I Leap Over The Wall
A RETURN TO THE WORLD AFTER TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS IN A CONVENT
by
MONICA BALDWIN
By the help of my God I leap over the wall
(MOTTO OF THE BALDWINS)
With love and gratitude to
Mary-Eula Draper Blair
who has shown me what friendship
between America and England mean
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Copyright
INTRODUCTION
I AM not the first member of my family to leap over a wall.
Nearly four hundred years ago, my ancestor, Thomas Baldwin of Diddlebury, leaped to freedom from behind the walls of the Tower of London, where he had been imprisoned for taking part in a plot for the escape of Mary Queen of Scots.
His name, with an inscription and the date ‘July 1585’ can still be seen where he carved it on the wall of his cell in the Beauchamp Tower. Later, he added a motto to his coat-of-arms, Per Deum meum transilio murum—‘By the help of my God I leap over the wall’.
It has been the family motto of the Baldwins ever since; but the wall that I leapt over was a spiritual and not a material obstacle.
In 1914, my cousin, William Sparrow, who disapproved of my entering the convent, wrote to me:
‘… Knowing you as I do, I can safely predict that it will be with you as with another fair and foolish female, whose unwisdom caused her to languish long behind prison walls. Your End will be your Beginning. I commend these words, with those of the family motto, to your meditation. Taken together, they may suggest a course of action in years to come….’
In the following pages I have tried to describe what happened when my cousin’s rather ambiguous prophecy was fulfilled. It is a rash and foolhardy undertaking, in the circumstances, for I really know nothing about anything, except, perhaps, what goes on behind ‘high convent walls’.
My only excuse is that so many, and such different kinds of people, have urged me to attempt it.
Some of them said to me, ‘Because of your past environment, your angle is unusual. It should interest people. You ought to write about it.’
Others simply bombarded me with questions. It is chiefly on their account that I have embarked upon this book. Some of the remarks made to me revealed such fantastically wrong ideas about nuns and convents that I began to feel something ought to be done to put the monastic ideal in a truer perspective for those who know little or nothing about it.
So I have tried to write accurately and fairly about life in a strictly enclosed convent, as I myself experienced it. To do this it was necessary to describe not only the wonderful and exalted spiritual ideal which inspires that life, but also certain aspects of it which, for various reasons, may perhaps leave something to be desired.
I do not feel that I have done my subject justice. If, however, these pages help to straighten out even a few of the curiously crooked notions which so many people still appear to retain about convents, I shall be well satisfied.
One fact I must make clear from the outset. I describe the religious vocation from the point of view of one who had no such vocation. The alternative title of this book might well be Impressions of a Square Peg in a Round Hole.
Cornwall
February 1948 MONICA BALDWIN
CHAPTER ONE
(1)
LEAPS over walls—especially when taken late in life—can be extremely perilous. To leap successfully, you need a sense of humour, the spirit of adventure and an unshakable conviction that what you are leaping over is an obstacle upon which you would otherwise fall down.
My own leap was taken on October 26, 1941.
On that day I left the convent, where for twenty-eight years I had lived in the strictest possible enclosure, and came out again into the world.
In reality, it was not necessary to do any leaping, either of walls or of anything else. As soon as the customary formalities were ended, the doors were opened and I simply walked out.
The story of what led me to do this might be interesting: this, however, is not the place for it. This book deals with what happened after the convent doors were closed behind me and I stepped out into a world that was just beginning its third year of a new and particularly devilish kind of war.
Naturally, everyone whom I consulted assured me that I could not have chosen a more unsuitable moment for my exodus. What with clothes coupons, food rationing, travelling restrictions and the appalling rise in the cost of living, how on earth—they asked—did I imagine I should ever be able to cope?
I looked at all this, however, from another angle. Just because the world appeared to be in such a crazy turmoil, I felt that it was exactly the background that I required. Everybody was rushing round doing unprecedented things. Old standards had already been swept away. How easy it would be to plunge into the seething waters of the war deluge and splash about unnoticed, listening, looking about, experimenting, learning about things, till the floods died down! Afterwards—always provided that anything of the universe still remained to be lived in, which just then seemed unlikely—one might perhaps start trying to construct a life.
In my opinion, it would have been far more difficult to adjust oneself to the comparatively ordered rhythm of the pre-war world.
My sister Freda came to fetch me away, rather appropriately, on a cold and frosty morning. She brought with her an atmosphere of faint disapproval and a suitcase containing the clothes into which I was to change before finally going forth into the world.
The crescendo of shocks which awaited me began abruptly with my first introduction to up-to-date underwear. Frankly, I was appalled.
The garments to which I was accustomed had been contrived by thoroughgoing ascetics in the fourteenth century, who considered that a nice, thick, long-sleeved ‘shift’ of rough, scratchy serge was the right thing to wear next your skin. My shifts, when new, had reached almost to my ankles. However, hard washing and much indiscriminate patching soon stiffened and shrank them until they all but stood up by themselves. Stays, shoulder-strapped and severely boned, concealed one’s outline; over them, two long serge petticoats were lashed securely round one’s waist. Last came the ample habit-coat of heavy cloth, topped by a linen rochet and a stiffly starched barbette of cambric, folded into a score of tiny tucks and pleats at the neck.
So, when my sister handed me a wisp of gossamer, about the size and substance of a spider’s web, I was startled.
She said, ‘Here’s your foundation garment. Actually, most people only wear pants and a brassière, but it’s cold to-day so I thought we’d better start you with a vest.’
I examined the object, remembering 1914. In those days, a ‘nice’ girl ‘started’ with long, woolly combinations, neck-high and elbow-sleeved, decorated with a row of neat pearl buttons down the front….
Next came the modern version of the corset. It was the merest strip of elastic brocade from which suspenders, in a surprising number, dangled. I thought it a great improvement on the fourteenth-century idea. The only drawback was that you had to insert your person into it serpent-fashion, as it had no fastenings.
What bothered me most were the stockings. The kind I was used to were enormous things, far thicker than those men wear for tramping the moors and shrunk by
repeated boiling to the shape and consistency of a Wellington boot. The pair with which Freda had provided me were of silk, skin-coloured and so transparent that I wondered why anyone bothered to wear the things at all.
I said firmly, ‘Freda, I can’t possibly go out in these. They make my legs look naked.’
She smiled patiently.
‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘Everyone wears them. If you went about in anything else you’d collect a crowd.’
By this time it had become clear to me that the generation which affected the transparencies in which I now was shivering must long ago have scrapped the kind of garments I had worn as a girl. I wondered what they had done about the neck-high camisoles with their fussy trimmings of lace and insertion and those incredibly ample, long-legged white cotton drawers.
The answer turned out to be an airy nothing called ‘cami-knickers’, made, apparently, of cobweb. I felt my teeth beginning to chatter as I put it—or should one say ‘them’?—on.
One further shock awaited me.
An object was handed to me which I can only describe as a very realistically modelled bust-bodice. That its purpose was to emphasize contours which, in my girlhood, were always decorously concealed was but too evident.
‘This,’ said my sister cheerfully, ‘is a brassière. And it’s no use looking so horrified, because fashions to-day go out of their way to stress that part of one’s anatomy. These things are supposed to fix one’s chest at the classic angle. Like this—’ she adjusted the object with expert fingers. ‘There—you see the idea?’
The worst problem was my hair.
For twenty-eight years it had been cropped convict-wise beneath the incredible system of headgear exacted by the Order to which I belonged. As a foundation, a ‘snood’, or long narrow strip of linen, was wound two or three times round the head. Over this, a close-fitting cap—rather like those worn by bathers—was pulled down to the ears. A piece of fine cambric, called a ‘tip’, was then bound tightly across the forehead and tied at the back with strings. Next came the ‘head’—a kind of wimple—which covered the head and ears. It was gathered in closely at the neck and then frilled out as far as the shoulders beneath the starched barbette. Over this was pinned an erection of black cashmere which fell, gable-wise, on either side of the head to just above the elbows. Between this and its lining of starched white linen was a double cardboard stiffening with strips of cotton, fortified with yet more starch. Finally, the veil proper—of thin, black material, rather like ninon—was mounted on the underveil and firmly secured with pins. Eight thicknesses in all! In summer it was apt to give one a headache. The wonder, of course, was that, having worn it for so many years, I had any hair left at all.
For about two months before my exodus, however, I had allowed my hair to grow. The result was that my head now resembled that of a moth-eaten golliwog. My sister, foreseeing this dilemma, had been inspired to bring me an admirable hat. Though neither toque, beret nor képi, it combined the advantages of all three. I drew it on now, a little apprehensively. Perhaps the effect may have been a trifle raffish; however, it concealed my elf-locks very satisfactorily.
Now we were on the threshold.
As I crossed it, two thoughts occurred to me. One was that the door which at that instant was being locked behind me was not a door but a guillotine. And it had just chopped off from me, utterly and irrevocably, every single thing which, for twenty-eight years, had made up my life. Henceforward I was a being without a background. And no one who has not actually experienced that sensation can know how grim it is.
The other thought flashed in upon me with the urgency of a commandment:
Thou shalt not look back!
And I knew instinctively that, if I wanted to keep my balance on the tight-rope stretched before me, I must slam the door behind me and keep on looking straight ahead. Otherwise I should have to pay the penalty.
I crossed the courtyard and went out into the pale October sunshine.
For good or ill, I had leapt over the wall.
(2)
Before I go further, I must explain why I found it—and still find it—so extraordinarily difficult to acquire that wide-awake, all-alert attitude which is essential for any kind of success in the world to-day.
I had not been more than a few hours out of the convent when I realized that I didn’t know even the first thing about modern life. I had forgotten the value of money; I knew less than nothing about clothes; I had never even heard of the authors, athletes, film-stars, politicians, whose names were in the news. My standards were all pre-1914. And even these had been badly blurred by the passage of time. In fact, if Providence had not blessed me with a sense of humour, the thought of the masses of information which I had to assimilate might well have made me defeatist before I had begun to fight.
The most difficult thing to deal with was my own interior attitude.
For twenty-eight years I had lived with my outside turned inwards. Now, swiftly and violently, I had, so to speak, to reverse engines and start trying to live with my inside turned out.
Let me try to make this clear.
Most people imagine that girls go into convents because of an unsuccessful love-affair. Possibly some do; but they are the rare exceptions. I myself believe that most people become nuns because they belong to one or other of two classes.
The first and smaller class consists of those who are naturally devout. Marriage does not particularly attract them. They like saying their prayers (as opposed, perhaps, to praying); they love a quiet, well-ordered existence, with heaven as its goal. They do not make the best nuns, but they certainly lead good lives and quite often arrive at a surprising degree of holiness.
The second class is the larger and the more interesting. It consists of the people who enter convents less because they themselves choose to do so than because they are chosen by God. These are the real ‘vocations’. Some spiritual adventure has happened to them: some vital encounter has taken place between their souls and God. They know, beyond all possibility of doubt, that God is not just some vague, remote, spiritual ideal, but a living Person. They therefore become possessed by a kind of burning hunger and thirst for God, which only he himself can satisfy.
To those who have never had this experience, such an idea will probably seem fantastic. But the fact remains that you cannot read the lives and writings of the saints and mystics without repeatedly coming up against the assertion that, even in this life, it is possible for the veil to be lifted and for the human soul to enter into what is, literally, a conscious, experimental contact with God. And those who have experienced this contact declare unanimously that it can only be described as a foretaste of the bliss of heaven.
This being so, it is not really so very surprising that when this craving for contact with God becomes fierce and urgent, as it undoubtedly does in certain people, they are ready to trample underfoot the world and everything in it, if by that means their longing can be satisfied.
It is, of course, for this type of person that contemplative convents primarily exist. They are organized, down to the very smallest details, with one object in view—to provide for those who live in them the kind of life which will best enable them to attain their end.
The discipline to which religious subject themselves is extremely rigorous. God, lovelier than any dream, is pure Spirit; therefore, if contact is to be established, the counter-attraction of the senses must be overcome. You can’t be completely wrapped up in God (and he is a jealous lover) unless you are unwrapped-up in what this world has to offer you. In convents, this process of unwrapping is effected by a system of remorseless separation from everything that is not God.
All intercourse with the outside world is reduced to the absolute minimum. The same applies to visits and letters, which the Superior is free to censor or suppress, as she thinks fit. Newspapers and secular literature are prohibited. In fact, one lives—as far as is humanly possible—oblivious of what goes on outside the convent walls.
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br /> I myself became a nun only a few months before the invasion of Belgium in 1914. The war brought many sensational happenings to the community; but beyond those in which I was necessarily involved I knew next to nothing of what was going on. Now and again a nun would be sent for by Reverend Mother and told that some relation had been wounded or killed; but I can’t remember reading a single newspaper during the whole four years. Then, one day, bells were rung and Reverend Mother announced to us that the fighting was ended. Afterwards we went to the choir and sang the Te Deum in thanksgiving. That, for me, represented World War Number One.
So much for exterior separation. The interior separation cut deeper still.
Almost the first thing that the Mistress of Novices explained to me was the importance of being exact about even the smallest details of the Rule. She said, ‘You must give up your own tastes and habits and allow the Rule to mould you according to the pattern of the Order to which you belong.’
As I was extremely lively and much attached to my own way of looking at things, I found this difficult. And it was some time before what are called ‘The Rules of Modesty’ managed to transform my worldly manners into a ‘religious’ exterior.
Among other things, these ‘Rules’ decreed that when walking you might never swing your arms. Instead, your hands must be kept meekly clasped together at the level of your waist. This was ‘religious’. To hurry was another breach of decorum. You were obliged to take short, measured steps, head bent just a little forward and eyes invariably cast down. Even had a bomb exploded just behind you, it would have been more perfect not to look up. In fact, this ‘custody of the eyes’ was considered so important that to raise them, even for a moment, without strict necessity, in choir or refectory, was a minor breach of Rule.
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