_Thursday, June_ 16_th._
Dined with Aunt Ruth. Gertrude and Edmund were there. Edmund said to
Aunt Ruth that he had heard the Caryls were in London. Aunt Ruth said
she had no idea of this, and she would ask them to dinner next Thursday.
Aunt Ruth asked a good many diplomats to meet Edmund, and they had a
long talk after dinner about their posts. They called Edmund their
"_Cher collègue_." Edmund enjoyed himself immensely. Uncle Arthur cannot
bear him, nor, indeed, any diplomats, and it is, I think, the chief
cross of his life that Aunt Ruth asks so many of them to dinner.
Aunt Ruth asked after A. and said that she had been to inquire.
_Friday, June_ 17_th_.
Received a letter from Mrs Housman, saying she was coming up to London
to-morrow, and was going to stay with Lady Jarvis till Monday. She would
go and see A. on Sunday afternoon if convenient. She asked me to ring up
the nurse and find out. I did so and arranged for her to call at four
o'clock.
_Saturday, June_ 18_th._
I dined with Lady Jarvis. There was no one there but Mrs Housman and
myself. Cunninghame is staying somewhere with friends of the Caryls.
_Sunday, June_ 19_th_.
I had luncheon with Aunt Ruth. Edmund and Gertrude were there, but no
one else. Edmund has been appointed to Berne. It is not what he had
hoped, but better than any of us expected. He said Berne might become a
most important post in the event of a European war.
_Monday, June_ 20_th._
Dined with the Caryls at the Ritz. Cunninghame was there and Miss
Hollystrop. Mrs Vaughan asked me whether it was true that A. had become
a Roman Catholic. She had heard Mrs Housman had converted him.
Cunninghame deftly turned the conversation on account of Mrs Caryl.
We all went to the opera--_Faust_.
_Tuesday, June_ 21_st_.
I went to see A. He told me Mrs Housman had been to see him. He is still
in bed, but looks better.
_Wednesday, June_ 22_nd_.
Barnes of the F.O. came to the office this morning. He asked after A.
He said he had heard that the real cause of his illness was his passion
for Mrs Housman, who would have nothing to do with him unless he was
converted. Cunninghame said he wondered he could talk such nonsense.
_Thursday, June_ 23_rd_.
Went to Aunt Ruth's after dinner. The Caryls were there, and Gertrude
and Edmund came after dinner. Heated arguments were going on about the
situation in Russia, Edmund taking the ultra-conservative point of view,
much to the annoyance of Aunt Ruth and Uncle Arthur, who felt even more
strongly on the matter because he thought they were discussing the
French Revolution.
_Friday, June_ 24_th_.
Dined with Lady Jarvis; she was alone. She said Mrs Housman was coming
up again to-morrow. The fact is, she says, Staines is intolerable now on
Sundays. Mrs Fairburn comes down almost every Sunday. She overwhelms
Mrs Housman with her gush and her pretended silliness. Housman thinks
her the most wonderful woman he has ever met.
_Saturday, June_ 25_th._
Went down to S---- to stay with Riley. Riley lives in a small villa
surrounded with laurels. A local magnate came to dinner, who is
suspected of being about to present some expensive masterpieces to the
public gallery.
_Sunday, June_ 26_th_.
Riley went to Mass in the morning. I sat in his smoking-room, which is a
litter of books and papers and exceedingly untidy. A geologist came to
luncheon, Professor Langer, a naturalised German. When we were walking
in the garden afterwards, he said he could not understand how Riley
reconciled his creed with plain facts of geology. But Riley's case
surprised him less than that of another of his colleagues, who was a
great authority on geology, and nevertheless a devout Catholic, and not
only never missed Mass on Sundays, but had told him, Langer, that he
fully subscribed to every point of the Catholic Faith. It was true he
was an Irishman, but politically he was not at all fanatical, and not
even a Home-Ruler.
In the afternoon we had tea with the magnate, whose house is full of
Academy pictures. I now understand what happens to that great quantity
of pictures we see once at the Academy and then never again. An art
critic was invited to tea also. He had, I believe, been invited here to
persuade the magnate in question to present some very modern piece of
art to the city. He seemed disappointed when he saw the pictures on the
walls, and when the magnate asked his opinion of a composition called _A
Love Letter_, he said he did not think the picture a very good one. The
magnate said he regretted not having bought _Home Thoughts_, by the
same painter, which was undoubtedly superior.
We dined alone, and I told Riley what Professor Langer had said. He
said: "Most Protestants, whether they have any religion or not,
attribute Protestant notions to the Catholic Church. What these people
say shows to what extent the conception of Rome has been distorted by
their being saturated with Protestant ideas. Mallock says somewhere that
the Anglicans talk of the Catholic Church as if she were a _lapsed
Protestant sect_, and they attack her for being false to what she has
never professed. He says they don't see the real difference between the
two Churches, which is not in this or that dogma, but in the authority
on which all dogma rests. The Professors you quote take for granted that
Catholics base their religion, as Protestants do, on the Bible _solely_,
and judged from that point of view she seems to them superstitious and
dishonest. But Catholics believe that Christ guaranteed infallibility
to the Church _in perpetuum: perpetual_ infallibility. Catholics
discover this not _at first_ from the Church as doctrine, but from
records as trustworthy human documents, and they believe that the Church
being perpetually infallible can only interpret the Bible in the right
way. They believe she is guided in the interpretation of the Bible by
the same Spirit which inspired the Bible. She teaches us _more_ about
the Bible. She says _this_ is what the Bible teaches."
He said: "Mallock makes a further point. It is not only Protestant
divines who talk like that. It is your advanced thinkers, men like
Langer and his colleagues. They utterly disbelieve in the Protestant
religion; they trust the Protestants in nothing else, but at the same
time they take their word for it, without further inquiry, that
Protestantism is more reasonable than Catholicism. If they have
destroyed Protestantism they conclude they must have destroyed
Catholicism _a fortiori_. With regard to Langer's geological friend, it
doesn't make a pin's difference to a Catholic whether evolution or
natural selection is true or false. Neither of these theories pretends
to explain the origin of life. Catholics believe the origin of life is
God." He had heard a priest say, not long ago: "A Catholic can believe
in evolution, and in evolution before evolution, and in evolution before
that, if he likes, but what he must believe is that God made the world
and in it _mind,_ and that at some definite moment the mind of man
rebelled against God."
_Monday, June_ 27_th_.
A. telephoned for me. I saw him this afternoon. His room was full of
flowers. He will not be allowed to get up till the end of the week. As
soon as he is allowed to go out the doctor says he ought to go away and
get some sea air. There is no question of his going to Canada. The
Housmans have asked him to go to Cornwall and he is going there as soon
as he can. He asked me when I was going. I said at the end of the month,
if that would be convenient to him.
_Tuesday, June_ 28_th._
Finished Renan's _Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse_. He says: "Je
regrettais par moments de n'être pas protestant, afin de pouvoir être
philosophe sans cesser d'être Chrétien. Puis je reconnaissais qu'il n'y
a que les Catholiques qui soient conséquents." Riley's argument. Dined
at the Club.
_Wednesday, June_ 29_th._
Dined with Hope at a restaurant in Soho. Quite a large gathering, with
no one I knew. We had dinner in a private room. Two journalists--Hoxton,
who writes in one of the Liberal newspapers, and Brice, who edits a
weekly newspaper--had a heated argument about religion. Brice is and
has always been an R.C. Hoxton's views seemed to me violent but
undefined. He said, as far as I understood, that the Eastern Church was
far nearer to early Christian tradition than the Western Church, and
that by not defining things too narrowly and by not having an infallible
Pope the Greeks had an inexpressible advantage over the Romans. Upon
which someone else who was there said that the Greeks believed in the
infallibility of the First Seven Councils; they believed their decisions
to be as infallible as any papal utterance, and that dogma had been
defined once and for all by the Councils. Brice said this was quite
true, and while the Greeks had shut the door, the Catholic Church had
left the door open. Besides which, he argued, what was the result of the
action of the Greeks? Look at the Russian Church. As soon as it was
separated it gave birth to another schism and that schism resulted in
the rise of about a hundred religions, one of which had for one of its
tenets that children should be strangled at their birth so as to
inherit the Kingdom of Heaven without delay. That, said Brice, is the
result of schism.
The other man said that there was no religion so completely under the
control of the Government as the Russian. The Church was ultimately in
the hands of gendarmes. Hoxton said that in spite of schisms, and in
spite of anything the Government might do, the Eastern Church retained
the early traditions of Christianity. Therefore, if an Englishman wanted
to become a Catholic, it was absurd for him to become a Roman Catholic.
He should first think of joining the Eastern Church and becoming a Greek
Catholic. The other man, whose name I didn't catch, asked why, in that
case, did Russian philosophers become Catholics and why did Solovieff,
the Russian philosopher, talk of the pearl Christianity having
unfortunately reached Russia smothered under the dust of Byzantium?
Brice said the Greek Church was schismatic and the Anglican Church was
heretical and that was the end of the matter. Hoxton said: "My
philosophy is quite as good as yours." Brice said it was a pity he could
neither define nor explain his philosophy. Hope, who was bored by the
whole argument, turned the conversation on to the Russian stage.
_Thursday, June_ 30_th._
Dined with Aunt Ruth. After dinner I sat next to a Russian diplomatist
who knew Riley. He said he was glad he had become a Catholic--he himself
was Orthodox. He evidently admired the Catholic religion. He said, among
other things, how absurd it was to think that such floods of ink had
been used to prove the Gospel of St John had not been written by St
John. He said, even if it wasn't, the Church has said it was written by
St John for over a thousand years. She has made it her own. He himself
saw no reason to think it was not written by St John. Uncle Arthur, who
caught the tail end of this conversation, said the authorship of _John
Peel_ was a subject of much dispute. Gertrude wasn't there; they have
gone to the country.
_Friday, July_ 1_st_.
Dined with Lady Jarvis. Cunninghame was there and a large gathering of
people. More people came after dinner and there was music, but such a
crowd that I could not get near enough to listen so I gave it up and
stayed in another room. Lady Jarvis told me Mrs Housman is going down to
Cornwall next Monday.
_Saturday, July_ 30_th. Grey Farm, Carbis Bay._
Arrived this evening after a hot and disagreeable journey. The Housmans
are here alone. Housman goes back to London on Tuesday. A. is coming
down here as soon as he is fit to travel. He is still very weak.
_Sunday, July_ 31_st_.
The Housmans went to Mass. Father Stanway came to luncheon. He said he
had been giving instruction to an Indian boy who is being brought up as
an R.C. I asked him if it was difficult for an Indian to understand
Christian dogma. Father Stanway said that the child had amazed him. He
had been telling him about the Trinity and the Indian had said to him:
"I see--ice, snow, rain--all water."
_Monday, August_ 1_st_.
Housman played golf. Mrs Housman took me to the cliffs and began reading
out _Les Misérables_, which I have never read.
_Tuesday, August_ 2_nd_.
Housman left early this morning. We sat on the beach and read _Les
Misérables_.
_Wednesday, August_ 3_rd_.
Lady Jarvis arrives to-morrow. We continued _Les Misérables_ in the
afternoon and after dinner. Mrs Housman said that some conversations and
the reading of certain passages in books were like _events_. Once or
twice in her life she had come across sentences in a book which,
although they had nothing extraordinary about them and expressed things
anyone might have thought or said, were like a revelation, or a
solution, and seemed to be written in letters of flame and had a
permanent effect on her whole life; one such sentence was the following
from _Les Misérables_: "Ne craignons jamais les voleurs ni les
meurtriers. Ce sont là les dangers du dehors, les petits dangers.
Craignons nous-mêmes. Les préjugés, voila les voleurs; les vices, voila
les meurtriers. Les grands dangers sont au dedans de nous. Qu'importe ce
qui menace notre tête ou notre bourse!" She said: "Of course this has
never prevented me from feeling frightened when I hear a scratching
noise in the night. That paralyses me with terror."
_Thursday, August_ 4_th._
We continued our reading. The weather has been propitious. Lady Jarvis
arrived in the evening. We continued our reading after dinner.
_Friday, August_ 5_th._
A. arrived this evening. He was exhausted after the journey and went to
bed at once. Housman arrives to-morrow--he is only staying till Monday.
_Saturday, August_ 6_th._
A. sat in the garden and Mrs Housman read out some stories by H.G. Wells
from a book called _The Plattner Story,_ which we all enjoyed.
Housman arrived in the evening. A. is not yet strong enough to walk. He
sits in the garden all day. The weather is perfectly suited to an
invalid.
_Sunday, August_ 7_th._
Housman invited Father Stanway to luncheon. He and Housman talked of
politicians and popularity and the Press and to what extent their
reputation depended on it. Housman said it was death to a politician not
to be mentioned. A politician needed popularity among the public as much
as an actor did. Father Stanway said it was a double-edged weapon and
that those who lived by it risked perishing by it. Housman said
Gladstone and Beaconsfield had lived by it successfully. Father Stanway
said it depends whether you want to be famous or whether you want to get
things done. A man can do anything in the world if he doesn't mind not
getting the credit for it. Father Stanway said nobody realised this
better than Lord Beaconsfield. He said somewhere that it was private
life that governs the world and that the more you were talked about the
less powerful you were.
A. is a little better. I went for a walk with Father Stanway in the
afternoon. I asked him a few questions about the system of Confession.
He said the Sacrament of Penance was a Divine Institution. I asked him
if the practice did not lead to the shirking of responsibility and the
dulling of the conscience on the part of those who went to Confession.
He said Confession was not an opiate but a sharp and bitter medicine,
disagreeable to take but leaving a clean after-taste in the mouth I gave
him a hypothetical case of a man being in love with a Catholic married
woman. If the woman was a practising Catholic and faithful to her
husband, and if she continued to be friends with the man who was in love
with her, would she confess her conduct and, if so, would the priest
approve of the conduct? Father Stanway said it was difficult to judge
unless one knew the whole facts. If the woman knew she was acting in a
way which might lead to sin or even to scandal--that is to say, in a way
which would have a bad effect on others--she would be bound to confess
it. If a woman asked him his advice in such a case he would strongly
advise her to put an end to the relationship. I said: "You wouldn't
forbid it?" He said: "The Church forbids sin, and penitents when they
receive Absolution undertake to avoid the occasions of sin." He said he
could not tell me more without knowing more of the facts. Cases were
sometimes far more complicated than they appeared to be, but however
complicated they were, there was no doubt as to the attitude of the
Church towards that kind of sin and to the advisability of avoiding
occasions that might bring it about.
_Monday, August_ 8_th._
Housman went back to London. Cunninghame arrives to-morrow. A. walked as
far as the beach this morning. In the afternoon Lady Jarvis took him for
a drive. Mrs Housman went into the town to do some shopping.
_Tuesday, August_ 9_th._
We all went for a drive in a motor to a village with a curious name and
had tea in a farm-house. Cunninghame arrived in time for dinner. He has
been staying at Cowes.
_Letter from Guy Cunninghame to Mrs Caryl_
CARBIS BAY,
_Wednesday, August_ 10_th_.