Letters to a Sister (15 page)

What
are
we to do to get out of Korea with dignity? It is too awful. There is a horrible account of it in
Picture Post.
¹²
And there seems no reason why it should ever stop. America should never have rushed in like that, dragging us after her. No wonder the soldiers have no idea what they are fighting about.

I am seeing Gilbert Murray next week and must ask him how he feels about it. But of course he is tied up with U.N. and likes them to try out their paces. I say, let Russia take anything, rather than send people to join in these barbarian wars….

Very much love.   
E.R.M.

8 October, [1950]

Dearest Jeanie,

Many thanks for your letter. I don't think you are fair to the
Life
of Florence Nightingale.
¹³
See enclosed review, which gives a good idea of it. I don't think anyone
could
think it ‘spiteful'. The author admires her tremendously: of course she doesn't make her perfect, but her faults emerge almost entirely by her own letters, journals, and comments, and aren't emphasised by the author at all. It would be dull if she had been faultless. She had an irritable and unforgiving temper, a good deal of self-pity, intolerance and contempt (especially for those who she thought were not doing all they could for
the reforms she wanted, and who said they were tired or ill) and much too much anger with (a) her family and relations, (b) women who wanted to be doctors not nurses. She was temperamental & neurasthenic. But, with it all, she had no
mean
faults, and was a magnificent person both intellectually and in hard work and persistence. One would have loved her if one had been working for her, but less if one gave it up, or (like her aunt)
¹⁴
left her to return to her husband & children, which Florence thought was a betrayal of affection. She was too stormy to have been an easy companion; but all her friends loved her. You should read the book, and see for yourself what it's like.... If it
¹⁵
said she nursed in order to leave home, the reviewer can't have read it. On the contrary, she ‘heard the call' to go and do some work (she wasn't sure what) when she was 16, but for years after that didn't go, because she thought her parents needed her.

I have been looking up the history of English hospitals. Apparently the
voluntary
ones in the mid [nineteenth] century were very well supported—and from 1901 on the King Edward Hospital Fund was a great gift-raiser. It was those on the rates that were so unhygienic—the fault, I suppose, of the Councils responsible for them. What puzzles me is why the doctors who had to work in such conditions didn't insist on better arrangements, if only for selfish reasons. Of course hygienic notions were very poor compared with now, but even so it is surprising. I think the 1850's can't be called
(relatively)
poor in social conscience—it was a time of great progress in the poor laws, factory laws, laws about children's labour, etc. But of course social conscience has never been good, in a general way, though now improving.

I had a lovely day at Bath—really warm; I hoped a little Indian summer was starting, but it was only one day, it seems. I went over the Roman baths, and saw the hot spring coming up; what wonderful engineers the Romans were. Apparently
there are many more Roman baths under the town, which can't be excavated. The
Northanger Abbey
people who went to the Pump Room knew nothing about them. Then I climbed a hill and saw Sham Castle, a ruined façade built there by a Bath citizen for him to look at from his house, in 1760.
¹⁶
Altogether I had a good day, and did a lot of work in the train too.
¹⁷
…

I like the new
Sunday Express
serial about the Saucers
¹⁸
—much more amusing and interesting than the Abdication. What
can
they be? Do you think they come from Higher Intelligences who are spying on us? Or are they American experiments?

Very much love.   
E.R.M.

For over two years after late
1950
there is a gap in the series of surviving letters to Jean. The course of Rose's life is, however, clearly delineated in her correspondence with Father Johnson (Letters to a Friend' and ‘Last Letters to a Friend'). Against the secret background of contrition and penitence, and her return to the Anglican Church after a lapse of thirty years, she busied herself with all her usual activities, and in spite of bad health—for six months she suffered from persistent attacks of undulant fever—she toiled on undefeatably at ‘Pleasure of Ruins'. Early in 1953, embarking on yet more research for ‘Ruins', she made ready for a trip to Cyprus and the Middle East.

20, Hinde House, Hinde St, W.1 9 March, [1953]

Dearest Jeanie,

Very many thanks for letter and King-Hall. Yes, his account of Cyprus was very nice, so far as it goes, but he only touched on the beauties before going off (as I knew he would) about the political position, and Enosis.
¹
Still, of course that is the object of the
News-Letters
—the physical descriptions one can get from books. It is a most enchanting & exciting & wonderful island, which I have always longed to visit. I see his boat went from Athens, hence the islands. Boats from Britain, or Marseilles, or Genoa, go more directly. Though I believe there is one from Venice that goes via the islands. But it means first a train journey then a boat, and it is all much longer and more complicated than air, and, with all the meals, sleepers, etc, is just about as much, or nearly. I am just going to book my seat, May 16th, 9 a.m….

Yes, Bp Cockin
²
was quite interesting. But he tends to imply that non-Christians are apt to be scientific. Any number of non-Christians are literary, classical, what is called humanist;
I know very many, and I know very few scientists. So long as they are aiming (as he says) at what is good, better leave them to it, and not bother about trying to persuade them that Christianity is true. Much better for Christians to spend their energies converting other Christians... to decent ideas.

I went to the licensing of Gerard Irvine to his new charge the other night—a mission church near Hounslow.
³
Rather a picturesque ceremony, he knelt before the Bp of Kensington
⁴
and answered questions about how he was going to try to behave in the new parish. ‘Will you use the Book of Common Prayer as authorised, adding nothing to it?' That, however, is qualified by the clause ‘except by lawful authority'…. Actually the parish is very extreme in its services, and obviously the congregation (a kind of factory-working new town, grown on to the old parish) likes it, and was very cheerful and friendly. There was a bun-fight after the service, and Gerard made himself popular at once.…We are mourning the death of the [Grosvenor] Chapel Sacristan, an extraordinarily nice woman
⁵
who was also a church cleaner…. How much she… liked something… once quoted [in a sermon] about there being no dust in heaven.
⁶
She was a very clean, tidy, conscientious, kind person, and always found and kept safe the oddments I left in church.
⁷
She has a Requiem Mass tomorrow; and lies in the Chapel to-night, covered with flowers. I hear from Fr Johnson
⁸
that the new R.C. fasting rules have gone a long way, and they look forward to very full congregations at evening Communion. Will the Anglo-Catholics follow suit soon? I expect so…

Very much love.

E.R.M.

Thursday [19 March, 1953]
⁹

... I have missed seeing Tito and his bodyguard sweeping thro' London, I expect they went too fast. What with Catholics and Communists, no doubt he does well to go fast.
¹⁰
I met Lord Pakenham last night, who always tries to convert me. But he said he had been delighted to hear that I was now a practising Anglican, which was big of him. I fancy he thinks it is [a] step nearer Rome. He asked me what I did for a central Church authority, did I go by what Canterbury said. I said I didn't need an authority, and that if I was R.C. [I] shouldn't take any notice of what the Pope said. What about the interpretation of Scripture, he said. I said I read Bible commentaries by good scholars, if anything puzzled me, but didn't think it mattered a lot, and what I believe in was the Light that lights every man, trained up by reason, and the Bible after all, and the Church too, were only products of the Light, not its sources. However, he kindly said he still had hopes of my conversion. He is really a very nice, nave man, and seems to take a genuine interest—tho' he ought to know that I am a hopeless proposition. But who knows, I might come back from Cyprus a Greek Orthodox. I am going to Cyprus at the right time; they say next year it may be submerged by the Army, who regard it as an ‘outpost'. What a point of view!

Love...

E.R.M.

King George Hotel, Famagusta, Cyprus 17 May, [1953]

Dearest Jeanie,

I got here last night at 8.0, after a very smooth and beautiful journey: I spent last night in Nicosia, and came on here at lunch-time. Nicosia is inland, and is the capital, but quite small. When I went out last night to see it, the hotel manager said ‘You will have to be careful, or you may be killed.' I asked why, and he said there were the municipal elections on, and people got very excited and stampeded. (Very different from London ones!) However, the streets were actually extremely quiet. There is a beautiful Greek medieval cathedral, turned into a mosque by the Turks, like so many Greek churches, when they took Cyprus 300 years ago. They whitewash the inside and take away all ornaments, monuments, and stained glass, and put in vulgar-looking patterned white glass instead. I don't care for mosques inside. The man who drove me to Famagusta to-day said it would be ‘boiling' with election excitement. Cypriotes, he said (being one himself) are excitable. There are 2 parties, Communist and Nationalist. He is Nationalist. The Nationalists officially want Enosis (union with Greece), but he says most of them don't really, as without the British occupation they would probably starve. One noticeable thing about the streets of the towns is that there are practically no women. None at all last night in Nicosia. My driver said Cyprus women don't go out alone, and never in the evenings. What would happen to a woman who went for a walk alone, I asked. He said, her father would beat her. Also they never walk out with boyfriends. The British soldiers must miss this. There is a lot of Turkish blood, obviously; the people are much darker than Greeks, and some have a Turkish look. No wonder, after so long an occupation. No doubt they absorbed rather a Turkish view of women, too.

This hotel is right on the beach, and about 2 miles from old
Famagusta, the walled town. The walls are splendid, and the citadel, and St Nicholas's Gothic cathedral, a magnificent buttressed 13th century church, now a mosque, with a perky minaret on it. Inside it was white-washed and carpeted, and Moslems were praying aloud in corners—all men, of course, unlike R.C. churches, where they are mostly women. Round the cathedral stand ruined fragments of medieval churches, and some domed Moslem buildings, in a littered desert of thistle and grass and palms. There are a few streets, and a square. Otherwise all is desolation. It was, seven and six and five centuries ago, a very flourishing and rich city, and thick with churches and convents built by the crusaders. But it was devastated and thrown down by the Turks, and later nearly all the buildings were torn up and the stones taken to build Cairo. It seemed haunted by the rich life that went on once, the trading in the harbour, and the bells of all the churches; and now nothing but the sound of the wind in the palm trees and among the grass, and the rustling of the sea. ….

There is
no
way of getting about Cyprus but on foot, bicycle, or car. No buses—or scarcely any, and the few there are get filled up with goats & hay & hens and now and then a camel. So I am hiring a self-drive car, to explore in, making Famagusta my base this week.

The British are doing their best to make the island hideous with Nissen huts, barracks, etc. What I feel is, what's the sense of making an island a military base if it means making it ugly? Because if it's ugly, why fight to keep it?

V. much love.

E.R.M.

20, Hinde House, Hinde St, W.1 8 September, [1953] (Nativity of B.V.m.)

Dearest Jeanie,

Thank you so much for yours, and for sending de Caussade.
¹¹
What a shocking way to write to a postulant considering her vocation! ‘I forbid you in the name of God and by all the authority he has given me over you, either to listen to or examine into this subject in any way, and I command you to act about it as if the devil suggested that you should poison all the Religious !'
¹²
What did he think a postulant was supposed to do, except think over her vocation? I suppose the poor girl never dared to say any more about it, but became an unhappy nun. If that is the way all postulants were dealt with, no wonder many nuns were unhappy….

Did you hear E. M. Forster's nice talk on Indian art, last night and the night before?
¹³
He is now just off to Portugal for a fortnight, and I hope will give a talk about his impressions of it.

I eat plenty, and always have a good mid-day meal; if at home I cook a bit of meat, and potatoes with it, and have fruit; if out lunching with a friend I also eat well. To-day I shall eat
very
well, as I am lunching at the expensive Dorchester, in company with some other writers, with a rich American publisher, who should feed us richly….

Very much love.

E.R.M.

After ‘Pleasure of Ruins' was published, at the end of 1953, Rose turned her thoughts towards her next trip abroad. Both Yugoslavia and Russia attracted her, but neither of these ideas came off. Eventually she made plans for the expedition to Turkey which was to inspire ‘The Towers of Trebizond', and meanwhile her busy round in London continued as usual.