Read Letters to a Sister Online

Authors: Constance Babington Smith

Letters to a Sister (40 page)

161
The Anglican Bishops of South Africa had issued a formal protest against a new law prohibiting Church attendance by Africans in white Urban areas. They thereby risked liability to a fine of
£500,
5 years in prison, or whipping.

162
A broadcast discussion between Bible scholars as to what the New Testament writers really meant when they spoke of ‘Jesus Christ being raised up'.

163
A discussion between Noel Annan, Stuart Hampshire, and Prof. P. B. Medawar.

164
W. E. Purcell,
Onward, Christian Soldier
(1957).

165
Postcard.

166
Pensione La Calcina
(Ruskin's House).

167
‘The month of Mary'.

168
A letter appealing for funds to provide aid for those accused in the South African Treason Trial (signed by R.M., Canon Collins, and eighteen others) was published as an advertisement in
The Observer
on 12 May.

169
A letter from John Mannering deploring that ‘there are not more Church leaders like Canon Collins who are prepared to condemn this crime against all creation'.

170
The appointment of Rt Rev. Joost de Blank, Suffragan Bp of Stepney, as Archbishop of Cape Town had just been announced.

171
There were rumours of an impending amalgamation of the
News Chronicle
and
Daily Herald.

172
W. H. Macaulay was Tutor at King's College, Cambridge, 1902-13.

173
Miss Peggy Guggenheim.

174
In May and June 1957 three British tests of ‘nuclear devices' (hydrogen bombs) were carried out, all in the Pacific.

175
Rt Rev. H. J. Carpenter.

176
Very Rev. John Lowe.

177
The Church of the Gesuati (Santa Maria del Rosario).

178
‘Laborare est Orare:
Sanctity in the Secular'
(The Times,
6 July, 1957).

179
‘The Redemption of Nature: Glory in the Coming Age'
(The Times,
13 July).

180
Her cousins.

181
Alfred Conybeare, Dorothea's brother, who was an Eton master.

182
A drapery shop where R.M.'s mother often bought clothes for the Macaulay children when the family lived in Oxford.

183
R.M.'s birthday.

184
An evening service at the Abbey of lona (St Mary's Cathedral) conducted by Rt Rev. George MacLeod, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and leader of the lona Community.

185
‘I say—Drop that ban on women as Priests', by Lord Altrincham,
Sunday Express,
28 July, 1957.

186
The Chapel Royal, St James's Palace.

187
John Baillie,
A Diary of Readings
(1955).

188
In the annual report of the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee.

189
An official journal of the South African Institute of Race Relations in Johannesburg.

190
Rt Rev. Ambrose Reeves had recently been speaking at a meeting of the South African Church Institute, also preaching at St Martin-in-the-Fields.

191
Allan Warren, aged 7, whose body had been found at Loughton, Essex, on 11 August. On 25 October H. H. Edwards, of Wanstead, pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

192
The bodies of Royston Sheasby (aged 5) and his sister June (aged 7) had been found near the Bristol Mental Hospital on 1 July. On 13 September, at the resumed inquest, a verdict of murder by some person or persons unknown was recorded.

193
Sir Arnold Lunn,
Enigma: A Study of Moral Re-Armament
(1957).

194
The second of three extracts from
On Growing Old
by Sybil Harton. The theme of the second instalment
(Church Times,
23 August, 1957) was that old age should be, above all, a time for prayer.

195
The 10th anniversary congress of the Liberal International was to be held in Oxford on 29-30 August.

196
Maisie Ward,
Insurrection versus Resurrection
(1937).

197
Wilfrid Ward.

198
Maurice Nédoncelle,
Baron Friedrich von Hügel; a Study of his Life and Thought
(trans M. Vernon, 1937).

199
Nédoncelle, in a foreword to the English edition, states that it is ‘almost identical with' the French one. A 26-page section of his first chapter, on Von Hügel's life and work, is headed ‘The Modernist Crisis'.

200
‘The Future of the Public Schools', a broadcast conversation between Anthony Crosland and Sir John Wolfenden.

201
Rev. Nathaniel Micklem.

202
The Swiss headquarters of Moral Rearmament.

203
A Father and his Fate.

204
Dame Edith Sitwell gave a poetry reading in aid of the Stonor Chapel Restoration Fund on 4 September, 1957.

205
The Congregational church in Duke Street, W.I, not far from R.M.'s flat.

206
Congregationalism came fully into being during the years following 1640; its early beginnings can be traced back to the middle of the 16th century.

207
The report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual offences and Prostitution, published on 4 September, aimed at ‘cleaning up the streets' of London and other big cities by greatly increasing the maximum penalties for soliciting in the streets by prostitutes.

208
The report proposed a relaxing of the law on homosexuality, and urged that there should be no penalty for consenting adults.

209
See
Religio Medici,
II 9: ‘I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition.'

210
The
Sunday Times
was running a series of articles on ‘The Mystery of Life', and R.M. had sent the second, ‘From the Atom to the Saint' by the Archbishop of York, Dr Michael Ramsey (20 October). Inset in the article was the
Sunday Times'
usual poetic item, on this occasion Byron's ‘Juan and Haidée' from
Don Juan.

211
The ‘jazz' setting for the service of Holy Communion, composed by Rev. Geoffery Beaumont, was much in the news at this time.

212
Philip Carrington (Abp of Quebec),
The Early Christian Church
(2 vols, 1957).

213
This exhibition of paintings by two chimpanzees (Congo, of the London Zoo, and Betsy, of the Baltimore Zoo) was held at the Gallery of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, not at the Tate Gallery.

214
By Ivy Compton-Burnett (1947).

215
Geoffrey Faber
Jowett; a Portrait with Background
(1957).

216
‘Dick Sheppard, The Human Parson', a programme broadcast in memory of Canon H. R. L. Sheppard (d. 1937).

217
See above, p.
95n.

218
The Dean of St Paul's.

219
See Ps. 91, 5-7: ‘Thou shalt not be afraid... for the pestilence that walketh in darkness... A thousand shall fall beside thee, and ten thousand at thy right hand: but it shall not come nigh thee.'

220
After a Retreat at Pleshey conducted by the Bp of Tewkesbury.

221
Evidence in Camera; The Story of Photographic Intelligence in World War II
(1958).

222
Canon W. Warren Hunt, Vicar of Croydon, who was giving the current broadcast talks in the ‘Lift up your Hearts' programme.

223
After the second Soviet satellite, carrying a dog named Laika (‘Little Lemon') was launched on 3 November, officials of the National Canine Defence League made an official protest to the Russian Embassy in London, and called for a minute's silence daily on behalf of the dog in the satellite.

224
Rev. R. M. Jeffery, who had worked in South Africa from 1946 to 1955, became Principal of the Grace Dieu School, Pietersburg, in 1958.

225
The opposition to
Essays and Reviews,
a collection of essays by seven authors (including B. Jowett), who believed in the necessity of free enquiry in religious matters, culminated in the synodical condemnation of the book by the Church of England's Lower House of Convocation in 1864.

226
See
The Tablet, 2
November, 1957.

227
A letter from Canon C. B. Mortlock headed
Anglicans and Catholics
had been published in
The Tablet
of 26 October. He did not write again, but the correspondence continued until 14 December.

228
Postcard.

229
The Dale family in the broadcast serial story ‘Mrs Dale's Diary'.

230
James Lewis May,
The Oxford Movement, its History and its Future: a Layman's Estimate
(1933).

231
The Correspondence of Arthur Hugh Clough, edited by Frederick Mulhauser,
reviewed by R.M. in
The Listener
(5 December, 1957).

232
£50,000 or more was the target for the appeal launched by the Community of the Resurrection in May 1957 to provide education of a higher level at its mission schools in Penhalonga, Southern Rhodesia.

233
The B.B.C. Sunday programme ‘Meeting Point' (1 December) consisted of the second of ‘Two Christian Portraits', in which Christopher Mayhew interviewed Rev. C. C. Pande, Methodist Minister of Bankura, West Bengal.

234
E. Moore Darling,
Highways, Hedges and Factories
(1957).

235
A ‘Christian Forum', in the B.B.C. Home Service series ‘The Way of Life', broadcast on 1 December.

236
‘Saturnalia', see
The Spectator,
22 November, 1957.

237
Oscar Hardman,
But I
am
a Catholic
(1958).

238
See
The Tablet,
30 November, 1957.

239
R.M. is referring to a broadcast on the Orthodox Church and Divorce, by Iulia de Beausobre (Lady Namier). See
The Listener,
12 December, 1957, ‘A Religious Justification of Divorce'.

240
See above, p. 244.

241
Tarzan and the Lost Safari.

242
In the 1958 New Year Honours List R. M. was appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire. When this letter was written she had just been invited to accept the honour.

243
See ‘His Majesty's Declaration' preceding the Articles of Religion in the Book of Common Prayer.

244
W. H. Mallock,
The New Republic
(1877).

245
A daily broadcast programme.

246
Mr Malik was guest of honour at a Foyle's Literary Luncheon in honour of Russia's scientific, artistic, and literary achievements.

247
Raymond Mortimer, Edward Sackville-West, Eardley Knollys and Desmond Shawe-Taylor.

248
The Epistle for the Second Sunday after Christmas given in the 1928 Prayer Book consists of one verse only, II Cor. 8.9.

249
A meeting held at the St Pancras Town Hall on 15 January in connection with the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

250
Rev. R. V. Spivey.

251
Rt Rev. Ivor Watkins, Bp of Guildford.

252
Rev. S. Austen Williams.

253
Michael de la Bedoyere.

254
Dorothea Conybeare had maintained that no Roman Catholic priest has a right to ‘turn anyone back from the altar', whether a heretic or a ‘notorious sinner'.

255
‘Personal Questions' were put to Lady Violet Bonham Carter by John Connell, Margaret Lane and Anthony Wedgwood Benn in the broadcast programme ‘Frankly Speaking' on 21 January.

256
‘He is the Great Reconciler' by Geoffrey Murray
(News Chronicle,
21 January, 1958).

257
It had just been re-issued as a Penguin.

258
The other ‘Critics': E. Arnot Robertson, Harold Hobson, Stephen Potter, and David Sylvester.

259
Louis Bouyer,
Newman, His Life and Spirituality
(trans. J. Lewis May, 1958). See R.M.'s review in
The Spectator,
31 January, 1958.

260
From the
British Weekly.

261
The investiture when R.M. received her D.B.E.

262
S. C. Roberts.

263
Rt Rev. W. M. Askwith.

264
Abbot Extraordinary,
Peter Anson's memoir of Aelred Carlyle, for which R.M. was writing a foreword.

265
Robin Denniston.

266
Peter Anson comments that in his own view R.M.'s foreword lays undue emphasis on the Abbot's eccentricities and shows little appreciation of his good points.

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