The Eagle and the Dove

by Vita Sackville-West

  Thérèse no more than any other devout nun would ever have dreamt of going against the wishes of her superiors, but a wistful desire did come her way : she had heard that two Carmelites were needed for the convent at Hanoï in Indo-China. Had not Noah dispatched a dove from the Ark, and why should not she, Thérèse, also fly forth bearing the olive-branch towards those infidel shores? It occurred to her that her life at Lisieux was too soft, surrounded as she was by the love of her sisters both natural and spiritual, whereas by transporting herself to a foundation where she would be totally unknown, she might gain the benefit of suffering the pains of exile. But it was already apparent that another and longer journey awaited her, not into exile indeed, but into the haven she logically longed to reach.

  A Good Friday had brought her the first indication of the joy in store. It so happened that she had been feeling in unusually good health and had gone all through Lent observing the strictest fast without ill-effects, and it was much to her disappointment that she had not been allowed to keep vigil by the Sepulchre for the whole of the Thursday night. It was midnight when she returned to her cell, and no sooner had she put out her lamp and laid her head on the pillow, than she became aware of a flood surging into her mouth, causing her to think that she was about to die and consequently filling her with bliss. A natural curiosity made her want to relight her lamp, but true to her principles she suppressed the impulse and went quietly to sleep until morning. When the castanets sounded, she awoke, filled with the conviction that she had something joyful to learn; carried her handkerchief to the window, and found it soaked in blood.

  So well did she conceal this happening from her companions and her superiors, that she was allowed without question to carry out all the obligations imposed upon her by that most tragic of the Church’s holy days. The Prioress must have been either singularly unobservant or singularly unsympathetic, compared with the little novice who found Thérèse cleaning the windows, and, noticing her livid face and obvious exhaustion, implored her to ask to be relieved of her task. Thérèse, of course, forbade her to say a word, remarking that she could well put up with a little fatigue on that day when Jesus had endured so much. Even her own sisters knew nothing of her condition until a year had passed.

  She had been delicate from birth, nearly losing her life on several occasions during her babyhood and childhood; moreover her family history from a medical point of view could scarcely have been more deplorable. She had lost two brothers and two sisters, one of them certainly through consumption; she had lost an aunt through consumption; her mother had died of cancer, and her father was now paralytic and mad. It was not a good record. Oddly enough, and unlike Teresa of Avila some three hundred and ten years earlier, she had escaped very lightly from a similar epidemic of influenza which devastated France and found its way into the Carmel of Lisieux in 1891, when all the nuns save two fell ill and several died. Nevertheless, while still possessing her ordinary state of health, she had confided her prescience of death to an aged nun in whose discretion she could trust. “I shall die soon,” she had said; “I don’t say that it will be within a few months, but within two or three years at most.” Her prophecy proved to be correct. Within two years and five months she was dead.

  Thérèse had always been physically courageous; as a child she had enjoyed thunderstorms and in her religious life she never allowed fits of giddiness or blinding headaches to interfere with her duties. She had concealed them, as she had concealed the digestive troubles which were not improved by fasting or by the lean diet of Carmel. But there was now no question of concealment: she was attacked by tuberculosis of the lungs, accompanied by violent and repeated haemorrhages and a continuous dry cough. She could be observed painfully mounting the stairs towards her cell, obliged to pause on each step to regain her breath—not so very many years ago she had also paused on each step, calling “Maman! maman!”—so exhausted on arrival that it sometimes took her an hour to undress. Her condition at last realised, she was subjected to various treatments such as frictions, leeches, and cauterisation, a painful process which involved stabbing her with hot irons, but the doctor himself put little faith in his remedies, remarking that although he could not cure her, that soul was never made for earth. The less observant members of the community, evidently, did not all share the doctor’s opinion of her saintliness, for one day Thérèse overheard a nun talking in the kitchen and saying, “Sæur Thérèse de l’Enfant Jésus is soon going to die, and I really wonder what our Mother will find to say about her after her death. She will find herself in rather a difficulty, for although that little sister is amiable enough she has never done anything worth talking about.” Her remark referred, of course, to the Carmelite custom by which the Prioress sends a biographical notice on any deceased nun to all convents of the Order. It would be interesting to know by how many years that nun survived St. Thérèse; it is quite possible that she may still be alive to-day.

  By the end of Lent 1897 it became clear that the end could not be many months off, but to Thérèse herself it approached much too slowly. Characteristically, she compared herself to a child who has been promised a cake, always withdrawn when he tries to take it. Characteristically also she begged to be left in her cell instead of going to the more comfortable infirmary where her cough would disturb other people. Shut alone into her cell, she could not be heard. She would drag herself into the garden to enjoy the spring sunshine, then the warmer sunshine of May and June, but by July she was compelled to leave her wretched cell for the last time and resign herself to entering the infirmary. They kept on asking her if she feared death, an idle question. “I am as gay as a chaffinch,” she wrote in a farewell letter to her uncle and aunt, “except when I have fever, but luckily that is only at night, when all chaffinches are asleep, their heads under their wings !” The door of her sombre prison was opening, she said; but by a cruel trial the darkness of the soul which, like all her kind, she had so often had to combat, returned to her at times, when she tossed upon her bed tempted to question whether God indeed loved her, begging them all to pray for her, imploring the Sister to throw holy water over her face for the Devil was around her, tormenting her, holding her down with an iron hand, impeding her from prayer. “Oh,” she cried, “how one ought to pray for the dying ! if only people knew !” At moments she seemed driven almost out of her mind by these mental sufferings; at other times she would regain all her confidence and serenity which no physical suffering, however atrocious, could shake.

  “You are in great pain just now, are you not?”

  “Yes, but I have so longed for it.”

  She spoke of her life after death. “I shall send down a rain of roses,” she said. “I feel that my mission is about to begin, my mission of making others love God as I love Him, of giving my Little Way to souls. I want to show them the little methods which I have found so perfectly successful. I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth,” but interspersed with such prophecies and amidst the distraction of her mortal pain she still did not fail to pursue those little methods of self-suppression. In a raging fever one night, and longing above all things for a cooling drink, the Sister brought her a hot-water bottle and iodine to rub on her chest. It was the height of summer, and poor ‘Thérèse who had felt the cold so bitterly addressed a mental reproach to Jesus, “Bear witness,” she said to Him, “I burn, and they bring me fire and more heat instead of half a glass of water ! But I am glad to lack my necessity, in order to resemble you more and to save souls.”

  She was now so ill that they had once already administered Extreme Unction thinking that her release was at hand; she could no longer move without help; the sound of voices hurt her, she herself could scarcely speak a word without exhaustion. Yet she lingered on. Dreadful sickness now made it impossible for her to receive the Sacraments, to her the worst of all deprivations. At times she could only moan to God to take pity on her. At other times she could speak a little, and exhorted the Sister to answer “So much the better,” every
time she should complain of being in pain. To the Almoner, who asked her if she was resigned to dying, she replied that resignation was necessary only for living. On the eve of her death, when her sister Céline, now herself a nun, was sitting with her, she was gently pleased on seeing a dove fly in and perch by the open window.

  It was the last earthly pleasure she knew, for by morning she was crying pitifully that she could not breathe this air and asking when she should breathe the air of heaven. Suddenly sitting straight up in bed, she who for weeks had been unable to move cried out, “The cup is full to the brim! No, I could never have believed it was possible to suffer so much…. I can explain it only by my extreme desire to save souls…. All that I have written about my desire for pain, oh, how true it is! I do not regret having given myself up to love.”

  By the evening she was asking if it was not the last agony, and on being told that it was, but that it might be prolonged by several hours, she murmured that she did not wish to suffer less. They were mistaken in their warning, for looking at her crucifix, she then uttered her last words, “I love Him. My God, I love you.”

  It was not long before mysterious scents of flowers began to be noticed in the convent, in places where no flowers were.

  XII

  THUS IN COMPLETE obscurity, known only to a few, this little nun slipped away after a concealed and humble life and a death which in its way had been a martyrdom of the least dramatic type. Hundreds, thousands of nuns had lived similar lives, good, pure, devout; there was nothing to distinguish Sæur Thérèse de l’Enfant Jesus from their long procession. According to the custom of Carmel, her body was placed behind the grating of the choir, when all who were so minded might come to gaze once more upon the uncovered face; this exposition drew a large crowd, some of them attracted no doubt by a somewhat morbid curiosity, others by a more reverent affection for Thérèse in her early days or for members of her family. One rather curious incident took place, when a nun in repentance for having once spoken unkindly to Thérèse came to kneel by the bier, and, pressing her forehead against it, became aware that she was cured of a long-standing cerebral anaemia. Otherwise the last ceremonies took place as usual, with becoming lack of display, and a wooden cross was placed over the grave, bearing the words, “I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth.”

  A curiously complete parallel to her life and practices may be found in the brief story of Beatriz Oñez, a Carmelite nun professed at Valladolid in 1570; so complete that, but for the sequel, every word related of her might be applied to Thérèse. She was said never to utter a word with which fault could be found; never to make an excuse for herself, even though the Prioress would find fault with her for things she had not done. She never complained of anything, never by word or look did she hurt the feelings of anybody, never failed in obedience but did whatever she was commanded to do readily, perfectly, and with joy. The most trifling thing we do, she was wont to say, is beyond all price if we do it for the love of God. Her sufferings, which were very grievous, and most distressing pains, she bore willingly and joyfully, begging her sisters to pray that God might send her much suffering to make her happy; yet, when it came to her, kept it secret as far as she could, that those around her might not see how much she had to bear. Even in her death she resembled Thérèse, for she seemed as though gazing at something which filled her with gladness, and as her body was laid in the tomb a most powerful and sweet smell was perceived arising from it. Yet, for all this similarity, what honour has ever been paid on earth to Beatriz Oñez, who differed in no way from the equally inconspicuous Carmelite of Lisieux? Buried lives! their earthly record ended with the last shovelful of soil as their companions turned away to resume the daily sacrifice, the daily devotion.

  All was over to outward appearances, but the most remarkable chapter in the history of Thérèse Martin was to open only after her death. Her life had been so sequestered, so uneventful, that her name would have remained unknown outside the small territory of Lisieux, and with the gradual falling-off of the few people who had known her the sea of forgetfulness would have closed for ever over her grave, but for the existence of that unstudied manuscript, l’Histoire d’une âme. Thérèse’s last months on earth had made a profound impression on the Prioress, Mère Marie de Gonzague, who now reproached herself with certain harshness towards Thérèse in the past, and, contemplating with tears a picture of Thérèse as a child on her mother’s knee, began to wonder how she could make amends. It is hard to resist the suspicion that Mère Marie de Gonzague had at moments been irritated by Sæur Thérèse, but death is a great obliterator. It will be remembered that it was customary to send a kind of obituary notice to all the other convents when a Carmelite died; it now occurred to the Prioress to print and distribute the Histoire, letting Thérèse speak for herself. How effectively she spoke can be estimated only by the startling results which ensued.

  In the whole history of the Church, such a thing had never been known before. The book, first read in the convents, was then lent to chosen friends; the circles widened rapidly, and before long the Carmel of Lisieux was inundated with orders for copies of the book from all parts of France. Not only orders arrived, but numbers of young women all desirous of entering the convent of Lisieux and following in the footsteps of Thérèse de l’Enfant Jésus. From the French provinces they came, and then from Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Turkey, and even from the Argentine. As Lisieux, crowded out, could not possibly cope with them all, they had to be distributed as best they might into other convents wherever the Order possessed a foundation. The value of the written word had never been more clearly demonstrated than now, when it shot this searchlight beam into the recesses of Thérèse Martin’s obscurity.

  It was not only impressionable or repentant young women who found themselves attracted by Sæur Thérèse and the solution of her Little Way, but priests and missionaries all over the world, some of whom had started by being sceptical, declaring candidly that they were put off if not actually repelled by her emollient sentimentality. The youthful and critical seminarists of Bayeux, who now spent a great deal of their time in argument about the merits or demerits of the book and its author, were especially captious in the judgments, but amongst them was a certain ill young abbé Anne, whose doctors diagnosed galloping consumption and gave him at most a few more days to live. A neuvaine to Thérèse was instantly begun (and this alone shows how high her reputation already stood), but apparently to no avail : after some days of intercession it was thought that the end would come during the night. Forewarned of this probability, the young man, who, for all his piety, had no wish to die, pressed a relic of the nun to his heart and passionately invoked her in silent prayer, saying that although he felt sure she was in Heaven, he was on earth where much work remained to be done, and that, in a word, she must cure him.

  An extraordinary change visibly taking place without delay in the patient, the doctors were summoned in haste and to their astonishment were obliged to declare that they found him completely restored to health. Lest any exaggeration should be suspected, it is as well to give the statement in the words of Lisieux’ official chronicler in a work crowned by the French Academy, “The destroyed and ravaged lungs had been replaced by new lungs, carrying out their normal functions and about to revive the entire organism. A slight emaciation persists, which will disappear within a few days under a regularly assimilated diet.” Moreover, not only did the abbe Anne make a complete recovery from the ravages of this usually fatal disease, which, as is well known, is especially pernicious in youth, but developed in afterlife a remarkably robust health and constitution. The miracle was so well authenticated, owing to the attendance and the testimony of the doctors, that it was later taken as one of the two test cases demanded.

  Without making any attempt to explain or to explain away such phenomena, let us merely continue with a very brief list of instances taken almost at random from the seven volumes entitled A Rain of Roses (Pluie de roses), edited by the Carmel of Lisi
eux. Thérèse promise that she would send down this shower when once she had reached Heaven was being most multitudinously and variously fulfilled. There was the Bishop of the Upper Congo, who persuaded her to cure a missionary attacked by sleeping sickness, and who, although he had asked no favour for himself, was incidentally cured likewise of his chronic and disabling rheumatism. There was the Prioress of a Carmel in southern Italy who, having an urgent debt to pay off, found the needed banknotes miraculously placed in an empty drawer of her writing-table. There was the Reverend Alexander Grant of Edinburgh, a Presbyterian minister who, not content with embracing the Catholic faith after his perusal of l’Histoire d’une rime, uprooted himself from Scotland and went to live in Thérèse’s birth-house at Alençon, there to receive the increasing stream of pilgrims. There was the manufacturer of Liverpool, a hard-bitten man, who after reading the Histoire, caused a statue of Thérèse to be placed in all his workshops, presented a copy of the book to all his work-people, and, what they probably appreciated most of all, gave them a week’s holiday with full pay. Maurice de Waleffe, a sceptical journalist, wrote in Le Journal that the world had fallen on its knees before the purest soul since Francis of Assisi. To say that the world had fallen on its knees was perhaps going rather far, but there was no denying that the cult was growing at an extraordinary rate in all countries and continents. It is perhaps not surprising to find her venerated among the French Canadians, but somewhat unexpected to meet with a similar enthusiasm in the industrial cities of the United States. There, in the Protestant hospitals, the nurses and even the doctors got into the way of advising their patients to invoke her aid. The post-bag of Lisieux was swollen by requests for the Histoire, for portraits of Thérèse, for scraps of relics, from Australia, Ceylon, India, South America, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, England, and all the time new tales of miraculous cures filtered in from the distant French colonies and from missions in Africa and the Far East.