XVII

In a letter to Monsignor, Evelyn wrote:

"I have just sent a letter to my father, in which I tell him, amid many hopes of a safe arrival in Rome, not unduly tired, and with all the dear instruments intact, unharmed by rough hands of porters and Custom House officers, that, one of these days, in three or four months, when I am well, I look forward to contributing the viola da gamba part of a sonata to the concert of the old instrumental music which he will give when he has put his choir in order: you know I used to play that instrument in my young days. A more innocent wish never entered into the heart of a human being, you will say, yet this letter causes me many qualms, for I cannot help thinking that I have been untruthful; I have—lied is, perhaps, too strong a word— but I have certainly equivocated to the Prioress, and deceived her, I think, though it is possible, wishing to be deceived, she lent herself to the deception. Now I am preferring an accusation against the dear Prioress! My goodness, Monsignor, what a strange and difficult thing life is, and how impossible to tell the exact truth! If one tries to be exact one ends by entangling the thread, and getting it into very ugly knots indeed. In trying to tell the truth, I have been guilty of a calumny against the Prioress, nothing short of that, Monsignor, nothing short of that—against the dear Prioress, who deserves better of me, for her kindness towards me since I have been to the convent has never ceased for a single instant!

"One of her many kindnesses is the subject of this letter. When I arrived here the nuns were not decided, and I was not decided, whether I should live in the convent as I did before, as a guest, or whether, in view of the length of my probable residence in the convent, I should be given the postulant's cap and gown. Mother Mary Hilda thought it would be dangerous to open the doors of the novitiate to one who admitted she was entering the religious life only as an experiment, especially to one like myself, an opera singer, who, however zealously she might conform to the rule, would bring a certain atmosphere with her into the novitiate, one which could not fail to affect a number of young and innocent girls, and perhaps deleteriously. I think I agree with Mother Mary Hilda. All this I heard afterwards from Mother Philippa, who, in her homely way, let out the secret of these secret deliberations to me—how the Prioress, who desired the investiture, said that every postulant entered the novitiate as an experiment. 'But believing,' Mother Mary Hilda interrupted, 'that the experiment will succeed, whereas, in her case, the postulant does not believe at all.'

"As it was impossible for the Mothers to decide I was sent for, and asked whether I thought the experiment would succeed or fail.' But what experiment?—I had to ask. And the Prioress and Mother Hilda were not agreed, their points of view were not the same; mine was, again, a different point of view, mine being, as you know, a determination to conquer a certain thing in my nature which had nearly brought about my ruin, and which, if left unchecked, would bring it about. Room for doubt there was none, and, after such an escape as mine, one does not hesitate about having recourse to strong remedies. My remedy was the convent, and, my resolve being to stay in the convent till I had conquered myself, it did not at the time seem to me a falsehood to say that I put myself in the hands of God, and hoped the experiment would succeed. Mother Mary Hilda, who is very persistent, asked me what I meant by conquering myself, and I answered, a subjugation of that part of me which was repellent to God. At these words the Prioress's face lit up, and she said, 'Well, Mother Hilda, I suppose you are satisfied?' Mother Hilda did not answer, but I could see that she was not satisfied; and I am not satisfied either, for I feel that I am deceiving the nuns.

"But, Monsignor, if a different answer had been given, if I had said that I looked upon the convent as a refuge where a difficult time might be passed, two or three months, it does not seem to me that I would have answered the nuns more truthfully. The Prioress seems to think with me in this, going so far as to suggest that there are occasions when we do well not to try to say everything, for the very simple reason that we do not know everything—even about ourselves; and she seemed glad that I had not said more, and took me there and then to her room, and, in the presence of Mother Philippa and Mother Mary Hilda, said, 'Now, we must hide all this fair hair under a little cap.' I knelt in front of the Prioress, and she put a white cap on my head, and pinned a black veil over it; and when she had done this she drew me to her and kissed me, saying, 'Now you look like my own child, with all your worldly vanities hidden away. I believe Monsignor Mostyn would hardly know his penitent in her new dress.'

"I think I can see you smile as you read this, and I think I can hear you thinking, 'Once an actress always an actress.' But there is not sufficient truth in this criticism to justify it, and if such a thought does cross your mind, I feel you will suppress it quickly in justice to me, knowing, as you must know, that a badge gives courage to the wearer, putting a conviction into the heart that one is not alone, but a soldier in a great army walking in step towards a definite end. This sounds somewhat grandiloquent, but it seems to me somewhat like the truth. Trying to get into step is interesting and instructive, and the novitiate, though hardly bearable at times, is better than sitting in the lonely guest-room. Mother Hilda's instruction in the novitiate seems childish, yet why is it more childish than a hundred other things? Only because one is not accustomed to look at life from the point of view of the convent. As a guest, I felt it to be impossible to remain in the convent for three months, and it pleased me, I admit it, and interested me, I admit it, to try to become part of this conventual life, so different, so strangely different, from the life of the world, so remote from common sympathies. In speaking of this life, one hardly knows what words to employ, so inadequate are words to express one's meaning, or shall I say one's feeling? 'Actress again,' I hear your thoughts, Monsignor; 'a woman desirous of a new experience, of new sensations.' No, no, Monsignor, no; but I confess that the pure atmosphere of the convent is easier and more agreeable to breathe than the atmosphere of the world and its delight. To her whose quest is chastity, it is infinitely agreeable to feel that she is living among chaste women, the chastity of the nuns seems to penetrate and enfold me. To the hunted animal a sense of safety is perhaps a greater pleasure than any other, and one is never really unhappy, however uncomfortable one's circumstances may be, if one is doing what one wants to do…. But I am becoming sententious."

In another letter to Monsignor she said:

"This morning I received a long and delightful letter from my father telling me about the progress he is making, or I should say the progress that the choir is making under his direction, and how convinced he found everybody of the necessity of a musical reformation of some kind, and how gratifying it was to find them ready to accept his reading of the old music as the one they had been waiting for all this time. But, Monsignor, does my father exaggerate? For all this sounds too delightful to be true. Is it possible that his ideas meet with no opposition? Or is it that an opposition is preparing behind an ambuscade of goodwill? Father is such an optimist that any enthusiasm for his ideas convinces him that stupidity has ended in the world at last. But you will not be duped, Monsignor, for Rome is your native city, and his appointment of capelmeister is owing to you, and the kindly reception of my father's ideas—if they have been received as he thinks—is also owing to you. You will not be deceived, as he would easily be, by specious appearance, and will support him in the struggle that may be preparing under cover. I know you will. "His letter is entirely concerned with music; he does not tell me about his daily life, and, knowing how neglectful he is of material things, thinking only of his ideas, I am not a little anxious about him: how he is lodged, and if there is anybody by him who will see that he has regular meals. He will neglect his meals if he is allowed to neglect them, so, in the interests of the musical reformation, somebody should be charged to look after him, and he should not be allowed to overwork himself; but it will be difficult to prevent this. The most we can hope for is that he shall get his meals regularly, and that the food be of good quality and properly cooked. The food here is not very good, nor very plentiful; to feel always a little hungry is certainly trying, and the doctor has spoken to the Prioress on the subject, insisting that nourishing food is necessary to those suffering from nervous breakdown, and healthy exercise; of healthy exercise there is plenty, for the nuns dig their own garden; so I am a reformer in a small way, and I can assure you my reformation is appreciated by the nuns, who thank me for it; my singing at Benediction is better appreciated on a full than on an empty stomach, especially when it is the song that fills the stomach. And it is my singing that enables Mother Philippa, who looks after the catering, to spend more money at the baker's and the butcher's. There has been an improvement, too, in the cooking; a better watch is kept in the kitchen, and not only my health but the health of the entire community is improved.

"We are a little more joyous now than we were, and every day I seem to be better able to appreciate the happiness of living among people who share one's ideas. One cannot love those whose ideas are different, at least I cannot; a mental atmosphere suitable to our minds is as necessary as fresh air is to our lungs. And I feel it a great privilege to be allowed to live among chaste women, no longer to feel sure of my own unworthiness, no longer; it is terrible to live always at war with oneself. The eyes of the nuns and their voices exhale an atmosphere in which it seems to me my soul can rise, and very often as I walk in the garden with them I feel as if I were walking upon air. Owen Asher used to think that intellectual conversation kindled the soul; so it does in a way; and great works of art enkindle the soul and exalt it; but there is another exaltation of soul which is not discoverable in the intellect, and I am not sure that it is not the greater: the exaltation of which I speak is found in obedience, in submission, yes, and in ignorance, in trying—I will not say to lower oneself—but in trying to bring oneself within the range of the humble intelligence and to understand it. And there is plenty of opportunity for this in the convent. To explain what I mean, and perhaps to pass away the tedium of an afternoon which seems long drawn out, I will put down here for you, Monsignor, the conversation, as much as I can remember of it, which introduced me to the inhabitants of the novitiate.

"When Mother Hilda recited the Litany of Our Lady, and we had risen to our feet, she said:

"'Now, Evelyn, you must be introduced to your sisters—Sister Barbara I think you have met, as she sings in the choir. This is Sister Angela; this tall maypole is Sister Winifred, and this little being here is Sister Jerome, who was the youngest till you came. Aren't you pleased, Jerome, to have one younger than yourself?' The novices said, 'How do you do?' and looked shy and awkward for a minute, and then they forgot me in their anxiety to know whether recreation was to be spent indoors or out.

"'Mother, we may go out, mayn't we? Oh, thank you so much, it is such a lovely evening. We need not wear cloaks, need we? Oh, that is all right, just our garden shoes.' And there was a general scurry to the cells for shoes, whilst Mother Hilda and I made our way downstairs, and by another door, into the still summer evening.

"'How lovely it is!' I said, feeling that if Mother Hilda and I could have spent the recreation hour together my first convent evening would have been happy. But the chattering novices soon caught us up, and when we were sitting all a-row on a bench, or grouped on a variety of little wooden stools, they asked me questions as to my sensations in the refectory, and I could not help feeling a little jarred by their familiarity.

"'Were you not frightened when you felt yourself at the head of the procession? I was,' said Winifred.

"'But you didn't get through nearly so well as Sister Evelyn; you turned the wrong way at the end of the passage and Mother had to go after you,' said Sister Angela. 'We all thought you were going to run away.' And they went into the details as to how they had felt on their arrival, and various little incidents were recalled, illustrating the experience of previous postulants, and these were productive of much hilarity.

"'What did you all think of the cake?' said Sister Barbara suddenly.

"'Was it Angela's cake?' asked Mother Hilda. 'Angela, I really must congratulate you; you will be quite a distinguished chef in time.'

"Sister Angela blushed with delight, saying, 'Yes, I made it yesterday, Mother; but, of course, Sister Rufina stood over me to see that I didn't forget anything.'

"'Ah, well, I don't think I cared very much for the flavouring,' said
Sister Barbara in pondering tones.

"'You seemed to me to be enjoying it very much at the time,' I said, joining the conversation for the first time; and when I added that Sister Barbara had eaten four slices of bread and butter the laugh turned against Barbara, and every one was hilarious. It is evident that Sister Barbara's appetite is considered an excellent joke in the novitiate.

"Of course I marvelled that grown-up women should be so easily amused, and then remembered a party at the Savoy Hotel (on leaving it I went to the presbytery to confess to you, Monsignor). I had to admit to myself that the talk at Louise Helbrun's party did not move on a higher level; our conversation did not show us to be wiser than the novices, and our behaviour was certainly less exemplary. Everything is attitude of mind, and the convent attitude towards life is curiously sympathetic to me… at present. My doubts lest it should not always be so is caused by the fury of my dislike to my former attitude of mind; something tells me that such fury as mine cannot be maintained, and will be followed by a certain reaction. I don't mean that I shall ever again return to a life of sin, that life is done with for ever. Even if I should fall again—the thought is most painful to me—but even if that should happen it would be a passing accident, I never could again continue in sin, for the memory of the suffering sin has caused me would be sure to bring me back again and force me to take shelter and to repent.

"I know too much belief in one's own power of resistance is not a good thing, but I can hardly bear to think of the suffering I endured during those weeks with Ulick Dean, walking in Hyde Park, round that Long Water, talking of sin and its pleasures, feeling every day that I was being drawn a little nearer to the precipice, that I was losing every day some power of resistance. It is terrifying to lose sense of the reality of things, to lose one's own will, to feel that one is merely a stone that has been set rolling. To feel like this is to experience the obtuse and intense sensations of nightmare, and this I know well. Have I not told you, Monsignor, of the dreams from which I suffered, which brought me to you, and which forced me to confession, those terrific dreams which used to drive me dazed from my bed, flying through the door of my room into the passage to wake up before the window, saying to myself:

"'Oh, my God! it is a dream, it is a dream, thank God, it is only a dream!'

"But I must not allow myself to dwell on that time, to do so throws me back again, and I have almost escaped those fits of brooding in which I see my soul lost for ever. Sooner than go back to that time I would become a nun, and remain here until the end of my life, eating the poorest food, feeling hungry all day; anything were better than to go back to that time!"

In another letter she said:

"I am afraid I shall always continue to be looked upon as an actress by the Prioress, and St. Teresa's ecstasies and ravishments, with added miracles and prophecies, would not avail to blot out the motley which continues in her eyes, though it dropped from me three years ago.

"'My dear Evelyn, you have hardly any perception of what our life is,' she said to me yesterday. 'You know it only from the outside, you are still an actress, you are acting on a different stage, that is all.' And it seemed to me that the Prioress thought she was speaking very wisely, that she flattered herself on her wisdom, and rejoiced not a little in my discomfiture, visible on my face, for one cannot control the change of expression, 'which gives one away,' as the phrase goes. She laughed, and we walked on together, I genuinely perplexed and pathetically anxious to discover if she had spoken the truth, fearing lest I might be adapting myself to a new part, not quite sure, hoping, however, that something new had come into my life. On such occasions one peers into one's heart, but however closely I peer it is impossible for me to say that the Prioress is right or that she was wrong. Everybody will say she is right, of course, for it is so obvious that a prima donna who retires to a convent must think of the parts she has played, of her music, and the applause at the end of every evening, applause without which she could not live. To say that no thought of my stage life ever crosses my mind would be to tell a lie that no one would believe; all thoughts cross one's mind, especially in a convent of a contemplative Order where the centre of one's life is, as Mother Mary Hilda would say, the perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament exposed upon the altar; where, as she teaches, next to receiving Holy Communion, this hour of prayer and meditation in the presence of our Lord is the central feature of our spiritual life, the axis on which our spiritual progress revolves.

"This was the subject of yesterday's lesson; nevertheless, during the meditation thoughts came and went, and I found much difficulty in trying to fix my mind. Perhaps I shall never learn how to meditate on—shall I say the Cross?—I shall never be able to fix my attention. Thoughts of the heroes and heroines of legends come and go in my mind, mixing with thoughts of Christ and His apostles; yet there is little of me in these flitting remembrances. My stage life does not interest me any longer, but the Prioress does not see it as I do, far away, a tiny speck. My art was once very real to me, and I am surprised, and a little disappointed sometimes, that it should seem so little now. But what I would not have, if I could change it, is the persistency with which I remember my lovers; not that I desire them, oh, no; but in the midst of a meditation on the Cross a remembrance catches one about the heart, and, closing the eyes, one tries to forget; and, Monsignor, what is worse than memory is our powerlessness to regret our sins. We may not wish to sin again, but we cannot regret that we have sinned. How is one to regret that one is oneself? For one's past is as much oneself as one's present. Has any saint attained to such a degree of perfection as to wish his past had never existed?

"Another part of my life which I remember very well—much better than my stage life—is the time I spent working among the poor under your direction. My poor people are very vivid in my memory; I remember their kindness to each other, their simplicities, and their patience. The patience of the poor is divine! But the poor people who looked to me for help had to be put aside, and that was the hardest part of my regeneration. Of course I know that I should have perished utterly if I had not put them aside, but even the thought of my great escape does not altogether satisfy me, and I would that I might have escaped without leaving them, the four poor women whom I took under my special protection, and who came to see me the day before I came to the convent to ask me not to leave them. Four poor women, poor beyond poverty, came to ask me not to go into the convent. 'The convent will be always able to get on without you, miss.' Such poverty as theirs is silent, they only asked me not to leave them, not to go to the convent. Among them was poor Lena, a hunchback seamstress, who has never been able to do more than keep herself from starving. It is hard that cripples should have to support themselves. She has, I think, always lived in fear lest she should not be able to pay for her room at the end of the week, and her food was never certain. How little it was, yet to get it caused her hours and hours of weary labour. Three and sixpence a week was all she could earn. Poor Lena, what has become of her? So little of the money which my singing brings to the convent would secure her against starvation, yet I cannot send her a penny. Doesn't it seem hard, Monsignor? And if she were to die in my absence would not the memory of my desertion haunt me for ever? Should I be able to forgive myself? You will answer that to save one's soul is everybody's first concern, but to sacrifice one's own soul for the poor may not be theological, but it would be sublime. You who are so kind, Monsignor, will not reprove me for writing in this strain, writing heresy to you from a convent devoted to the Perpetual Adoration of the Sacrament, but you will understand, and will write something that will hearten me, for I am a little disheartened to-day. You will write, perhaps, to the Reverend Mother, asking her if I may send Lena some money; that would be a great boon if she would allow it. In my anxiety to escape from the consequences of my own sins I had almost forgotten this poor girl, but yesterday she came into my mind. It was the lay sisters who reminded me of the poor people I left; the lay sisters are what is most beautiful in the convent.

"Yesterday, when the grass was soaked with dew and the crisp leaves hung in a death-like silence, one of them, Sister Bridget, came down the path carrying a pail of water, 'going,' she said, answering me, 'to scrub the tiles which covered the late Reverend Mother's grave. Ah, well, Mother's room must have its weekly turn out.' How beautiful is the use of the word 'room' in the phrase, and when I pointed out to her that the tiles were still clean her answer was that she regarded the task of attending the grave not as a duty but as a privilege. Dear Sister Bridget, withered and ruddy like an apple, has worked in the community for nearly thirty years. She has been through all the early years of struggle: a struggle which has begun again—a struggle the details of which were not even told her, and which she has no curiosity to hear. She is content to work on to the end, believing that it was God's will for her to do so. The lay sisters can aspire to none of the convent offices; they have none of the smaller distractions of receiving guests, and instructing converts and so forth, and not to have as much time for prayer as they desire is their penance. They are humble folk, who strive in a humble way to separate themselves from the animal, and they see heaven from the wash-tub plainly. In the eyes of the world they are ignorant and simple hearts. They are ignorant, but of what are they ignorant? Only of the passing show, which every moment crumbles and perishes. I see them as I write—their ready smiles and their touching humility. They are humble workers in a humble vineyard, and they are content that it should be so."