More reading in review

In addition to the memoirs of former nun Monica Baldwin, which I wrote about in the last post, I have finished a few other books of note.  Can I add Frommer's and Rick Steves' guides to Rome, Florence, and Italy to my book count for the year?  Admittedly, I haven't read them completely, just sections pertinent to our trip. I also skimmed A Literary Pilgrimage to Rome, which is part guide book, part anthology of quotes by famous writers about their impressions of Rome. It is organized by walks through various neighborhoods so that you could arrange your peregrinations through Rome according to the places mentioned by the writers included in this book - including the Romantic poets and Nathanial Hawthorne, but also including some lesser known contemporary writers.  We won't be using that guide for our trip, although I'll point out the house where Keats died to the kids, who will likely be unimpressed because they don't know Keats (note to self - make them read "Ode on a Grecian Urn" before we go), and perhaps we'll grab a coffee at Caffe Greco.

Note to interested readers: I overcame most of my Executive Decision Disorder to reserve apartments each night of our stay. Opted for a place around the corner from the Pantheon that looks tiny and uncomfortable in exchange for a great location at a good price, instead of staying at a place for the same price with more comfortable looking beds further away from the city center. I had instant regrets after I reserved this nonrefundable apartment, but was comforted by my husband who said if we hate it after the first night, we'll just find someplace else to stay and chalk up the loss of funds to an education in trip planning.

I meant to read more fiction about Rome, but only got around to finishing Anthony Doerr's Four Seasons in Rome, which is a memoir of his year on a fellowship to write while living in a little apartment on the Janiculum Hill.  He and his wife and twin infant sons arrive in Rome in the early fall, when the babies are only a few months old. Much of the first half of the book describes the fatigue and inability to navigate small spaces with two babies.  I found myself wondering if I felt that tired and inexperienced with our first babies? Surely I was, and perhaps more so, because I had no energy to write about it. Initially, I wondered why Doerr and his wife weren't more adventurous about exploring Rome with their infants. I felt sorry for his wife cooped up with the babies while he was in his studio daydreaming (and writing a worldwide bestseller, All the Light We Cannot See, so I guess the time paid off) or exploring Rome. He went to observe the crowds when John Paul II was dying, but it doesn't seem his wife witnessed any of it. Then again, we don't get his wife's perspective on this year in Rome, and the impression he gives is that at first she rarely leaves the apartment with the babies, except to go to the little park near it most of the first two seasons they are there. Eventually, a few months into their stay, they hire a Filipina grandma to watch the twins occasionally, so they can visit sites and eat out ever once in a while.  His description of their discovery of St. Ivo alla Sapienza is moving. By time the twins are mobile in the spring, she comes at least once a week so they can explore the countryside around Rome.  While the beginning of the book gives the impression that they were too intimidated to explore, by the end they are getting around the city and conversing in Italian.  The book is obviously a carefully crafted memoir, not just a diary of a year, so large chunks of the year are omitted. Doerr is a good enough writer that I wished he had shared more.  And as I read, I found myself wishing I had written more about those days when our children were infants. What a wonderful record of life.

A book I enjoyed more than I thought I would was another book I happened to pull down off the shelf because I had seen it on the internet: My Badass Book of Saints by Maria Morera Johnson. The title is off-putting to me, but I liked the book more than I thought I would. I thought it might be one of those books that is self-consciously trying to be intentionally hip to appeal to an uninterested youthful readership, but it was much more readable. Johnson combines reflections on certain virtues like perseverance and courage with biographical sketches of some lesser known contemporary figures to examine along with little and well-known saints and blesseds. For example, she writes about Edel Quinn, Mary Wake, Irene Sendler, Audrey Hepburn, Mother Antonia Brenner, Flannery O'Connor, and Dorothea Lange, fascinating women, along with Blessed Rosalie Rendu, St Catherine of Sienna, St. Christina the Astonishing, and St. Bibiana. These women's lives model generosity, friendship, interior beauty, compassion, advocacy, and charity, among other virtues, and Johnson connects their examples to moments in her own life.  I might buy a copy, or check it out again, to make my high school daughter read it during Lent.

If I had to pick again, I would have recommended that book over the one I read for book club this month, Benjamin Wiker's Saints and Scoundrels, although again I thought it might be a good book to pass on to the high school kids. In it, Wiker imagines historical figures like St. Augustine and Jean-Jacques Rousseau meeting up in his living room to discuss their ideologies - sacred vs. secular visions of the meaning of life. Flannery O'Connor shows up again in a match up against Ayn Rand - that was perhaps my favorite chapter.  St. Francis debates Machiavelli. Edith Stein confronts Friedrich Nietzsche. St Thomas More and Henry VIII meet again. It's a fun concept and easy to read, but I'm afraid I wasn't too attentive to it as I read. The image Wiker creates of his office - a chess set, comfortable chairs for snoozing, swords and pistols on display - provides a quirky setting. It would be great assignment as an intro to modern philosophy, perhaps why Wiker, a professor at Steubenville, wrote it.

Finally, I also skimmed through Natasha Tretheway's new collection of verse, Monument: Poems New and Selected. It was on display in honor of Black History Month, but I have loved Tretheway since I first read her work when we lived in Gulfport, which forms a backdrop to many of her poems. She became poet laureate the year after we left to live in Guam. Her poetry examines the complexities of coming from a place so full of contradictions, of beauty and darkness, and the complexities of her mixed race background, her mother's murder by her second husband, and the imagined lives of former slaves.  She makes poetry seem so easy, and then includes a line of clarifying brilliance, a twist that reveals her gift.  Read more  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/natasha-trethewey

Ask yourself what's in your heart, that

reliquary—blood locket and seedbed—and

contend with what it means, the folk saying

you learned from a Korean poet in Seoul:

that one does not bury the mother's body

in the ground but in the chest, or—like you —

you carry her corpse on your back.here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/148332/imperatives-for-carrying-on-in-the-aftermath

Elegy for the Native Guards

BY NATASHA TRETHEWEY

                                        Now that the salt of their blood   
Stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea . . .
       —Allen Tate
 

We leave Gulfport at noon; gulls overhead

trailing the boat—streamers, noisy fanfare—

all the way to Ship Island. What we see

first is the fort, its roof of grass, a lee—

half reminder of the men who served there—

a weathered monument to some of the dead.

 

Inside we follow the ranger, hurried

though we are to get to the beach. He tells

of graves lost in the Gulf, the island split

in half when Hurricane Camille hit,

shows us casemates, cannons, the store that sells

souvenirs, tokens of history long buried.

 

The Daughters of the Confederacy

has placed a plaque here, at the fort’s entrance—

each Confederate soldier’s name raised hard

in bronze; no names carved for the Native Guards—

2nd Regiment, Union men, black phalanx.

What is monument to their legacy?

 

All the grave markers, all the crude headstones—

water-lost. Now fish dart among their bones,

and we listen for what the waves intone.

Only the fort remains, near forty feet high,

round, unfinished, half open to the sky,

the elements—wind, rain—God’s deliberate eye.

Natasha Trethewey, “Elegy for the Native Guards” from Native Guard. Copyright © 2007 by Natasha Trethewey. Reprinted by permission of Natasha Trethewey.Source: Native Guard (Mariner Books, 2007)

South

BY NATASHA TRETHEWEY

Homo sapiens is the only species
to suffer psychological exile.
        —E. O. Wilson
 

I returned to a stand of pines,

                            bone-thin phalanx

 

flanking the roadside, tangle

                            of understory—a dialectic of dark

 

and light—and magnolias blossoming

                            like afterthought: each flower

 

a surrender, white flags draped

                            among the branches. I returned

 

to land’s end, the swath of coast

                            clear cut and buried in sand:

 

mangrove, live oak, gulfweed

                            razed and replaced by thin palms—

 

palmettos—symbols of victory

                            or defiance, over and over

 

marking this vanquished land. I returned

                            to a field of cotton, hallowed ground—

 

as slave legend goes—each boll

                            holding the ghosts of generations:

 

those who measured their days

                            by the heft of sacks and lengths

 

of rows, whose sweat flecked the cotton plants

                            still sewn into our clothes.

 

I returned to a country battlefield

                            where colored troops fought and died—

 

Port Hudson where their bodies swelled

                            and blackened beneath the sun—unburied

 

until earth’s green sheet pulled over them,

                            unmarked by any headstones.

 

Where the roads, buildings, and monuments

                            are named to honor the Confederacy,

 

where that old flag still hangs, I return

                            to Mississippi, state that made a crime

 

of me—mulatto, half-breed—native

                            in my native land, this place they’ll bury me.

Natasha Trethewey, “South” from Native Guard. Copyright © 2007 by Natasha Trethewey. Reprinted by permission of Natasha Trethewey.Source: Native Guard (Mariner Books, 2007)

And I finally finished Signs of Grace by my former professor, Fr. Nicholas Ayo. This book has been my bathroom meditational for many months, picked up and set down. I finally read the last reflection on St. Jude. Ayo travels around the Notre Dame campus, using landmarks and little-known corners as inspirations for meditations on faith and life. He seems so full of love and understanding, a genuinely good man. He was always thoughtful, a slow speaker, a gentle soul, in class. Perhaps he was always praying. I am sure he is missed by many, especially in the Program of Liberal Studies.

So many good books this month!

A hidden life revealed

I have been spending Tuesdays and Thursdays at the library the past couple of weeks because I don't start teaching again until February. I meant to use this time for research, writing, and planning next semester, but I've mostly used it for researching our Rome trip and other diversions. For instance, last week I was actually looking for a book about ecocriticism, but I happened to pick up another interesting read off the library shelf: Monica Baldwin's memoir I Leap Over the Wall. It's the story of a British woman of aristocratic background who leaves convent life after spending 28 years as a nun. She entered the convent (which she doesn't name, but a little internet research reveals she was Augustinian cannoness at St. Monica's Priory in Hertfordshire) in 1914 during the beginning of one war and returns to the world in 1941, the beginning of the second world war. It's a fascinating peek at the changes that occurred in those 28 years and the impressions of someone who was removed from worldly life at a time of great social upheaval.

Baldwin makes the obvious comparison of her to Rip Van Winkle a number of times. She notes changes such as wartime privations and increased materialism. She entered the convent as WWI was beginning and leaves as WWII is ramping up.  Some of the notable changes: Ladies' dress: panty hose, underwear, bras. Her sister picks her up outside the convent and takes her shopping first thing.  She writes that all of London seemed poor and working class, no more assistance in the shops, no more glamorous gowns. Women were smoking on the trains.  Music was also quite different.  Interestingly, providentially, one of the first songs she hears on the radio is one of the last songs she ever listened to - Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin.  

Why did she leave the convent? It does not seem that she lost her faith, but rather that she doubted her vocation. For a decade after she realized she had followed her own will into the convent instead of God's will, she lived in distress and then began the process of getting permission to give up her vows. Her reasons for leaving are simply that she was not suited for convent life and that she had to go. I thought it admirable that she doesn't dwell too closely on her own interior struggle. Several remarks about her faith make it seem that she did not lose it, but just realized she didn't have a call to consecrated life.  She doesn't complain about convent life or other sisters, although her description of the habit she wore does sound complex - the headdress sounds like a torture device. But the simple collation described in the refectory sounds delicious - whole grain dark bread, vegetable soup, figs or dates, all eaten in silence.  She does describe a couple of convent conflicts - arguments over opening windows - "Fresh Air Friends" vs "Fug defenders" -and over the volume of plainchant. But she writes a good deal of praise for the prayers and music, including describing the divine offices - the order's raison d'etre.

Much of the book describes Baldwin's struggles to find a job. She stays with an elderly aunt in Sussex for some time and then with her uncle, one time Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.  The names of the ancestral homes are so lovely -  Astley in Worcestershire, Bredon Hill, Woodbury, Abberley - the Malverns,  Hallow, Grimley, Shrawley, the Severn River.  Her immediate family seems unable or unwilling to take her in. I am guessing her parents had died, although I don't remember reading about them dying - admittedly, I skimmed the book to get through it in a couple hours.

Her skills are not very marketable - painting illuminations, researching St. Augustine and his time, administering simple home remedies as an infirmarian. She does not want to be a teacher or be around a bunch of girls. And she mentions that she avoids tiny women for some reason.  But she does try out several jobs - as a garden worker or "land girl," a factory girl at an ammunition factory, a blue print designer, a canteen worker - until she finally finds some satisfaction as a librarian.
The dream of the Cornwall Cottage

At one point she stays with two elderly women Barbara and Gay - grandmothers who smoke and cuss call her immature, naive, try to teach her about life.  Later she meets some "Buchmanites" who were early evangelicals who take her in and give her encouragement.   She finds London smothering and longs for the country, "ordained by God" for healing the soul. This line resonated with me, as city life often gets wearisome.  She has a dream of a tiny cottage in Cornwall with a garden against a cliff, which becomes her goal.

Eventually, she becomes an assistant librarian with Royal Medical Society. In this capacity, one evening she happens to have dinner with Lord Dawson and is introduced to spies - perhaps obliquely invited to be one. She lectures Dawson about the history and love of Christ that led to the building of monasteries and the blessings of a hidden life. She offers a convincing apology for convent life even as she leaves it behind when she describes seeing all souls as cells in the mystical body of Christ with the purpose of carrying on his passion. We have our own individual life but contribute to the unity of the body of Christ. "The whole Christ lives in me" in the flesh - convents devote all to Christ to have more unity with his heart, in union in contemplation. Their goal is to bring Him to the world in prayer; they are like the force that created and preserved the world and is refused nothing by God - a miraculous being. Dawson in response to her descriptions offers her a job of developing a welfare society, but she declines.

Although she enjoys the job as a librarian, her eyes are no longer good. Her doctor tells she was well preserved and wasted her life for the 18 years she thought about leaving the convent. She talks about the experience of envisioning adventures and growing in humility during that time, learning to make room for God. She continues to be disgusted by materialism.

In the end, Monica finds her tiny cottage in Cornwall that she dreamed about. Her conversations with another uncle about convent life and perhaps frequent questions about why she left inspire her to write her memoirs. She must have become something of a hermit, living in Cornwall with her cat and writing. She published this book in 1949, then wrote a novel Called and Chosen that came out in 1957, shortly after A Nun's Story by Katheryn Hulme, which was more popular.  I think she also wrote another memoir. 

The couple of hours I spent reading this were a delightful glimpse of another world and of another soul seeking to follow her vocation without road signs. Perhaps not the best use of my time, but the hours were not wasted.