Did you hear ‘Lift up your Hearts’ this morning? I didn’t agree that Christians tend to be alike. St Francis, whom he279referred to, was extremely different from Savonarola, or St Bernard, or St Jerome. And I don’t suppose the old lady who spent 60 years lying in bed talking cheerfully and knitting (she ought to have got up long ago I expect) was like the enterprising girl who went as a missionary to India. I liked the Royal Academy dinner speeches last night, especially Kenneth Clark’s and the President’s.280
V. much love.
E.R.M.
20, Hinde House, Hinde St, W.1 10 May, 1958
Dearest Jeanie,
… Yes, Dummelow281 is very orthodox; a brother of Mother Selina282 would be likely to be, I suppose. Gore’s commentary283 is more critical, but I expect even that sticks up for the credibility of the 4th Gospel on the whole. I will look up what it says about it. You might look what D. says about Mary Magdalene. I find this is often a test of whether a critic has examined the Gospel allusions to her and [those] to the ‘woman who was a sinner’ and came in to the supper and who was, they said, unknown to Christ; or whether they have accepted a Church tradition (started by Gregory the Great) without evidence. Gore says there is no evidence that she was a sinner; ‘seven devils’ usually means fits or mania in the Bible. If critics repeat this tradition without question, it usually means that they will accept others, more important, without question either. I don’t know what the best recent commentary is, or what is the latest view about the 4th Gospel….
I went to St Paul’s [Cathedral] this afternoon to see the new high altar, which is very splendid, the canopy all gold and decoration and angels and a tall Christ standing at the top, and gold leaves scrolling round the pillars.284 A woman who had come up from Lancashire to see it was almost in tears of admiration. Her mother had told her it wasn’t worth the fare, but ‘I’ve seen something better than I’ve ever seen in my life!’ she said. She had never seen St Paul’s before. I also saw the 2 new National Gallery pictures.285 The Reni is n.g., but the Poussin is attractive, the Israelites dancing round the gold calf in touching joy, and Moses coming down the mountain to them looking furious and just about to break the Tables. It was rather a shame, they had taken so much trouble and it was a beautiful creature and they liked it so much.
Did you listen to The Square Search the other evening?286I thought it odd that a quite decent & kindly pilot should condone the cold-blooded attempted murder by another pilot of three men because he thought one of them had been getting off with his wife. All the good pilot said was, what a lot he must have been through. I should have reported him and got him sacked as a dangerous criminal. He had also deliberately wrecked two expensive planes.
V. much love.
E.R.M.
17 May, 1958
Dearest Jeanie,
... I went the other night to the Layman’s Trust meeting at the Albert Hall, described as a Christian Social Challenge.287The speakers were all good, Fr Huddleston and Manuela Sykes the best I thought. Fr H. saw me in the audience and came at the end to chat; he said he tried to come and see me in hospital, but went to Charing X after I had left it, what a pity. Tomorrow the new C. R. Superior288 is preaching at St Paul’s, Knightsbridge, I think I shall go there. Today there were May processions from various churches about the streets, in honour of Mary, who balanced rather unsteadily on her perch.289 I should have been glad to see her topple, but couldn’t throw any thing, as police were near. They (not the police but the processors) were singing Hail Mary as they walked, very monotonously. A pity no Protestant Truth champions turned up. There will be some more processions tomorrow. The Layman Trust speakers, with their emphasis on social justice and mercy, were much better representatives of Christianity. I liked the ‘Lift up your Hearts’ this week. What a lot of things the speaker290 had done….
I see that the Kirk is getting very restive about the idea that they should have bishops, and Anglican elders. It does seem silly, when all that is needed is intercommunion, without any attempt to get a similar church. I like to see bishops in church very much; the Bp of Kensington turned up at G. Chapel the other morning to confirm someone and took the 8.15 mass after it, and to see his golden mitre and crozier added great dignity to the service….
Very much love.
E.R.M.
20, Hinde House, Hinde St, W.1 27 May, [1958]
Dearest Jeanie,
The buses still out, and probably no hope of [a] meeting this week.291 They are selfish & mean; and now trying to stop the coaches by calling out the petrol tankers. Well, no doubt they will have their reward. I hope you had a nice Whitsun. I drove to Sussex on Sunday and spent the afternoon with John Lehmann, who has a cottage & a wood & a small lake. I came home in comparative quiet, because of Whit Monday next day. It was my first long drive since my fall, and my hand survived it quite well, tho’ ached rather. Everyone seems to be breaking their femurs just now, it seems an epidemic; I visited someone in hospital with it yesterday.292... I hope she will get better… quickly; she is coming on my cruise.293 So is Lady Diana Cooper….
The Times is having a correspondence about intercommunion, the first few days of which I enclose (mixed up with one about the Kirk, by mistake apparently).294 I will send later letters as they come up. Anglican opinion seems sharply divided. I rather like the last letter.295 I imagine the masses see no reason at all why we shouldn’t all communicate together, or indeed with Rome, as an English woman tried to do in a Spanish church not long ago, but her acquaintances and husband told her to sit down at once. Besides believing it to be right and Christian, I also feel that it would be a pity for (say) the C. of E. & the Kirk to try and adopt one another’s organizations, as neither would feel so happy that way. Much better be as different as we like, and allow intercommunion with all Christians. I certainly don’t want elders, and they don’t want bishops. I feel that kind of approach to a similar organization might lead to minimising Anglican ritual and ornament, which I shouldn’t at all like, and perhaps making the Scotch use our P.B. more, which they wouldn’t like….
What is De Gaulle up to? How is he able to ‘take over the government’ like that, in the face of its present members?296How odd the French are, politically. I’m sure he will do a lot of harm, and may bring about civil war. If so, which side would G.B. support, for I can’t imagine we should keep neutral. Nor America either. Nor Russia. ‘Massive support’ would roll in for all sides, and I dare say an H-bomb would go off.
Very much love.
E.R.M.
20, Hinde House, Hinde St, W.1 31 May, 1958
Dearest Jeanie,
Thank you for your letter & enclosures…. French affairs seem to be settling down under de Gaulle, but I expect there will be a lot of trouble and violence in Algeria and Tunisia. People just back from Paris say it is very quiet, and the French shrug it away as unimportant, but are probably ashamed of it. I sent you some more intercommunion letters yesterday. Public opinion is certainly for it, and the cons are having a rough handling.297 It looks as if the Kirk would turn down the Report; they are stiffening against episcopacy.298 Much better drop the whole thing, and just throw down the communion barriers where they exist. I can’t imagine why the Kirk should have bishops. It would split it in two, as most of them would never accept them; George MacLeod would, but it is thought he would rather like to be one….
Did you see that Bishop Morris, the head of the ‘English Church in South Africa’, protested to the Archbishop about asking Makarios to Lambeth299?... I hope Makarios won’t come as there would certainly be unpleasantness; he might be attacked, and General Spears says he will get him arrested and imprisoned for murder.300 In any case he might be mobbed & shouted at & stoned, as the Czars used to be when they came over after atrocities at home.301
How very silly we are; some people here have now formed a ‘Committee for the defence of French democracy’. I wonder what they plan to do to defend it….
I wonder if The Observer tomorrow wi
ll correspond any further about hell fire.302 A rather futile subject, as every one really knows that the Biblical writers thought of real fire and that we don’t any more.... Now I’ve just heard ‘Lighten our Darkness’ on the wireless,303 but turned it off when he talked about ‘the good book’ and ‘folk’. I wish people wouldn’t talk like that about religion, it debases it rather and will do it no good with listeners, who are becoming more intelligent. Did you hear the 3rd Programme talk on the Church? I thought [it] interesting.304
How vulgar and spiteful these R.C. propagandists are about the C. of E. I’m glad we don’t talk like that to the Press about them, though we do privately to one another. I think all that happened to the Church Enquiry Bureau was that they thought of starting one and decided not to after all, as they didn’t think there would be enough demand.305 I expect they were right; very few people would write and ask about the C. of E., which most people think they know quite enough about already, whereas very many are curious about Rome, and (in this country) great numbers are attracted by it, because it is strange to them and romantic. Lots, when they get to know it, don’t like it much and don’t join, or soon leave. But there is a much more admiring feeling about it here than in R.C. countries, where the majority belong, but complain of it. There have been several attacks on it lately, in Irish and French books by lapsed R.C.s who didn’t like their education in Jesuit schools. I imagine that when the C. of E. quite disintegrates, its former members will mostly either become agnostic or R.C. and the fight will be ‘between irreligion & Catholicism’, as the R.C.s say it is now. I doubt if dissent will ever be powerful again. The Scotch Church Assembly says the Romans treat people like infants, the Anglicans like adolescents, and they themselves like civilized adults; hence they won’t be ruled by bishops.306 I like bishops, their golden mitres shine so finely, and their croziers. We had Bishop Hamilton307 this morning at St Paul’s [Knightsbridge]; he used once to be vicar there. He preached well, about the division between Christians and non-Christians, if they ever came to be sorted out, which I agree with him is whether they believe that Christ was in any sense God or not. He is a thoughtful bish., but rather slow perhaps; he is reputed the best-looker on the Bench….
Very much love.
E.R.M.
20, Hinde House, Hinde St, W.1 12 June, [1958]
Dearest Jeanie,
... I sent you a card from Stonehenge, where I spent an hour on the downs in sunshine looking at the stones.308 Then my companion took over the driving and drove me home, which was restful, as I don’t like to drive for so long with my present hand, tho’ it doesn’t damage it really. I am driving to Cambridge tomorrow for the night, but that is a much shorter way. The Conference309 should be interesting, as some good speakers are there.
If I had 7 yrs alone in prison, and a ball-top pen, or still better a typewriter, I should write a long and very successful book recording my reactions & thoughts & occupations each day, something like yours, no doubt, and, like yours, showing my degeneration into imbecility and morbidity.310 It would make a lot of money when published, probably more than yours, as I should start with a known name. But I dare say yours might be better.
I will send you the two books I am now reviewing later. Both are small books, one by Lord Altrincham,311 one by Peter Kirk,312 son of the late Bp of Oxford. Both are about the C. of E., both making criticisms & suggestions, but P.K. is a much firmer member of it. When at Oxford he says he got discontented with it and had a good look at the R.C. and Quaker Churches; at first he was pleased with Rome, but after a time he saw he could never join it, owing to its narrowness, bigotry and erroneous belief that it was the one true Church, besides Mariolatry etc. He admired the morality and good works of Quakers, but wanted something more articulate; he couldn’t worship without any stimulus of words, music, etc., and also likes sacraments. He then decided to stay C. of E., and now much prefers it to anything else, and thinks there is the greatest potentiality of good in it, anyhow for him. He is sensible about disunion, feeling that every one must stay in the Church which best shows & helps him to be Christian, and that differences are quite a good thing. He believes in apostolic succession as a help to the value of sacraments, and I don’t agree with him in everything. Lord A., on the other hand, makes a fuss about the things in the creeds, Prayer Book and Bible that he can’t believe; he is a little childish about it, thinking it keeps many people out of the Church. Of course in the case of clergy he is partly right. But I get bored with all this literalness, like those humanists telling us we must believe in material hell fire because it is mentioned in the New Testament,313 as if Christianity wasn’t allowed to march with the times and re-interpret from age to age, like any other system of thought. Because every one believed in material hell torments 2000 years ago (and even much later, like Dante) is no reason at all why anyone should now. Peter Kirk says one very odd thing; that his father the Bp never told him that he was brought up a Methodist, but let him think he had been C. of E. always. I suppose his grandparents were dead, or was he never allowed to meet them? He discovered by looking thro’ his father’s papers after his death that he changed to C. of E. at Oxford. It would seem to me almost impossible to keep it dark from one’s children, considering how enquiring children are; you would think Peter would ask how many times on Sundays his father had to go to church, and what church was it, etc. etc. I wonder if his mother too was in the dark. Peter says he is puzzled as to the reason, but it was probably snobbery; many people did say he was rather a snob. I should have been nervous about its coming out and making me look silly & deceitful....
Very much love.
E.R.M.
20, Hinde House, Hinde St, W.1 16 June, [1958]
Dearest Jeanie,
Thank you so much for yours, and interesting piece on Cyprus by Cameron.314 How menacing it all is. Turks v. Greek Cypriotes would be a very barbarous and savage war, horrible to contemplate; neither Turks nor Greeks bar any holds in war. If only we can save it from coming to that.
My Conference was really worth while, I think. We discussed a number of things (I enclose the programme), and had a lot of it in the garden, in lovely weather. Quite a bit of Church thrown in, H.C. for any one who liked to come (Canon Collins doesn’t fence the Anglican altar), and other prayers for those who didn’t like to, as most of the non-Anglicans didn’t. I went on Sunday morning to a very attractive Children’s Mass at Little St Mary’s. Adults communicated, some with infants (in their arms or kneeling by their sides) who got blessed by the priest, and the bread and wine brought up by two children, and five children kneeling at the rail holding candles, which they raised high during the elevation. A very good church training for them.
All the conference speakers were good, the best were Canon Collins on Nuclear bombs and Mervyn Stockwood on the general position of Christianity today. I am glad he is on the Commission for revising the Canons, Liturgy, etc.,315 as he is on the right lines about it. As he put it, he hopes the revisers will ‘play ducks & drakes’ with a great deal of it…. Canon Stockwood… thinks the Church will never pull much weight till… assumptions [such as the Genesis view, which assumes that man was once perfect and fell] are got rid of & no one can taunt Christians with believing nonsense. Also the [Thirty-nine] Articles must be torn up, or most of them. He is a very energetic and purposeful man, and speaks excellently. I believe he fills the University Church every Sunday in term with undergraduates and dons—and no doubt elderly women too, tho’ he spoke with scorn of a Church which ‘only appealed to elderly women and children’. I sometimes feel quite ashamed of being one, as Dorothea used to say she did when Fr Waggett was at Great St Mary’s. The clergy seem very friendly when one talks to them, but all the time I suppose they are feeling that one is rather contemptible and not worth while. I wonder about old men; but of course fewer of them go to church.
The Bishop of Willesden316 spoke in favour of retaining nuclear bombs as a deterrent; he feels quite hysterical about Russia and the threat of C
ommunism, which he says is ‘wholly of the devil’; and better keep the bomb, & even use it if necessary, than risk Russian occupation. Canon Collins replied to him very well, saying all I think about it. Afterwards we formed groups, and discussed it, and each group made a report of our conversation, which was read aloud later on, after the Bishop had gone, so our group reporter could say that ‘The group found the Bp of Willesden somewhat onesided and even hysterical in his views.’ The Bp of Jo’burg317 unfortunately couldn’t come; I am going this evening to his meeting318 at the Central Hall [Westminster] when he will tell of his African experiences. The Racialism discussion was entirely about Africans v. Europeans, which seemed a pity, as there is so much other race hate, but we had a Kenya man, Mr [Joseph] Murumbi, there, so he kept it to that. The only blot on the proceedings was the speech of an English worker in Kenya, who had asked if he might come and give his point of view, tho’ he doesn’t belong to Christian Action. He made a most embarrassing speech, about how we ought to know the reasons for Europeans not liking to mix with Africans or share their lavatories etc.; it was a question of two levels of civilization and hygiene (meaning obviously syphilis) and it was very unpleasant to mix them. Mr Murumbi was present of course, and every one was very angry. Canon Collins replied to it, pointing out that when one was in a foreign land, such as Italy e.g., one had to adapt oneself to its lavatory arrangements, tho’ no doubt every one preferred those they were used to. Mr Murumbi also spoke, but avoided the lavatory question. I liked Fr Corbishley,319 the R.C., whom I sat next at dinner on Saturday; but his talk wasn’t very practical, too much about Thomist views on war etc., and how every one is ‘equal’, which is obviously untrue. Does it mean in character, brains, or what? But almost the best was Janet Lacey, who manages the Refugee Church Aid,320 and gave a most interesting account of refugees everywhere, and the general situation. Such a nice large beneficent woman. She did ‘Lift up your Hearts’ lately, and I liked her then….
Letters to a Sister Page 21
