Letters to a Sister (20 page)

Dearest Jeanie,

... I have a rather full week—Africa meeting in House of Lords tomorrow, meeting at Dominican Priory Saturday, French Book Committee lunch Wednesday, de la Mare memorial service St Paul's Thursday, besides a lot of ordinary engagements. I have heard from [the] Bihar Diocesan publication society about reprinting Eleanor's book, and they are going ahead with it. Apparently it is one of the best books on bible readings published in Bihar language.
⁹²

No, I wasn't hurt by my tyre burst. Tubeless tyres don't puncture easily, but, like other tyres, they blow up when cut by sharp kerbs etc. when going fast. I wobbled all over the road before I could stop, but luckily without harm, as there was nothing just behind me. Nothing can be done to prevent it except to try not to hit sharp edges with the side of the tyre….

We had a v.g. [sermon]... yesterday from Fr Harris, about the shock of realising that one's regular prayers and communions aren't ‘making a ha'porth of difference to one's behaviour or one's attitude towards other people'; his plea was that we should make them more effective, and not think
them an end in themselves. I think your [ideal] Service would be very thoughtful and helpful, but would take a very long time. It would have to begin about 8.0, & not end till I.O. It would help if people made their notes beforehand, not at the time. I quite agree about the pauses. Even our sins aren't given any time to remember. The Prayer Book needs mother's rows of dots.
⁹³
During the Offertory sentences we should think of what we are meaning to try to offer (apart from money); during the exhortation, of those of our neighbours we might not be in charity with, during the thanksgiving of the good works prepared for us to walk in. There might be an annotated P.B. published, with spaces for such details.

I'm afraid you will be terribly disappointed with my novel,
⁹⁴
if you expect the kind of book John the Baptist might have written. I don't think it is really reformist at all, only full of churchy chat and speculations. Next time I will perhaps write a reformist book, putting in all my plans for a better Church, and send copies to all the Bishops and important clergy. Perhaps it had better be a novel, the central character a vicar, who in the end resigns because his reforms aren't allowed, and becomes a hedge preacher.

I was reading an article the other day about the ancient Jews; how they were so wholly religious, and therefore so ready for new revelations of God, because they cared for no secular arts. Unlike the Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Persians, Etruscans, Indians, Egyptians, of the same periods, they had, apparently, no secular literature, drama, poetry, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, carving, or anything, and concentrated entirely on religion. No philosophy, even,
except religious or moral. I wonder if this philistinism about the arts & culture is the best background for strong religious interests. It may be. Certainly the more artistic and cultured popes weren't very religious. I wonder how far religion and secular culture pull opposite ways, as Gregory the Great always maintained. It seems important to combine them. Of course it isn't quite true that the Jews had no secular poetry; there is the Song of Solomon, and may be some more that hasn't been preserved. But on the whole they concentrated on goodness, and on God. They seem to have outgrown this single interest now….

Now I must write a review, answer 3 letters, and make my will (good works prepared for me).

Very much love.

E.R.M.

20, Hinde House, Hinde St, W.1 10 July, [1956]

Dearest Jeanie,

Here is Canon [Charles] Smyth of Westminster.
⁹⁵
One sees that it is much more difficult for the unthinking than for the thinking man, who can always think of senses in which he can believe. You are wrong that a clergyman can't have both brains and integrity; I have known many with both. What he mustn't have is too literal a mind, he must be a little subtle. Dorothea writes, by the way, that she thinks bishops usually now ask the deacons the 1928 revised question.
⁹⁶
I expect
tomorrow there will be a lot of letters telling the Brigadier that people do go to church, not only a handful of old people.
⁹⁷
…

Miss Markham was v. sensible on old age.
⁹⁸
She said the first thing was to face it without dismay. She mentioned the shock she had when, long ago, she was waiting for the lights to change before crossing the road, and some kind person came up and said ‘Shall I help you across, ducks?' and the shock it was to a man she knows when he heard some people speaking of him as ‘such a nice old gentleman'. But when one has settled down to that, she said how good & interesting life still was, and how many new things to discover all the time.

Subtopia means, I take it, the country round and near a town, which is apt to get built over and spoilt.
Topia
is Greek for place, and
sub
means near (when it doesn't mean under), as in suburb
(urbs,
town). Utopia is a
good
place, from
eu,
well.
⁹⁹
I suppose Subtopia hasn't been a word long enough to get in a dictionary.

I don't go to all the P.E.N. meetings, but have some tomorrow.
¹⁰⁰
My protégée, Sheila Davies, is greatly excited by seeing so many writers, and goes about starry-eyed, thinking it all wonderful. I tell her who they are, and introduce her when there is opportunity, so I hope she will get to know some, which is her great ambition. It is touching to see someone feeling so young about writers.

I have changed the
News Chronicle
for the
Telegraph,
which is a good deal less silly and vulgar. And I have ordered
Reynolds [News]
instead of
Sunday Express.

Wednesday.
Only one letter printed today,
¹⁰¹
but many received. They ought to print some from the Universities.

Much love.

E.R.M.

20, Hinde House, Hinde St, W.1 July 15, [1956] (St Swithin's, & has rained.)

Dearest Jeanie,

… I'm afraid that the ‘Believe' correspondence is now over, as
The Times
had a leader about it yesterday, which is enclosed. They say that if any deacon feels the declaration a stumbling-block, it can be removed by proper instruction. It would seem simpler to change the words, but apparently this is difficult. I don't quite know how they… have the effrontery to say that believing ‘means believing that the scriptures contain everything necessary for salvation'; it is a great twisting of plain words, and certainly not what the original composers of the declaration meant. Our 1662 Prayer Book is, I suppose, the only P.B. that has this form
¹⁰²
; the American one hasn't
¹⁰³
; I'm not sure about the Scotch, but I think not.
¹⁰⁴
But
thinking
young men can always think themselves out of it, no doubt. Only so many ordinands are
not
thinking young men, and they must either assent to a lie or say ‘No'. If I was being ordained and the Bish. asked in
what: sense I believed any particular book of the Bible, I should say ‘In the same sense that you do, my Lord.' Then he would be in a hole, as he couldn't well say that wasn't enough….

We had a wet day in Cambridge yesterday, but I think the P.E.N. quite enjoyed themselves. We had lunch in Trinity great hall, where the Master kindly presided (Lord Adrian). I sat next him, and enjoyed talking to him. He and Lord Pethick-Lawrence were talking about the Lords debate on the abolition [of capital punishment] bill.
¹⁰⁵
Both these Lords had voted for the bill. The Lords can't hold it up indefinitely, so in a year or two it will probably be passed, unless the Commons change their minds about it. After lunch I showed my new P.E.N. recruit
¹⁰⁶
Cambridge a little, then went to part of an organ recital in King's Chapel, then she went off with half the company to a place outside Cambridge whose owners had offered us a party. I stayed behind, then about 20 of us had tea with E. M. Forster in his room. He had asked if as many as possible could be foreign delegates, and of these as many as possible dark-skinned. However, he had invited me also, and most of us were white, though I talked to a magnificent Gold Coaster and a charming Lebanese. Then I went to see Dorothea, and the rest of the P.E.N. returned to London by the coach….

I shall find this ‘believe' correspondence very useful in my Cambridge discussion with C. S. Lewis.
¹⁰⁷
I hope some baulked ordinands will still write in and complain, saying what good clergymen they would have made.

I am re-reading Evelyn Underbill's chapter about Psychology and the Spirit.
¹⁰⁸
It is v.g.; I mean, exactly what I think myself, about the struggling-up of man from his animal
state, with all his animal desires still clinging to him. I like her quotation from St Angela of Foligno's conversation with the Holy Ghost, who said to her ‘Thou art my best and sweetest bride, and I love thee better than any one else in the valley of Spoleto'.

Next Sunday at 9.30 a.m. there is a sung Mass broadcast from St Paul's, Knightsbridge, so mind you listen. I shall stay at home & listen. It is a proud moment for St Paul's, and the Vicar is delighted.

Very much love, thank goodness this Congress is over and we can sit back. The Organizing Committee is all but dead. The foreign delegates are, some of them, touchy, and envied one another's parties, places at the Dinner, length of time allowed to speeches, etc. etc. As people go, I think the British—no, the
English
—are on the whole less touchy than most, though touchy enough.

I thought the ‘Lift up your hearts' speaker was wrong about the one word in which Euodias probably answered the question ‘What is wrong with the Church?' I think she more likely said ‘Syntyche' than ‘I am.'
¹⁰⁹
I thought last week's speaker very interesting. They are improving….

Very much love.

E.R.M.

20, Hinde House, Hinde St, W.1 24 July, 1956

Darling Twin,

This brings very much love for tomorrow.... I thought the St Paul's service came over beautifully, and I was glad to hear it, for once, from the outside. The music there is excellent, and the choir and choirmaster celebrated. I am very lucky to be able to have it every Sunday; I wish you had too…. Fr Harris was perhaps almost too expository, aimed too much at people who knew little about it, but this may have been useful. He did say that when the bread was broken we offered our selves and lives with it, to be broken in the service of God and of other people; but I should have liked more about the effects on our lives; I have heard him preach well about this, tho' too seldom.… Had I written it for him, it would have been nearly all about this, one could go on for some hours about it of course, but he had only 10 minutes. However, I was glad he set the scene for listeners, including the incense, which is a good thing to popularize. We now all feel that St Paul's has had a good boost, and, if it wasn't just at the beginning of the holiday months, should hope for a rush of fresh congregation. I wish you could come up some Sunday in your holiday and we could go there together….

I think the meaning of music adds a lot to one's enjoyment of it. Still, the music I enjoy most—Mozart symphonies & concertos, & Beethoven, Haydn, Bach & a few others—has no words and no meaning beyond what one feels as if was in it. And music one doesn't care for isn't really made palatable by a meaning one does care for; in fact, the music matters more than the sense. The most beautiful poetry set to dull music is no use, and much better left in words only….

I think I shall be here most of August. I wrote cancelling my voyage,
¹¹⁰
also told Gervase Mathew, who writes back how healthy it would be for me, but, judging from what I
heard from someone who made such a trip last year, it is rather tiring. I hope I am not now past such enterprises, and that it is only this year that I don't feel quite up to it. But let's face it, we are getting old. A nice young woman offered me her seat in a train the other day. I said ‘How nice of you. I don't see why I should take your seat, but I agree that I'm much older than you, so thank you very much', and she smiled sweetly and I took it. This seems the friendlier course, I think, even when one isn't tired.

Did you hear ‘Lift up your Hearts' this morning? I thought it good, but I never quite liked the idea of those old rotten clouts,
¹¹¹
they were probably smelly; still, I expect poor Jeremiah didn't mind, having been so long in that deep dirty hole, which I saw in Jerusalem.

I'm glad you are taking
Reynolds [News]
too. What do you make of the story of the doctor M.P. who was drugged and put in an asylum and certified, till his wife drank the same sherry with hemp in it and went mad too, which showed they had been drugged? He says he is now hunting for the gang who drugged him.
¹¹²
It sounded a very odd, mad story.... It surely can't be all that common to be wrongly shut up. I thought they had access to doctors continually, and could be decertified any time they were thought sane. Tho' of course I have read many novels about patients shut up by their enemies for years....

On Friday we will talk about your holiday. Dear me, what should I do without these Fridays, or Saturdays, or whenever the weekly meeting is. How very lucky it is that you are so near; you might be at the other end of England, or in S. Africa or somewhere, and then what
should
I do? As it is, provided you live as long as I do, or even longer, it is all
right. All my love for the year. I shall go to Mass for you and St James tomorrow; how right it is that he should be your saint.

Now I must get on with Style in Eng. Religious Lit.
¹¹³
I am full of envy & spite, and believe that other people are the same, but not you.