I Leap Over the Wall

by Monica Baldwin

  One writer, suggesting that the vanished Cassiterides were once a part of Lyonnesse, insisted that, if you listened breathlessly on those rare still days when no waves disturbed the sea, you could hear drowned church bells chiming in the water far below.

  Her history I found a trifle disappointing. There seemed so little of it. Or, possibly, I got hold of the wrong books. Anyhow, Cornwall appeared to have had next to no contacts with the history of England. As ‘Q’ pointed out, a few sturdy insurrections against the imposition of taxes or the ‘reformed’ liturgy—two or three gallant campaigns in the fated cause of Charles I, and—of course—the great revival of religion led by Wesley, made up most of the written tale.

  To atone for this, however, every stone and mound held hints of her unwritten story. And it was this which, above all things, thrilled and stirred my imagination.

  This kind of history was not to be learnt from books. You had to get into actual contact with the place itself; with the tombs, long-stones, dolmens, barrows and stone circles set up more than six thousand years ago by an unknown race. This was the secret Cornwall of the hill-tops, moors and ruined cliff-castles, all older than the earliest records that exist.

  Instinctively I knew that the Old People had left something of themselves behind them; that each grim monolith contained its own dark life. In those fantastically shaped stones where so much blood had been outpoured, often in human sacrifice, ‘Something’ still lived, mysteriously imprisoned—‘Something’ which could only communicate itself if one were able to receive what it had to give.

  I must, I felt, I absolutely must get down there; preferably to that weird, rather menacing neighbourhood inland from Morvah and Land’s End. For I felt sure that if I could only soak myself sufficiently in the atmosphere of such places as the Stone Circles of Tregaseal, or Carn Kenidzhek—‘the Hooting Cairn’—among whose boulders and holed stones the spirits of an even older people than the ancient Celts still lurk—well—I should have no difficulty about ‘tuning in’ to their vibrations. I pictured myself leaning down over the deep, dark tarn of Cornwall’s earliest history, watching each bubble as it rose slowly to the surface to break, releasing secret forces that were faintly sinister and belonged to an unknown, utterly primitive mode of life. Could anything on earth have been more fascinating? I could not wait to get away.

  (2)

  The third thing which sticks out from this unlively period is the Quadriga.

  In case you do not happen to be a Londoner, I had better explain that this is the sculptured group above the archway leading into the Green Park at Hyde Park Corner. It was given to the nation by one of King Edward VII’s admirers and has for its subject The Triumph of Peace.

  It caught my eye, rather in the manner of a heavenly vision, as I walked, one cold March morning along Piccadilly on my way to work. Silhouetted against a sunrise sky of fierce cerise and dusky violet, the grace and poise of the lovely standing figure in the two-wheeled chariot suggested a triumphant Victory of ancient Greece. But what impressed me was the fact that the four madly prancing horses harnessed to the chariot were reinless.

  ‘That,’ I reflected as for the first time I set eyes on it, ‘isn’t Peace at all. It’s Adventure. Being galloped away with, who knows where, by the horses of Destiny.’

  And after that, morning after morning, as I skipped off my bus at Hyde Park Corner in sun or rain or fog or frost or snow, I used to cast long upward glances at the Quadriga, finding inspiration in the attitude towards life that I felt it typified.

  The odd thing was that, in the back recesses of my memory, I felt sure that the Quadriga and I had met before.

  And then, one morning as I was stepping delicately across the bomb débris after a night of particularly savage raids, it all came back to me.

  It had happened years ago, when I was still in the convent. Sext and None were just over and I was tip-toeing down the beautiful wide staircase that led from the landing outside the choir to the blue-grey cloister down below. As refectorian, it was my duty to ring the great iron bell outside the refectory for the community exercise known as ‘Examen of Conscience’ which took place ten minutes before the midday Angelus.

  And here I should like to pause again and explain to those who are unfamiliar with such matters, in what that exercise consists.

  During my first few days as a postulant, I observed that when Sext and None were ended, a bell used to clang somewhere far away in the cloister. Upon which, the nuns—already kneeling, as was their custom, on the bare parquet floor of the choir, noses pressed against the corners of their stalls—would give a kind of little wriggle, indicating somehow an even greater application to the business in hand. Each would then draw forth from her pocket a small black note-book, in which the briefest of entries would be made. Book and pencil were then re-pocketed; after which, with another indescribable wriggle, suggesting that an unpleasant duty had been virtuously performed, they once more buried their noses in the corner of their stalls.

  What on earth could it all be about?

  ‘I wish,’ I murmured plaintively that evening at Recreation, ‘that someone would tell me what the nuns do with those funny little books and pencils after Hours!’

  ‘Hush, my dear!’

  A Polish postulant, whose kindness of heart had already saved me from several pitfalls, smothered a rather refreshing giggle and drew me rapidly aside. ‘Don’t you know, one never talks about such things in public!’ she whispered. ‘One saves them up and asks Mother’ (“Mother” was the Mistress of Novices) ‘when next she Calls For One for a little Talk. I’ll just mention it to her, shall I?’

  Next morning I was Called For.

  The little alcove in which the Novice Mistress interviewed her charges was so small as to be positively a cupboard. I found her seated on a low, rush-bottomed chair, her fine profile silhouetted against the latticed window, her fingers busy with a delicate piece of needlework. I knelt beside her on the bare boards, hands uncomfortably clasped at waist level, eyes resolutely cast down.

  I should do better, she suggested, to keep custody of the eyes in choir instead of indulging my curiosity by gazing around to see what other people were about. However, being such a newcomer to the convent, my fault perhaps was not, after all, so grave. As for the matter of the little books and pencils, that was easily explained.

  I then learnt that ‘Particular Examen’ was a simple but most efficacious means of acquiring virtues or ridding oneself of faults.

  Later on, when I tried myself to practise it, I discovered that it worked out more or less like this:

  Suppose, for example, that a certain nun in the community was so constructed as to tempt you almost automatically to Unkind Thoughts. (You know the sort of person. Even in the best regulated religious communities they are to be found.) Very well. By means of the Particular Examen, this temptation could be rapidly overcome.

  The method was simple. You had to tackle your temptation three times daily. You began at your morning prayers with a really terrific resolution that, no matter how maddening you might find the behaviour of Sister So-and-So, you would not allow one Unkind Thought to enter your mind. You would next, as far as possible, preview the morning, foreseeing those occasions when—as experience had taught you—only the toughest of struggles would enable your resolution to be kept. In conclusion, you would pray earnestly to God for grace to save you from a Fall.

  During the morning, you would, of course, watch your step whenever Sister So-and-So appeared on the horizon. Should, however, a Fall occur, you would immediately arise, beat your breast, renew your early morning resolution and—continue as before. The pencil and paper performance which had so intrigued me was simply the totting up of how often Sister So-and-so had got you down.

  Contrition over lapses—a forward glance over possible afternoon collisions with Sister So-and-so—a re-stiffening of the will and a prayer for help in time of tribulation, and the mid-day exercise was at an end.

  The fina
l exercise, at bed-time, was simply a repetition of what has just been described.

  I myself obtained better results from the positive method of attack.

  Suppose, for instance, that your weekly Confessions revealed a disquieting habit of picking holes in other people. Well, instead of dotting down the number of times you had made disparaging remarks you would count how often you had succeeded in transforming incipient criticism into thoughts and words that were kind.

  Humility was a favourite subject for Particular Examen.

  [And I do beg of you just to cast your eye upon what follows. If you do not there are two things you will find it difficult to understand. One is, why all the details of religious life—the Vows, especially that of Obedience; the subjection to Rule; the penances—some of which are quite agonizingly humiliating—and a hundred other things are all ordained with a view to the promotion of humility. The second is, the curious passion for humiliation which seems to get hold of people once they have made substantial progress in the spiritual life.]

  We will begin with a story.

  I hadn’t been for many weeks in the convent when I heard an enthusiastic novice declare in public that her life’s ambition was to reach the tip-top rung of the ladder of humility.

  The Novice Mistress eyed her thoughtfully.

  ‘Begin,’ she suggested drily, ‘by seeing how often you can accept correction without excuse.’

  So the novice continued plodding away at this till she had schooled herself to accept anything and everything without a word. And at last the Novice Mistress told her that she was fit to make the second grade.

  This time, she had to mark down in her little black book how many times morning and afternoon she had failed to welcome a humiliation. (And if you think that sounds comparatively easy, do just think back over the way that you yourself instinctively react to sneers, snubs, settings-down, insolent or arrogant behaviour … or, hardest of all, the bitterness of undeserved disgrace.)

  That kept her busy for a year or so. Then came a Retreat preached by a Jesuit who urged the nuns to ‘go in’ for humility as people in the world ‘go in’ for sport.

  Then the novice felt that Now Her Chance Had Come. She set her teeth and took a flying leap on to the heroic level. Henceforward, instead of merely ‘welcoming’ humiliations, she counted how many she could possibly manage to squeeze into her day.

  Well, the point of the story is that if anyone has the courage to persevere with a course of action like that, noteworthy things begin to happen in their spiritual life. Pêre Surin, the Jesuit mystic, says that love of contempt is the key which unlocks the treasure-house of God’s gifts and graces. Once you get to the point when you honestly want to be humiliated and looked down upon, you will find your soul flooded with what are known as ‘spiritual delights’.

  Which probably sounds to you completely crazy.

  And yet, you know, it’s not….

  To-day, when I look back on that strange phenomenon known as Religious Life, I see clearly that success or failure in it depends, in the end, on one thing only: one’s attitude to humility.

  I had better be honest and own that I myself was spiritually so obtuse that it was years before I realized how all-important was the acquisition of that virtue. And I regret to say that even when I did …

  ‘You know,’ I remember once complaining to a fellow-postulant, ‘I don’t somehow seem able to grasp the idea behind this business of humility.’

  The postulant, to whom this fact must have been glaringly apparent, did her best to look sympathetic.

  ‘Sometimes,’ I continued gloomily, ‘I think I must be rather like St. Augustine. When he was a Manichee, you know. He simply couldn’t get into his head the idea of a spiritual substance. Well, I feel like that about humility.’

  The postulant looked startled and said good gracious, she hoped I wasn’t going to become a Manichee.

  ‘I may,’ I hissed (the bell for silence was already ringing) ‘become something even worse than that unless somebody soon enlightens me about humility.’

  ‘I’ll whisper a word to Mother,’ she hissed back at me. And, as we parted, I saw her take out her little black book and—presumably for having broken silence—mark down a ‘one’.

  Next morning I was Called For by the Mistress of Novices. You may like to know a few of the things she said to me.

  (a) The reason why humility was so terribly important was that it had always been the characteristic virtue not only of Christians but of Christ.

  (b) It was the spirit and life and very nature of prayer; so the humbler one was, the better one would be able to pray.

  (c) It was by far the quickest way to holiness, because a corresponding increase in all the other virtues was brought about by every increase in humility.

  (d) In the same way that impurity defiled the body, so the spirit was defiled by pride. Humility was the purity of the soul, just as chastity was the body’s purity. And without purity, no holiness was possible.

  (e) Humility was so essential a part of sanctity that when anyone was proposed for canonization, the first thing that the authorities investigated was always whether humility had been practised in a heroic degree. If that could not be proved, the rest fell automatically to the ground.

  There was a good deal more besides, which I have unfortunately forgotten. What was still more unfortunate, however, was that even when everything had been said, the word ‘humility’ still just didn’t mean a thing to me.

  Which only shows that the things of the spirit are not to be got at by merely human reasoning. Understanding is a gift of the Holy Spirit. And it wasn’t until several years later that even a small measure of it was bestowed upon me.

  It happened, oddly enough, when I was helping to hang up some wet pillow-cases in the garret very early on an icy January morning. There was snow on the roof and my mind was completely taken up with the problem of how to hang frozen-stiff linen with fingers that were numb with cold.

  And then, suddenly, and for no apparent reason, it was made clear to me. I saw how each act of humility which one so laboriously and distastefully performed was, far from being an end in itself, simply a means by which one was able to hollow out within one’s soul an ever-deepening capacity. And this capacity was immediately and unceasingly filled up to overflowing by a torrent of God’s grace.

  So that the deeper the soul hollowed itself out by the self-slaying practice of humility, the greater became its capacity for receiving the graces and gifts of God.

  Yes, really. It was as simple as all that.

  (3)

  We seem to have become enmeshed in such a herring-net of interpolations that I can think of no way out.

  If you will allow me, therefore, I propose to lead you by the hand back to our first point of call after leaving the Quadriga.

  This, as you may remember, was the great staircase leading from the choir landing to the cloister which contained the bell outside the refectory door. And it was at the bottom of this staircase that the queer little incident occurred.

  Just as I stepped off the last stair into the cloister, something suddenly seemed to swoop down like a whirlwind and seize hold of me, sweeping me up out of myself on to a completely different plane. I felt as though I had been flung into a madly rocking chariot, drawn by reinless horses, and was being whirled rapidly away through space. I knew it wasn’t actually what was happening to me; but that somehow symbolized what I felt was taking place. Just for one mad moment some terrific unknown force had got completely hold of me and had taken over the direction of my life. I was so thrilled I could have screamed out loud with sheer excitement. At the same time it was borne in upon me as convincingly as though an archangel had shouted the words in my ear, that adventures lay ahead. Real, positive adventures, of a kind about which I had hitherto never even dreamed.

  And then, no less suddenly and inexplicably than it had happened, the whole thing vanished into the whirlwind out of which it had come. And I found
myself standing at the other end of the cloister, feeling rather dizzy and with my nose within an inch of the bell outside the refectory door.

  I never told anyone about it. Neither did I try to explain it to myself. As for the queer, almost ominous sense of impending adventure which for the next few days stabbed me repeatedly with illicit and inexplicable thrills, I finally got rid of it by reminding myself severely that even the mildest adventures were out of the question when, by taking perpetual vows one had buried oneself in the depths of a strictly enclosed convent for the remainder of one’s life.

  (4)

  You will, I feel certain, agree that we have had more than enough in the way of attempts to describe the indescribable. What follows shall, I promise you, be on a more prosaic plane.

  From February till the end of May I worked at the Prisoners of War Department of the War Office in Curzon Street.

  This, formerly an enormous block of luxury flats, had been requisitioned when war broke out and transformed into a honeycomb of offices. Rumour had it that among the maze of passages was one leading to a private suite which had been prepared for the King and Queen in case the bombing—which was becoming more and more terrific—should make Buckingham Palace unfit for habitation.

  I was happier in the P.O.W. section than I had been in any other job since I left the convent. My fellow-clerks were kind and friendly; the work was, for once, within my rather limited powers of comprehension, and in my off-time there was always the house in South Audley Street close at hand where Gay and Barbara with a perpetually changing crowd of relatives and friends of every age and nationality carried on the war effort according to their various capacities.

  At the end of May, unfortunately, some eye trouble which had been threatening ever since I started work at the War Office, suddenly put me out of action. The Scots doctor, looking angrier than ever, muttered that worse things were in store for me unless I could get away for rest and change. Scared by the idea of possible illness when I had no one to look after me, I extricated myself—not without difficulty—from the Civil Service and began to think up plans. Letters and telegrams buzzed to and fro between myself and A.B. I packed my suitcases (by now they were beginning to show signs of wear) and took a taxi to Victoria. Another train journey. (Heavens, the amount I’d learnt since my first solitary venture down that line two years ago!) The London episode was ended. My aunt met me on her doorstep. And the frightful depression which inevitably assaults me when I set foot in Sussex took hold of me again.