The Abbess of Crewe

by Muriel Spark

  ‘What are they saying?’ says the Abbess.

  ‘Time compares our public to Nero who fiddled while Rome burned. Newsweek recalls that it was a similar attitude of British frivolity and neglect of her national interests that led to the American Declaration of Independence. They make much of the affair of Sister Felicity’s thimble at the time of your election, Lady Abbess.’

  ‘I would have been elected Abbess in any case,’ says the Abbess. ‘Felicity had no chance.’

  ‘The Americans have quite gathered that point,’ Walburga says. ‘They appear to be amused and rather shocked, of course, by the all-pervading bitchiness in this country.’

  ‘I dare say,’ says the Abbess. ‘This is a sad hour for England in these, the days of her decline. All this public uproar over a silver thimble, mounting as it has over the months. Such a scandal could never arise in the United States of America. They have a sense of proportion and they understand Human Nature over there; it’s the secret of their success. A realistic race, even if they do eat asparagus the wrong way. However, I have a letter from Rome, dear Sister Walburga, dear Sister Mildred. It’s from the Congregation of Religious. We have to take it seriously.’

  ‘We do,’ says Walburga.

  ‘We have to do something about it,’ says the Abbess,‘because the Cardinal himself has written, not the Cardinal’s secretary. They’re putting out feelers. There are questions, and they are leading questions.’

  ‘Are they worried about the press and publicity?’ says Walburga, her fingers moving in her lap.

  ‘Yes, they want an explanation. But I,’ says the Abbess of Crewe, ‘am not worried about the publicity. It has come to the point where the more we get the better.’

  Mildred’s mind seems to have wandered. She says with a sudden breakage in her calm, ‘Oh, we could be excommunicated! I know we’ll be excommunicated!’

  The Abbess continues evenly, ‘The more scandal there is from this point on the better. We are truly moving in a mythological context. We are the actors; the press and the public are the chorus. Every columnist has his own version of the same old story, as it were Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides, only of course, let me tell you, of a far inferior dramatic style. I read classics for a year at Lady Margaret Hall before switching to Eng. Lit. However that may be — Walburga, Mildred, my Sisters — the facts of the matter are with us no longer, but we have returned to God who gave them. We can’t be excommunicated without the facts. As for the legal aspect, no judge in the kingdom would admit the case, let Felicity tell it like it was as she may. You cannot bring a charge against Agamemnon or subpoena Clytemnestra, can you?’

  Walburga stares at the Abbess, as if at a new person. ‘You can,’ she says, ‘if you are an actor in the drama yourself.’ She shivers. ‘I feel a cold draught,’ she says. ‘Is there a window open?’

  ‘No,’ says the Abbess.

  ‘How shall you reply to Rome?’ Mildred says, her voice soft with fear.

  ‘On the question of the news reports I shall suggest we are the victims of popular demonology,’ says the Abbess. ‘Which we are. But they raise a second question on which I’m uncertain.’

  ‘Sister Felicity and her Jesuit!’ says Walburga.

  ‘No, of course not. Why should they trouble themselves about a salacious nun and a Jesuit? I must say a Jesuit, or any priest for that matter, would be the last man I would myself elect to be laid by. A man who undresses, maybe; but one who unfrocks, no.’

  ‘That type of priest usually prefers young students,’ Walburga observes. ‘I don’t know what Thomas sees in Felicity.’

  ‘Thomas wears civilian clothes, so he wouldn’t unfrock for Felicity,’ observes Mildred.

  ‘What I have to decide,’ says the Abbess, ‘is how to answer the second question in the letter írom Rome. It is put very cautiously. They seem quite suspicious. They want to know how we reconcile our adherence to the strict enclosed Rule with the course in electronics which we have introduced into our daily curriculum in place of book-binding and hand-weaving. They want to know why we cannot relax the ancient Rule in conformity with the new reforms current in the other convents, since we have adopted such a very modern course of instruction as electronics. Or, conversely, they want to know why we teach electronics when we have been so adamant in adhering to the old observances. They seem to be suggesting, if you read between the lines, that the convent is bugged. They use the word “scandals” a great deal.’

  ‘It’s a snare,’ says Walburga. That letter is a snare. They want you to fall into a snare. May we see the letter Lady Abbess?’

  ‘No,’ says the Abbess. ‘So that, when questioned, you will not make any blunder and will be able to testify that you haven’t seen it. I’ll show you my answer, so that you can say you have seen it. The more truths and confusions the better.’

  ‘Are we to be questioned?’ says Mildred, folding her arms at her throat, across the white coif.

  ‘Who knows?’ says the Abbess. ‘In the meantime, Sisters, do you have any suggestions to offer as to how I can convincingly reconcile our activities in my reply?’

  The nuns sit in silence for a moment. Walburga looks at Mildred, but Mildred is staring at the carpet.

  ‘What is wrong with the carpet, Mildred?’ says the Abbess.

  Mildred looks up. ‘Nothing, Lady Abbess,’ she says.

  ‘It’s a beautiful carpet, Lady Abbess,’ says Walburga, looking down at the rich green expanse beneath her feet.

  The Abbess puts her white head to the side to admire her carpet, too. She intones with an evident secret happiness:

  No white nor red was ever seen

  So amorous as this lovely green.

  Walburga shivers a little. Mildred watches the Abbess’s lips as if waiting for another little quotation.

  ‘How shall I reply to Rome?’ says the Abbess.

  ‘I would like to sleep on it,’ says Walburga.

  ‘I, too,’ says Mildred.

  The Abbess looks at the carpet:

  Annihilating all that’s made

  To a green thought in a green shade.

  ‘I,’ says the Abbess, then, ‘would prefer not to sleep on it. Where is Sister Gertrude at this hour?’

  ‘In the Congo,’ Walburga says.

  ‘Then get her on the green line.’

  ‘We have no green line to the Congo,’ Walburga says. ‘She travels day and night by rail and river. She should have arrived at a capital some hours ago. It’s difficult to keep track of her whereabouts.’

  ‘If she has arrived at a capital we should hear from her tonight,’ the Abbess says. ‘That was the arrangement. The sooner we perfect the green line system the better. We should have in our laboratory a green line to everywhere; it would be convenient to consult Gertrude. I don’t know why she goes rushing around, spending her time on ecumenical ephemera. It has all been done before. The Arians, the Albigensians, the Jansenists of Port Royal, the English recusants, the Covenanters. So many schisms, annihilations and reconciliations. Finally the lion lies down with the lamb and Gertrude sees that they remain lying down. Meantime Sister Gertrude, believe me, is a philosopher at heart. There is a touch of Hegel, her compatriot, there. Philosophers, when they cease philosophizing and take up action, are dangerous.’

  ‘Then why ask her advice?’ says Walburga.

  ‘Because we are in danger. Dangerous people understand well how to avoid it.’

  ‘She’s in a very wild area just now, reconciling the witch doctors’ rituals with a specially adapted rite of the Mass,’ Mildred says, ‘and moving the old missionaries out of that zone into another zone where they are sure to be opposed, probably massacred. However, this will be an appropriate reason for reinstating the orthodox Mass in the first zone, thus modifying the witch doctors’ bone-throwing practices. At least, that’s how I see it.’

  ‘I can’t keep up with Gertrude,’ says the Abbess. ‘How she is so popular I really don’t know. But even by her build one can foresee her st
one statue in every village square: Blessed Mother Gertrude.’

  ‘Gertrude should have been a man,’ says Walburga. ‘With her moustache, you can see that.’

  ‘Bursting with male hormones,’ the Abbess says as she rises from her silk seat the better to adjust the gleaming robes of the Infant of Prague. ‘And now,’ says the Abbess, ‘we wait here for Gertrude to call us. Why can’t she be where we can call her?’

  The telephone in the adjoining room rings so suddenly that surely, if it is Gertrude, she must have sensed her sisters’ want from the other field of the earth. Mildred treads softly over the green carpet to the adjoining room and answers the phone. It is Gertrude.

  ‘Amazing,’ says Walburga. ‘Dear Gertrude has an uncanny knowledge of what is needed where and when.’

  The Abbess moves in her fresh white robes to the next room, followed by Walburga. Electronics control-room as it is, here, too, everything gleams. The Abbess sits at a long steel desk and takes the telephone.

  ‘Gertrude,’ says the Abbess, ‘the Abbess of Crewe has been discussing you with her Sisters Walburga and Mildred. We don’t know what to make of you. How should we think?’

  ‘I’m not a philosopher,’ says Gertrude’s deep voice, philosophically.

  ‘Dear Gertrude, are you well?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Gertrude.

  ‘You sound like bronchitis,’ says the Abbess.

  ‘Well, I’m not bronchitis.’

  ‘Gertrude,’ says the Abbess, ‘Sister Gertrude has charmed all the kingdom with her dangerous exploits, while the Abbess of Crewe continues to perform her part in the drama of The Abbess of Crewe. The world is having fun and waiting for the catharsis. Is this my destiny?’

  ‘It’s your calling,’ says Gertrude, philosophically.

  ‘Gertrude, my excellent nun, my learned Hun, we have a problem and we don’t know what to do with it.’

  ‘A problem you solve,’ says Gertrude.

  ‘Gertrude,’ wheedles the Abbess, ‘we’re in trouble with Rome. The Congregation of Religious has started to probe. They have written delicately to inquire how we reconcile our adherence to the Ancient Rule, which as you know they find suspect, with the laboratory and the courses we are giving the nuns in modern electronics, which, as you know, they find suspect.’

  ‘That isn’t a problem,’ says Gertrude. ‘It’s a paradox.’

  ‘Have you time for a very short seminar, Gertrude, on how one treats of a paradox?’

  ‘A paradox you live with,’ says Gertrude, and hangs up.

  The Abbess leads the way from this room of many shining square boxes, many lights and levers, many activating knobs, press-buttons and slide-buttons and devices fearfully and wonderfully beyond the reach of a humane vocabulary. She leads the way back to the Infant of Prague, decked as it is with the glistening fruits of the nuns’ dowries. The Abbess sits at her little desk with the Sisters Walburga and Mildred silently composed beside her. She takes the grand writing-paper of the Abbey of Crewe and places it before her. She takes her pen from its gleaming holder and writes:

  ‘Your Very Reverend Eminence,

  Your Eminence does me the honour to address me, and I humbly thank Your Eminence.

  I have the honour to reply to Your Eminence, to submit that his sources of information are poisoned, his wells are impure. From there arise the rumours concerning my House, and I beg to write no more on that subject.

  Your Eminence does me the honour to inquire of our activities, how we confront what Your Eminence does us the honour to call the problem of reconciling our activities in the field of technological surveillance with the principles of the traditional life and devotions to which we adhere.

  I have the honour to reply to Your Eminence. I will humbly divide Your Eminence’s question into two parts. That we practise the activities described by Your Eminence I agree; that they present a problem I deny, and I will take the liberty to explain my distinction, and I hold:

  That Religion is founded on principles of Paradox.

  That Paradox is to be accepted and presents no Problem.

  That electronic surveillance (even if a convent were one day to practise it) does not differ from any other type of watchfulness, the which is a necessity of a Religious Community; we are told in the Scriptures “to watch and to pray”, which is itself a paradox since the two activities cannot effectively be practised together except in the paradoxical sense.’

  ‘You may see what I have written so far,’ says the Abbess to her nuns. ‘How does it strike you? Will it succeed in getting them muddled up for a while?’

  The black bodies lean over her, the white coifs meet above the pages of the letter.

  ‘I see a difficulty,’ says Walburga. ‘They could object that telephone-tapping and bugging are not simply an extension of listening to hearsay and inviting confidences, the steaming open of letters and the regulation search of the novices’ closets. They might well say that we have entered a state where a difference of degree implies a difference in kind.’

  ‘I thought of that,’ says the Abbess. ‘But the fact that we have thought of it rather tends to exclude than presume that they in Rome will think of it. Their minds are set to liquidate the convent, not to maintain a courtly correspondence with us.’ The Abbess lifts her pen and continues:

  ‘Finally, Your Eminence, I take upon myself the honour to indicate to Your Eminence the fine flower and consummation of our holy and paradoxical establishment, our beloved and renowned Sister Gertrude whom we have sent out from our midst to labour for the ecumenical Faith. By river, by helicopter, by jet and by camel, Sister Gertrude covers the crust of the earth, followed as she is by photographers and reporters. Paradoxically it was our enclosed community who sent her out.’

  ‘Gertrude,’ says Mildred, ‘would be furious at that. She went off by herself.’

  ‘Gertrude must put up with it. She fits the rhetoric of the occasion,’ says the Abbess. She bends once more over her work. But the bell for Lauds chimes from the chapel. It is three in the morning. Faithful to the Rule, the Abbess immediately puts down her pen. One white swan, two black, they file from the room and down to the waiting hall. The whole congregation is assembled in steady composure. One by one they take their cloaks and follow the Abbess to the chapel, so softly ill-lit for Lauds. The nuns in their choirs chant and reply, with wakeful voices at three in the morning:

  O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful

  is thy name in all the earth:

  Thou who hast proclaimed thy

  glory upon the heavens.

  Out of the mouths of babes and

  sucklings thou hast prepared praise

  to confuse thy adversaries:

  to silence the enemy and the revengeful.

  The Abbess from her high seat looks with a kind of wonder at her shadowy chapel of nuns, she listens with a fine joy to the keen plainchant, as if upon a certain newly created world. She contemplates and sees it is good. Her lips move with the Latin of the psalm. She stands before her high chair as one exalted by what she sees and thinks, as it might be she is contemplating the full existence of the Abbess of Crewe.

  Et fecisti eum paulo minorem Angelis:

  Gloria et honore coronasti eum.

  Soon she is whispering the melodious responses in other words of her great liking:

  Every farthing of the cost,

  All the dreaded cards foretell,

  Shall be paid, but from this night

  Not a whisper, not a thought,

  Not a kiss nor look be lost.

  Chapter 2

  IN the summer before the autumn, as God is in his heaven, Sister Felicity’s thimble is lying in its place in her sewing-box.

  The Abbess Hildegarde is newly dead, and laid under her slab in the chapel.

  The Abbey of Crewe is left without a head, but the election of the new Abbess is to take place in twenty-three days’ time. After Matins, at twenty minutes past midnight, the nuns go to their cells to sleep briefly and
deeply until their awakening for Lauds at three. But Felicity jumps from her window on to the haycart pulled up below and runs to meet her Jesuit.

  Tall Alexandra, at this time Sub-Prioress and soon to be elected Abbess of Crewe, remains in the chapel, kneeling to pray at Hildegarde’s tomb. She whispers:

  Sleep on, my love, in thy cold bed

  Never to be disquieted.

  My last goodnight! Thou wilt not wake

  Till I thy fate shall overtake:

  Till age, or grief, or sickness must

  Marry my body to that dust

  It so much loves, and fill the room

  My heart keeps empty in thy tomb.

  She wears the same black habit as the two asters who wait for her at the door of the chapel.

  She joins them, and with their cloaks flying in the night air they return to the great sleeping house. Up and down the dark cloisters they pace, Alexandra, Walburga and Mildred.

  ‘What are we here for?’ says Alexandra. ‘What are we doing here?’

  ‘It’s our destiny,’ Mildred says.

  ‘You will be elected Abbess, Alexandra,’ says Walburga.

  ‘And Felicity?’

  ‘Her destiny is the Jesuit,’ says Mildred.

  ‘She has a following among the younger nuns,’ Walburga says.

  ‘It’s a result of her nauseating propaganda,’ says lofty Alexandra. ‘She’s always talking about love and freedom as if these were attributes peculiar to herself. Whereas, in reality, Felicity cannot love. How can she truly love? She’s too timid to hate well, let alone love. It takes courage to practise love. And what does she know of freedom? Felicity has never been in bondage, bustling in, as she does, late for Mass, bleary-eyed for Prime, straggling vaguely through the Divine Office. One who has never observed a strict ordering of the heart can never exercise freedom.’

  ‘She keeps her work-box tidy,’ Mildred says. ‘She’s very particular about her work-box.’

  ‘Felicity’s sewing-box is the precise measure of her love and her freedom,’ says Alexandra, so soon to be Abbess of Crewe. ‘Her sewing-box is her alpha and her omega, not to mention her tiny epsilon, her iota and her omicron. For all her talk, and her mooney Jesuit and her pious eyelashes, it all adds up to Felicity’s little sewing-box, the norm she departs from, the north of her compass. She would ruin the Abbey if she were elected. How strong is her following?’