Just a bit more on this novel, about which I wrote yesterday.
As I said there, I was surprised to encounter Catholic themes and characters. They are important, but not exactly at the center at all times. Their perspectives and odd choices are described, commented upon and discussed, but from the outside, as it were – even though Frankau herself was a Catholic convert. These characters’ perspectives and counter-cultural choices impact the course of the story, but we observe them from an outsider’s narrative perspective.
It is almost as if it gives the “insider” – the reader who might be Catholic herself – the perspective of – Oh, this is how it looks to the world. Or, more powerfully – This is how it could look to the world if I actually took all of this seriously and lived it.
It happens here and there, mostly in conversations. I can only say so much about the specifics, because to do more would, indeed, be to spoil the experience, and if you’re interested at all in reading this novel, I certainly don’t want to do that.
I’ll just highlight a couple of conversations and moments that are possible to bring out without spoiling. For example this:
“What subject did you choose?” she asked, looking at me. The turn of her neck made the ‘prim swan’, but there was something pointed and Spanish in the face; a medallion’s look. I explored for a moment the thought of people who looked more interesting than they were.
I said, “It’s on Penitence.”
She was surprised: “Penitence? What made you choose that?”
The memory of the humiliating talk disturbed me still. “Well, Crusoe did, really,” I mumbled. “We were discussing what one was sorry for, and who one was sorry to.” At the grammar he put his hands over his ears.
Mrs. Irvine continued to look puzzled and interested. But I was playing the conversation back. It had happened in the circular panelled room with the books; a bright day and his eyes were hurting him, so the curtains were drawn at the windows. I had just finished eating an enormous tea. I was enlarging upon a row at home.
“And every time I fight, I feel mean to them afterwards. I’m eaten with remorse.”
“You needn’t niggle around with remorse,” said Crusoe.
“Don’t all decent sinners suffer from it?”
“On the contrary. Decent sinners, given time, become penitent. From penitence you can at least learn something. Remorse is sheer indulgence; threshing about in a self-made trap. Going back over it all, trying to pretend that it didn’t happen; or that it happened quite differently; excusing yourself and cursing yourself by turns. All going in, d’you see?—instead of out. Just battering up against the walls of your own ego.”
I like that very much – remorse is pointless and self-indulgent. Penitence is God-centered and oriented towards actual change and growth.
Near the end, one of the characters ends up in the situation of being nearby during the health crisis of a person she doesn’t like very much, and in fact, sees as an enemy of sorts. In the beginning, her assistance in the situation is essential, but as the hours pass, it is less so – but she sticks around anyway. Her only task at that point is to make sure a priest gets to the hospital. That happens, but still – she stays. Something keeps her there.
I said, “Is it all right? I mean . . .” my words trailed.
“She’s still in the operating-theatre,” said Father Briggs. “Awful time you’re having. Shall we go in here?” It was the waiting-room; green leatherette chairs and a green leatherette sofa; white walls; a gas-fire.
Father Briggs shut the door behind him. “Got to wait a little while,” he said and patted the poodles’ heads. “Pretty, aren’t they? How old?”
“I don’t know. They are hers.”
“Your friend’s, you mean?”
He offered me a cigarette. I took it because it was something to do. He said, “We might as well sit down.” He reminded me of the more sober young men at Oxford, solemn and round, with an educated twinkle. It is, I thought, an essentially English pattern.
I was embarrassed, saying, “Look—forgive my asking. You couldn’t do it now, go into the theatre and do it?”
“Goodness me, no. Wouldn’t be allowed. I’d have to be disinfected and decontaminated and Lord knows what all—imagine. We never do.” He crossed his short legs and looked at me sympathetically. “It’ll be quite all right; just as soon as she comes out.”
“Can you give her Absolution if she’s unconscious?”
“Oh yes; conditional Absolution, and I’ll anoint her. Don’t worry about that.”
“And if she’s dead?”
“Same thing,” he said. “There’ll be time. . . . It’s all very simple really. It was she who sent for me, wasn’t it? Not you yourself?”
“Oh no. I’m not a Catholic, Father. She thought of it.”
“Well then, her dispositions are good,” said Father Briggs, sounding as though he were talking of her heart, lungs or liver. “So we needn’t worry about anything. Just leave it all to Almighty God. You’re staying near here?”
I explained what had happened. He looked sympathetic again, particularly when I got to the luggage. “Good gracious . . . what can you do about that?”
“Just wait.” I said. “I can get it in the morning.”
“But where’ll you spend the night?”
He seemed cheered by the fact of Aunt Anne. He offered to look after the dogs while I telephoned her, but I said I would rather wait until I knew what was happening. “Awful for you, really,” he said. “Only possible way I can help is with the dog food. I’ve got a Welsh Corgi. So if you’d like to bring them back——” He looked at his watch. “Seven-twenty now. I don’t suppose they’ll be much longer.”
We lapsed into what seemed an endless silence. I knew suddenly that I was tired.
“Wish you’d telephone that aunt of yours,” said Father Briggs.
“I’d rather wait, please. Till I know.”
He smiled at me, “Is she a very old friend, the patient? Forgive my saying so—you look too young to have a very old friend.”
“She isn’t my friend at all.”
“Eh?” said Father Briggs.
I twisted my fingers together. “I know it looks like that, but it isn’t like that. I may shock you,” I said, “but the truth is I want her to die.”
He said mildly, “Oh? Why? Don’t you like her?”
“No. I hate her.”
“Got rather a funny way of showing it, haven’t you?”
If I had to describe the most commonly-shared trait of Priests in Mid-Century Anglosphere Literature – it would probably be matter-of-factness. They all are deeply aware of sin and weakness and of the fallen state of the world, but they don’t stress about it – they simply use the powerful tools at their disposal – their presence, their prayer, their sacramental actions – to bring Christ into the situation. There’s a humility, an acceptance of life as it is and their role in it, combined with an understanding that this role they’ve accepted is essential, but the outcome isn’t dependent on them. There’s just a sense of something bigger, objectively true and good that’s ultimately in control.
This attitude can, of course, slide into indifference and laziness – and I don’t think that’s ignored, either. But this quality – personified best, perhaps, in the old priest who regularly visits the bedridden woman at the end of O’Connor’s The Displaced Person – explaining the dogmas of the Church. There’s only so much he can do, he’s obliged to do it, and so he does – accepting that yes, this is all he can do.
“Well there we are,” said Father Briggs. “She’ll be all right now. What about your aunt? Could I drive you over?” He was leading me down the corridor. I hung back. I had forgotten the number of her room. The corridor was darkened. We came to the lighted window at the end where the night-sister on duty was sitting.
“Father.”
“Yes?” I could see his spectacles glimmering as he turned to me.
“I think I’d rather stay here.”
“No toothbrush,” said Father Briggs constructively.
“Mouthwash. In a hospital. Sure to be.”
“What have you got against your aunt? Hate her too?”
“No, it isn’t that. It just seems so awful to leave redacted here alone all night.”
“She’s got her nurse. And God. Or don’t you count Him?” He patted my shoulder, “Not fair to tease you, is it? I don’t believe they’ll let you stay.”
“If you ask them, they will.”
He didn’t argue. He ducked into the night-sister’s office. “All right,” he said, coming out. “As she’s on the danger-list. They’ll fix you up with some blankets in the waiting-room. But I insist on your coming back to the Presbytery with me and having some supper.”
I hesitated. “It’s kind of you, but——”
“Got to feed those dogs, now, haven’t you?”
“Supposing she dies while we’re having supper?”
“A lot of people,” said Father Briggs, “will die while we’re having supper.”
And now for the author:
Here’s a biography of her – you can find others elsewhere. She came from a family of artists, had a long-term love affair with a man in the 1930’s, was briefly married after the war, had a baby who died, and had a number of intense relationships with women which are ambiguous in nature, ultimately – not ambiguous in their singularity and connection, but in the way they would be defined in 2021. The Wikipedia entry defines them as “lesbian relationships,” and they certainly seem that way to me, but other material is less definitive. It was, in fact, the woman in the first of these relationships who inspired her to become Catholic and indeed acted as her sponsor. And given the seriousness of spiritual themes in Frankau’s works after her conversion – yes, there’s space for ambiguity.
***
To live in this world, believing sometimes beyond all sense, that we come from and our journeying towards the One who is eternal solidity, reality, truth and love, believing that He has entered our world in solid, real, truthful and loving ways – realistic about ourselves, accepting both our limitations and the solidity of that Rock? Accepting what can and must change – and accepting that there is One who doesn’t? Being reassured, frustrated, alienated and comforted by these realities, all at the same time?
That, it seems to me, is the essence of How to Catholic, then and now.
Charlotte was Both 