_Thursday, May_ 6_th._
Riley talked of music, Wagner, _Parsifal._ He quoted some Frenchman who
said that _Parsifal_ was "_moins beau que n'importe quelle Messe Basse
dans n'importe quelle Église_." I said that I had never been to a Low
Mass in my life, but that I disliked the music at most High Masses I had
attended. I said I disliked Wagner, especially _Parsifal_. He said he
agreed about Wagner, but I did not understand what the Frenchman had
meant. I confessed I did not. He said: "It is like comparing a
description of something to the reality." I told him that I envied
people who were born Catholics, but I did not think it was a thing you
could become. He said it was not like becoming a Mussulman. He was
simply going back to the older tradition of his country, to what
Melanchthon and Dr Johnson called and what in the Highlands they still
call the Old Religion. I told him that I had once heard a man say,
talking of becoming a Roman Catholic, "if I could tell the first lie,
all the rest would be easy and follow naturally down to scapulars and
Holy Water."
_Friday, May_ 7_th._
Riley left this morning. He has gone back to Paris. He is not going to
take any immediate step.
_Sunday, May_ 9_th_
I went to see Mrs Housman yesterday afternoon. I told her what Riley had
told me. I asked her if she thought people could _become_ Roman
Catholics if they were not born so. She said she wished that she had not
been born a Catholic so as she might have become one. She envied those
who could make the choice. I asked her if she did not consider there was
something unreal about converts. She said she thought English converts
were in a very difficult situation which required the utmost tact. Many
perhaps lacked this tact. She said that in Canada and America, where she
had lived most of her life, the anti-Catholic prejudice as it existed in
England did not exist, at any rate it was not of the same kind. "The
nursery anti-Catholic tradition doesn't exist there."
She asked me what I had advised Riley to do. I told her I had dissuaded
him from taking such a step and had begged him to wait. She said: "If he
is to become a Catholic there will be a moment when he will not be able
to help it. Faith is a gift. People do not become Catholics under the
influence of people or books, although people and books may sometimes
help or sometimes hinder, but because they are pulled over by an
invisible rope---what we call _Grace_."
I told her I would find it difficult to believe that a man like Riley
would believe what he would have to believe. She asked me whether I
found it difficult to believe that she accepted the dogmas of the
Church. I said I was convinced she believed what she professed, but that
I thought that born Catholics believed things in a different way than we
did. I did not believe that this could be learnt by converts.
She said I probably thought that Catholics believed all sorts of things
which they did not believe. Such at least was her experience of English
Protestants, who seemed to imbibe curious traditions in the nursery, on
the subject.
I asked her if Mr Housman believed in Catholic dogma. She said: "Albert
has been baptized and brought up as a Catholic, but he is an Agnostic.
He is very charitable towards Catholic institutions."
She asked me more about Riley and whether he had any Catholic friends. I
said: "Not to my knowledge." "Poor man, I am afraid he will be very
lonely," she said.
She said that she herself knew hardly any Catholics in England, that is
to say she had no real Catholic friends, and that she felt as if she
were living in perpetual exile.
"You see," she said, "your friend ought to realise that he will have to
face the prejudice and the dislike not only of narrow-minded people but
of very nice intelligent and broad-minded people, who agree with you
about almost everything else. The Church has always been hated from the
beginning, and it always will be hated. In the past it was people like
Marcus Aurelius who carried out the worst persecutions and hated the
Church most bitterly with the very best intentions, and it is in a
different way just the same now."
I said that to me it was an impossible mental gymnastic to think that
Catholicism was the same thing as early Christianity.
She said: "Because the tree has grown so big you think it is not the
same plant, but it is. When I go to Mass I feel as if I were looking
through the wrong end of a telescope right back into the catacombs and
farther."
I told her Riley would take no decisive step. He had promised to wait.
She said there was no harm in that. There were many other things I
wished to ask her, but A. arrived, and after talking on various topics
for a few moments I left.
_Monday, May_ 10_th._
A. told me he had been invited to dinner by Aunt Ruth next Thursday and
that he was going. He asked me whether I was invited. I said I was
invited.
_Tuesday, May_ 11_th._
Cunninghame said he was dining at the Housmans' to-night.
_Wednesday, May_ 12_th._
I asked C. whether he had enjoyed his dinner. He said it was very
pleasant, but that the music was too classical for his taste. A. was not
there.
_Thursday, May_ 13_th._
I dined last night with A. in his flat. Nobody but ourselves. A. played
the pianola after dinner. He said I must come and stay with him in the
country soon. He would try and get the Housmans to come too.
_Friday, May_ 14_th._
A. dined with Uncle Arthur and Aunt Ruth. So did I. It was a dinner for
the American Ambassador. I sat next to a Miss Audrey Bax, a lady of
decided views and picturesque appearance. She talked about Joan of Arc,
and asked me whether I had read Anatole France's book about her. I said
I had not, but I had read an English translation of Joan of Arc's trial
which I thought one of the most impressive records I had ever read. She
said: "Ah, you like the stained-glass-window point of view about those
sort of people." I was rather nettled and said I preferred facts to
fiction. I thought Joan of Arc as she appeared in her trial was a very
sensible as well as being a very remarkable person. She had not read
this. She said Anatole France told one all one wanted to know from a
rational point of view. It was a comfort to read common-sense about this
sort of hallucinated people. A man who was sitting opposite her joined
eagerly in the conversation, and said that the two people in the whole
of history who had made the finest defence when tried were Mary Queen
of Scots and Joan of Arc. Miss Bax said she supposed he looked upon Mary
Queen of Scots as a martyred saint. The other man, whose name I found
out afterwards was Ashfield, an American who is now at the American
Embassy, said that he regarded Mary Queen of Scots as a woman who was
tried for her life and who had defended herself without lawyers without
making a single mistake under the most difficult circumstances. He said
he had been a lawyer, and spoke from a lawyer's point of view. Miss Bax
went back to Joan of Arc and Anatole France and said his book was as
important a work as Renan's _Vie de Jésus_. Mr Ashfield said he thought
that work no improvement on the Gospel. I said I had not read it. Miss
Bax again said that if we preferred sentimental traditions we were at
liberty to do so. She preferred rational writers untainted by
superstition. Ashfield said he regarded Renan as a sentimental writer.
Miss Bax said: "No doubt you prefer Dean Farrar." Ashfield said he did
not think Renan's book was a more successful attempt to rewrite the
Gospels than Dean Farrar's although it was better written. She said that
proved her point, and as she seemed satisfied, we talked of other
things. But throughout her conversation she struck me for a professed
free-thinker to be singularly dogmatic and sometimes almost fanatical.
_Saturday, May_ 15_th._
Spent the afternoon and evening with Solway at Woking but came back
after dinner.
_Sunday, May_ 16_th._
Went to see Mrs Housman in the afternoon, but she was not at home. This
is the first time she has not been at home on Sunday afternoons for a
very long time.
_Monday, May_ 17_th_.
A. said he was going to the opera to-night. Housman, whom he had seen
yesterday, had told him it would be a very fine performance.
_Tuesday, May_ 18_th._
Went to the opera in the gallery. Some fine singing. Cunninghame had
been in the Housmans' box.
_Wednesday, May_ 19_th._
Was going to dine with the Housmans to-night, but Mrs Housman is unwell.
_Thursday, May_ 20_th._
Lady Jarvis has asked me to stay with her Sunday week.
_Friday, May_ 21st.
This morning a man called Barnes came to the office. He is an
acquaintance of Cunninghame's; he is in the F.O. He talked of various
things, and then he asked Cunninghame whether he knew Mrs Housman. He
said she was playing fast and loose with A.'s affections. She was doing
it, of course, to convert him. Catholics didn't mind how immoral they
were in such a cause. He said that she was well known for it. She had
refused to marry Housman till he had been converted. He had been so much
in love with her that he could not refuse. I said that I happened to
know that Housman had been baptized a Catholic when he was born.
Cunninghame bore me out and said it was all nonsense about A. He was
sure Catholicism had nothing to do with it. He knew Mrs Housman quite
well and she had never mentioned it to him. Barnes said we could say
what we liked, but all London was talking of A.'s unfortunate passion
and Mrs H.'s behaviour.
"One sees them everywhere together," he said.