Letters to a Friend Read online

  LETTERS TO A FRIEND

  Rose Macaulay

  EDITED BY

  CONSTANCE BABINGTON SMITH

  Contents

  Preface

  Introduction

  Letters

  Bibliography

  Preface

  These letters were written by Dame Rose Macaulay to the Rev. John Hamilton Cowper Johnson, of the Society of St. John the Evangelist (commonly known as the Cowley Fathers), and they are essentially a record of her return to Christian faith and to the sacramental life of the Anglican Church after nearly thirty years’ estrangement. But they are also a lively chronicle of Dame Rose’s enormously varied interests and doings.

  She had known Father Johnson for about two years at the beginning of the first world war when he was on the staff of St. Edward’s House, Westminster, but they lost touch soon after 1916 when he was transferred to the Cowley Fathers’ community at Boston, Massachusetts. He remained there and they never met again, but occasionally he read her books. In 1950, after reading the American edition of They Were Defeated, he wrote to her, and her reply is the first of the letters in this book.

  After Dame Rose’s death in 1958, Father Johnson was anxious that the letters he had received from her should be put into safe keeping. He believed that if these letters could be published (after careful editing) they would be of help to many. He had met me once, through the introduction of Dame Rose who was my third cousin, when I was in America in 1956, and it was this personal link which led him to arrange with Dame Rose’s god-child Miss Emily Smith, whose home was near Boston, for the letters to be dispatched to England and entrusted to me.

  Miss Jean Macaulay, Dame Rose’s sister, and the only surviving member of this branch of the Macaulay family, was then consulted, as well as others concerned, and it was decided that the letters should be prepared for publication. The editing was to be my responsibility, and I thereupon entered into correspondence with Father Johnson, in order to discuss various matters of policy. I received much helpful advice from him until his health failed (during the year preceding his death in March 1961), and his enthusiasm for the publication of the letters was a constant encouragement to me. It should also be mentioned here that the Father Superior of the Cowley Fathers’ American Congregation, the Rev. G. Mercer Williams, S.S.J.E., was kept informed of the planning as it progressed.

  The correspondence falls naturally into two parts, the letters written in close sequence between 1950 and 1952 and the less frequent letters of the subsequent six years. The present book consists of the first of these two parts and the second part of the series will be published in a later volume. There is no question of publishing the “other half” of the correspondence, namely the replies from Father Johnson, as they were among the papers which, according to Dame Rose’s instructions, were destroyed after her death.

  The Introduction to this book is intended to give such biographical background as is needed for an understanding of the letters. While preparing it I have had many talks with Miss Jean Macaulay, who has given her whole-hearted approval to the entire project, and with Miss Dorothea Conybeare, Dame Rose’s first cousin, to whom I have turned repeatedly in connection with family history. Both Miss Macaulay and Miss Conybeare have given me much valuable information from memory, and have made available various family diaries and other records; I am deeply grateful to both of them. I would like in addition to express my gratitude to Miss Emily Smith for organizing the dispatch of the letters on Father Johnson’s behalf, and to those of Dame Rose’s friends who have helped me in many ways, especially by lending letters in their possession. I am also very grateful to Miss Mary Barham Johnson for providing historical details about the Johnson family, and to Mrs. Frank C. Paine for advising on some of the references to Father Johnson’s life in America.

  In editing the letters I have omitted references which might cause embarrassment to living persons and in order to distinguish such omissions from ambiguous cases where “…” appears in the original I have added [sic] in these latter instances. The only other omissions are on pages 50, 51, 172, and 335 where Father Johnson had made deletions.

  The letters were sometimes sent by surface mail and often by air mail. This is constantly referred to in the correspondence, so I have identified those which were airmailed by the symbol f placed alongside the date of the letter.

  Some of the original letters are typed but many are handwritten and in the deciphering of these I was ably assisted by MissM. F. McKnight. In the handwritten letters there are frequent contractions; I have extended most of these and have also corrected occasional typing errors, apparently unintentional misspellings, and punctuation which might be misleading. In general however I have not amended quotations, book titles, etc. where they are written incorrectly or in contracted form. Upon such problems of editing I have received invaluable advice from Mr. A. F. Scholfield who also assisted me in translating the Latin quotations and I am warmly grateful to him. I am also very grateful to Professor Bruce Dickins who has taken a most helpful interest in my work, to Dr. F. Brittain and Dr. F. J. E. Raby, whom I consulted when preparing some of the footnotes, and to Canon Charles Smyth and Professor Patrick Duff, who kindly advised on various other footnotes. I am furthermore indebted to the Father Superior of the Cowley Fathers’ English Congregation, the Rev. F. B. Dalby, S.S.J.E., for allowing me to examine material belonging to the S.S.J.E. Library at Oxford, to the Rev. A. P. Hill, S.S.J.E., for facilitating this work, and to the Rev. E. A. Thomas, S.S.J.E., for his advice on some of the editing. I would also like to acknowledge the permission kindly given by Brother Paul, Oblate, S.S.J.E., to reproduce his photograph of Father Johnson, and by Mr. Cecil Beaton to reproduce his photograph of Dame Rose.

  Constance Babington Smith

  Cambridge, 1961

  Introduction

  “No wonder,” Rose Macaulay herself once wrote, “that I feel an interest in religion, considering how steadily and for how many centuries ancestors versed in theology have converged on me from all sides.” On the Macaulay side—the side which stemmed from a Scottish clan and whose motto was Dulce Periculum—her grandfather and great-grandfather had both been Anglican parsons and her great-great-uncle Zachary, father of Lord Macaulay, had been a lay member of the Clapham Sect. Before that there had been two generations of Presbyterian ministers: John Macaulay (Rose’s great-great-grandfather) was a minister at Inveraray when Dr. Johnson visited the Hebrides and their meetings are recorded by Boswell.

  It was in the generation of Rose’s father that the long line of Macaulay clergy came to an end; neither he nor any of his brothers took orders. George Macaulay chose an academic career and in due course became recognised as a sound and accomplished scholar in the field of English studies. After reading Classics at Cambridge he had been briefly a Fellow of Trinity, but in 1878 he relinquished his fellowship to marry his cousin Grace Conybeare.

  Rose’s mother came of a family with roots in Devonshire and some French Huguenot blood and with an even longer tradition of scholarly divines than the Macaulays. Some of the Conybeares were notably versatile. Rose’s grandfather, William John Conybeare, well known in his day as co-author of a life of Saint Paul, also wrote a novel in three volumes; her greatgrandfather, William Daniel Conybeare, who became Dean of Llandaff, was a distinguished geologist and a Fellow of the Royal Society; while his brother, John Josias Conybeare, also a clergyman, was Professor of Anglo-Saxon and of Poetry at Oxford. Rose’s great-great-great-grandfather, John Conybeare, a noted preacher in the first half of the eighteenth century, was Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and later Bishop of Bristol. In the less distant past Rose’s uncle Edward Conybeare was an Anglican parson who towards the end of his life join
ed the Roman Church, and her first cousin James Conybeare was for many years Provost of Southwell. Rose was also related, through her maternal grandmother, to another great family of ecclesiastics, the Roses (this is why she was given the name of Rose, in addition to her first name Emilie).

  After George Macaulay’s marriage he worked for nine years as an assistant master at Rugby during which time six children were born: Margaret, Rose, Jean, Aulay, William, and Eleanor. Emilie Rose was born on 1st August, 1881, and her mother, who had been passionately hoping for a boy, was much disappointed at the arrival of a second girl. On 18th September Emilie Rose was baptized: her godparents were Mrs. Archibald Moncrieff, Miss Ada Currey, and her uncle Reginald Macaulay. Of these three her godfather was to play much the most important part in Rose’s life.

  Uncle Regi like her father had been a classical scholar. His fine intellect, applied to business matters, contributed largely to the expansion of Wallace & Co. and of the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation, which brought him considerable wealth. He was a very kind and generous man with a jocund manner and a lively sense of the ridiculous; religion was a target for his gay mockery like everything else. Another of Rose’s uncles, W. H. Macaulay—’ Uncle Willie,’ of whom she also became very fond—was a Fellow and Vice-Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, where he was renowned for the astringent precision of his remarks.

  Some of the Macaulay attitudes appeared early in Rose and according to family legend when she was three years old and her mother first told her about God, her comment was “I don’t know that!” But as she grew older her mother’s religious teaching made a profound mark. Grace Macaulay, who had been brought up in a High Church atmosphere at Weybridge, under the influence of her much loved uncle Edward Rose, had all the imagination and originality of the Conybeares and was also a brilliant teacher. Her Sunday-school classes were notable for her vivid rendering of Bible stories and for her clear and simple interpretations of Christian theology. Church-going was of course taken for granted in the Macaulay household and also the tradition of family prayers; parents, children, servants, and any visitors joined in these prayers every morning. Psalms and prayers were said and a hymn was sung—often an ordeal for musical visitors, for the Macaulays were all tone-deaf, and Grace Macaulay at the piano played many wrong notes, though it is said she had a sense of time. At night, when the children went to bed, she used to visit each child alone for a talk and prayers, and she encouraged them to learn hymns by heart.

  In 1887 the whole family went to live in Italy. The main reason was Grace Macaulay’s health; tuberculosis was threatening and her doctors had advised her to live in a warm climate. They took a house at Varazze, a small fishing village near Genoa, and George Macaulay set to work on a translation of Herodotus. For the next seven years the children ran blissfully wild; sea and shore were their home as much as the unconventional “Villa Macolai,” where life was simple partly because the Macaulays were not well off. The children’s education consisted mostly of lessons with their parents, though for a short time Margaret, Rose, and Jean attended the local convent school.

  The years in Italy, when “Rosy” grew from a child of six into a gauche tomboy of thirteen, set the course for much of her later development. The love of the sea-shore and of bathing, the attachment to “abroad,” especially the Mediterranean countries, the happy-go-lucky untidy ways, the frugal standards of living, the boyish hobbies, the farouche demeanour—all these can be traced to Varazze. At Varazze too she gained lasting impressions of religious ceremonial, and in later life she often recalled the festivals, the processions, and the candles at the local church. But deepest perhaps of all the legacies of Varazze was the bond between the young Macaulays. Margaret, as the eldest sister, was rather more “grown-up” than the others, but Rose and Jean, Aulay and Will shared constantly in every game and adventure, and with Margaret they thought of themselves both then and later as “the five.” Eleanor, several years younger and seldom included in the doings of “the five,” was thus very much the odd one out. While the family was in Italy Grace Macaulay gave birth to another daughter, Gertrude, but to her great sorrow this lovely child died at Varazze at the age of three and a half.

  The family returned to England in 1894, largely in the interests of the children’s education, and they settled in Oxford where Margaret, Rose, and Jean were sent to the High School. Rose at this time was excessively shy. Although there had been visits to England during the time in Italy, Varazze had truly become home for her, and the contrast between the life there and the conventional Victorian ways of her contemporaries in England was sharp indeed. “Rosy,” the family decided, was too childish a name and for some years she was known as Emily. She was also told sternly by her father that she must not talk about her longing to be a boy and join the Navy.

  When Emily was fourteen she and Margaret were prepared for confirmation by the vicar of the Church of St. Philip and St. James in Oxford, where they used to attend the children’s service. Emily felt many religious doubts (so she later disclosed), but was too tongue-tied to discuss them, and decided to submit to confirmation in silence.

  In July 1899, according to a note by Grace Macaulay, Emily left school and put up her hair.” But she was loth to grow up. Never interested in clothes, she was a gawky, boyish figure, far happier on the hockey field than on the dance floor —by this time Aulay was at Woolwich, and he sometimes invited his sisters to dances there. Then in 1900 when Rose was nineteen came an important new development: Uncle Regi offered to send her to the university. During her three years at Somerville College, Oxford, when she read History and acquired a great love for the seventeenth century, a remarkable change came about in her. The painfully shy and awkward young girl became a vivacious talker and letter-writer, an adventurer in ideas and experiences, a popular companion who made friends wherever she went. When she came down, in the summer of 1903, she again lived at home. By now her father had an appointment at Aberystwyth so living at home meant rural Wales. Rose very much missed the stimulating company of Oxford and before long she was starting on her first novel. Abbots Verney, a sombre story in an Italian setting, was published in 1906. “If you want to be really interested and entertained,” she wrote to a Somerville friend, “publish a novel; it’s quite worth it! … It’s a fearfully amusing occupation—so amusing that the financial side of it seems of very minor importance, except as a sort of justification, to turn it from play to earnest.” She was also at this time “extracting an occasional guinea or two” from the Westminster Gazette for her poems; they were many of them in a wistful mood with religious undertones and nostalgic echoes of the Italian shore.

  George Macaulay’s next appointment was to Cambridge as Lecturer in English and in 1906 the family moved to Great Shelford, then a secluded village. By this time both the Macaulay boys had started careers; Aulay was with the Royal Engineers in India, and Will had just set off to farm in Canada. Jean, after a certain amount of protest from her mother (whose extreme possessiveness was becoming more and more of a trial to most of her children), had left home to become a nurse, so only Margaret, Rose, and Eleanor were at home.

  Rose was writing more novels and being acclaimed as “a writer of no common ability,” and life at Shelford was continuing as usual when in February 1909 came news of a shocking tragedy: Aulay had been murdered on the North-West Frontier. He had been journeying on duty through a lonely ravine when he was attacked and shot by thieves who wrongly believed he was carrying a large sum of money. The whole family was naturally devastated with grief, but to his nearest sisters the foundations of life seemed shaken. The inviolable unity of “the five” had been violated. Rose for the first time turned spontaneously and with full seriousness to religion. Impulsively she offered herself as a missionary to the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa, but her offer was declined, on grounds that she was unsuited for the work. Soon after this with Margaret and her mother she attended a retreat at St. Alban’s, Holborn— a High Church stronghol
d—and it was at about this time that she first gave herself to the “Catholic” approach. In Cambridge at this same time Father Waggett, the Cowley Father, was at the peak of his brilliance as a preacher and was also a powerful social influence; Rose got to know him, and she and her mother often listened to his sermons. Meanwhile Margaret who since Aulay’s death had often been doing mission work with the East London Deaconesses decided in mid-1911 to become a probationer with their community (she was ordained Deaconess two years later). Eleanor by 1912 was also away—in India, where she was teaching (later she became a missionary)—so Rose was now the only daughter at home. At this time she saw much of her father whom she greatly loved and also much respected for his scholarship of which a typical manifestation was a four-volume edition of the Latin, French, and English works of John Gower. Rose made several trips abroad with him; in the spring of 1912 they went together on a memorable Hellenic cruise. But during the years just before the war she was also coming to London more and more, joining with delight in quite a different circle.

  Chiefly through Naomi Royde Smith, the literary editor of the Westminster Gazette, she met “a brilliant and vocal group of people”—Walter de la Mare, E. V. Knox, J. C. Squire, Middleton Murry, Hugh Walpole, and many others. “I liked them all,” she later wrote. “They were all gay and intelligent and young or youngish, and haloed to me with the glamour and sophistication of London; they chattered of the literary and political world and its personalities as initiates—or so it seemed to me, who was a Cambridge provincial.” By now Rose herself was beginning to make a mark as a novelist. Her book The Lee Shore was awarded a literary prize in 1912 and she had already established a reputation for “brilliant cleverness, yet with depths of thought” when her godfather, wishing to help her in her career as a writer, gave her a pied-à-terre in London, a tiny flat of her own off Chancery Lane. The year 1913 when Rose was dividing her time between the settled home at Cambridge and her exciting new life in London was a year of such happiness that she later called it her Annus Mirabilis.