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To THEODORA BOSANQUET
Literary Editor of Time and Tide. The following five letters refer to a review written by a Cat member of the Highden household, E.U. acting as amanuensis when necessary.
MY DEAR EDITOR,
Here is the review of Cat Books. I have tried my best but it is my first effort and I am very young; do please be lenient to its defects.
Hoping this finds you well and frisky as it leaves me at present, I am,
Your obedient Kitten,
MICHELANGELO VAN KATZENELLENBOGEN.
p.p. E.S.M.
Highden House, Washington.
17 November, 1939.
MY DEAR EDITOR,
Thank you so much for my Proof, and your kind letter. All these attentions are very gratifying, and deepen the purr. Please also thank Miss Moore for her amiable words.
As to my signature, I am not usually known as Underhill—I am the common property, if one may use such an expression of a Cat, of three families. I have heard them mention drawing lots for me when they leave the district. The one I call Mummy suggests perhaps “p.p.
E.U.” would clarify the situation sufficiently, or even E. Underhill if you think this really necessary. We leave it all to you.
With grateful purrs,
Your affectionate Kitten,
MICHELANGELO VAN KATZENELLENBOGEN.
Highden, Washington.
22 November, 1939.
DEAR T.B.,
The request for Michelangelo’s photograph is just to hand. He is much excited, but regrets that so far no portrait exists. However earnest attempts will be made to secure a portrait tomorrow and we hope a print may reach you on Monday. His moods and motions being unpredictable it is impossible to say whether anything fit for publication will result. Your telegram put the whole tea table in a flutter and nothing else was spoken of for some time.
In haste to catch our very infrequent post,
Yours ever,
E.S.M.
If no portrait available I will let you know.
Highden, Washington.
23 November, 1939.
MY DEAR EDITOR,
Alas! a wet dark day has put an end to any hope of getting my portrait into the paper. I am terribly disappointed. Had I realized these possibilities earlier, I would have got into touch with a Press photographer. Perhaps some other time! Your regretful Kitten,
MICHELANGELO.
Lawn House, 12 Hampstead Square, N.W.3.
Christmas Day, 1940.
HONOURED EDITOR,
Your magnificent card—intended of course for me—has given great pleasure to all. And as you say, what a lesson it conveys what a warning!
Ah, better far to dwell alone
One Ball, one Basket, and one Dish, Than midst a maze of twitching tails To share the rationed Fish.
My own work entirely. I am leading a very careful life now.
With love and purrs,
Your affectionate,
MICKIE.
Highden House, Washington, Sussex.
21 November, 1939.
To E.N.
From what you say in your letter, I don’t think you are really the sort of person who should go to Confession at all frequently. I should think two or three times a year quite enough. Confession should be kept for real sins and persistent faults, whether of omission or commission; and not be used for exploring the soul, trying to disentangle one’s own inward states, etc.—a proceeding which only encourages self-occupation and does not really get one anywhere. The best way to take the “darkness and left aloneness” is not discussion, but a generous and humble act of acceptance of the state in which God has placed one’s soul, however useless and frustrated one may feel, and an act of trust that in this darkness and incapacity He is training us to a more perfect selfabandonment.
The fact that you feel “empty and useless” is not “material for confession”—it is really rather a good state to be in because so destructive of self-esteem. Probably physical health has something to do with it too in your case! And as you say it is the conditions “deep down” that really matter.
Highden House, Washington, Sussex.
28 December, 1939.
To E. I. WATKIN.
It was a great pleasure to have news of you again. One of the distresses of our present condition is the way one’s friends are scattered and the difficulty of keeping in touch. We, as you see, have left London for the present, and are sharing this house on the downs with some great friends.
Don’t you find these times very difficult for pacifists? The war seems to enter into everything, and there are few things that one can conscientiously do. Most of my quasi-pacifist friends are becoming more warlike, apparently feeling that provocation is more important than principles and that the only way to combat sin in others is to commit sin ourselves. The attitude of the Anglican bishops has also been disappointing, though a great many of the clergy are strongly pacifist.
31 December, 1939.
To MAISIE SPENS.
I am sure a book which clings all the time to “the theocentric basis of interpretation” and approaches Christianity from the Godward side, is more than ever needed now, when we are so plainly approaching a crisis which only the deepest understanding and most heroic and other-worldly acceptance of the Cross can resolve. At present the whole attitude of the Church strikes me as getting steadily more sub-Christian, more and more forgetful of absolute standards and inclined to regard the B.E.F. as the instrument of the Divine Will. And as the earthly situation deteriorates—as it must-all this will get worse, unless some vigorous movement is made in the opposite direction. However it has generally been in times when the temporal outlook was darkest, that the great swings back of the human spirit towards the Eternal have taken place. The gist of all this is that I think you should make these new insights central for your work the more supernatural, absolute, and non-utilitarian you make it, the better it will be! I particularly like what you say about physical suffering: that it is God’s Will, and yet also never His Will. That paradox has to be held on to all the time so that we can accept even evil and imperfection as penetrated in spite of themselves, by God’s overruling Will and Grace and turned thus to His final purpose, though still remaining in them selves, and until redeemed, contrary to His intrinsic Will for life… . .
Highden House, Washington, Sussex.
12 January, 1940.
To E. I. WATKIN.
I delayed thanking you for the kind gift of The Catholic Centre till I had time to read it carefully, which I have now done with much enjoyment. What a fine, broad and deep book it is! And how I hope it will go home to those to whom it is really addressed. The chapters I specially liked were those on Ecclesiastical Materialism and on Immanence and Transcendence and the final pages on Adoration.
I think your exposition of that glorious Whitsun Introit is splendid—it is difficult to say anything fresh about Transcendence but you have made a wonderful thing of that chapter. I was particularly interested in “The Problem of Suffering” as I have just been reading the Abbe Nedoncelle’s Souffrance, and was so glad you emphasized (as I felt he did not) the irreplaceable supernatural value of suffering. This of course does not solve the problem, since only a minute proportion so far as we know of the world’s anguish serves spiritual ends but it does emphasize a deep reality which humanism tends to forget But on the general problem I can’t feel Father Rickaby’s arguments are satisfying! To predicate impossibilities of God seems in itself such impudence!
I am sorry we do not agree about Peace. Although I quite agree about the stern element in Our Lord’s teaching, the denunciations of Pharisees, etc., etc., still the numerous texts enjoining love of enemies, non-resistance, etc., do seem to qualify this strain in a sense that precludes war. And in fact the early Christians held that they were debarred from war, didn’t they? Of course Christendom has never had the nerve to apply this teaching without qualification, right up to the point of national martyrdom. When it does, perhaps the Kingdom of God will come.
Highden House, Washington, Sussex.
Jan. 18, 1940.
To FATHER GEOFFREY CURTIS, C.R.
The coming of the Church Unity Octave reminds me that I have never answered the letter which you wrote to me in November, and which I enjoyed so much. And now your article in the current C.R. brings you back so vividly to my mind.
That real growth of unity among Christians of which you speak is one of the few consoling elements in the present situation, isn’t it?
and must surely mean the first beginning of a drawing-together and casting down of barriers. The warm interest in the Papal Encyclical among Anglicans and even Nonconformists, seems to me very remarkable—and there seems to be a real increase of elasticity among the Romans themselves. Such a book as E. I. Watkin’s Catholic Centre, which I’ve just been reading, in spite of some special pleading, shows it in a marked degree. And so does a new book which has very much impressed me: Dom Aelred Graham’s Love of God. I wonder whether you have seen it?
I liked your article immensely, particularly the passage on p. 9, about the offering of all sufferings for the re-integration of the Body of Christ. It is this sense of the sacrificial worth of suffering that one rather misses in de Tourville (and also in Abbe Nedoncelle’s La Souffrance, which I expect you have seen). Perhaps this is what you mean when you say that he (de Tourville) does not leave the door open to a life of reparation, and also what Fr.
Northcot felt the need of. But of course the whole of that little book is taken from letters addressed to two penitents, both of them plainly of the self-tormenting scrupulous type, and there is nothing to show that he would not have made far harder demands on souls of a different kind. He seems to make a great appeal at the present time, judging by the way the English translation has been received. But I agree with you, that in spite of his great merits—realism, confidence, simplicity, etc.—there are large tracts of spiritual experience on which he throws no light, and depths which one instinctively feels to exist especially in respect of suffering, which he entirely ignores. All the same, he is a splendid tonic for certain states of soul.
Pensees Diverses, by the Abbe de Tourville.
I do wonder what you thought of La Souffrance. There too I couldn’t help feeling that the supernatural had been sacrificed to the sensible—I mean the common-sensible; and also that there was disproportion in the long section given to “suffering through friendship.” And again that putting of the sufferings of the Saints in a special class and allowing redemptive value to them alone, is surely wrong? The sufferings, whether “deserved” or “undeserved” of all Christians surely have or can have redemptive value in their own small way? the doctrine of the Mystical Body must mean this.
It seems to me part of the transforming power of grace, that even suffering caused by our own silliness or sin can be turned to the purposes of God. But he (Nedoncelle) doesn’t seem to think that.
Yes, I am still entirely pacifist and more and more convinced that the idea that this or any other war is “righteous” or will achieve any creative result of a durable kind, is an illusion. But I notice that a good many of my pacifist friends are showing a tendency to compromise! and certainly it is difficult (for instance) to say what one thinks the Finns ought to have done… .
I hope you keep well and find a little time for Father William.
Highden House,
Jan. 18, 1940.
TO S.T. (a member of the Prayer Group).
I am so glad you are going to try to reduce the tension in your life. The important thing, psychologically and every other way, is to get that one clear day in the week, without theology! this will do far more to get rid of strain and feelings of saturation than reducing hours of work on the other days.
About “mortal sins”—they are the same as the “deadly sins”; and if persisted in, inevitably separate us from God. According to Catholic teaching, these are the only sins we must confess; and if we die without repenting and being forgiven for them, we are lost. But committing a mortal sin is not as easy as it sounds—because it must be done deliberately and our will must consent to it. This does not happen very often to people who are trying to live a Christian life; e.g. we get angry, are possessive, greedy, lazy, etc., more through weakness and yielding to sudden temptation, than by deliberately doing these things when we could have refused to do them! So we have to distinguish between the sinfulness which makes us constantly commit faults, and be conceited, impatient, envious, etc., and the Sin of persisting in these things when we need not; not trying to resist. The Seven Deadly Sins, if you look at them, are all forms of selfishness; so what it boils down to is, that if we deliberately persist in selfishness, we shall inflict mortal injury on our soul and finally lose God. Which, after all, is what one might expect, is it not?
On the other hand, if we love God, and constantly turn to Him, this is practically a safeguard against mortal sin, for in His presence we cannot be deliberately self-assertive, angry, envious, avaricious, etc., even though we may sometimes be tempted to the faults which are as it were the “baptized forms” of mortal sins —self-esteem, impatience, clinging to our possessions, grabbing the things we enjoy, etc.—because these tendencies are rooted in our nature and can only really be vanquished by God’s grace. But falls of that kind are “venial” not “mortal”—we do not want to do them and we are sorry when we have!
The second volume of Archbishop Temple’s book on St. John is now out and seems very good. So I suppose [you] will take that up, after reading the one on Ephesians which you have in hand now.
Lawn House, 12 Hampstead Square, N.W.3.
May 20, 1940.
To L.K.
I was so glad to hear from you. This 2|d. business has reduced my letter-bag to nothing and will I can see tend to isolate people in the most horrible way just when we most need to keep together.
I didn’t write to anyone for Whit, this time as I’ve been seedy again and was in bed and discouraged from writing. However, I’m up again now though still in my room. This fragile plant business is beginning to pall upon me but no doubt it is a good plan!
I expect your prayer-cum-knitting is also a good plan so long as you get enough sleep (I do not think 6 hours is enough, with all you have to do.)
The great difficulty (to me) just now in prayer, is that directly you quiet your mind all the frightful things that are happening batter against it and make it impossible to steady yourself on God, which is the most important thing one can do for the world and for all those overwhelmed by the violence—and there I think something done with your fingers probably helps. I feel a great concern, don’t you, for the dying and for those who are suffering the extremity of fear, as if one should try to hold on to them, and keep them linked to the Perfection of God? …
There is nothing Pacifists can do but take their share of the agony and pray for the future we shan’t live to see. I must say it’s not an easy creed to hold on to, in view of Norway, Belgium and Holland.
In fact it can only be held for supernatural reasons and by a supernatural faith that love is the ultimate reality and must prevail.
How satisfactory it must be for X. and in fact all religious, to have their jobs so clearly defined now. No “practical” distractions but nothing to do but put their whole weight on to the spiritual scale, feeling quite sure that kind of action is not wasted. Have you heard that Y. is giving up … and going into a contemplative Order? .. . It is rather like the 12th century when the horrors of the outward life caused hermits and anchorites to spring up everywhere. Perhaps we are about to see a great return to the contemplative life. It’s about the only thing strong enough to conquer Hitlerism. Meanwhile I suppose that next Sunday we shall see a dreadful explosion of patriotic Christianity. I do hate these “days of prayer,” don’t you? Such a flagrant making use of God.
22 June, 1940.
To MAISIE SPENS.
The only thing that pulled me up, as it often has in other writers, is the description of the Crucifixion as “the very worst that can possibly happen.” If by this you mean Absolute Holiness enduring the full punishment of evil, perhaps it is a permissible phrase. But as it stands, it always seems to me an exaggerated statement: the cross was endured by hundreds of malefactors throughout the Roman Empire.
It was a commonplace, not a ne plus ultra of suffering. And Our Lord endured it for three hours only, whilst 24 was a usual time for the victim to survive. It seems to me that perhaps it is truer and more impressive to think of Him as enduring the ordinary lot of the individual condemned under the law. Of course in a way capital punishment is the “worst possible” but it hasn’t a unique character.
…
I think perhaps the war has tended to increase religious unity among ourselves, don’t you? But it has also increased a good many other less desirable things. Feeling against aliens, even refugees, is becoming obvious everywhere and hatred of the enemy is increasing all the time. The News Bulletins with their glorification of bombing are enough to destroy the moral integrity of any society.
Lawn House.
June 8, 1940.
To L.K.
I am still in my room but am up at last; but allowed to do nix and hardly move as everything makes me breathless. It transpires that the long illness destroyed the elasticity of my lungs and that takes ages to come back (so far as it does come back). Meanwhile one just has to stay put and submit to having everything done for one. I can’t say I like it much but it seems to be the Lord’s idea for the present moment… .
Mickie has two entrancing kittens, Spitfire and Hurricane, and the family basket lives in my room quite a lot and is very engaging and helps to keep our minds off the war.
Dunkirk was so absorbing that for days one could think of nothing else. An acquaintance of Hubert’s took his motor-boat there and says it was the finest week-end he ever had in his life. He came back with the boat riddled with shot.
What is so fine, and suggests that somehow our people have a certain amount of Christianity in their marrow even if not outwardly believing, is the way everyone agrees about the wonderful behaviour and unselfishness of the men—all quite patient, no pushing or attempt to get off before others, though it was “each man for himself.”
Hampstead.
Trinity IV, 1940.
To M.C.
I have a feeling just now that one should try to make contact with one’s friends not knowing how long normal communications will be possible to us, or what the next few weeks may bring. This shattering triumph of the evil will leaves one dazed and unable truly to realize anything. I suppose the Romans felt a bit like it, when Attila swept down on them and suddenly broke their security to bits… . Do you notice now how everything in the liturgy seems to have a new and piercing application? especially of course the Psalms and many of the collects too.
I am glad to think of you tucked away in the comparative security of the N.W. and surrounded by all the summer loveliness. Everyone tells me the country has never been more beautiful and peaceful over against the destruction and hideousness which is all we seem able to produce. Yet even war, it seems, isn’t spiritually sterile… .
Were you not thrilled by all the accounts of the patient endurance and unselfishness at Dunkirk?—no one pushing and trying to get away first—and the splendid work of the young Chaplains, going about those awful beaches helping the men and giving the Sacraments. There was something supernatural in all that, an eternal quality triumphing over the horror—and if our whole civilization has to be smashed under the Nazi heel, that is what will survive… .
I can’t settle to writing, can you? One is too conscious of living on the brink of the precipice for it to have any reality. …
Lawn House.
June 20, 1940.
To L.K.
Thank you so much for your letter: I do think one values these contacts with those one loves just now, when “earth’s foundations tremble” as never before. I feel more and more it is all a great purging action of God, beyond our control, and using the Nazis as His instruments. The way in which all initiative, energy, surprise, is on their side, never on ours, is most extraordinary… .
Don’t you think this is a lovely bit from De Caussade? It seems to fit the present moment rather well:
“Let us remember these great truths: (1) There is nothing, however small or apparently indifferent, which has not been ordained or permitted by God—even to the fall of a leaf. (2) That God is sufficiently wise, good, powerful and merciful to turn those events which are apparently the most calamitous to good and the advantage of those who know how to adore and accept with humility all that His Divine and adorable will permits.”
Lawn House, 12 Hampstead Square, N.W-3.
June 27, 1940.
To W.V.
Yes, aren’t the Psalms extraordinarily apposite just now? They seem to have come alive in an entirely new way… .
As for “merit” it is a horrid phrase but I feel it does stand for a spiritual reality; ultimately, the extent in which the Spirit of Christ indwells and dominates any particular soul or (the same thing) its entire submission to God’s Will.
8 July, 1940.
To MAISIE SPENS.
I’m sure it is the sense of that coincidence of Majesty and Mercy [of God] and of our real position over against it which is wanted now—and this is part of the lesson which God’s present action through history is to teach. Only apparently when everything is reeling do we begin to perceive the overruling presence of the Eternal Being. Don’t you feel now that out of what at first was utter confusion bit by bit the Divine purifying purpose is beginning to emerge? Fear and bewilderment are giving place to a sort of hushed expectancy, as if people were beginning to realize the superhuman character of that which is taking place.
Lawn House, Hampstead.
Aug. 12, 1940.
To S.T.
It was lovely to see you here and I do hope you will come again when you can.
As to W.‘s views on Intercession, I entirely agree with you….
After all, Intercession is not asking God to do difficult things for Mr. Jones or Mr. Smith (though as you say sometimes when we are deeply concerned we can’t help doing this). It is offering your will and love that God may use them as channels whereby His Spirit of mercy, healing, power, or light, may reach them and achieve His purposes in them. We can’t do it unless we care, both for God’s will and also for “the whole family of man”—but that certainly does not involve knowing all the details about everyone who asks our prayers.
God knows the details—we need not. Probably the best kind of intercession is a quite general offering of oneself in union with our Lord—and that is what the total prayer of the Church for the world is. He prays in and through us, lifting up into the supernatural world all souls and causes and setting them before God’s face—and it is our privilege to share that “lifting-up”
process. Of course there is and must be a wide variety in the way people pray. For some, “crude petition” about Tommy’s exam, or Aunt Jane’s bronchitis is the only sort that is real. We each do what we can, mostly very badly. The point is that we do it with faith and love and offer it to God, who will take from it that act of will and love which alone really matters, and use it where and how He chooses. Perhaps the prayer we make here may find its fulfilment the other side of the world. Perhaps the help we were given in a difficult moment came from a praying soul we never knew! It is all a deep mystery and we should be careful not to lay down hard and fast rules. The variousness with which Grace works is one of the most wonderful things about it. It is a living and personal energy, not a machine, and makes a response of love to all our movements of love —even the most babyish. But our power of interceding for those quite unknown to us is very closely connected with our membership of the Church—it is her total prayer in which we take part. As individualists we could not do it with any sense of reality. I think we have to try to keep two sorts of Intercession going—this share in the Church’s prayer and also our personal selfoffering for persons or causes about which we care deeply—the corporate and individual sides of full religion.
Lawn House, Hampstead.
Oct. 6, 1940.
To MRS. HOLDSWORTH.
Thank you so much for your beautiful little book. I waited to read it at leisure before writing, knowing that in your case this was a safe thing to do, as indeed it proved.
Seas of the Moon. Friends Book Centre, 1940.
I am so grateful for much you say in it; for though I am not yet half through the sixties, illness plus age has come to mean a very thorough limitation of freedom and general slowing down and dependence on others; none of which is altogether easy to a person who prefers to do everything for herself at express speed! But it’s a marvellous discipline and introduces one to a complete fresh series of tests and opportunities and involves the discovery and acceptance of so much devoted kindness.
I specially loved your Sea of Honey and Sea of Peace, and that serenity and joy which so many people are letting slip now, just when the poor world needs it most. In one’s desire to take one’s share in the universal suffering, it is so easy to forget the positive value of joy.
…
We are living here with friends and have shut up our own little house for the present, as it seems better just now to be part of a larger family. But it is a “warm spot” and we are bombarded from 8 p.m. to daylight regularly. I am afraid Falmouth too has had a bad time. What tragic folly and sin!
12 Hampstead Square, N.W-3.
23 October, 1940.
To NESTA DE ROBECK.
I have long been meaning to write and ask how you are getting on. We miss you and your visits so much though glad to think you are away from the noise and destruction that surrounds us and seeing something of this lovely autumn. “And wherever He passed He touched all things to beauty.” It’s so difficult to remember that among the swishes and thuds and shakings!
This household has remained very lucky and so far nothing has touched us, and we are now quite settled in to a basement and ground-floor existence. The whole district is practically without water since the Highgate Power Station was blown up last week. We fill buckets from the main in the morning and live on it as best we can during the day.
However there is a certain odd satisfaction in being reduced to primitive conditions and having to practise abstinence about something one has always taken for granted. Sitting very loose to possessions and much simplification of life is certainly one of the lessons the Lord is going to teach us through the war, and we are beginning to get on with it now. Travelling facilities change almost from hour to hour as stations are bombed and roads closed, and shops are getting less and less able to deliver anything; so that a peculiar mixture of prudence and resignation is required in the conduct of life!
Underneath all this muddle and horror, however, I do have don’t you? a queer underground feeling that something new is being prepared? a more realistic view of religion, a fresh sense of the overwhelming majesty of God, a shifting of emphasis to a more organic Christianity—not just socially but supernaturally organic. All sorts of separate little struggles seem to be going on in this direction, especially amongst the younger clergy, and the same trend appears in most of the new theological books, both Catholic and Anglican. With us it is all mixed up with the liturgic revival, which has now rather got its bit between its, teeth and threatens to snuff out individual prayer altogether.
What a pity it is that religious thinkers always seem to find it necessary to bang about between extremes instead of keeping steady and trying to remember the inclusiveness of God.
Lawn House, Hampstead.
Wednesday [undated, 1940].
To D.E.
… He [Father Z.] seems to have been rather useful this time, and really got hold of your situation. I love the bit about it being grand to feel bedevilled and identified with all the sin and evil because that is like Christ—unconditional sacrifice of everything even the most precious thing, our instinct for holiness and peace.’ I think you are very privileged, and standing up to the cost marvellously well. But it is costly, and naturally his first concern must be to protect your nervous and physical health. The compensating craving for some shelter and love seems just natural and rather humbling but not in the least sinful. No point in increasing strain by trying to behave more heroically than we really are, and rejecting the helps that nature provides. If Lawn House can give a bit of shelter and cherishing, we shall feel very pleased, warmed through and honoured.
I communicated some of your letter to M. who sends her very best love and says in her opinion there is no hard and fast difference between consecrated and unconsecrated—whatever is offered even in a roundabout way is taken and consecrated by the Lord. I think the Baron would have agreed with that.
All Saints, 1940.
To MAISIE SPENS.
… It [London] really does feel like living in the Inferno, perpetually confronted by the folly and wickedness of men… .
Christians never (or hardly ever) seem able to take the gift of Power seriously, but when they do wonderful things happen—e.g. the Cure d’Ars. And that sense of impotence you describe is I feel sure almost universal in the Church at present, and is absolutely crippling in effect. I think your linking up of the gift of Power with Unity is fine, and gives a basis for intercession which many, baffled by the usual theories, will be able to accept. (It is astonishing how prevalent the crudest notions of intercession—“asking God for things,” etc.—still are even among the clergy—and perhaps specially among the clergy!) …
… Ruysbroeck’s great passages on the “fruitive unity of the Godhead,” I have always thought to be among the most profound and inspiring writings of the medieval mystics.
… It is because our Christianity is so impoverished, so second-hand and non-organic, that we now feel we are incapable of the transformation of life which is needed to get humanity out of its present mess… . It all comes back of course (a) to the lack of a concrete, realistic faith; (b) to a failure to realize what Unity really involves. Yes, I do understand your distinction between trying to visualize and grasp all the sufferings and horrors, and accepting the pain of them. At the beginning of the war I tried to do the first, with deplorable results. The second is done to one rather than by one, which makes it all right, and is simply one’s share in the life of the Church at this time.
Nov. 27, 1940.
To L.M.
There is so much to say about the sacrificial side of Christianity suitable for Lent and Passiontide, and it all fits in so well with much that is happening now, that you ought to find plenty of material.
I suppose there never was a time when people were more completely called to abandonment or encouraged to look beyond the world for the clue to life.
I enclose with this Maisie Spens’ last utterance, which I think most remarkable—one might make a good set of addresses on that theme, don’t you think?
All Power is Given. S.P.C.K., 1d.
Gwynedd turned up on Saturday after a long absence—she had had the typhoid inoculation and been made rather ill by it. She told us that early one morning after a recent raid the head of their local Toc H
heard a knock on the remains of the front-door, went down and found a stocky figure in mac. and tin-hat, who said, “I just looked in to see whether you were all right here.” The head replied that they were; and the visitor said, “I’m glad to hear that. Carry on; and God bless you.”
It was Winston Churchill. It appears he often goes out alone in the early morning and looks round districts where the blitz has been bad.
Dec. 7, 1940.
To THE SAME.
I am trying to put together some Retreat notes and will send them soon, but I doubt their being much use to you. It is so difficult to use other people’s material. I thought: 1st day, The preparatory conditions of the spiritual life—interior Poverty, Chastity and Obedience.
2nd day, The essence of it, the life of Faith, Hope and Charity.
Lots of scope and deals with fundamentals which I feel a retreat should always do, don’t you?
Lawn House, 12 Hampstead Square, N.W-3.
St. Stephen, 1940.
To NESTA DE ROBECK.
Your lovely gift arrived on Christmas Eve and I began to read it at once. Thank you so very much for it. I think it is a most valuable book and casts a lot of fresh light on St. Francis’s method of direction. I, certainly, had not realized how thorough was his dislike of rule-keeping and every sort of rigidity. It would do some modern directors and superiors good to ponder it! I think the whole section on “Characteristics of Salesian religious life” excellent both from the religious and psychological point of view. It is really much the same in principle as De Caussade’s Abandon brought down to “brass tacks.” The last half I have not read yet. I think what always puts me off St. Francis slightly is the fact that he is so exclusively the Apostle of the upper classes, and takes so seriously the position and duties of the Best Set. One is reminded so often of Wilberforce—“Yes indeed, my dear Duchess, as your Grace so truly observes, God is love.” But all this no doubt he would claim as an example of his own doctrine of vocations—and certainly French society in his time badly needed an evangelist. And of course the great lines of his doctrine are of universal application and a great pity it is that they are not more generally applied. Muller brings them out in a remarkable way, doesn’t he? Far better and more convincingly than Bremond, for instance: and shows so clearly their theological implications. It is odd to realize that on his showing St. Francis must almost have disliked St. John of the Cross! at any rate for general consumption. It is a good book and I’m so very grateful to you for it.
Christmas Day, 1940.
To U.V.
It was a great joy to hear of you and know how all your family are doing. How proud you must be of them—but I fear anxious too …
I loved your quotation about “the wild-weather of His outlying provinces”—most beautiful; I wonder where it comes from?
Lawn House, 12 Hampstead Square, N.W-3.
1 January, 1941.
To E. I. WATKIN.
Thank you so much for your Christmas letter—I had heard of you through Maisie Spens to whom you have given so much pleasure… .
The paper on Christian power, which I understand you have seen, … seems to me extremely fine. I am glad it is going into the Guardian though I could wish it a wider circulation than that luckless paper ever seems able to achieve. I hope it will do better under your friend’s editorship. There is room for a really intelligent paper representing the Anglican central position.
I am sorry I did not see your article on the Collet MS. Little Gidding has always interested me, but I found the Ferrar Papers rather disconcerting when they were published! The clash of temperaments in that strange household must have been terrific and very unlike what one understands as the religious life!
I wonder how Pax is getting on. So many of my fellow pacifists seem to have fallen from the absolute position and think that Hitler’s wickedness justifies participation in the war; but when we have won it they will be pacifists again. I cannot feel, however, that committing sin to cure sin is either Christianity or common sense, and the steady increase in bombast and self-righteous heroics is very displeasing, isn’t it? Perhaps we have reached a level of collective sinfulness in which we cannot do right. I quite understand your deep satisfaction that your son is a monk. I remember his interest in theology as a boy, and wondered then which way his life would turn. How very interesting that he should have found those Winchester relics!
I am supposed to be writing a book on Christianity and the Spiritual Life for the Christian Challenge Series; but feel quite unable to get on with it—partly because a long stretch of ill health has reduced my vitality, partly the difficulties of living in someone else’s house, as we are doing now, with only a few of my books, and partly the general disturbance of the times! I have just read C. S. Lewis’s Problem of Pain in that Series, and think it excellent.
I am so glad you are working. Everyone likes The Catholic Centre.
Father Biggart, C.R., preached on it a few weeks back at St.
Augustine’s, Queen’s Gate, and told everyone to read it.
The book on Lauds and Compline will be good to have and I hope you will soon find a publisher.
Lawn House, 12 Hampstead Square, N.W.3.
13 January, 1941.
To C. S. LEWIS.
When Out of the Silent Planet appeared, I was so excited by it that I had to write to you, and received a very kind reply. I hope this event, though long forgotten, may serve as a reintroduction now, because The Problem of Pain over which I have been brooding for the last week or so, has impressed me deeply, and opened up so many paths for exploration, that I feel I must talk to you about it.
The subject is one that I have thought about a good deal, which is why I am particularly grateful for your book and for the way in which you have related the fact of suffering to the eternal background of our life. Myself, I cannot get much beyond von Hugel’s conclusion, that Christianity does not explain suffering but does show us what to do with it. To me the most satisfactory theory—and I am glad to see it is one that you are willing to accept—is that of a cosmic or angelic Fall, infecting the world with sin and its consequences. We can’t, I think, attribute all the evil and pain of creation to man’s rebellious will. Its far-reaching results, the suffering of innocent nature, the imperfection and corruption that penetrate all life, seem to forbid that. The horrors of inherited insanity, mental agonies, the whole economy of disease, especially animal disease, seem to point beyond man to some fundamental disharmony between creation and God. I sympathize a good deal with the listener who replied to every argument on the love of God by the simple question, “What about cancer in fish?”
It is your chapters on Human Wickedness, and Original Sin and the Fall that I so specially admire and feel to be immensely important and illuminating. I hope they will be widely read and digested by the clergy, especially those who keep on insisting what fine fellows we really are; and so reduce the amount of sentimental rubbish poured out from their pulpits, and deepen their conceptions of human personality.
Original sin, which in my bright and clever youth I regarded as pure nonsense, now seems to me one of the most profound and far-reaching of truths. And your treatment of it is particularly valuable and satisfying because you have kept so clear of the mere theological say-so, and related it to our total experience of life. Our generation has a [specially good chance of grasping this fact and all it implies if the [psychologists will let it! I was very much impressed, too, by your picture of Paradisal man. It is this capacity for giving imaginative body to the fundamental doctrines of Christianity that seems to me one of the most remarkable things about your work.
Where, however, I do find it impossible to follow you, is in |your chapter on animals. “The tame animal is in the deepest sense the only natural animal … the beasts are to be understood only in their relation to man and through man to God.” This seems to me frankly an intolerable doctrine and a frightful exaggeration of what is involved in the primacy of man. Is the cow which we have turned into a milk machine or the hen we have turned into an egg machine really nearer the mind of God than its wild ancestor? This seems like saying that the black slave is the only natural negro. You surely can’t mean that, or think that the robin redbreast in a cage doesn’t put heaven in a rage but is regarded as an excellent arrangement. Your own example of the good-man, good-wife, and good-dog in the good homestead is a bit smug and utilitarian, don’t you think, over against the wild beauty of God’s creative action in the jungle and deep sea? And if we ever get a sideway glimpse of the animal-in-itself, the animal existing for God’s glory and pleasure and lit by His light (and what a lovely experience that is!), we don’t owe it to the Pekinese, the Persian cat or the canary, but to some wild free creature living in completeness of adjustment to Nature a life that is utterly independent of man. And this, thank Heaven, is the situation of all but the handful of creatures we have enslaved. Of course I agree that animals too are involved in the Fall and await redemption and transfiguration. (Do you remember Luther looking up from Romans viii. 21 and saying to his dog, “Thou too shall have a little golden tail”?) And man is no doubt offered the chance of being the mediator of that redemption. But not by taming, surely? Rather by loving and reverencing the creatures enough to leave them free. When my cat goes off on her own occasions I’m sure she goes with God—but I do not feel so sure of her theological position when she is sitting on the best chair before the drawing-room fire. Perhaps what it all comes to is this, that I feel your concept of God would be improved by just a touch of wildness. But please do not take this impertinent remark too seriously.
I have run on far too long and must not weary you with my comments on your Heaven and Hell chapters, both of which I admire immensely —especially that on Heaven, which is a fitting conclusion to an impressive and beautiful book and lifts your thesis once for all to the level at which alone it has full significance. Thank you so much for it.
Lawn House, 12 Hampstead Square, N.W.3.
27 January, 1941.
To L.K.
… Thank you so much for letting me see all these. I have enjoyed them, even though the result of the whole thing seems to me rather inconclusive. I was specially interested in Dr. Temple’s answers to queries though I must say, in the teeth of Our Lord’s remarks about riches, that “vocation to share the life of the wealthy in a spirit of detachment” made me smile. Once you were really detached from wealth, you would simply be unable to bear it a moment longer surely.
Papers about the Malvern Conference.
I thought the synopsis of Sir R. Acland’s speech awfully good and am not surprised he made an impression… . But I quite agree with you that what people want from the Church and always have wanted are precise and simple directions on what they can and should do now —not only as regards special points like birth control or military service (and she can’t even make up her mind about these) but about use of time and money, Christian conduct of business, education, etc. I don’t agree with you, however, that Our Lord made the full demand for absolute surrender on all. He obviously made a great distinction between the “multitude” and the “little flock,” and I think recognition of that, and a call to become part of the little flock (but, as you say, in the world) is probably what we need. Things like the Franciscan Tertiaries and the Jeunesse Ouvriere Catholique and the Filles de Marie are looking in the right direction. But it must not be only a devotional demand but something practical and far-reaching. I think it will come—we are only at the tentative stage now—and so far as possible one should throw one’s weight in that direction.
12 Hampstead Square.
Wed. in Holy Week, 1941.
To THE SAME.
This brings you my best love and all blessings for Easter. I do hope you are now a bit less tired and overstrained and will be able to enter into something of the supernatural peace and wonder, even in your crowded and Martha-ish life. I was dreadfully sorry not to be able to answer your last letter; just then the germ which had been rambling round the house attacked me and turned to asthma and bronchitis and the Dr. sternly forbade all letters and has now only partly raised the ban.
Well, I do largely agree with your R.M. It is always a difficult problem to decide, when only external “good works” seem to put a stopper on one’s interior life, whether this is God’s call to the soul or one has made a mistake and chosen an unsuitable job. If you are strong enough to stick it out, the mere fact of its being very uncongenial does not matter. But the desire for selfsacrifice may easily lead one into temptation that is too much for one’s delicate interior processes. After all, the very best thing one can do for one’s neighbour as well as for God, is to keep spiritually alert, and anything which checks prayer is to be held in suspicion. I may say practically everyone I hear from finds that war-work does this: and you, with your inclination to go “all out” on your jobs and not keep an inner reserve, are particularly vulnerable!
But I cannot agree with Fr. A. about Mass without communion. Bishop Frere and Baron von Hugel were solidly against this and I hope you will take their deep and wise view on this…. Quite right not to strain and struggle when prayer is difficult; but just make a simple motion of abandonment to God. But as to Communion, both would say it is something done by God to us, not by us towards God; and even though we felt actually repelled we must still receive it. I feel no doubt at all that this is right; and is a deeper, simpler, more direct view of our relationship to God than all the stuff about Church discipline, etc.
Meanwhile a holiday is clearly indicated as soon as you can contrive it: and in the future better management of your resources and a certain moderation in your self-giving. This does not mean “ca’
canny.”
Of course all these suggestions must be laid before God who will then (if you can give Him time and opportunity!) show by His pressure on your soul how you should act. But to have got yourself into a jam in which you can no longer feel that pressure, is to destroy the chief source of your usefulness to Him!
12 Hampstead Square, N.W.3.
27 April, 1941.
To E. I. WATKIN.
Yes, I have never felt any inclination to change my views about the war. As horror is piled on horror it becomes more and more clear that one cannot fight evil by the use of evil. Of course I think none of us have any idea of what the real and spiritual events are, which have this awful repercussion on the surface of life. We are witnessing Armageddon without knowing what Armageddon really means and so have not the material for forming a considered judgment on what our own action can and should be. But to adhere to the Eternal God, and help others to steady their lives in the same way, must always be right. I understand so well and sympathize with your own feeling that you had not sufficiently given yourself to your original attrait. But I suppose the principle of abandon means that we always envisage our situation as it is now and give ourselves to God in that, without considering the past?
Indeed I will pray for you “according to my poor cunning” and hope you will for me. Our future seems very dark and uncertain as so much we thought permanent has fallen away.
30 April, 1941.
To MAISIE SPENS.
… the whole idea of the Communion of Praise must be free and loose-knit and nothing in the way of an “Order” attempted.
Apart from all else this would at once bring in denominational difficulties, and give the idea of some specially intense group in contrast to the rest of the Church. I feel so sure myself that this movement and others like it—i.e. Brother Edward’s “dail waiting on the Holy Spirit”—are small surface manifestations of some great movement in the supernatural, some vast a transforming action of the Spirit, which will end the present chaos, and also the divisions of the Church… . People hardly seem to realize how remarkable it is that Cardinal Hinsley and the Archbishop and the Free Church people should be writing letters and acting together in the interests of the Christian life. Yet this is happening more and more, and is I’m sure one of the manifestations of the great things preparing in the Invisible World.
… Of course printing is terribly difficult now but we must get a lot of it done if possible, if the central idea of union in adoration, with all that flows from it, is to be made known—and I’m sure it is intended to be made known.
May 3, 1941.
To K.N.
People sometimes get St. John of the Cross by the tail!
Selfoccupation, including religious self-occupation, is always wrong, though often disguised as an angel of light.
This is the first thing I should say—Just plain self-forgetfulness is the greatest of graces. The true relation between the soul and God is the perfectly simple one of a childlike dependence. Well then, be simple and dependent, acknowledge once for all the plain fact that you have nothing of your own, offer your life to God and trust Him with the ins and outs of your soul as well as everything else! Cultivate a loving relation to Him in your daily life; don’t be ferocious with yourself because that is treating badly a precious (if imperfect) thing which God has made.
As to detachment—what has to be cured is desiring and hanging on to things for their own sake and because you want them, instead of offering them with a light hand and using them as part of God’s apparatus; people seem to tie themselves into knots over this and keep on asking themselves anxious questions on the subject—but again, the cure is more simplicity! They must shake themselves out of their scruples. The whole teaching of St. John of the Cross is directed to perfecting the soul in charity, so that all it does, has, says, is, is transfused by its love for God. This is not a straining doctrine, though a stern one, as of course it does mean keeping all other interests in their place and aiming at God all the time.
5 May, 1941.
To C.D.
… No—I had not heard of the meetings you mention; but I never do go to meetings nowadays nor, I fear, have I much belief in their usefulness. All this discussion about a “Christian Society,” a “New Christian England,” etc., seems so entirely on the surface, doesn’t it? And shows no realization of the drastic changes and awful sufferings which must be endured before anything of the kind becomes possible. I agree with you in thinking Hitler a “Scourge of God”
—but it is idle to begin to think yet of what we shall or can do when he has finished his course! Probably very little of what we know as the ordinary framework of life will survive.
The new life when it comes, I think, will not be the result of discussions, plans, meetings, etc., but will well up from the deepest sources of prayer. I see some signs of the beginning of this movement, and one is the new and marked tendency of the various Christian bodies to draw together and work together. You may have seen some of the writings of the Abbe Couturier on this. I think it one of the most religious phenomena of our times. A great friend of mine, Maisie Spens, a very unusual person and something of a prophetess, is greatly concerned in it, and during Lent she got a number of R.C. and Anglican Communities to offer their whole prayer for this intention of spiritual unity. Of course a great many individuals of all denominations also joined in. The next period of special prayer begins on June 27 and ends on the Transfiguration: I should be so glad if you cared to take part. I enclose a copy of one of her “meditations” in case you are interested.
12 Hampstead Square, N.W.3.
12 May, 1941.
To MILDRED BOSANQUET.
Yes—I am still a pacifist though I agree with you about the increasing difficulty of it. But I feel more and more sure that Christianity and war are incompatible, and that nothing worth having can be achieved by “casting out Satan by Satan.” All the same, I don’t think pacifists at the moment should be controversial, or go in for propaganda. The nation as a whole obviously feels it right to fight this war out, and must I think do it. I think Hitler is a real “scourge of God,” the permitted judgment on our civilization; and there are only two ways of meeting him—war, or the Cross. And only a very small number are ready for the Cross, in the full sense of loving and unresisting abandonment to the worst that may come. So those who see that this alone is full Christianity should be careful not to increase the disharmony of life by trying to force this difficult truth on minds that are closed against it, and will only be exasperated by it. At present I think one can do little but try to live in charity, and do what one can for the suffering and bewildered. We are caught up in events far too great for us to grasp, and which have their origin in the “demonic powers” of the spiritual world. Let us hope that the end of all the horror and destruction may be a purification of life!
Lawn House, Hampstead.
Easter IV (1941).
To E.N.
Don’t worry about your prayer! Everyone I know feels in a “rotten state” and general condition of muddle and distraction. The situation is a bit too thick for us—but we must just do our best! I am sure a quite general waiting on God, and giving oneself and all one cares about totally and trustfully into His hands, should be the substance of it. A very deeply spiritual woman I know says that the Lord’s Prayer, Gloria Patri, and Behold the handmaid of the Lord, are the only prayers she can use now! Though it may seem play-acting because our feelings are overstrained and numb—so long as we pray not as individuals but part of the Church, it shares the reality of the Church’s total prayer—and as the essence of that total prayer is “Thy Will be done” this overrides our inevitable human desire for victory.
I will try to remember your poor friend though I’m terribly bad at intercession for individuals.
Lawn House, 12 Hampstead Square, N.W.3.
Whitsunday, 1941.
To Z.A.
Will you accept the enclosed if it appeals to you? and tell anyone else who might care for it. It is part of the Reunion Movement begun by the Abbe Couturier; who considers reunion can only begin by union in prayer and thence spread to the surface. Many R.C. and Anglican communities have taken it up eagerly and Maisie Spens who is much concerned with it has written some really remarkable pamphlets I’d like you to see.**
An invitation to join in forty days of prayer.
* All Power is Given and As One in Praising. S.P.C.K., 3d. each.
5 June, 1941.
To MAISIE SPENS.
I have been immersed in Kierkegaard—some new ones in English lately published, and all of his latest period, when he was much more spiritualized than in the first part of his career. At his best he really is superb—and just what all are needing now, though too drastic in his demands ever to be popular.
Trinity, 1941.
To M.C.
You have been so much in my mind lately and I’ve been meaning to Write—but it’s extraordinary that tho’ I live such a quiet life now, mostly in one room, the arrears of letters never get done. You as billeting officer must be very busy—what an exacting but as you say very very worth while job. This mixing-up of people, specially children, will surely be one of the few good things to come out of this time of horror. I feel more and more to be living through the Apocalypse. I remain pacifist but I quite see that at present the Christian world is not “there” and attempts to preach it at the moment can only rouse resistance and reduce charity. Like you I think the final synthesis must reconcile the lion and the lamb—but meanwhile the crescendo of horror and evil and wholesale destruction of beauty is hard to accept… .
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