Letters to a Sister

by Constance Babington Smith

  22 ‘We Beg to Differ’, a broadcast discussion on various topics between Kay Hammond, Joyce Grenfell, Celia Johnson, John Clements, Gilbert Harding and John Betjeman.

  23 Grace Macaulay was always very nervous about colds. In church when others coughed or sneezed she sniffed ostentatiously at a eucalyptus-soaked handkerchief, to the great embarrassment of her family.

  24 ‘Talking of the Welfare State’, a broadcast conversation between Violet Markham and Dame Rachel Crowdy-Thornhill.

  25 Doris B——, see above p. 156n.

  26 St Cyril, Bp of Jerusalem (c. 315-386).

  27 In February 1954 R.M.’s flat was burgled, see Last Letters to a Friend (pp. 147-8).

  28 By A. W. Watts (1953).

  29 R.M. had been considering going to Russia in a party in honour of Tchekhov.

  30 It was Ephesus. See II Timothy 4. 14,15: ‘Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil....’

  31 R.M. means their discussion on ‘Changes in Morals’.

  32 Replying to a question from R.M. on the moral effects of present-day irreligiousness, John Betjeman said: ‘I think we’re living on the spiritual capital of the past, and that it will soon run out... we can’t go on being morally sound if we forget the model of our soundness, and He is, I submit, God become man, Jesus Christ.’

  33 The anonymous author of the Preface to the 1953-54 issue of Crockford’s Clerical Directory had criticised the currently proposed revision of canon law relating to the remarriage of divorced persons in church, and advocated leaving decisions to individual parish priests, who could seek advice if needed.

  34 Rev. W.J. Conybeare, co-author with Rev. J. S. Howson of The Life and Epistles of St Paul (1852).

  35 A correspondence in The Times had followed a leading article on ‘Christianity and Bombs’ (7 June), which supported the views of the Archdeacon of London, Ven. O.H. Gibbs-Smith (that the New Testament lent no countenance to absolute pacifism, that the pacifist had ‘the heresy of perfectionism’ in a world which had not achieved perfection, and that the infernal machine was not the bomb but the ‘unprincipled and unconsecrated human mind’).

  36 In a letter to President Roosevelt dated 2 August, 1939, Prof. Einstein recommended that supplies of uranium should be guaranteed and that research in nuclear fission should be speeded up.

  37 A discussion on ‘Billy Graham and his Greater London Crusade’ between Malcolm Muggeridge and Rev. George MacLeod was broadcast on 25 June.

  38 Since R.M.’s car had been stolen and damaged, on 19 January, she had been getting about London by bicycle.

  39 At this time R.M. was in the habit of worshipping both at Grosvenor Chapel and at St Paul’s, Knightsbridge.

  40 Rev. E. B. Henderson, Vicar of St Paul’s, Knightsbridge.

  41 Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.

  42 A comedy by Philip King and Falkland Cary.

  43 Sir Richard Acland had resigned his seat as Labour member for Gravesend in protest against the Labour Party’s acceptance of hydrogen-bomb manufacture in Britain.

  44 Cardinal Griffin (1899-1956) preaching in Westminster Cathedral on 13 March said, ‘the problem… rests upon whether this bomb can ever be brought sufficiently under control that, given a just war, it can be directed only against unjust and violent aggressors. The answer to this must lie with those who have access to the necessary scientific knowledge.’

  45 Sir Lawrence Jones, A Victorian Boyhood (1955).

  46 ‘The Churches and Psychical Research’, a broadcast talk by the Dean of St Paul’s, given on 9 March.

  47 In ‘Any Questions?’, a weekly feature in the B.B.C.’s Light Programme, ‘questions of the moment’ put by members of the audience are discussed by a panel of well known personalities. ‘Any Answers?’, a ‘radio correspondence column’, deals with letters from listeners to the previous week’s ‘Any Questions?’.

  48 The question of the relationship between the Press and hospital authorities was raised in February 1955 when an operation to separate confined twins was performed ‘secretly’, in order to avoid the sort of ‘persecution’ that had occurred when the Boko conjoined twins were separated at Hammersmith Hospital. On that occasion reporters and photographers forced their way into the hospital and waylaid doctors and staff, and some took photographs through windows.

  49 At a luncheon on 11 March the William Foyle Poetry Prize was awarded to John Betjeman for his book of poems, A Few Late Chrysanthemums, and Lord Samuel was one of the speakers. When he ridiculed the poetry of Dylan Thomas, Stephen Spender got up and left.

  50Jean Macaulay does not recall what ‘that book’ refers to. She often used to say to R.M., ‘You ought to write a book about that’.

  51 ‘It is time we shunned South Africa’ (News Chronicle, 27 June, 1955).

  52 Fr Huddleston quoted the South African High Commissioner in London (G. P. Jooste) as saying that ‘hostile criticism does hurt’, and commented that this was a very healthy sign, for it meant that ‘at last one South African is beginning to feel... a little bit cold shouldered by civilized people’.

  53 At this time political relations in Cyprus were exacerbated by an intensification of the Eoka terrorist campaign.

  54 James Benson, Prisoner’s Base and Home Again: The Story of a Missionary P.O.W. (1957).

  55 ‘Dirge for Trebizond’, see The Times Literary Supplement, 24 June, 1955.

  56 Rev. W. R. Derry, Curate-in-charge at Grosvenor Chapel.

  57 Mary Stocks was a member of the ‘Any Questions?’ panel on 24 June.

  58 March Cost’s novel By the Angel, Islington (1955), which was discussed by the B.B.C. ‘Critics’ on 16 October. The programme was repeated on 18 October.

  59 The Miramar, see R.M.’s Fabled Shore, Chap I.

  60 The Church of England in South Africa, which developed from an evangelical minority, has always remained strictly apart from the Church of the Province of South Africa (formed by Bp Gray in 1870).

  61 In a letter to The Times (11 October, 1955) Rt Rev. A. B. L. Karney, former Bp of Johannesburg, reported that on one occasion, hearing that one of the so-called Church of England churches had some candidates for confirmation, he offered to confirm them, but the offer was rejected.

  62 In the ‘Any Questions?’ programme on 14 October.

  63 Freda Bruce Lockhart, Philip Hope-Wallace, Tom Hopkinson, John Connell, Eric Newton.

  64 Rev. D. B. Harris, who had become Vicar of St Paul’s, Knightsbridge in September 1955.

  65 A meeting initiated by the Council for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, an Anglican body, was held in London on 20 January.

  66 During the week ending 25 January (Feast of the Conversion of St Paul) special services with sermons were held at Westminster Cathedral.

  67 The Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches are not, in fact, in communion, though in an emergency the Sacrament can be adminstered by a priest of one Church to a communicant of the other.

  68 H. H. Milman, History of Latin Christianity (6 vols., 1854-5).

  69 Giovanni Miegge, The Virgin Mary: The Roman Catholic Marian Doctrine (trans. W. Smith, 1955).

  70 The possibility that a doctrine of Mary Mediatrix of all graces would be defined became remote after the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958.

  71 Mary Anne O’Donovan.

  72 An Anglican Society for prayer in association with the Church’s ministry of healing.

  73 After it was announced that the Soviet Prime Minister, Marshal Bulganin, and Mr Krushchev, First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, would visit Britain in April 1956, Malcolm Muggeridge led an attempt to stage a protest meeting at the Albert Hall. This meeting was not permitted, but another was held in Manchester on 26 March.

  74 This Leech cartoon ‘The Latest Arrival of the Zoological Gardens’ was re-published in Punch of 18 April 1956.

  75 When Nicholas I of Russia visited England in June 1844 he was not mobbed, but in general was received with enthusiasm. There was, however, a minority attempt to arous
e opposition to him. Handbills, calling him ‘a much greater tyrant than Nero or Caligula’ were distributed, and a protest meeting, attended largely by foreigners, was held in London on 6 June.

  76 Georgi Malenkov, Soviet Minister of Electric Power Stations, had arrived in Britain on 15 March. During his subsequent tour he received a very favourable reception and press.

  77 The expulsion of G. Malenkov from the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party did not take place till July 1957.

  78 Rev. M. A. P. Wood, Vicar and Rural Dean of Islington, was writing apropos of relations between Methodists and the Church of England.

  79 No one did.

  80 In the 1928 Prayer Book the reference to the canonical scriptures in the Bishop’s question is qualified thus: ‘as given of God to convey to us in many parts and in divers manners the revelation of himself which is fulfilled in our Lord Jesus Christ’.

  81 The Trial of Thomas Cranmer by Anne Ridler.

  82 On 13 March it had been announced that Sir Eugene Goossens had been temporarily relieved of his duties as conductor of the Sydney Orchestra, and the next day that he had been served with a summons for importing ‘prohibited goods’, later stated to be obscene films and photographs.

  83 P. N. Waggett’s The Heart of Jesus (1902), a series of Holy Week addresses.

  84 Since becoming a regular worshipper at both St Paul’s, Knightsbridge and Grosvenor Chapel.

  85 Rev. Raymond Raynes, C.R., Father Superior of the Community of the Resurrection.

  86 Rt Rev. B. C. Roberts.

  87 In his first major speech since returning from South Africa, Fr Huddleston denounced ‘white supremacy’.

  88 Dr Anthony Barker, author of Giving and Receiving: An Adventure in African Medical Service (1959).

  89 Since Marshal Bulganin and Mr Krushchev arrived in London on 18 April, they had not been received with any public enthusiasm.

  90 ‘Dialogues of Mortality’ in The Towers of Trebizond.

  91 He had been Rector of St Mary’s, Bedford (1945-55).

  92 See above p. 61n.

  93 R.M.’s sister Eleanor (1887-1952) had devoted much of her time as a missionary in India to the translation, editing and production of books and magazines, all into Hindi. The book mentioned here is Din-Ba-Din (‘Day by Day’), a translation of Bible notes.

  94 Grace Macaulay had taught her children to pause, when saying their prayers, so as to remember their sins. When away she left them prayer-cards, with rows of dots meaning ‘stop and think’. Jean, a very literal-minded child, took the usual six dots to mean that she had to remember six sins.

  95 The Towers of Trebizond.

  96 A letter from Canon Charles Smyth was published in The Times on 10 July in a correspondence on the ordination of deacons. Some correspondents maintained that many deacons were troubled in conscience at having to reply ‘I do believe them’ to the Bishop’s question ‘Do you unfeignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament?’ Canon Smyth. pointed out that these words raise no difficulties when interpreted in the light of the Thirty-nine Articles.

  97 See above p. 185n.

  98 Brigadier Hanbury Pawle, in a letter to The Times (9 July) had stated that ‘the congregations of our lovely churches are now reduced to a mere handful of old people’.

  99 Violet Markham was then aged 83.

  100 ‘Utopia’ is derived from the Greek ou (not) and topos (a place), thus literally meaning an imaginary country.

  101 R.M. was assisting at a London Congress of the International P.E.N.

  102 On 11 July The Times published a letter from Rev. J. A. Ainger of Penrith, affirming that his congregation contained as a rule no elderly people, and included 50 per cent of the younger generation.

  103 The question as phrased in the 1662 Prayer Book was taken over verbatim from the Prayer Book of 1549.

  104 The equivalent question in the Prayer Book of the Protestant Episcopal Church is worded as follows: ‘Are you persuaded that the Holy Scriptures contain all Doctrine required as necessary for eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ?’

  105 In the Prayer Book of the Episcopal Church of Scotland the question is identical to that in the 1662 version.

  106 The House of Lords had rejected the second reading of the Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill by 238 votes to 95.

  107 Sheila Davies.

  108 In October R.M. and C. S. Lewis were to discuss ‘Some Difficulties which keep people out of the Christian Church’ at the Cambridge house of the Society of St Francis.

  109 In her Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day (1922).

  110 Canon Fenton Morley, broadcasting in the ‘Lift up your Hearts’ programme during the previous week, had taken as his theme the question ‘What’s wrong with the Church?’ Discussing Phil. 4.2 (‘I beseech Euodias, and beseech Syntyche, that they be of the same mind in the Lord’), he suggested that St Paul made mention of a private feud between the two women, hoping they would realize that their own attitude was the real answer to the question ‘What’s wrong with the Church?’

  111 R.M. had been planning a holiday cruise in the Aegean.

  112 See Jer. 38. 6-14.

  113 This account of the experiences of Dr Donald Mcl. Johnson, M.P. in 1950 was published in Reynolds News (15 and 22 July, 1956) when he was campaigning for the reform of the Mental Health Service. For his own account of the events in question see his Bars and Barricades (1952).

  114 See ‘Religious Writing’, an article by R.M. in a special issue of The Times Literary Supplement on ‘The Frontiers of Literature’ (17 August, 1956).

  115 Rev. John Stott, Rector of All Souls’, Langham Place; see below p. 252.

  116 After the death of Cardinal Griffin, Abp of Westminster.

  117 Rt Rev. E. B. Henderson, formerly Vicar of St Paul’s, Knightsbridge.

  118 Dorothea Conybeare had been partly paralysed since an accident in 1954.

  119 By P. Wyndham Lewis (1956).

  120 See Last Letters to a Friend, pp. 229-32.

  121 Jean Macaulay was to receive her M.B.E. at a Buckingham Palace investiture.

  122 This was four days after the outbreak of the revolutionary movement against the Communist regime in Hungary.

  123 See Last Letters to a Friend, p. 23.

  124 R.M.’s Christmas card had been printed in black and white, and she was planning to colour it herself.

  125 i.e. Anthony Eden and his Cabinet.

  126 In deciding on Suez intervention.

  127 Hugh Gaitskell, Leader of the Opposition, had called for Anthony Eden’s resignation in a broadcast speech on 4 November.

  128 Anthony Nutting, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, had resigned on 3 November because of the Government’s Suez policy.

  129 On R.M.’s 1956 Christmas card a castle fortress, with one large star above it, was accompanied by this verse:

  Urbs ad montem, wearing as a crown

  Castrum in rupe, the walls falling down;

  Portae sine clavibus, the gates swing wide;

  Turbae jucundissimae throng inside

  In Nativitate Domini, the dark of Christmas Day,

  And Oriens, splendor Lucis, lights their way.

  130 Very Rev. W. R. Matthews.

  131 Rev. Leslie Tizard had spoken on ‘Dealing with our Doubts: Finding the cause’ in the ‘Lift up your Hearts’ programme.

  132 Jean Macaulay insisted on continuing work after her retirement (at the age of 74) until the District Nurse who was to replace her had actually arrived.

  133 Jean Macaulay had forfeited her District Nursing pension when she went to do missionary nursing in South Africa in 1936.

  134 Graham Hough, Anthony Quinton, and Alan Pryce-Jones discussed The Towers of Trebizond in a broadcast on ‘Recent Novels’ on 26 December.

  135 A series of articles by well-known people of different beliefs, giving their views on Immortality, began in the Sunday Times on 6 January, 1957. The first article, ‘The Great
Mystery about Heaven and Hell’, was by Dorothy Sayers.

  136 Rev. S. C. Carpenter (1877-1959).

  137 The Fountain Overflows.

  138 Pope Pius XII had stated the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on the use of anaesthetics, hypnosis, and other pain-killing methods.

  139 Helmut Rueckriegel and a friend.

  140 Rev. D. B. Harris.

  141 Since this letter was written he has in fact introduced Ash Wednesday ashes. There have been no complaints from anyone, and much appreciation has been expressed.

  142 ‘Lent Habits’, Time and Tide, 2 March, 1957.

  143 R.M. was trying to give an hour a day to devotional reading and prayer.

  144 Probably a broadcast talk by Minnie Pallister in the ‘Home for the Day’ programme on 3 March.

  145 ‘The Reality of Self, by Arabinda Basu, see Sunday Times, 17 March.

  146 Frank Tilsley, author and broadcaster, was found dead at his home, with a breadknife nearby, on 16 March.

  147 ‘The Purpose of Punishment’, a ‘Medieval Disputation’ between Rev. Laurence Bright, o.p., and Very Rev. Ian Hislop, o.p., was broadcast on 14 March from the Aquinas Centre at the Priory of St Dominic, Haverstock Hill.

  148 J. A. Kensit (1881-1957) was the son of John Kensit, founder of the Protestant Truth Society. He took over the Secretaryship of the society on the death of his father in 1902.

  149 Jean Macaulay’s general practitioner.

  150 A series of four broadcast talks for Lent entitled ‘The New Man’.

  151 A new B.B.C. policy of providing ‘more relaxation and entertainment’ had just been announced.

  152 ‘Network Three’ was being planned to cater for ‘specialized interests’, among which pigeon-fancying was specifically mentioned.

  153 ‘Let’s face it, Madam, you’re a Mess!’ by Solveig Peters, News Chronicle, 9 April, 1957.

  154 Cranford, Middlesex.

  155 Helmut Rueckriegel.

  156 The News Chronicle had commissioned the Gallup Poll to enquire into the religious beliefs and practices of the British. Their findings were summarized in three articles (15-17 April), the first headed ‘Pagan Britain? Nonsense*. The second stated that ‘the Church of Rome is holding on to its members to a far greater extent than is any other church; it is making more converts than any other church… About the Church of England only one conclusion is possible—it is in a parlous state.’