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Lex Credendi
A Modern Mystic’s Way.
The Rod, the Root and the Flower, by Coventry Patmore.
Do you know Francis Thompson’s poem The Hound of Heaven? It is in a little anthology called Lyra Sacra. I am sure you would like it and probably also much in Coventry Patmore’s Unknown Eros.
3 Campden Hill Place.
May 15, 1907.
To THE SAME.
I am so glad you are going to read the Missal. But do not be “put off” if at first it strikes you as a rather commonplace liturgy and you are left wondering what I see in it. Everything, really, is there: but like other valuable things it has to be hunted for. As to understanding the Mass, no reading or other intellectual process makes one do that, I think. You see the Mass is either (a) a gross superstition or (b) an enormous spiritual fact. Intermediate theories, that it is a “helpful symbol,” “true for those who believe in it,” etc., are not really tenable. Now it is quite easy to think it is (a); but quite difficult of one’s own accord to realize that it is (b). This means that one’s perceptions must be exalted to the spiritual plane, if only for a moment—and such an exaltation is of course the true object of ceremonies, liturgies and much meditation.
But don’t worry and excite yourself or pull yourself up by the roots to see how you are getting on! That way lies spiritual insomnia, the most deadly disease in the world. Let yourself go more, and trust more: you will get in the end what you are meant to have.
3 Campden Hill Place, W.
Corpus Christi, May 30, 1907.
To THE SAME.
Please don’t apologize for writing … if I can help you the least bit, I shall be paying back some of the debt I owe those who have helped me; it is rather a luxury to administer counsels of perfection to others instead of to oneself!
I feel like writing you a rather bracing, disagreeable, east-windy sort of letter. When I read yours my first impulse was to send you a line begging you only to let yourself alone. Don’t keep on pulling yourself to pieces: and please burn that dreadful book with the list of your past sins! If the past really oppresses you, you had far better go to confession, and finish that chapter once and for all!
It is emphatically your business now to look forwards and not backwards: and also to look forwards in an eager and optimistic spirit. Any other course is mere ingratitude, you know. There is a dispirited tone about your letter as if you were taking your own variations of mood and inevitable failures far too seriously —feeling your pulse too much. You say reading the Modern Mystic “increased your responsibility more than you can bear.” This also is morbid (I am really horribly rude this evening!). Your responsibility ends when you have made sure that you are honest in will and intention, and are doing your best. There are no unbearable responsibilities in this world but those of our own seeking. Once life is realized as a succession of acts of loving service, undertaken in a spirit of joy, all that moonshine vanishes. I nearly quoted a text at you: but instead of that, here is a “bit” which contains much food for profitable meditation I think. I wonder if you know it already?
“There was a saint who said, ‘I must rejoice without ceasing, although the world shudder at my joy.’ He did not think he could save his soul without it”
People seem often to forget that Hope is a cardinal virtue necessary to salvation like Faith and Love: an active principle which ought to dominate life. I do think it would be so much better if you would go on quite simply and trustfully for a bit. After all, we value far more in our human relationships the sort of love that gives itself joyously and eagerly without introspection than the sort which is perpetually occupied with its own unworthiness or shortcomings. I wonder whether you are living too lonely a life for your temperament. You sound a little bit like it.
Of course you are quite right when you say that feeling must precede doing: but unless it finally results in doing, it is mere emotional satisfaction, of no value. The direction and constancy of the will is what really matters, and intellect and feeling are only important in so far as they contribute to that. Don’t be bullied by Tyrrell: he is often splendid, and also often quite wrong, being cursed with a cleverness that runs away with him.
Have you read R. H. Benson’s Papers of a Pariah? I’m not “recommending” this as a “serious” work—but it is rather a pleasant book which has several things in it which I thought extremely well put, and I think you might like it. I wonder what you thought of the Missal! I observe that you preserve a discreet silence on the subject! I hope the one you got had the liturgy in Latin as well as in English. It is untranslatable somehow. Don’t you think the office for to-day is beautiful? Have you read the Pange Lingua in the original? I forget whether it comes at Corpus Christi or Holy Thursday in the Missal for the laity, being sung on both days.
Yacht Wulfruna.
Aug. 2, 1907.
To THE SAME.
I think the central Fact of the Mass is the Presence on the Altar.
From this are deducible the other aspects of communion, sacrifice, and adoration. To limit the meaning of the Eucharist to any one of these things is implicitly to deny the Presence in its full signification. One of the best introductions to the history of the Early Liturgies is Neale’s Essays in Liturgical History, if you can get hold of it. They have it at the London Library I know. Bright’s translations of early collects are also good: and there is a wonderful collection of scraps from all these sources in Ancient Devotions for Holy Communion about which I think I told you. It’s a Roman book, though! Also the Mozarabic Rite has lately been edited I think. Perhaps you would like Dr. Abbott’s Silenus the Christian.
Duchesne is of course good: but more about ceremonies than liturgies. Remind me when I go home to send you some little booklets on the Holy Week ceremonies, which are rather interesting in a slight way.
It is odd how quickly the Christian Liturgy arrived at its full splendour; and how every alteration made since has resulted in blemishes rather than improvements—unless the editor happened, as in the case of St. Thomas Aquinas, to be both a poet and a saint.
But of course the Platonizing of Jewish conceptions which went on at and about Alexandria during the first 4 centuries A.D. was an intellectual process almost unparalleled in history, and the Fathers of the Church which it produced were very superior, mentally, to most of their sons!
I wonder if you have read any of St. Augustine’s sermons as well as the Confessions? He, of course, inspired many of the mediaeval mystics—as for instance Julian of Norwich, one of the wisest and most beautiful.
50 Campden Hill Square, W.
Oct. 9, 1907.
To THE SAME.
It is perfectly disgraceful of me to have left your last letter unanswered so long. But we have only been home a fortnight, and there has been so much to do—my house not being really in order yet—that correspondence has been considerably neglected. … I am glad you were pleased with Ruysbroeck. He is one of the truly illuminated, I think, and belongs with St. Teresa and the matchless Lady Julian of Norwich (I forget whether you have read her: if not, I could lend her to you if you like).
I send you with this the Holy Week pamphlets, and also a book of scraps (all the best really) from Plotinus, the best of the Neo-Platonists. I wonder if you know Boehme. There is an excellent introduction to him, by Martensen—not a particularly new book. As to St. Augustine’s Sermons, the only edition I know is old (about 1840), big, and probably out of print. But you would get it surely at a library? I wonder if you know of Dr. Williams’ Library in Gordon Square? There is no subscription; they send you two books at a time, and their collection of theological and mystical books is magnificent. I am sure you would find it most useful.
It seems to me from what you say in your letter, that things are going on so well with you that it would be superfluous, not to say highly impertinent on my part, to lecture or argue. If I am right about the Eucharist—and I can only tell you what I see or believe I see—you will see it too, sooner or later. The question after all, is not what the Church of England says is there, or what any one else says, but what is there.
There are plenty of learned persons saying all the time that what you have already found is not there at all. But their arguments will never be valid to you again, any more than the arguments of Anglican divines against adoration of the Blessed Sacrament are valid to me.
Direct spiritual experience is the only possible basis; and if you will trust yours absolutely you are safe. When one thinks of the distance you have gone in the last few months, it is incredible that you should ever be depressed or distrustful again!
50 C.H.S.
Nov. 20, 1907.
To THE SAME.
I see I have got two letters of yours to answer! This is quite dreadful of me: but it is consoling to reflect that you must have found out long ago that I am a very bad correspondent.
I am so glad you are happy: I always thought you would be, if only you would let yourself. People who care about these sort of things at all have a fund of happiness at their disposal which outside circumstances, “hard lives,” etc., can’t touch. Only so often they are perverse, and won’t take advantage of their privileges—like an over-scrupulous nun, haggling over whether she is quite good enough for her Maker.
I am so sorry you thought you had got to return Plotinus if you had not finished with him. There is never any hurry really: and I will always tell you if I happen to want books back. Mr. Williams has got a very fine complete edition of the Life and Works of St. Teresa in French—together with other Spanish mystics—three large and heavy volumes! It is most unsuitable for Dissenting ministers but I’m sure you would like it. There is a nice little edition of Tauler in the Library of Devotion for 1s. 6d.—without the remarks of the odious Miss Winckworth.
I cannot think why you are “put off” by a thing like the Mass of St.
Gregory. Are you going to disallow all the visions of all the Saints? And, if the substance of what he saw was God, surely it was just as reasonable for him to perceive its accidents under one form as under another?
50 C.H.S.
Dec. 30, 1907.
To THE SAME.
Thank you so much for your last letter—and for the very pretty card, quite the nicest I had! Of course I will be glad for you to tell me more about yourself if you feel that it will help you. It is so much easier to tell a person one has not seen, and you need never see me unless you like!
You say reading St. Teresa has made you feel anxious to get on quicker (but no one can get on quickly with this particular job) and you do not know what to do next. I do not one bit want to go on harrying you with advice: but I just submit it for your consideration that there are certain attitudes of mind to be cultivated, and certain methods of devotion to be learned, which are quite essential and quite definite. They are really, I believe, the thing to do next. Of course I can only gather vaguely and approximately the point you have reached and the use you are making of the light you have got—so all I can do is to tell you the things I have found out for myself, on the chance of one or two of them fitting in.
Now it seems to me that one’s life only attains reality in so far as it is consciously lived in the Presence of God. This consciousness can be attained and clung to by a definite act of the will—or rather by a series of graduated acts. Once you can breathe that atmosphere, it will determine most questions of conduct for you —become a sort of norm or standard, by which all other proportions are judged. Secondly, as a means of getting at this, there is the regular and systematic practice of meditation: by which of course I do not mean thinking about a pious subject but the “deep” meditation which tends to pass over into unitive prayer. You probably know that experience already: but so many people, instead of regarding it as a part of their regular spiritual food only do it when they “feel in the mood” or “when they can.” But once the will is in proper control you can always enter into the silence, though often enough without finding anything (consciously) there. That, I think, does not matter much. What does matter is, never to give up, once you have started on the way, in spite of the horrid discouragements and ups and downs. I expect it is “more than my place is worth” to mention the extreme usefulness of the rosary in this connection? So many people seem to think it a sort of calculating-machine for the saying of Hail Marys: whereas it is really a wonderful psychological device for assisting the meditative state—a sort of “First Steps for Little Contemplatives.” At least I find it so but perhaps you would not!
50 C.H.S.
Jan. 16, 1908.
To THE SAME.
I feel a horrid diffidence in advising you on your last letter: it seems very presumptuous to do so—because, in a way, you have enough of your own to go on, and I, in advising you, can only go on my own experience, which may not be a bit of use to you. So, I shall probably make mistakes, and you must exercise your own judgement in accepting what I say. We are both in a very confusing forest, and the fact that I say I think I have found a path in one direction is no valid reason for you to alter your course.
Now, first, you have, you know, the “root of the matter”—and as long as you cling to that, you can’t go far wrong. As your favourite St. Augustine said, “Love and do what you like!” If you like wrong things, you will soon find the quality of your love affected. This same condition of love governs everything else (e.g. it rules out, once for all, the idea of cash payments. Whether they are in force or whether they are not, the true lover, whether on the earthly or heavenly plane, has no thoughts to waste on them). It seems to me that your immediate job must be to make this love active and operative right through your life—to live in the light of it all the while, and act by it all the while—to make it light up your relations with other people, with nature, with life, with your work, just as much as it lights up immediate communion with Our Lord. Try to see people by His light. Then they become “real.” Nothing helps one so much as that. Prayerful and direct intercourse is only half one’s job; the other half is to love everything for and in God. This is of course only a longwinded way of saying that one has got to let faith issue in charity. When you have learnt to live within the love of God in this human and healthy sense, the question of sin will cease to be such a bogy as it is at present. Your attitude towards sin is really almost Calvinistic!! Don’t dwell on it! Turn your back on it. Every minute you are thinking of evil, you might have been thinking of good instead. Refuse to pander to a morbid interest in your own misdeeds. Pick yourself up, be sorry, shake yourself, and go on again. Of course, it is deplorable that we should all hesitate to make temporal sacrifices for eternal gains—Thomas a Kempis is very bitter on the subject if you remember—but look back on the time when this aspect of the subject would not even have occurred to you, and ask yourself if your present unrest does not indicate progress? So with sins—as we advance, our conscience gets more delicate, and acts of self-help which once seemed almost laudable, now look hideous. Of course, because you had a “good time” before Christmas, and enjoyed devotion, you are now having a reaction and a flat time. But sticking to it in the flat times is of far more value both as service and as discipline—than luxuriating in religious emotion. It is what strengthens your spiritual muscles.
Even the best people—even the saints—have always had to bear it: sometimes for years. It is a natural condition in the spiritual life. I know it is perfectly horrid when it happens—and I do not mean to be unsympathetic! But you must get enough grip to go on trusting in the dark. All the prayer in the world will not get you into a state in which you will always have nice times. You must not get slack: you must make a rule of life and go on with it steadily.
Now about meditation. Perhaps it may not be your “line.” It is entirely a matter of temperament I believe. Some people cannot do it at all. Personally I can do it to a certain “stage”: but I know others who, with less practice, can pass easily and naturally into far deeper stages. In spite of all the mystics have told us, we are in it working with almost an unknown tool. Try to get rid of the visual image. Do you remember St. Teresa said of one of her nuns, “Sister X … has so little imagination that she always sees an image of the thing on which she meditates.”
Try this way.
1. Put yourself into some position so easy and natural to you that you don’t notice your body: and shut your eyes.
2. Represent to your mind, some phrase, truth, dogma, event—e.g. a phrase of the Paternoster or Anima Christi, the Passion, the Nativity are the sort of things I use. Something that occurs naturally. Now, don’t think about it, but keep it before you, turning it over as it were, as you might finger some precious possession.
3. Deliberately, and by an act of will, shut yourself off from your senses. Don’t attend to touch or hearing: till the external world seems unreal and far away. Still holding on to your idea, turn your attention inwards (this is what Ruysbroeck means by introversion) and allow yourself to sink, as it were, downwards and downwards, into the profound silence and peace which is the essence of the meditative state. More you cannot do for yourself: if you get further, you will do so automatically as a consequence of the above practice. It is the “shutting off of the senses” and what Boehme calls the “stopping the wheel of the imagination and ceasing from self-thinking” that is hard at first. Anyhow, do not try these things when you are tired—it is useless: and do not give up the form of prayer that comes naturally to you: and do not be disheartened if it seems at first a barren and profitless performance. It is quite possible to obtain spiritual nourishment without being consciously aware of it!
Read Holy Wisdom by the Ven. Augustine Baker.
P.S. The dear cat sends his love; he was much flattered, as he perceives you to be a lady who understands cat-nature! His name is Jacob, because he supplants all other cats in the affections of those who know him—or so he thinks!
Hotel St. Jean-Baptiste, Carcassonne.
Thursday night [25 April, 1908].
To HUBERT STUART MOORE.
I got your Sunday letter and Monday p.c. when we arrived here this afternoon. I’m so sorry you had such a disgustingly dreary holiday with no real sailing or anything; I can’t bear to think of it—but if only the fresh air and idleness has done you good, it will be something. You were a darling to send flowers to the Convent for Easter—nothing you could have done would have pleased me more, as you know. Sister Eucharistie wrote a delightful letter, saying how beautiful they were and that she put them on the High Altar near the Blessed Sacrament. I do love you for having done that. It’s lovely to think that there was something of ours there then —“offering the homage of their beauty,” as she says in her letter.
Via Michele 6, Firenze.
Saturday [27 April, 1908].
To THE SAME.
I am now quite raving mad about Italian pictures and you will find me a horrid nuisance on the subject. I thought I knew how to appreciate them before I left England, but now I know that I knew less than nothing. The Botticellis here are entrancing; after a bit they cast a sort of spell over you, and you can’t get away from them. Those really great old painters don’t throw themselves into your arms, like modern pot boilers, and say “Look what pretty things I paint”; you have to find that out for yourself, but once you have found it out, you must love them till the end of your days. Please bear with this nonsense, the place makes me incoherent and I’ve no one here to talk to, least on these subjects.
50 C.H.S.
2nd Sunday after Easter, 1908.
To M.R.
Here are your other Carcassonne pictures: I hope you will like them. It was nice of you to write me a “welcome back” letter! I liked it very much: as much as Jacob’s very furry and demonstrative greeting. We had a nice smooth and sunny crossing, and I feel very glad to find myself at home again!
I wonder if you have yet discovered Auch? It takes a little looking for: and I have not yet met anyone else who has been there. It’s on a side-line, west from Toulouse: a rather miserable, empty, unsuccessful-looking town, full of empty houses and closed shops, with a Cathedral which also looks desolate outside but is “all glorious within.” Your window is, as you saw, 16th century and very good of its kind. It is in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, and is one of a series which go completely round the choir-chapels; really magnificent Renaissance glass with all the splendour of the period and none of the paganism.
As for O felix culpa!—I feel a certain evil joy in telling you that it comes from that despised manual of Christianity, the Roman Missal!! you will find it in the Exultet, sung at the blessing of the Paschal Candle on Holy Saturday. It, and the music to which it is always chanted, are supposed to be the most ancient things in the Liturgy. I think I shall never forget the first time I heard it: it is so strange, wild and poignant. And they are expressive words, aren’t they? They lift one straight away from the morbid and emotional hash with which the average curate profanes the Passion.
Benediction is nice, isn’t it? If you want the whole text of the service you can get a little book called The Garden of the Soul for 6d. which contains that, and Mass, and Sunday Vespers, the Way of the Cross and some devotional odds and ends. The first Hymn is always St. Thomas Aquinas’ O Salutaris Hostia and the Collect is always the one for Corpus Christi Deus qui nobis. Next time you are in London you must go to Benediction at the Chapel of the Assumption in Kensington Square. They have it every day at 5, and the nuns sing quite charmingly. … It is a tiny place so you would be able to see quite well.
I wonder how you will like Boehme. Often enough he is over my head altogether. He seems like a person dazed by his vision and stuttering with the violence of his effort to express it.
I found some more Ruysbroeck while I was away. OEuvres Choisies by E. Hello. Snippets are always horrid: but in this there is a long piece of the Treatise on Contemplation, and two Canticles, and various other precious things. Would you like me to lend it to you presently?
50 C.H.S.
May 9, 1908.
To THE SAME.
I am sending you a Holy Week Book to see the Exultet in Latin just to take the taste of the English version away. The bit you quote is terrible; I have never come on quite such a bad example as that.
There is no hurry about returning this book as I am not likely to want it yet awhile.
Isn’t the Lady Julian lovely? But Methuen’s 33. 6d. edition is much better than the Kegan Paul one and has quite a nice Introduction instead of that stuffy little essay of Tyrrell’s. Tell me when you want Ruysbroeck. There is a little life of him at the beginning, which is rather nice to have.
I was amused to find you had seen the picture in the Bookmanl It is more like a nigger boy than anything else, having been taken in the back of the chemist’s shop at Scilly, at the end of a day’s fishing!
Heinemann annoyed me by demanding a portrait for publication, which should be “mystical and strike a personal note”! Whereupon in a spirit of pure devilry, I sent him that! He was annoyed—but used it!
June 16, 1908.
To THE SAME.
Your letter got to me late as we were spending Whitsuntide in the depths of the New Forest—in a tiny cottage with forest ponies browsing at the door—so nice! I wonder was this the region where you felt you could not follow me? It is inaccessible: far away from the Blessings and Fonts and all other circumstances of ecclesiastical splendour. A perfect example of what a pious friend called “the godless desolation of rural England.” All the same I do rather miss churches when I have not got them to run to—don’t you?
I was amused by your description of your violent and successful hunt for those Corpus Christi verses. I imagined you and the bookstall boy vainly searching M.A.P., Home Chat, and London Society—and finally running them to earth in the least expected spot! I am so pleased you liked them—it never occurred to me you would want to see them at all. I thought the middle stanza had some horrid stuffy lines in it but I could not get it any better. I want to do a little book some day of those sort of verses for all the year? but so far only the Christmas, Mid-Lent and Holy Week ones are done and nowadays I seldom write rhymes.
I wonder if you idolize Corpus Christi day as much as I do? It is my “secret love” among all the feasts of the year I think. In the afternoon I generally go to the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Roehampton where they have a procession of the Blessed Sacrament and Benediction in the lovely old garden. I wonder if you would like it?
I nearly forgot the most important part of this letter: namely, that Jacob sends his best love and says that—most fortunately—he is, as you wished, Tabby: but emphatically NOT COMMON. He has been told he is Pure Persian, and is inclined to believe it. He celebrated my return yesterday by catching a mouse and eating it, with every circumstance of cruelty, in the garden whilst I was having my tea.
There are moments when it is difficult to adjust even the nicest cat to an optimistic scheme of Creation!
This is a horribly frivolous letter. I don’t know why a bit. Perhaps the after result of last night’s women writers’ Dinner—which this year was madder and more amusing than ever. My opposite neighbour was a lady who has made herself a religion of Conic Sections, and told me that Curves were the key to the Universe and an infallible corrective of pantheism: and that Sex and Psychology were in it all —a dark saying indeed which I have not yet unravelled! Next to her sat Mrs. Tay Pay O’Connor who interrupted the discourse on Curves to ask her if she knew Mrs. Cecil Raleigh, who had done so much in Drury Lane Melodrama. Add to this a large Chorus of successful Suffragists, full of Saturday’s demonstration: and the usual hare-and-hounds business of anxious admirers chasing successful authors in order to have the pleasure of saying, “I do so like your book!”—and it is not surprising if every scribbler in London is feeling weak and light-headed to-day!
Goodbye. I will send Ruysbroeck in a day or two. His remarks on Hell, coming from such a quarter, are painful reading: but much of the rest compensates.
St. Martha’s Day, 29/07/08.
To THE SAME.
I am writing this to Liverpool on chance of its catching you before you go. Not that my remarks on the subject are likely to be of the slightest use as I am quite as much (or more) feeling my way in the dark, as you are! So, you must please only read it as a tentative expression of opinion, founded merely on my own experience as far as I have gone yet.
The first point is—do you wish to develop in yourself (1) “balanced faculties” or (2) to be a “specialist”? If (1), then utter repression of the senses is obviously wrong, and indeed impossible to those who live the active life at all.
If (2), then such repressions may be right for entirely exceptional souls. But please note that the great contemplative saints are not found amongst such souls. Remember St. Francis with his love of birds and music, sun and air: St. Teresa’s eau-de-Cologne: Ruysbroeck’s and St. Bernard’s passion for the forest. As to what you say about the cloistered life, I don’t know whether you have ever known any nuns or monks personally? I know a good many and as a matter of fact, they live the life of the senses just as much as anyone else, only in a peculiarly simple and detached way. If you want to find the person who combines spiritual passion with appreciation of a cup of coffee—go to a convent. It is just there that you find this type in perfection. I believe the whole secret to lie in “detachment”: and it is difficult to conceive how anyone who has once seen the “vision splendid” even for a moment can fail to have this detachment in some measure, or fail to see bits of it, hints and shadows, in most of the evidences of sense. I think that the R.L.S. point of view, lit by this experience, may be spiritual; not lit by it—it is only a sort of cosmic cheerfulness and rather shallow at that!
The Church has always, of course, held up as the Christian ideal a mixture of the active and contemplative life—the one lit up by the other. Our Lord’s human life was just that, wasn’t it? Social intercourse regulated by nights spent in the mountain in prayer. We ought to be strong enough to use our senses without letting them swamp our souls: to enjoy them, without ever forgetting the greater joy of the “deep yet dazzling darkness.”
The condemnation of “lust of the eyes” seems to me to just point the distinction between lust and reasonable love. Just as, in the same way, it is right to love other people in the Love of God—but not to have violent and exclusive passions for them. This shuts off the spiritual light just as completely as an attack of hatred and malice! I am sure that nothing which can co-exist with the consciousness of the spiritual world hurts us—and it seems to me that all pure beauty can so co-exist if we choose. Of course in moments of meditation (and indeed, I think, of prayer) all sensual images are in the way. But even in the cloister, unitive prayer cannot be continuous. A rightly detached soul can “switch off” the world of sense at those times without despising it. The two things are so very near together. So that it is the “garment that ye see Him by”—if you know Him first. And, as pain is plaited right through nature and supernature as we know it, I don’t see that this longing to hurt oneself (it can become hysterical if not looked after, as I know to my cost, so beware!) militates against the other part.
Consider again St. Francis: the “heavenly melody” and the Stigmata lived side by side in his experience. I do not believe anyone ever lived a more perfectly Christian life than he did. It is shamefully ungracious not to glory in the works of the Lord because one is preoccupied over the fact that one is a miserable sinner. The fact that we say the Confession and the Agnus at Mass does not make us modestly omit the Gloria. I am certain we should stretch our spiritual muscles till they permit selfless joy as well as selfless pain. If it were otherwise, Gethsemane would have made Cana in Galilee impossible. Surely you have perceived for yourself the difference between created things as seen in the indescribable atmosphere which theologians call “the love of God,” and seen in the ordinary worldly light?
I remember you told me once the first thing you “found out” was a sense of intense refinement. The first thing I found out was exalted and indescribable beauty in the most squalid places. I still remember walking down the Netting Hill main road and observing the (extremely sordid) landscape with joy and astonishment. Even the movement of the traffic had something universal and sublime in it.
Of course that does not last: but the after-flavour of it does, and now and then one catches it again. When one does catch it, it is so real that to look upon it as wrong would be an unthinkable absurdity. At the same time, one sees the world at those moments so completely as “energized by the invisible” that there is no temptation to rest in mere enjoyment of the visible.
This is all very scrappy and unsatisfactory I know; but if there is anything I have left out that I could answer, do tell me.
P.S. Did you notice this in St. Bernard? “Experto crede: aliquid amplius invenies in Silvis quam in Libris. Ligna et lapides decelunt te quod a Magistris audire non possis.” And this: “Quidquid in Scriptures valet, quidquid in eis spiritualiter sentit, maxime in silvis et in agris meditando et orando se confitetur accepisse, et in hoc nullos aliquando se magistros habuisse nisi quercos et fagos joco illo suo gratioso inter amicos dicere solet.”** Isn’t that rather nice? I hope you will find the oaks am beeches equally improving to the mind!
‘Believe me who have tried. Thou wilt find something more in woods than in books. Trees and rocks will teach thee what thou canst not hear from a master.’—Letter to Henry Murdach.
* Whatever strengthens him in the Scriptures, whatever he feels of’
spiritual worth in them, he confesses that he had found chiefly when meditating and praying in the woods and fields, and in this respect he is wont to say among his friends with that gracious playfulness of his that he had had no other teachers but the oaks and beeches.
Vezelay.
August 29, 1908.
To THE SAME.
I have been “thinking you over” a lot since we were here. Oddly enough your letter partly anticipates what I wanted to say to you: but does not quite answer it. What struck me about you was, not that there was any danger of your relapsing into “comfiness,” but that your tendency was to make your religion a tete-a-tete affair. The communion of Saints and all that is implied by that does not occupy a sufficiently prominent place in your creed, I think. (All this must be read with the usual reservations because so often my judgement is wrong.) This is a trap specially set for those who are attracted by the personal and mystical aspect of religion and find their greatest satisfaction in unitive prayer. Now, you say you have taken up two new bits of work: but you carefully refrain from mentioning what they are. I don’t in the least want you to tell me: for probably having to answer questions about yourself fills you with the same misery and loathing that it does me! But I do hope it is work which brings you into immediate personal contact with those you are helping—which appeals to your human qualities. Half an hour sspent with Christ’s poor is worth far more than half a million spent
on them. It is necessary to a sane Christianity. Experto crede.
I remember some years ago being told that I was all wrong because I had not learned to recognize Christ in my fellow-creatures. I disliked the remark intensely at the time—but it was true.
I do not mean by this that I want you to undertake a prolonged course of slumming: but since you are doing work, do let an hour a week be given to something of that kind. Never mind about extra devotions at present. You are doing enough in that way I think: but remember that you are to be a companion-in-arms, a fellow-worker, as well as a lover and secret friend: that you are to further the coming of the Kingdom by your outer as well as your inner life. Do this not only as a “response,” a “sacrifice,” but as a natural act of friendship to your brothers and sisters. The kingdom of heaven is not a solitude a deux. It is the vice of a false mysticism that it often produces this impression.
On the other hand, saying fervent things, if one truly feels them, is never humbug even though one is too weak to live up to one’s aspirations. So don’t worry about that. Just as it is not humbug to say prayers one longs to feel, even though the emotional power fails at the moment. Never forget that the key of the situation lies in the will and not in the imagination.
I know it is difficult to take the same interest in other things: sometimes one simply can’t. I cannot give you any prescription against that and after all, although it is regrettable in some ways, I am not sure it is wholly a vice. One cannot have more than one centre to one’s life (at least, not without suffering pretty badly for it—and I hope you will not try that!) and once you are adjusted to Eternity, Time is bound to look a bit thin. Metaphysics produced this effect in me far more badly than religious mysticism, because they proved that the world was illusion without providing any reason for its existence.
Now, after this drastic lecture, you cannot say I have not taken your parable to heart, can you? I should like even to say a little more on the merits of those vocal and formal prayers for which you manifested such a truly Protestant contempt, but that will keep for another time if you feel you want it!
We are enjoying ourselves here immensely and I already feel much better. The quiet is heavenly: and we are staying on till September 7, as Hubert thinks it is “better for me” than rushing about… .
The company has been very amusing: two French lady artists and the Director of the Bibliotheque des Arts Decoratifs at Paris, a delightful person, both cheerful and brilliant who became very friendly and is going to take us round the Musee in person when we return to Paris. We walked over together to Pierre Perthuis yesterday afternoon. What a perfectly lovely place! It was very clear after a rainy morning and the view from the high bridge was marvellous. The old gentleman whose garden contains the ruins of the cloister, dortor and refectory and the monks’ garden and vineyard here, asked us in yesterday and showed us round: gave Hubert a local fossil from the “grotte” and me a bunch of roses!
50 C.H.S.
Sep. 26, 1908.
To THE SAME.
I am afraid you will think this letter has been a terrible long time coming, but we only got home yesterday morning: and whilst we were away I never once had enough leisure to really settle down to it. We had a splendid time, particularly at Autun, which is a most gorgeous place both for scenery and “monuments” and at Chateau-Chinon which is as good as Switzerland without its disadvantages. We wound up with 5 days of shopping and sight-seeing in Paris: a little of everything, with the Sainte Chapelle at one end of the scale, and new autumn hats at the other. We liked none of the places better than dear Vezelay though; and shall certainly go back there another year. It was quite affecting saying good-bye to all our friends—particularly Madame Bobelin, who for some unknown reason loved me dearly and kissed me fervently (to my great amazement) in the middle of the narthex.
I return your bath with our unlimited thanks. We have severally blessed your name every morning for it. It was kind of you to lend it. Now for business.
A. About your work. I think you are doing very well indeed: and I should have thought, with your regular work, you have undertaken as much as you can properly manage. You say you will do more if I think this is the right line for you. I think, as I told you, that it is B. an essential ingredient in your life, but this does not mean that it is to overpower all the other ingredients. You must leave yourself time and energy for prayer, reading, meditation, and also please, for social intercourse with beings of your own class.
The “right line” for you, in my opinion, is to check your own tendency to excess of individualism. But do not, in your zeal, overdo it in the other direction. I do so want your life to be properly balanced. To live alone, and be shy, and have a turn for mysticism, makes an individualistic concept of the relation between yourself and GOD almost inevitable. Such a concept is not untrue: it is half a truth, and when held together with the other half—the concept of yourself as one of the household of faith, related to every other soul in that household, living and dead
—it becomes actually true. If this were quite true to you, intercessory prayer would become as natural and necessary as passing the salt to your neighbour at table instead of remaining in profound contemplation of your own plate.
B. This, too, is where formal prayer comes in, for in (the best) formal prayers—the Psalms, and prayers of the Saints—we are making our own the best aspirations of the best minds. To say that you cannot pray for the things they prayed for—that your wants are not theirs—is merely to say that you are not really in the stream of Christian tradition. To use these prayers confirms one in this tradition. They are educative to the soul which wants to learn to pray, just as good literature is educative to the mind that wants to learn to write. Also is it not rather arrogant to refuse to avail oneself of the help of experts? They got to the place you want to get to, and their prayers presumably helped them to do it. By using these prayers you enter into their atmosphere. You ought to pray to the saints too—ask them to help you. “The best way of knowing God is to frequent the company of His friends,” said St. Teresa, and it is just as important to keep in touch with your brothers and sisters out of the body as in the body.
Don’t be depressed about your girls’ Bible Class. Of course they have not an elementary sense of religion: not one per cent of the population has at their age: and only a smallish proportion I think, at any age! The main thing is in that sort of work that you should make them like you, and that you should make it perfectly clear to them that you believe absolutely in your religion and care intensely for it. Let all your religious appeals, if you make them, be as emotional as possible. You will not make them grasp religion now, because they do not feel the need of it: but some time in their lives a crisis will come in which they will either accept or reject religion. Then the remembrance of your teaching, or rather the personality of the teacher who represented Christianity to them, will become of paramount importance; and the fact that it is connected in their minds with some one who was friendly and helped them, will count enormously. So you really have no cause to feel sad: that sort of work has mostly to be done in faith: and at the very lowest you are acting as a civilizing agent, which is one way of furthering the coming of the Kingdom. To have got on friendly terms with the girls is a great thing. It means that you have an influence over them though they would probably rather die than let you know it!
Do not attempt “intellectual teaching”—go for their feelings quite simply and do not be afraid of letting them see yours! Religion cannot be communicated without enthusiasm. They must see it in you before they will get any idea of it for themselves—and this can be done independently of talking about it. I agree that the secret-love-affair style is very pleasant for the individual worshipper. But it is fatal in a missionary.
I wholly agree with the lady who asked you not to be a snail. The extra time which you proposed to put into more good works might be devoted to that department for the present, don’t you think?
I got such a nice little old book in Paris of the Meditations and Soliloquies of St. Augustine, which I had not read before. It is Latin but very easy. Would you like to see it later on? And was there not some other book I was to lend you? …
Which Viollet-le-Duc has the account of Vezelay in it? Is it the Dictionary of Architecture? I want to read it up before my memory gets faint at all. We found Nevers a nice place and extremely cheap.
There is one of the finest Romanesque churches I have seen —excepting St. Hilaire at Poitiers—and this is much less restored than St. Hilaire. It is all of a piece, not Gothic, and with all its dear little clusters of apses undisturbed.
Oct. 22, 1908.
To THE SAME.
This is not a “director’s” letter at all, so you may at once banish the usual sensations of trembling—and probably those of pleasure also!
It is really to ask you whether you feel like being extremely angelic and helping me at your leisure with the job I have on hand just now? I am writing—or trying to write—a “serious” book on Mysticism and of course want to make use of the German mystics and some of them have never been translated whilst others have been done from such a controversial point of view that one dares not trust the translators. I am particularly hung up over Meister Eckhardt and Mechthild of Magdeburg, but there may be others. Now if I sent you the books, would you read them leisurely through, check any passages I sent you and extract and translate for me any bits you thought specially good bearing on points of which I would send you a list?
This is a perfectly barbarous proposal and please do not hesitate to refuse point blank if you do not like it. I know you know German well—and I don’t know it at all—and so I thought perhaps I might venture to ask, anyhow. This letter is very scrawly for the usual reason—Jacob! Having settled myself in most unascetic ease for an afternoon’s letter-writing on the sofa, he said that he wished to be nursed; which has complicated matters. He sends his love, and is larger than ever! I have not any MS. to send: it is all in little bits, being added to and corrected, and won’t settle down. I suppose you do not happen to remember whereabouts in the Lady Julian a passage comes saying that salvation or perfection or something “cometh of the pure love of the heart and of the light of the reason and of the steadfast mind”? I have used the quotation and lost the reference!!!
I think you sound as if you were doing very well—and quite enough in the parochial department! Please hold the scales level, and don’t let tract-distribution take the place of meditation! Tell me how your girls go on—I feel most interested in them. It is such splendid kind of work—I wish I did it, but the young never like me unfortunately. Goodbye. Be sure you say NO if you feel like it.
Nov. 21, 1908.
To THE SAME.
It is very evil to have left your last letter unanswered so long: but then, I am evil—and truly sincere persons always express their character in action. You, by the way, are very evil too: your behaviour about “business arrangements” approaches the frontier of crime. Did you seriously think that I ever intended you to slave for me like this as a sort of graceful act of friendship?
You have just waited till you were indispensable; and then taken a Mean Advantage!! However—I will be even with you in the long run and what I says I’ll do, that I does do. Meanwhile I am deeply grateful for what you are doing, even on these preposterous terms.
The book gets on very slowly, as the further I go the more material I find. I enclose a plan of the chapters, which I shall keep to more or less. You will see from this the sort of extracts likely to be useful. It is a study of mystical method and doctrine, not of specific mystics: so that bits bearing on my points are more useful than bits showing their peculiar characteristics.
… Vaughan says Eckhardt’s “Spark of the soul” is equivalent to Plotinus’s “divine intuition.” Do you think this is so? I should like a bit or two about the said “spark of the soul” but this will do much later on.
Yes, I shall have to include Suso, also Tauler; but fancy I can get enough for my purpose in English. Mechthild has not come yet, and I fear must be out of print which is dreadful as she is really peculiarly lovely: even in the horrid shoddy rhymes of her only translator (who of course gives no references!).
This morning I found at the L.L. David von Augsburg catalogued as a 14th century mystic. He is Vol. I of Pfeiffer’s series, of which Vol. II is your Old German Eckhardt. I know nothing of him, nor, apparently, does Vaughan.
Nov. 24, 1908.
To THE SAME.
I cannot think of an unctuous book for you! Most of those I have read lately are of a strenuous cast, excepting Richard Rolle, who is at present the beloved of my heart. But he is only obtainable in the E.E.T.S. Northern English text: horrid stuff to spell out. I think I must edit him for modern readers some day.
Isn’t this lovely:
“In the beginning of my conversion and singular purpose, I thought I would be like the little bird, that for love of its Lover longs …
it is said the nightingale to song and melody all night is given, that she may please him to whom she is joined. How muckle more with greatest sweetness to Christ my Jesu should I sing … by all this present life that is night in regard to clearness to come….
Worldly lovers soothly words or ditties of our song may know, for the words they read, but not the tone and sweetness of that song they may not learn. Oh good Jesu, my heart thou hast bound in thought of thy Name and now I cannot but sing it!” There’s oil of joy for you!
Have you read Molinos? I could lend you a little thing of his if you like. He is nice—but not sticky.
I do not know what to say to you about Confession. My own feeling about it is, that if practised it should be done regularly, as a normal part of your life, without fuss or excitement, and not as a sort of spiritual spring-cleaning. This (the spring-cleaning style) is quite as upsetting as its material equivalent. It means, in my experience, agonies of contrition often extending over weeks, and paralysing in their effect: and I doubt its usefulness except for slack persons who will not face the facts of their own character without a stimulus of this kind. Regular confession made to a priest, who looks upon it as normal and not in the least interesting, I believe to be an excellent way of keeping your house in order. But, if it means anything at all, it is something so big that the personality of your confessor and whether he sees through you and you mind being seen through, etc. etc. simply does not come in. It is a sacramental act: you are not confessing to a sympathetic curate, but to Christ as embodied in the Church. You are a member of a family and are confessing to that family that you have not lived up to the standard set. This is why in the Roman form you confess not only to God and the priest, but also to the saints, each one of whom, as members of a potentially perfect Church, is injured by your imperfection.
Jan. 22, 1909.
To THE SAME.
I should be rather glad if you would send me your extracts from Mechthild and my notes (but not the book). I should like to look through them as on the strength of Mrs. Bevan I had arranged to use several passages which may not, from what you say, be admissible.
You shall have it back again later if you like to revise: and if I re-arrange the language at all you will have to tell me whether I am Bevanizing or not! I have used heaps of your Eckhardt, he seems to fit me nicely somehow: but Tauler, though excellent, does not so far seem any good for this job.
Tell me sometime from the history the date of David von Augsburg, and who he was and what he did. It sounds a charming sort of book.
Send it and Martensen back when you have quite done with them, not before.
Have you got Tauler’s Sermons for the Sundays after Trinity in German? If so and if I use any pieces from the Wicked Winckworth (neither your French vol. nor the Inner Way contains those sermons) perhaps you would not mind comparing them with the original to make sure she has not falsified in the interests of “evangelical truth”?
I have had St. Bernard On Consideration. Most of it is tiresome stuff about the duties of a Pope (it’s a letter addressed to Eugenius), but Book V, on the Consideration of heavenly things, has some lovely passages, and a splendid definition—“What is God? The best object of thought.” The last phrases I should like to use as a colophon:
“But perhaps after all He is more easily found by prayer than by dialectics. Here then let us end our book—but not our search for Him.” Isn’t that beautiful?
I am so sorry you are “left to yourself.” It is a cheerless experience but can be a fine piece of discipline if you choose to make it so. The causes I think are partly material—the inevitable fatigue of a spiritual sense which cannot live always on the stretch and is now resting. I think it helps one to go on if one remembers that one’s true relation to God is not altered by the fact that one has ceased to be aware of it. Other things being equal, you are just where you were before, but are temporarily unable to see the Light. And the use of the disability, just like the use of any other sort of suffering, is to prevent you from identifying fullness of life with fullness of comfort. Your ideal of spiritual life must be right up above all the pleasure-and-pain oscillations of your finite, restless self: and you will not have any real peace till you have surrendered that self altogether, and tried to grasp nothing, not even love. When you absolutely and eagerly surrender yourself to the Will, you will cease to writhe under that sense of deprivation.
You will take it all in the day’s work and go on steadily. These are the sort of times when verbal prayer, if one has assimilated it and made it one’s own in more genial seasons, becomes a help: and enables one to go doggedly on, praying more not less, because the light is withdrawn. To do otherwise would be a confession that you have been living by sight and not really by faith at all.
As to “having too good an opinion of one’s own capacities,” I don’t think we have any spiritual capacities except those obtained and developed by prayer, and one can hardly feel cocky about those, can one? The true attitude is to rest with entire trustfulness on the Love of God, and not care two straws what happens to one’s self. If you are there, how little the question of whether you see you are there can matter. It is rather an honour to be allowed to serve Him in the darkness instead of being given a night-light like a nervous child.
This does not mean to be a scolding letter and I hope it does not sound like one. It consists chiefly of rebukes I have administered to myself on similar occasions.
I am so glad you like Holy Wisdom. I think it very solid and trustworthy.
Sexagesima, 1909.
To THE SAME.
Please I really am sorry not to have answered your letter before —and it was nice of you to write to me for the Purification. I did not know you knew—so it was rather a surprise altogether! All the week a bad cold has induced limp sensations and a decided disinclination to do more writing once the daily tale of bricks was accomplished—so that is the real reason.
Are you still being a Martha I wonder? Don’t go and have a distracted Lent over it: it is such waste, one does not pick it up all the year. Better a dusty lodging than a dusty soul after all —though I am not sure you will agree with me.… .
I have got such a nice edition of Suso—quite complete—and am translating pieces from it. I expect I shall have to ask you to compare them with the original, as unless the French was almost literal (which I doubt) the final result may be much like Bevan.
There is something disastrous about French for the purposes of religious writing. I have just had the Abbot of Farnborough’s lectures on the Liturgy—and he translates Sursum corda, “Haut les coeurs!” Very exact no doubt—but there seems something lacking, doesn’t there?
I have also had Madame Guyon’s Autobiography (the original edition) and I will not conceal from you that it is highly diverting in parts, though of course I shall have to try and treat it respectfully. “Divers Croix chez M. son Pere” is the title of the chapter dealing with various events when she was twelve years old and her Mama and Papa did not quite fall in with her plans for her own salvation.
Feb. 17, 1909.
To THE SAME.
What a woeful letter! You are so very meek that I haven’t the heart to scold you much, though you really have been naughty this time.
Just when you were most “beset” and might anyhow have found it a bit difficult to hold on, you calmly gave up your one chance of beginning the day fair and square! Where had your sense of proportion got to, when you thought you had not time for your morning prayers?
Now you will not get out of your present depressing situation by expending emotion upon it. The only thing that can help you is exercising your will. To begin with, the question of whether your waking thoughts are going to be devoted to reality or Miss E … is one which is entirely within your own control, or can be, if you give a few days to it. Your waking-up thoughts are largely governed by those with which you go to sleep. Refuse to take the worries of the world to bed with you. Shut them down the minute they begin to emerge. Absolutely nothing is to be gained by thinking over domestic complications when they are not present: it is imitating Martha’s most reprehensible habit just at the moment when you have leisure to sit with Mary, and to gain from doing so a strength and peace and rightness of judgement which you can’t get in any other way. You have got yourself into a state of spiritual fatigue and muddle, and you imagine, as you say, that your life is “dislocated.”
It isn’t a bit: unless by dislocated you mean that it is not going quite so easily as usual and you are being given an opportunity to try your strength. Do be more trustful, more simple, more childlike.
It is you yourself who are complicating things by not taking them bit by bit as they arise. Do this, and turn constantly to God by an act of the will, whether it gives you happy feelings or not.
Adoration remains a grim duty when it ceases to be a joy: and is twice as much worth while under these conditions. Now about Lent.
(1) Yes, of course I do think it would be a good plan to go to a week-day celebration: couldn’t you go to Communion every week —during Lent only? Don’t answer that it would be too exciting.
It need not be if you handle yourself properly.
(2) Please say the Way of the Cross at least once a week during Lent; preferably in a church where the stations are set up, but if this is out of the question, say it by yourself. You can easily make your own meditations if you dislike those in the books. Stick to it even if it seems at first an arid and unsuitable sort of devotion. To me, the way in which it weaves together and consecrates every misery, injustice, humiliation, difficulty, weariness and squalor incident to human life, raises them to the nth degree of intensity and exhibits them in the full blaze of the Divine, is a sort of inexhaustible marvel.
(3) Put aside temporarily all ideas of unitive prayer, and devote yourself rather to plodding along, to intercession—using the whole strength of your will in it, not casually recommending people—and to curing faults. Pick one out and go for it steadily, noticing each day how many times you have committed it. Don’t go to Church or to Communion primarily to “get help,” but to offer service.
As to what to aim at. What you want is that steadfastness of spirit which is only obtained by realizing the greatness of God and the littleness of everything else except as a means to Him—meditate on these indubitable facts, and hold on to them with your will. Amans Deum anima, sub Deo despicit universa—and the odd thing is, that only when we “despise” them in this sense do we really cope with them efficiently. You will deal with the (domestic) problem much better when you regard it as a kindergarten implement, useful to your education, but otherwise not of deadly importance.
I send you a bit of typing as you say you are ready for it: I hope you are not saying so to oblige me and inconvenience yourself. Don’t do it until you really are comfortably at leisure. You will probably be annoyed (though I hope you won’t feel it a “cross “!) to hear that one of Hubert’s clerks, who had not much to do, has typed the first three chapters. I send the paper, as I thought it would be nice to have it all to match. Please make a carbon copy and give a 3-inch margin. My refs. at the foots of pages may not be always in the right order but mostly are I think. I have the opportunity of showing this chapter to a rather good theologian to check inadvertent heresies in it, which is really why I send it to you now. The other three chapters have been revised, lengthened and partly re-written and a rather long chapter on Conversion is nearly done, so I am not getting on so badly.
Many thanks for David. He seems nothing out of the ordinary, and I don’t think I need inflict his Early German works upon you! Have you read Waite’s Holy Graal yet? So queer and decidedly interesting. It contains at least one perfect epigram “God is the proper quest of the romantic spirit.” I like that, don’t you?
50 Campden Hill Square, W.
8 March, 1909.
To J. A. HERBERT.
Thank you very much for saying you will show Mrs. Limond some MSS.
We are coming about 2:30 to 3 on the 15th. I think what remnants of my ancient lore still stick in my mind will enable me to lead her round the show-cases: but what I really wanted your kind offices for was to give her a sight of the Durham Book and Sforza ditto.
I wonder if you can give me a bit of information I rather badly want? Is there in the Museum—or elsewhere in London—a copy, printed or MS., of Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris: the Latin not the English? It is not in Horstman’s collection, which I possess. I am using him a lot for the book on mystics which I am writing just now, and Misyn’s 15th century translation, called the Fire of Love (E.E.T.S.), looks suspiciously like being corrupt in places, so I must compare it with the original. I can’t find the LA. in the Catalogue and your esteemed colleague, Mr. Cyril Davenport, whom I roused from the agreeable occupation of making lantern slides this morning, could only tell me that if it was not in the Catalogue it was not in the Museum, unless possibly in a MS. which I should not be able to read! With which helpful and expert information I had to be content… . Rolle was such a popular writer in the XIV and XV
that there must be lots of copies of the thing. If there are any other mystical treatises in the MSS. that you know of, and in a hand I could read, I should be thankful to hear. Horstman says that nearly all the English mediaeval mystics are still in MS. and practically unknown. But he carefully refrains from mentioning names.
It is very exciting news about the MS. book. I suppose Methuen intends to publish this autumn? I know he is getting his list for that ready now, as he has just sent my new book (The Column of Dust) to press.
50 Campden Hill Square, W.
9 March, 1909.
To THE SAME.
Thank you very much indeed for all the splendid information about my Richard. I never meant you to take all that trouble—but am very grateful that you did! I will come and look at the most legible of the MSS. one day: probably I can find and check off the passages I am using without much trouble. I did find that much quoted ch. in La Bigne, but forgot to mention it. Why they always pick that one I can’t conceive: it’s good, but there are others better —particularly the nightingale passage and the bits about music. I want very much to edit Misyn, corrected by the original and arranged for modern readers, later on, when I have got my present job off my hands. Together with some of the things in Horstman it would make a very nice little book. And I think the “father of English mysticism” well deserves this trifling civility. When I am there I will also claim your kind promise to show me where and how hidden mystics may be catalogued. I am told to look out specially for Richard of Scotland, a pupil of the Victorines: but likely enough there is nothing in it.
There is a striking resemblance between the casual advice of the learned and the crackling of thorns under a pot!
50 C.H.S.
St. Patrick’s Day, 1909.
To M.R.
My very dear friend, I do hope I will get through this letter without saying something that will hurt you horribly by mistake. Believe me it’s not meant to be hurting: so please try to read it as it is written.
Now to take your remarks in order.
(1) “It is so fatally easy to dispense with the regulations which I make myself.” In giving way to such a feeling as this, and elevating your director into a sort of she-who-must be-obeyed, you are putting the whole thing on a wrong basis, and enfeebling your own will. If you regard any rule of life which you deliberately undertake as a promise made to God, an offering to Him—how can it be “fatally easy” to break it? Where is your sense of reality gone to?
At the present moment you seem to have got the perspective of your life all wrong: and you know it implicitly, and that is why you are so uncomfortable. You have got introspective again and are taking heaps too much interest in your own soul.
(1) “Your rule of weekly Communion is giving me a good deal of trouble.” Why? And don’t you think that this, again, is a self-centred and impossible sort of attitude to take up? “Behold the Bridegroom cometh” and you say, “But it’s such a dreadful lot of trouble to get ready and I am never sure that my hands are quite clean enough.” I suspect you of going about your preparation in a thoroughly wrong-headed way: and pulling yourself up by the roots every time and meditating upon their discouraging condition; with the result that you think more of your own imperfection than of the Perfection which you approach. I had far rather you made no preparation at all than this. Our Lord did not say, “Come unto me all ye faultless”: neither did He say, “Be sure you tear yourselves to pieces first.” There are only three necessities of a good communion —Faith, Hope and Charity. To rely utterly on God and be in charity with the world—this is the essential. What you happen to be feeling at the moment, does not matter in the least. Do—do try and be more objective in your religion. Try to see yourself less as a complex individual, and more as a quite ordinary scrap of the universe.
(2) To the alarming list of innate vices which you have managed to get together I should like to add another: Pride. All this preoccupation with your own imperfection is not humility, but an insidious form of spiritual pride. What do you expect to be?
Asaint? There are desperately few of them: and even they found that faults, which are the raw material of sanctity remember, take a desperate lot of working up. You know best when and how you fall into these various pitfalls. Try and control yourself when you see the temptation coming (sometimes you will succeed, which is so much to the good). Pull yourself up and make an act of contrition when you catch yourself doing any of the things. Never allow yourself to be pessimistic about your own state. Look outwards instead of inwards: and when you are inclined to be depressed and think you are getting on badly, make an act of thanksgiving instead, because others are getting on well. The object of your salvation is God’s Glory, not your happiness. Remember it is all one to the angels whether you or another give Him the holiness He demands.
So, be content to help on His kingdom, remaining yourself in the lowest place. Merge yourself in the great life of the Christian family.
Make intercessions, work for it, keep it in your mind. You have tied yourself up so tight in that accursed individualism of yours—the source of all your difficulties—that it is a marvel you can breathe at all.
I hope you are going to get hold of a little personal work amongst the poor when you can? As for the inclination to cut connection with other people, that must be fought tooth and nail, please. Go out as much as you can, and enter into the interests of others, however twaddley.
They are all part of life, remember: and life, for you, is divine.
As to the last crime on your list, however, “dislike of pain,” you need not take a very desponding view. My dear child, everyone dislikes pain, really—except a few victims of religious and other forms of hysteria. Even the martyrs, it has been said, had “less joy of their triumph because of the pain they endured.” They did not want the lions: but they knew how to “endure the Cross” when it came. Do not worry your head about such things as this: but trust God and live your life bit by bit as it comes.
There. God bless you.
50 C.H.S.
Wednesday in Holy Week, 1909.
To THE SAME.
I ought to have written ages ago: but these last days (a) the abrupt arrival of a new “case” for direction, of a very strenuous kind and (b) the fact that one of my dearest friends went through a very anxious operation last Monday, seem to have used up all one’s vitality. I am so sorry. And now in Holy Week you will not be wanting a director’s letter a bit: for the drama of these days provides far more than one can absorb as it sweeps over one. However, you can keep this till a more convenient season and I must send you a greeting for Easter Day. Do be happy on that day of days. Try being perfectly simple and trusting our Lord, and don’t tie yourself into knots.
I do not think reading the mystics would hurt you myself: you say you must avoid books which deal with “feelings”—but the mystics don’t deal with feelings but with love which is a very different thing. You have too many “feelings,” but not nearly enough love. You don’t love God in your fellow-creatures a bit. You ought to be able to love Him in Miss J… ., but you do not, because Miss J… .disagrees with your feelings.
Oh, do turn to, and do and be things for and to your fellow creatures for a bit. Devote yourself to that. Don’t be afraid of “surface interests.” Christ will be with you in those sorts of surface interests if they are whole-heartedly undertaken for His sake, and not for your own soul’s sake.
These are the sort of things of a disciplinary kind which I think you ought to do. You have lost the knack of drawing strength from God: and vain strivings after communion of the solitude a deux sort will do nothing for you at this point. Seek .contact with Him now in the goodness and splendour which is in other people, in all people, for those who have the art to find it.
But censoriousness and exclusiveness are absolute bars to making discoveries of that kind and you will not be happy till they are eliminated from your character… .
If this letter is very odious please forgive it. I am horridly tired and may not have put things properly. I always feel it is fearful presumption to scold you “being myself a full great wretch,” as Rolle says!
Dinant.
Sunday afternoon [1909].
To HUBERT STUART MOORE.
This place is rather nice, and we hear the country walks all round are simply magnificent if the weather was fit for ‘em. There’s very good 5 fr. a day accommodation in the next village. I think the whole district would be very agreeable for our summer holiday one year if we were careful to avoid the more touristy places. The river is big and lovely, with great cliffs each side of it, and there are forests quite close all round. The railway travelling is v. cheap indeed, and so are most things in the shops. In the summer a steamer goes up and down between here and Namur. The towns seem rather full of neat villas and summer residences but the villages must be heavenly I think. Namur I didn’t care for: but I got some nice old books. A little 17th century copy of St. Thomas Aquinas for 1 franc and a complete 4-volume breviary in leather, which I’d long hankered for, for seven and a half francs! The old man said, “I think I ought to warn you, Mademoiselle, that this book is written in the Latin language.” I was extremely pleased with the Cure in church this morning (I inadvertently came in for the sermon). He was a very robust person, who spoke like a commanding officer in the presence of very tiresome recruits. Having announced that certain services would take place this week, he suddenly added in a loud voice, “And I hope there will be more people at them than there were last week!” Everyone jumped, and he shook his head solemnly and said, “Far too few! far too few!”
adding, “If you won’t put yourselves out for the Blessed Virgin, you know, she won’t put herself out for you.”
50 C.H.S.
June 25, 1909.
To M.R.
Thank you so much for the MS. which arrived safely this morning: and also for putting in my missing references so kindly! You encourage me to leave ‘em all out! I shall have another chapter (on Visions and Voices—it has been a horror to do) ready for you in a few days I think, though the deluge of summer parties rather interrupts work.
I think the De Arrha Anima experience is an intensive form of something which happens—or rather may happen—to almost anyone. I had one or two rather sharp pokings up of that kind during my blackest years —and do so still. If Grace were not more interested in us than we are in Grace, most of us would live and die in hell. It is so much stronger than we are that it will break in, in spite of our automatic resistance: and we are so immeasurably below it that we cannot attain to it or keep it by any voluntary activity merely because we want to.
I certainly would like very much to speak to Miss X. on the 29th: if I am not stricken with hopeless shyness when the moment arrives! But I cannot try to “evangelize” her unless she shows some slight desire for it, can I? You will just have to pray for her hard (excellent opportunity for practising the difficult art of intercession) and if she should cease to be “bored and incredulous” I promise faithfully to respond!
So glad you are feeling happy and practical and “expansive.” Would you like to read Eleanor Gregory’s Horae Mysticae when you have finished the Book of Heavenly Wisdom! It has lots of nice things in it, though many of her “mystics” are not mystics at all—as I often tell her to her great disgust!
Feast of the Visitation, 1909.
To THE SAME.
I have been meaning all the week to write and tell you all about the Bedford College party—but this week I have been to five parties and given two myself—and so there has not been a large margin of leisure.
You have probably heard by now that the B.C. one was on the most moist
afternoon of the week—and everyone was jammed into the house, which was soon turned into a tin of nicely dressed sardines. When I arrived I could not find a soul I knew, so enlisted a large bevy of students to hunt (a) for Miss X … and (b) for my own hostess! Miss X … was discovered after a search which lasted close on an hour and just when I was thinking I must go on to my next party. She was very kind to me indeed; but there was a look in the tail of her eye as much as to say “keep off the grass.” Has she any suspicion do you think that you effected the introduction for missionary reasons? She said she knew you and I became acquainted by correspondence, and that it seemed a good idea. Please, what do you want me to do next?
I do not quite see that I can do anything unless she makes the first advance. We only talked for quite a short time and then my hostess found me and carried me off. The conversation rambled harmlessly round you, Vezelay and Bedford College. Would she come to tea with me if you told her to, do you think? I should be very pleased indeed if she would. I leave to you the task of inventing plausible excuses wholly unconnected with her soul.
I am glad the Vision chapter strikes you as “imposing.” Really it is rather a fraud, being easier to get up than the more elusive parts of the subject. The only difficulties were in arranging it neatly and speaking what one believed to be the truth without hurting the feelings of the pious.
I am getting rather nervous about the accuracy of my French edition of Suso: I see Rufus Jones quotes a passage (I suppose direct from the German) which does not tally a bit with my rendering! Later on if I sent you the German and my MS. with the Suso passages marked, I wonder whether you would be a saint and an angel and compare them for me? I know quite well that asking in this calm way is impudence of the worst kind, but you know you encourage me!
You shall have Hilton soon: he is in use for the moment but will then be at liberty for a spell. I rather expect you will like him very much—though he is not such a poet as Julian. Do you know that some people believe him to be the author of the Imitation of Christ!
Thank you very much indeed for the information about the Cambridge Press. I have not written yet, as the friend who helps me with mediaeval things knows a delegate or something and is going to consult him on my behalf first. It is not for this book, but for another thing. I’ve got a horrible lot of irons in the fire just now and do not know which to turn to first.
… Good night. I am nearly asleep so must leave off writing. I don’t think I very much approve of your setting yourself penances for long past sins! Live hard, with both hands, and love as much as you can, and don’t faddle with your experience!
Yacht Wulfruna, Fowey.
August 28, 1909.
To THE SAME.
We have been as far west as Helford and now are on our way back to Plymouth: as Hubert and I leave for Luxembourg on Tuesday. We shall be at Diekirch from the 3rd to 6th September I think and then probably go to Vianden if we can get in there, then Houffalize, St. Hubert, Houget and back by Namur and Antwerp. But our plans are quite vague and really depend on how we like the district when we get there… .
Send me a p.c. to Diekirch if you can, to say how you are getting on.
Cornwall has been behaving quite at its most beautiful, with lots of sunshine and only 2 or 3 soft drizzling days. The harvest fields all along the tops of the cliffs have been miracles of beauty. Don’t you love harvest fields? They make me feel sort of wild whenever I see them.
We are lazing along now, with all our sails set, in a very very light breeze, past a beautiful bit of coast, all strange scraggy cliffs and white beaches. There is an old church on the top of the down we are just passing. This part of the country is full of XVth century churches, round-arched with carved timber roofs and often with fine old carved bench-ends. The cream of them, Lanteglos, is close to Fowey and by some miracle has fallen into the hands of a vicar with a taste for accuracy who has given it the correct small flat altars and other furniture according to Sarum use. It looks charming though a bit artificial. It has one of the nicest epitaphs I have seen for some time, on a 17th century Cornish merchant:
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