On the whole, I was faintly relieved when my uncle and aunt drove down and bore me back with them to London.
I liked my cousin Desdemona and found her enchanting to look at. But Mr. Rudolf Steiner—nein!
J’en avais assez … pour la vie.
(2)
So there I was, back in London again, with forty-six pounds, nine shillings and fourpence in the bank and not the remotest idea what was going to happen next.
I was not left wondering for long.
Another cousin—this one was called Joyce—wrote to me that she had just heard of a job—in fact, of two jobs—which might suit me. If I would ring her, we could discuss their possibilities. This was exciting.
Unfortunately, before I could communicate with her, it was necessary to perform what would have been called in the convent an Act of Self-Conquest; for, among the objects in modern life with which I most disliked dealing, the telephone held at that time the first place. Incredible as it may sound, I doubt whether I had used one half a dozen times before entering the convent. Dialling made me so nervous that I invariably forgot the number before I had finished and had to begin all over again. As for the dreadful little red boxes in the street where one stuffed pennies into slots and did things with levers—or whatever they were—marked A and B, I would as soon have entered a den of lions.
Of the jobs into either of which my cousin now proposed to waft me, I chose the second. (The first was in Portugal. It sounded delightful, but somehow I didn’t feel that my Experience of Life—the phrase was becoming an obsession—was as yet quite sufficient to justify the risk of such a plunge.) The second was that of blue-print designer to an aircraft factory; and, though it would have to be preceded by a short course in a drawing-office, a job—provided that one passed a test at the end of it—was always guaranteed. Two friends of Joyce had in this way obtained excellent positions.
She said, ‘I’m told it’s frr-rrightfully interesting and not particularly difficult. And, as you can already draw and are accurate …’
Finally it was agreed that I should present myself at the drawing-office as soon as might be.
By this time I was feeling altogether brave and reckless. So, after a bout of furniture-shifting with my aunt, I thought I would fare forth and try to establish contact between myself and the London streets.
It was the first time that I had been out alone on foot in London. I blush to say that my principal reaction was one of fear. Fear at the complete unfamiliarity of everything. Fear of the crowds. Of not knowing the way to anywhere. Of the noise. Of the hurry. And a fear, which amounted almost to terror, of crossing the street.
This so hampered me that I felt something must immediately be done about it. It began to look rather as though another Act of Self-Conquest might have to be performed….
I therefore propelled myself by sheer will-power into the midst of the traffic and began an epic progress down Regent Street which, if I live till doomsday, I shall not forget. Between the Polytechnic and Piccadilly Circus, I zigzagged madly backwards and forwards across the street at least a dozen times. It was drastic; but it ended my traffic-shyness. To-day London holds no more intrepid street-crosser than I.
Which only shows, as my Novice Mistress used to say to me, what very unpleasant things you can force yourself to do if only you make up your mind.
(3)
Soon after this, I started work at the drawing-office.
It was run by a stout little Irishman who had been an instructor in the Air Force, with an efficient young woman—who looked as if she had just stepped forth from the pages of Vogue—as his partner and secretary. The office itself was a big L-shaped room with a sort of hutch at the back of it, where the Principal interviewed prospective pupils and gave tea-parties to the friends who always seemed to be drifting out and in.
Besides myself, there were about fifteen other students, mostly young married women and girls in their ’teens. They struck me as an unusually empty-headed collection. Indeed, anything more completely vapid than their conversation—which was unceasing—it would have been hard to find.
To me, however, even their inanity was interesting. As types, they were completely new to me. I studied their free and easy behaviour, their curiously small vocabularies, their clichés, their comments on books and films, their coiffures, their love-affairs—which gave me a lot to ponder over—their cosmetics and their rather attractive clothes.
It was quite an education—of a sort.
For myself, I lay low and spoke as little as possible. I knew that everything about me was odd and peculiar. I couldn’t talk their jargon and felt that not only my clothes, but also the way I wore them were somehow wrong.
The work was interesting. Provided you could draw a little, had a smattering of geometry and were perfectly accurate, you could hardly fail to succeed.
As soon as you had learnt to use the compass, protractor, set-squares, springbow and the rest, you were given machine diagrams to copy. I don’t know what else to call them. To this day I have no idea what half of them represented. Meanwhile, the Principal, a plump little partridge with a twinkling eye, would stroll around, bending over the desks and tables to explain the mysteries of dimensioning, of screws, lugs, plates, struts, ball-bearings and castle-nuts—all very technical.
When these were mastered, you would be given your first ‘rough’.
A ‘rough’ was the very sketchiest of sketches, supplied, presumably, by the inventor, consisting of a scrawl or two, a few curves, and some measurements. From this you were expected to produce a detailed diagram of the entire machine, in all its parts and from every point of view. A tracing was then made, from which blue-prints were taken off for distribution to the workshops.
I used to do a good deal of drawing at home in the evenings. One day I discovered the excellent Marylebone Public Library and, with books borrowed from the section of Engineering Draughtsmanship, taught myself quite a reasonable amount of geometry.
Every now and then a pupil would be sent for by the Principal, either to be dispatched to some engineering firm in the provinces or interviewed for a post in one of the Ministries.
In London, ‘The Norwegians’—which was, I believe, a Scandinavian Ministry—appeared to be the Mecca of everyone’s dreams. They paid well. The work was pleasant. The employees consisted almost entirely of charming Norwegian young men.
The Ministry of Works and Buildings was less sought after. Rumour had it that most of the lesser intelligences got landed there….
And just now and again, one of the Principal’s special favourites (it was astonishing how well some of these fluffy little creatures could draw) would be presented with a plum in the guise of a job as head designer in the office of some really important aircraft firm.
Those, of course, were the jobs that everyone coveted. The only snag was that the work, which had to be microscopically accurate, was extremely trying to the eyes. More than once I rather wondered whether I had been wise in attempting it. However, as I had almost finished my course when the fiercer kind of headaches began to bother me, I decided to give it a trial.
(4)
In between times, I did what I could to continue my education.
Once a week I went to the Public Library and, beginning with February 1941, worked through a year of the Illustrated London News. This seemed to me as good a way as any other of catching up on contemporary history.
I also prowled about London, studying the street and buildings, the clothes-shops (in the vain hope of getting modern fashions into my head), but, above all, the crowds. I saw a great many films, among them Mrs. Miniver, which struck me as too American in atmosphere to be convincing, and In Which We Serve—my first introduction to Noel Coward.
I also read every book that I could lay hands on, and received in consequence a number of—probably salutary—shocks.
As yet, I could not bring myself to meet people who had known me in the convent. And, as my aunt’s friends all seemed to
be out of London, I lived a rather solitary life.
One day, my cousin Windham, who was in the Air Force, walked into the drawing office.
He said, ‘Did you remember? You’re lunching with me today.’
Outside there was a taxi waiting. (I still greatly enjoyed going about in taxis.) We drove to a restaurant in Sloane Street. No one had taken me out to lunch before, so I was much excited. I hoped there would be no pitfalls. The first time of anything was always a little agitating.
I thought the restaurant marvellous. But when my cousin proceeded to feed me on whitebait and pêche Melba, my delight knew no bounds. It was far and away the most wonderful food I had tasted for nearly thirty years.
He asked me whether I would like a cocktail.
I had to explain, with some embarrassment, that—though I had met with them in books—I was a little uncertain as to the nature of the things. So he ordered me a Dry Martini, which I much enjoyed.
As I sipped my first cocktail, I watched my cousin mixing his own drink. He called it ‘shandygaff’. To this day, I have no idea of what it was composed. He mixed it himself, while a waiter stood by, handing him the bottles. This method of procedure was new to me, and filled me with awe.
When the coffee was brought, I flung my bonnet over the windmill and accepted a cigarette.
Altogether, it was a great experience.
Now and again, I saw a bachelor uncle, who, though kind, made no attempt to conceal his disapproval of me. What exactly it was that he disapproved of, he never revealed. I just had a general impression that everything about me was wrong. However, he possessed an unusually beautiful radiogram. For its sake I occasionally darkened his doors.
He was determined to educate me and would play me ‘modern’ music and then question me about my reactions. As a rule, my unique reaction was to stick my fingers into my ears. Prokovieff’s Pas d’ Acier was, naturally, utterly beyond me; so was Stravinsky, whose Sacre du Printemps, instead of evoking—as my uncle insisted that it ought to do—‘sub-racial-memories below the surface of normal consciousness’, struck me as a Gargantuan nightmare. Ravel’s Histoires Naturelles suggested Whipsnade; Scriabin’s Poème de l’Extase baffled me; while The Swan of Tuonela—as did everything by Sibelius—plunged me into an abyss of gloom. Altogether, there seemed to be something completely lacking in me where the music of the past two generations was concerned.
When I became a nun, I knew that music would be one of the things that it would cost me most to leave behind.
So, just before I entered, I was taken to see Parsifal at Covent Garden, as a kind of solemn Last Farewell. It was the first time that it had been performed in England and it completely overwhelmed me. I came away almost in tears. I thought that from henceforward I should only hear Plainchant for the rest of my life.
In the Order to which I belonged, Plain-chant held an extremely important place.
The Order existed chiefly for the purpose of carrying out the Church’s Liturgy. This meant that the nuns were especially dedicated to the recitation of the Divine Office in choir.
The eight ‘Hours’ of Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline were, so to speak, a radiation from the central Sacrifice of the Mass, five or six hours daily being spent thus in the official praise of God. Besides this, there were other devotions—Benediction, hymns, litanies, visits to the Blessed Sacrament, the conclusion of the long Latin Grace after meals, and the hours allotted by the Rule to mental prayer.
On Sundays and feast-days it was considerably longer. In fact, the higher the festival, the longer and louder we sang.
It will, therefore, be easily understood that on the conventual horizon Plain-chant loomed large indeed.
When first I entered, I so disliked everything connected with Plain-chant that, during Vespers, which were sung in full, and at the conventual Mass on Sundays, it was all I could do not to run out of the choir.
Every afternoon the Choir Mistress came to the Noviceship to teach the younger nuns the antiphons which it was their special duty to sing. To me, her voice was always faintly suggestive of the poultry-yard, though she undoubtedly possessed an artist’s soul.
Plain-chant, she would tell us, was as different from ‘the other kind of music’ as water is from wine. Indeed, it had something of the clear simplicity of water. Pure melody, it belonged to an age when harmony was still unknown; that was why it should always be sung unaccompanied.
Here, however, you came up against a difficulty.
Plain-chant was essentially for men’s voices; and a choir of nuns, unless instrumentally accompanied, had an uncomfortable tendency to sound like a choir of cats. That, of course, was because only a small proportion of the nuns were really singers. The rest (here the Choir Mistress would eye those of the novices who were more or less tone-deaf) merely made well-intentioned noises, which explained why—in the majority of convents—an anachronism known as the organ had found its way in.
The Choir Mistress was, naturally, distressed at my lack of appreciation.
‘Ah, but you do not understand!’ she would exclaim. (She pronounced it ‘ondairstahnd’, for she was Belgian.) ‘Vous cherchez dans le Plain-chant what you have seek in Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Chopin,’ (these, I had confided to her, with some diffidence, were my favourite composers) ‘mais … Plain-chant is not like that. Ça appartient essentiellement to the realm of the spirit. Le Plain-chant, c’est la musique de la priere. Attendez, ma petite, when you yourself have become a little more spiritual, you will see how it is.’
Being at the time only a postulant, I made no attempt to argue, though I disagreed with her. As the years went on, however, I realized that what she had said was true.
Plain-chant—partly, perhaps, because everything sensuous has been expelled from it—is, for most people, an acquired taste. If the ‘other kind of music’ suggests the splendour and colour of a sunset, Plain-chant has the austerity and purity of dawn.
Unfortunately, inside, as well as outside religious houses, the exponents of Plain-chant are sometimes inclined to be fanatical.
Some hold that the sense of the words should entirely dominate the music; others, that the sound is at least as important as the sense.
The Choir Mistress, highly strung and much tried by the idiosyncrasies of a Chantress who favoured the latter school of thought, would sometimes quote—not without malice—St. Aelred of Rievaulx in support of her own point of view. ‘Making noises like horses … or the dying … waving hands like mountebanks, preferring sound to sense’—already in the twelfth century this saint had described with some irritation the mannerisms of certain of his brethren in choir.
Now and again the opposing parties would become belligerent.
Indeed, upon no other subject except perhaps politics and religion have I known people be so thoroughly obstinate and intolerant. I have known chantress and organist reach a complete deadlock over the phrasing of an Easter Gradual. Indeed, it was only too evident that either of those ladies would sooner go to the scaffold than moderate an iota of her opinion. This delicate situation was handled with admirable tact by the Superior, who, if I remember rightly, declared that henceforward the singing was to be interpreted according to the teaching of the monks of Solesmes—namely, ‘sung with half-voice throughout, and an ever-increasing pianissimo’.
It so happened that this thrice-blessed pianissimo was what first opened my eyes to the possibilities that Plain-chant held.
(5)
The shortest route from Portland Place to the drawing-office took me three times a day through the old cemetery off Paddington Street.
It had been laid out as a rather lugubrious ‘pleasure ground’, though what pleasure the depressed-looking persons who haunted it could find in gazing at the ancient tombstones, it would be hard to say. My own affection for the place was inspired partly by the fact that two Stuarts, descended from Charles II, whom I adored, were buried there; and partly because it was the nearest approach to a garden
in that much-blitzed and always rather squalid corner of Marylebone.
I suppose that in everyone’s life there are certain moments which have been stamped so sharply on the memory that they can never be quite effaced. Well, once, in that graveyard, such a moment came to me.
During the week-end, my thoughts had been making little worrying excursions into the future. What, for instance, were one’s plans for after the war? A career was clearly impossible, for, being as one was, what success could one hope for? As for all the agreeable things that might have happened had one been but a few years younger—well, it was now definitely too late.
Whereupon, unpleasantly nostalgic sensations began to make themselves felt in the regions of my heart. There was something demoralizing in the knowledge that one simply hadn’t a notion what one was going to do with the remainder of one’s life.
I set out on Monday morning feeling profoundly depressed. I kept telling myself that this soul-sapping vagueness must cease. I must lash myself out of this indifference about the future and begin immediately to make plans. Especially plans concerning how and where I could—with as much decency and unobtrusiveness as possible—retire to spend my rapidly-approaching old age.
But it was all to no purpose. Not the vestige of an idea was to be extracted from my brain. I had no idea what I wanted. The future remained enveloped in an impenetrable haze.
At this point I arrived at the cemetery.
Now, the week-end had been warm. In a single night, the graveyard had been transformed into a garden. Magic was abroad and everything had taken on the translucent quality of stained glass. Trees and flowers were incandescent, the light shining not down upon, but forth from their leaves and petals. Tall irises, magnificent in purple and velvet, smouldered against a blaze of golden privet; laburnum blossom, the yellow of clouded amber, dripped pale fire from green-gold branches overhead. Everywhere was a plenitude of light and colour, almost too dazzling to be looked upon. And in the air hung the adorable, faint smell of spring.
I Leap Over the Wall Page 8
