In This House of Brede

4 She was Brede’s thirteenth abbess. “Perhaps there is something in numbers,” said Dame Domitilla. “The election was on the thirteenth; you started with thirteen votes.”

“Yes, it’s an augury,” said Dame Perpetua, her face beaming; Dame Catherine knew, without being told, that Dame Perpetua’s vote had been hers from the start. Thirteen abbesses— a long line, stretching from Dame Elizabeth Paget, first abbess of the house of Our Lady of Peace, little England, at Beauvais in France, to Abbess Hester Cunningham Proctor, and now thirteenth, and least, thought Dame Catherine, I. The nuns of Brede traced their origins back to an ancient and proud tradition. “There were Benedictine nuns in England in the seventh century,” said Dame Agnes; houses at Folkestone, Whitby, Minster, Ely, and Barking. When these were sequestered at the Reformation the nuns were scattered, but their traditions were handed down in the old Catholic families, from aunts to nieces, old cousins to young cousins, godmothers to goddaughters, in the faithful, persistent way of women, until, in

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the seventeenth century, a little band of them emerged, driven to new boldness. Nine resolute young women escaped from England, “at the risk of their lives,” Dame Ursula would impress on each succeeding novitiate, “and led by a Lady Elizabeth Paget, opened a house at Beauvais in northern France.” She turned to Hilary. “Am I right in thinking your family are offshoots of those Northumberland Pagets?”

“Yes, the Dalrymples,” said Hilary. “Perhaps I am a great, great—I don’t know how many greats—a very distant cousin of that Elizabeth.” Those nine young nuns had called their house Our Lady of Peace, a touchingly confident name for those perilous times.

For the next 170 years other adventurous young women, traveling in secret, had found their way from England and Scotland to Beauvais. They often brought their maids and dependents with them, from whom an equally sturdy lay sistership grew up. “But choir and lay have always worked together,” said Dame Ursula, “as they do now. Everyone has always shared the burden of the work of house and garden.” Indeed, the choir nuns provided the, as it were, unskilled labor because they went to help where necessary, often working under a lay sister expert in charge of kitchen, laundry, poultry, or garden. “And you don’t know,” Dame Ursula said, “what a profound effect it has on people, to see a young noblewoman working in the kitchen, a scholar laboring and doing exactly what she is told in the

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vegetable garden. In those days, gentlewomen didn’t do such things. We were revolutionary.”

Though Beauvais was in France, the house was firmly English; only English and Latin were spoken. The “little England” of Beauvais lived up to its name; it gained a reputation for beauty and peace, a place of quiet and culture in the troubled times, but, “In human life, peace is transient,” this was Dame Catherine, who taught church history in the novitiate. “We may enjoy a little pocket of peace, vouchsafed for a while, but no one should count on it.” The French Revolution was at its height in 1793 when the Beauvais house, like most religious houses, was seized and its nuns imprisoned.

“You may wonder,” said Dame Ursula, “why our abbess, for her pectoral cross, wears that humble little wooden one on a cord. You would expect it to be a gold cross, inlaid or set with amethysts, and once upon a time our abbess wore a cross like that, but it was seized in those troubles. Mother’s cross, rough and humble as it is, was made by a princess, the Princess Marie Hortense of Savoy, who was in that prison with our nuns. She carved this little wooden cross with her penknife from pieces of a broken chair and, on the morning that the tumbrel came to fetch her for the guillotine, she gave it to our then abbess, Lady Abbess Flavia Vaux, and said, ‘I give you the most valuable thing I possess.’ She could not say more because of the guards, but think of it,” said Dame Catherine. “For a princess

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the most valuable thing she possessed was a rough little cross.

Mademoiselle, as they called her, was guillotined the same day, so you can see why that cross is so eloquent, and more precious to us than gold. Our abbesses have worn it ever since.”

The Beauvais nuns would have gone to the guillotine, too, if Robespierre had not died; the fanaticism waned, and they were released on condition they left France. They decided to come to England in spite of danger. “There was nowhere else for us to go—and, half-starved, ragged, and penniless, twentyseven of us landed at Dover.” Only twenty-seven out of thirtyeight; eleven had died of malnutrition and prison fever; one, an old nun, Dame Benedicta Laidlaw, had died of a heart attack when the Beauvais house was invaded; one nun, trundled off the boat on a handcart, was paralyzed. “It was a terrible time,” Dame Ursula said when, at recreation, the novitiate talked over Dame Catherine’s lesson. “Nobody wanted us, most people were afraid of us, but the spirit was wonderful, and it was here in this district of downs and marshes on the borders of Sussex and Kent that—after several tries—we found a home.” “You know the portrait that hangs in the refectory,” Dame Catherine had said. “It is Elinor Hartshorn’s. She allowed us, not to buy Brede Abbey—many people then would not sell to nuns—but gave it to us. We had to keep it a secret though; Dom Aidan Pattinson, who came to see her for us over arrangements, had to come disguised as a country squire, and it was still years

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before we could bring back our customs and wear the habit.

When that was possible we had not even a pattern and had to write to Arras; the Arras nuns, bless them, sent a complete habit and cowl for the abbess. More years went by before we could put up the ‘grates,’ as they called our grilles, and have true enclosure, enclosure for life in this house.”

Dame Ursula’s first lesson to any postulant was on the meaning of that enclosure. She gave these lesson talks three times weekly to the novitiate. “They go on forever.” Hilary warned Cecily. “Dame Clare’s are far more pithy.”

“You have to know all these things,” said Dame Ursula, “because you, in your turn, will have to pass them on.” It was like a torch that went from hand to hand—and there was much to learn.

“It will be some time before you take any vows,” Dame Ursula always said. “Maybe a long time, but you must understand them.” “Understand what we are in for,” muttered Hilary.

“We Benedictines do not take the same vows as other orders: poverty, chastity, and obedience. For us, our first vow is of stability, stability to our chosen house. St. Benedict laid down,” said Dame Ursula, “that a monastery should be as self-contained as possible, with its own farm and orchard, its vegetable garden, poultry, and, in the old days, its watermill; its own bakery, its weaving, bookmaking—handwritten then,

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now it is printing—so that ‘its members should have no need to go abroad,’ ” she quoted, “ ‘which in no way can be good for them.’ ” The second vow was the famous Benedictine “conversion of manners.” “I’m glad you teach them manners,” Mrs. Scallon had said. “Young people’s manners are deplorable these days.”

“Which of course isn’t true,” said Dame Ursula. “Many of you have excellent manners.”

Conversion of manners, though, meant far more than that; it was an entirely different way of thinking from the world’s, “and turns your ideas topsy-turvy,” said Hilary: self-effacement instead of self-aggrandizement; listening instead of talking; not having instead of having; voluntary poverty. “They are dear, good girls,” Dame Ursula often said of the novitiate—it did not matter which novitiate—“If only they wouldn’t be so ardent. They want to sleep on planks, go barefoot, which isn’t necessary, but they won’t use up a reel of thread, or make a pencil last, or darn or patch, which is necessary,” and, “What is the use,” she said to Philippa, “of taking a vow of poverty if you look to the house to provide you lavishly with everything you need?” Philippa had to smile at the thought of Brede being lavish. “And our poverty,” Dame Ursula taught, “doesn’t simply mean doing without—a great many poor people are niggardly hoarders; it means being willing to empty yourself, be denuded, giving and giving up.”

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“Think of all you gave up to come here,” Cecily said to Philippa; her brown eyes were again bright with admiration.

“Yes, a cat and a clock and some dear little sins.”

“The newspapers said far more than that.” Cecily was indignant.

“Did they now? Do you believe all you read in the papers?”

“Don’t tease. You wouldn’t joke if you knew how they helped me,” said Cecily. “My mother was impressed. You gave up all that.”

“And what did you give?” Philippa was serious again. “You and Sister Hilary and Sister Constance and Sister Louise? I was like an orchard where the fruit is ripe, but some has fallen in windfalls, some been spoiled by wasps, some sold”—Philippa’s voice was low—“or given away or wasted. The owner comes and gathers what is left and gives it to God. That’s what anyone does who gives up in the fullness of her life, leaves it for him; but the one who comes at nineteen or twenty or even twentythree,” she said, looking at Cecily, “give the whole orchard, blossom and fruit and all.”

There were grounds for Philippa’s regrets. Dame Agnes, too, was worried. “She is extremely mature in the worldly world,” said Dame Agnes, “but a beginner in ours. Ideally the two should mature together; if they don’t, there is this unevenness, so difficult to redress. Can anyone ever really start again?”

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“Sister Philippa is making a valiant try,” Dame Clare defended her.

“I grant you that, but for her it is far more difficult than for anyone less gifted; just because she is so unusually capable and with so many resources, there must always be this instinct to decide, to settle matters for herself, be reserved. A religious must reserve nothing,” said Dame Agnes.

There was always this emphasis on giving—being fit to give.

“A monastery or convent is not a refuge for misfits or a dumping ground for the unintelligent,” Abbess Hester had often said, “nor for a rebound from an unhappy love affair—though a broken heart can often find healing in one of the active orders, it will not do for us—nor are we for the timid wanting security nor the ambitious wanting a career,” and, “Anyone who comes here with the idea of getting something is bound to fail,” Dame Ursula warned all her postulants.

“But every human motive is, in some sense to get, to find,” Philippa would have argued, “if only satisfaction.” Yet the paradox remained: Only by giving completely was there any hope of finding.

“Have you told me everything?” Abbess Hester had asked Philippa in her days of candidature.

“No, Mother.”

The abbess had not questioned further. She had only said, “You will.”

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The third vow was obedience, “and you don’t know what you are in for when you take that,” said the nuns. Obedience was the rub for them all—all through their religious lives. It must, too, be prompt and wholehearted, “which means what it says,” said Dame Clare, “doing what is asked of you with your whole heart, even if you don’t like it, even if you can’t agree.

It’s not blind obedience,” she said. “You cannot be asked to do anything you know is wrong, such as telling a lie, or hurting someone. It is submitting your will, even when it goes against the grain; giving up your judgment and accepting your superiors’—even such a weak superior as I,” said Dame Clare. “Our abbess, we believe, is the representative of Christ—God. It is in her name, ‘abbess,’ from ‘Abba,’ Father. That is why we hold her in such reverence; kneel to her, make the deep bow when we pass or meet her.”

“And she will be abbess for life,” said Cecily. “It must be terrifying.”

“Domina Catherina Ismay Abbatissa electa est.” Dame Catherine had had to step out of her stall as Dame Agnes bowed before her; step out of it forever, though that realization had not come to her then, and go to the wicket, where she had knelt, thankful to kneel, while the abbot president confirmed her as abbess in the name of the Holy See, giving her the pectoral cross, the ring, the seal, and the keys of the monastery. The bellringer

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had slipped up to the bell tribune to set the bells ringing; the doors were unlocked, and the claustral sisters and novitiate trooped in.

Dame Agnes led the new abbess to the abbatial chair, its mourning gone now, as the president intoned the Te Deum and the nuns took it up. Can they feel thankfulness and praise for this? Dame Catherine had wondered, but the voices had been strong and clear as if shaken into vigor after the days of hesitancy. The very newness of the idea of Abbess Catherine Ismay had shaken them. Then, one by one, Dame Perpetua first, the nuns had come, each kneeling and putting her hands between Abbess Catherine’s, to show fealty, homage, obedience, and to be given the Kiss of Peace. Peace and love to each; she had tried to show it, but what must Dame Maura be feeling as she knelt to her? Or Dame Agnes, those great nuns?

She had been heartened by Dame Perpetua’s open approval, the gladness in Dame Beatrice’s eyes, the delight in Philippa’s.

Then Dame Perpetua, acting for the prioress, had led Abbess Catherine up to the abbess’s rooms, the whole community following. As they reached the top of the stairs, they had heard the sound of castors; Sister Ellen and Sister Stephanie were wheeling away Abbess Hester’s small bed, bringing in a larger one. The homely sound had seemed suddenly to crystallize the morning’s happenings, make them positive. Then I’m not dreaming, thought Abbess Catherine.

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The rooms themselves were ready, the larger study swept and polished as only Sister Ellen could polish; a fire was burning, fresh flowers had been put in the bracket vase on the wall, clean paper in the blotter. But these are all Mother’s, Abbess Catherine had wanted to cry. How can they be for me? and her own voice had answered, “Not for you. For the Abbess of Brede.” The prie-dieu was in an alcove that made a small oratory—I should feel Mother’s spirit there. It was not the utilitarian prie-dieu they all had in their cells, with its shelf for books, a top that opened like a desk, a cupboard with shelves below; even the kneeling board lifted to show a space where each nun kept her cleaning things: a tin of polish, scouring powder, shoe blacking. An abbess would have no need of such things—she had not time for them—and this prie-dieu was handsome, of oak with a kneeling cushion—Mother needed that; her knees were old; for me it should be taken away. Dame Catherine’s few books were already on the shelves, her one picture hung on the wall, though Sir Basil’s Madonna was still over the fireplace. “Then my things have been moved already,” she had said, dazed. “Of course,” said Dame Perpetua. “We look after you now. I’ll leave you,” she said, “until it’s time for Sext. I expect you would like to be alone for a little,” and she had given the deep bow before she went respectfully away. The bow was like a blow. Abbess Catherine had shivered and fled to the small Chapel of the Crown of Thorns that opened out of the choir.

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The nuns saw her go, and Dame Beatrice guarded the door as Abbess Catherine fell on her knees close to the chapel grille.

“I can’t. I can’t,” she had cried silently; her face hot though her knees and feet and hands were cold. “I can’t.”

Dame Catherine had a brother who, like Sister Julian’s, was a monk, but ordained priest when he was still very young, and a bishop now. When they were children, Mark and Catherine had taken a vow together. “Whatever you do, I will do, too.

Whatever you are, I will be, too.” Mark had been ten, Catherine six, and she could remember how, sitting up in one bed, they had pricked their wrists with Mark’s penknife and held the two together so that their blood could mingle. “It’s a blood vow,” Mark had said solemnly. He was a Benedictine novice while she was still at school; then, for her, there had been Paris, further study in Rome, and when at last she had come home, she had still dallied, just staying at home, playing tennis, picnicking, going to every party and dance she could. Had her father and mother, Dame Catherine often wondered afterward, been trying to tempt her away from religious life—she was their only daughter—or had they been testing her vocation? Had she herself been trying to stifle the call that matched Mark’s? It was odd, she thought, that she who was so shy had, in those last months in the outer world, been almost feverishly gay.

One night—it was in June—she had gone to a dance at the big house of the village, she, the doctor’s daughter. She

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had always loved dancing; like many large people she was light on her feet—and I had danced myself giddy that night and had come home at three in the morning. She could still see every detail of her coming in: the color of her dress, dark-gold satin—an odd choice for a girl—but it set off her white skin and the chestnut of her hair; the necklace she had borrowed from her mother rose and fell with her excited breathing. She had almost gotten engaged that night. The hall was dim, the moonlight fell through the open window, warm moonlight, and then Catherine had seen a line of light under the surgery door. It was not her father, she knew; it was Mark, home for a few days, but still working. Mark! She had not spoken but, as if he answered her, the door had opened and he had come out, holding his book. His face, so young, looked tired but exalted, the young Catherine had thought, and as satisfied as if he had been drinking at some refreshing spring! “He shall be as a tree planted by running water,” she had found herself thinking; she had looked at his black tunic and cincture, and her own dress had suddenly seemed tawdry.

Her eyes had begun to burn, her heart to pound. Mark had been unaware. He was smiling at the sight of her. He thought I looked radiant, remembered Abbess Catherine. He should have seen his own radiance! “Was it wonderful?” he had asked, and Catherine had answered, “Yes,” and then said what she knew had been beating in her brain all evening, all night—and all

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the months before, months she had spent running round and round and round—“It was wonderful, but no place for me.”

“What you do, I shall do, too. Whatever you are, I will be, too.” That childish vow was fulfilled. “You a bishop, I an abbess,” she had whispered aloud in the Chapel of the Crown of Thorns and, at that, realization overwhelmed her. Everything she cherished at Brede would, for her, be gone: the anonymity that was such balm to her; her manual work—there would be no time for the fine weaving that was so restful— “Dame Catherine’s orphreys”—nor for translating—she was in the midst of a new book on the Qumran Caves by Father Pierre Benoit of the Order of Preachers—that would have to be left, nor would there be the lessons in church history she gave to the novitiate and found so interesting. She must not have special friends, must give up the joy she had taken in her talks with Dame Emily, once her own novice mistress, the recreation quips with Dame Colette and her companionship in the vestment room and, latterly, the growing friendship with Sister Philippa; the abbess must be for everyone, nothing is as lonely as a throne, and she, Catherine, would not possess Abbess Hester’s warm genius for getting beyond it. The silence Dame Catherine had found so fruitful must be continually broken in upon; worst of all she, to whom it was still an ordeal to take a solo part in choir, or to act as reader in the refectory, meet strangers in the parlor—though she had successfully hidden all

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this, too successfully she could have said—must now be always solo, leader in everything, unmercifully prominent. An abbess cannot lift a little finger but it is seen and marked by her nuns; she must lead, inspire, and every hour of the twenty-four hours of each day until she died, bear that awesome responsibility of souls and, in her own monastery, consent to be the representative of Christ.

“I can’t,” Dame Catherine had cried in the chapel and at once felt the need to be where all the nuns went for strength and comfort, reassurance and love; as if drawn, she had got up from her knees and gone into the choir itself, to kneel on the step behind the grille, the step facing the sanctuary where, long ago, she had knelt as a postulant in her first hour in the enclosure. Once again it was as if a quieting hand was laid on her panic; with her eyes on the small flame that had never gone out since the community came to Brede, she whispered, “I can’t,” but it was acceptance now. “I can’t,” whispered Dame Catherine, “so You must.”

The bell began to ring for Sext. She rose to her feet and walked toward the abbatial chair.

It was not until after dinner—in the strange seat at the high table—giving the knock, the rap with the small wooden mallet that was the abbess’s signal, walking behind the procession to sing the dinner grace in choir, that Abbess Catherine had been

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able to go to her rooms. “Go and rest,” Dame Perpetua had urged her. “I will take recreation today.”

The abbess had gone into her new cell; it was smaller than the study and as humble, she was glad to see, as any nun’s, with its bare floor, narrow bed, and chest of drawers below the crucifix, her own crucifix. Only the prie-dieu was missing; there was an armchair instead—cushioned, thought Abbess Catherine with distaste. Missing, too, were the customary basin and jug, and she remembered that the abbess had a bathroom, a bathroom to herself, while the others washed in basins on the floor of their cells. That had brought the unwelcome thought; there could be no more of those informal and friendly meetings in the interval between Vespers and supper when the nuns hurried to draw off their cans of washing water while the water was really hot.

Her bed was made up and ready. Abbess Catherine took a step nearer and caught her breath; the pillow and white counterpane were strewn with small picture cards and nosegays such as the extern sisters were often asked to place in the guest house to welcome some especially loved guest. No names were attached, no words written on them; they were not needed—the nuns who sent them could guess what that welcome would mean to their new abbess—but there was one exception: a few of Dame Mildred’s carefully grown white violets were gathered into a bunch, with a card on which Abbess

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Catherine recognized Dame Maura’s writing: “For my abbess and dearest Mother with the love, loyalty, and prayers of her devoted daughter, Maura.”

Sister Ellen, coming in with the small pile of Dame Catherine’s underclothes, found her new abbess on her knees by the bed, sobbing as if her heart would break. The door had been open, the sister had thought the abbess had gone to recreation—“or I shouldn’t have come in.”

Sister Ellen was ninety-two, “long past her work,” said Dame Veronica, but she was still scrupulously clean and tidy, and, “I can polish with the best of them,” she would say indignantly. Abbess Hester had refused to have anyone else. The old sister was tired with the changing of the cells, the emotion of putting her beloved Abbess Hester’s few things away; she was shaken out of herself, or, “I would never have done as I did,” she told Abbess Catherine afterward. She put the linen down, and Philippa, who had come up from recreation to catch up with her pile of letters, never forgot what she saw then. “It gave me a glimpse of what it means to be elected abbess.” Letters in her hand, she had followed Sister Ellen through the open door of the abbess’s room and for a moment stood transfixed by what she saw in the cell beyond.

Abbess Catherine was far taller than Sister Ellen, but the sister would never have dreamed of sitting down on her Abbess’s bed; instead she had knelt beside her, reached up and put her

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arms round the big strong body, cruelly shaken now—for the moment Sister Ellen’s thin old arms were the stronger. “Don’t cry, my Lady,” she was saying, and Philippa saw she was rocking Abbess Catherine as if she were a child—to Sister Ellen, of course, Abbess Catherine was still young. “Don’t cry. It will be all right. You will see. It will be all right.”

Philippa silently went away.