was made, than if I had never seen it, though I recalled the sight of the whole collection,” observations which she did not fail to turn to a cautionary illustrative purpose. Looking through the volumes of her letters, the noble names recur: Alba, Medina-Celi, Mendoza, Braganza.…

  But the Princess of Eboli was a thorn in Teresa’s side. This violent, spoilt, unreliable, beautiful woman, with the black patch worn always over a blinded eye, credited with many lovers who were said to include the King, threw Teresa’s convent of Pastrana into consternation by rushing there “in the tumult of her grief for her husband’s death.” Teresa herself was not there at the time, but the Prioress, awakened at two in the morning with the news that the princess was on her way, exclaimed, “The princess a nun? Then I give up this house for lost.” As it was too late to stop her, if indeed anybody could have succeeded in doing so, she presently arrived in a cart, having in an excess of mortification refused to travel in her own coach, and proceeded to fling the convent into confusion. She had already provided herself with a Carmelite habit, so dirty that the nuns hastened to give her a clean one; she now insisted that two women she had brought with her should be given the habit likewise and should be admitted as novices. On the Prioress protesting that such a thing was not to be done without the sanction of the Superior, the princess (who had, in fact, been the main benefactress of the foundation) cried out in a fury, “What have the friars to do with my monastery?” It had begun ill, and continued worse. Her behaviour was wildly contradictory; on the one hand she insisted on humiliating herself into the lowest place in the refectory, but on the other hand she compelled the nuns to serve her on their knees and salute her by her titles; demanded that her own maids should wait on her, received her friends and their retinues, in complete disregard for the rules of the reformed Order; and, on this being objected to, removed herself in a rage to one of the hermitages in the garden, had a door cut in the wall, and received her friends there, to the great indignation and distress of the nuns, who saw their privacy outraged and yet, in their gratitude, tried to remember the benefactions their house had once received at the princess’s hands. But now, worst of all, those benefactions were withdrawn. The princess, who was beginning to recover from her grief and also perhaps to regret her impulse, removed herself altogether to her own palace within the walls of Pastrana and suppressed the allowance hitherto made to the necessitous community, leaving it to struggle on or to starve as best it might.

  They appealed to Teresa, who after some abortive negotiations with the princess, acted with her customary decision. It was not in her nature to continue for long as a suppliant on unwilling charity. Orders came from her that the convent should be abandoned, and in spite of the attempted interference of the princess, who threatened to place guards at the gates and also sent a messenger “to say many things,” the nuns, accompanied by priests and friars, secretly took their departure a
t midnight in five carts for the protective comfort of Teresa and the refuge of Segovia.

  It was typical of Teresa’s Spain that an erratic and worldly intriguer like the Princess of Eboli should, in the first place, wish to endow a convent, and, in the second, rush to it as an inmate the moment she found herself in distress, for religion and the worldly life were confusingly intermingled. Fortunately, other figures of a very different stamp moved also within the periphery of the saint. To turn from the gusty episode of the Princess of Eboli, to turn even from the cabals, factions and suspicions of the Church, from the sordid difficulties with which Teresa so continuously had to cope, from the hysterical immolations and mortifications of pious persons with their sores and sack-cloth, to the serene purity of a St. John of the Cross, is like moving from a bewildering storm into the heavenly calm where it is light and the birds sing. Teresa’s Spain, abounding also in deplorable examples of religious fervour gone wrong, ripened a rare vintage of distilled holiness when all the imagination of that otherwise unimaginative race passed into the mysticism which has been called the natural produce of the Spanish soil. Among her countrymen and contemporaries she could number St. Peter of Alcantara, St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Thomas of Villanueva, St. Louis Bertrand, St. Francis Borgia, the “duke turned Jesuit”; the eloquent Juan de Avila, Apostle of Andalusia; Luis de Granada, preacher and writer; Luis Ponce de Leon; and the loveliest spirit of all, Juan de Yepez, known to Teresa as Fray Juan de la Cruz, to us as St. John of the Cross.