David Kertzer's 'The Pope and Mussolini' 2014

 

Random House first edition - 2014

As the blurb on the inner flap of the dust wrapper states, the book tells the story of two men (the clue is in the title!) who came to power in 1922 and together changed the course of twentieth-century history. This is the second, research-packed, book I have read by Kertzer on the Papacy - the previous one on Pope Pius IX. I must admit, I am strangely fascinated by the Roman Catholic Church - not through any subconscious desire to join it, but rather because I find so much of its history, and that of the papacy, repellant. The result of reading The Pope and Mussolini did not change my attitude, even though the other major figure was equally unattractive. Both Pius XI and Mussolini were autocrats, distrusting democracy and engaged in ruthless, often shady, behaviour to enforce their will. The Vatican played a central role both in making the Fascist regime possible and in keeping it in power. Pius remarked to a group of French union members: some argue that everything should belong to the state, making it totalitarian, But such a claim was absurd. If there is a totalitarian regime, totalitarian in fact and by right - it is the regime of the Church, because man belongs totally to the Church. Perhaps Mussolini was more historically accurate, when he mused that there was something unlucky about popes named Pius - they all brought disaster. Pius VI and Pius VII were both thrown out of Rome by Napoleon; Pius IX lost Rome and the Papal States; and Pius X saw all Europe erupt in war. "He is losing the whole world and now he risks destroying everything here as well. Ah, it's a true calamity." As a Catholic, he concluded, "I have to say that it would be hard to imagine a worse pope than this one."

The Pope and Mussolini 

Kertzer paints a compelling portrait of Mussolini. Admired, revered even, by many, both in Italy and abroad, his seventeen year sparring with Pius XI, for all its convolutions, was dictated by a simple aim. Win. Working with clerics such as the Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, Bogongini-Duca, Ledochowski (the virulent anti-Semite superior general of the Jesuits), he usually outwitted the pope. Meanwhile, using such unpleasant supporters as Buffarini, Pignatti and his son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini kept a firm hand on the reins of power.  Kertzer has some nice asides, such as Mussolini's 'take' on Neville Chamberlain. "I never want to see umbrellas around me. The umbrella is a bourgeois relic, it is the arm used by the pope's soldiers. A people who carry umbrellas cannot found an empire." (so there to Hiram Holliday!) 

The last few years of Pius XI's pontificate were bitter for him -  what made them so painful to the pope was his realisation that his dreams of turning Italy into a confessional state - one where the machinery of the authoritarian regime would be at the service of the church - had been so naïve. He was no anti-Semite: "It is impossible for Christians to participate in anti-Semitism...spiritually we are all Semites." However, singularly unpleasant and devious was the anti-Semitic pederast Father Tacchi Venturi (1861-1956), the pope's long-time trusted henchman (he was known as the pope's Rasputin), who met privately more than one hundred times with the Duce and exercised a strong influence on the pope. Flitting across the page is Victor Emmanuel III (1869-1947), the insecure, cowardly, pint-sized king who disliked the clergy but could never be trusted by either side. His vain attempts to preserve the monarchy by handing it on to his son was, rightly, doomed to failure.

Eugenio Pacelli (1876-1958)

On hearing of the pope's death, Mussolini commented, "At last the obstinate old man is dead." Perhaps, worse was to come with his successor - certainly for the Jews. Kertzer argues that, despite having irrefutable evidence of the ongoing extermination of the Jews, Pacelli (now Pius XII) never denounced the Nazi atrocities, as he preferred to leave the role of moral guide, rather than put at risk the situation of the church. Moreover, Pius XII spoke with much sympathy for Fascism and with sincere admiration for the Duce...as for Germany, the new pope could not be more eager to come to an agreement. His sainthood is still being discussed; it will say much about the Roman Catholic Church if he receives it.

John Cornwell, Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (1999)

Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners. A History of the Popes (2006)

David I. Kertzer, The Pope who would be King: The exile of Pius IX (2018)

Frédéric Martel, In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy (2019)

FOOTNOTE

Just out of interest, I thought I would look up the twelve popes who assumed the name Pius. Between the first and second was over 1,000 years; there were four between 1458 and 1572; then a 200-year gap until a flurry of another four between 1775 and 1878; finally, the three in the 20th century. The last four with the name, the IXth to XIIth, are, perhaps, the most controversial.

 Pius I (c.142-c.155) - opposed the heresy of the Gnostic Marcion. - 1,300 years before the next Pius! Pius II (1458-64) - patron of the arts; canonized St. Catherine of Siena, regularly called for a crusade, guilty of nepotism. Pius III (1503) - 10 day reign, ill health, but man of culture and integrity. Pius IV (1559-65) - father of three illegitimate children, vigorous benefactor of his many relatives, reconvoked and concluded the Council of Trent.  Saint Pius V (1566-72) - guilty of nepotism, strengthened Rome's fortifications, excommunicated Elizabeth, revived savage use of the Inquisition, harsh treatment of the Jews.  Pius VI (1775-99) - weak, vain and worldly; revived nepotism, spent lavishly on buildings, appeared grasping; arrested by Napoleon, died in prison.  Pius VII (1800-23) - crowned Napoleon; rehabilitated the Jesuits, reintroduced the Holy Office, founded the Vatican Picture Gallery.   Pius VIII (1829-30) -  traced breakdown of religion to activities of Protestantism, Freemasonry and secret societies.  Pius IX (1846-78) -  believed temporal sovereignty of the holy see indispensable to its spiritual independence; 1860 lost all his dominions save Rome; 1870 lost all but the Vatican area; centralised authority; created over 200 new bishoprics or apostolic vicariates; unprecedented number of canonisations; declared infallibility of the pope in faith and morals in their own right; against modern political and intellectual trends; pro ultramontanism.    Saint Pius X (1903-14) - canonised by Pius XII. Aimed to insist unyieldingly on the church's rights; anti Modernism; (they should be beaten with fists) harassed scholars; paternalistic; reorganised the Curia.  Pius XI (1922-39) - believed church and Christianity should be active in society; delegated as little as possible, dictatorial; he had not a liberal bone in his body; greatly reduced role of the sacred college. Pius XII (1939-58) - proclaimed the Dogma of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary; inveighed against communism; canonised 33 persons and created an unprecedentedly large number of cardinals; authoritarian in style.

Antonia Fraser's 'The King and the Catholics' 2018

 

Weidenfeld & Nicolson first edition - 2018

Antonia Fraser is well known for both fiction and non-fiction works. I have her biographies of Mary Queen of Scots and King Charles II. I have also read a magazine (?) article, where she cast doubts on the official version of the Gunpowder Plot. She writes good, old-fashioned narrative history - shades of C.V. Wedgwood? She admits, in her Author's Note at the start, to a lifelong fascination with Catholic history, but the tone of the book is pretty balanced.

There was half a century between the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780 and the passing of the Emancipation Bill in 1829. From violence to a 'bloodless revolution'. Caught up in the extremely emotive, partisan, often bigoted clashes were a gallery of fascinating characters. It is one of Antonia Fraser's strengths that she is a compelling delineator of human beings. It is what makes her such a readable biographer.

The tone was set from the very top - by George III, who reigned through most of this period, dying in 1820, and George IV. The former was determined to stick to his Coronation Oath (devised in 1689) to the utmost of your power maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel, and the Protestant reformed religion established by law.  He (and his successor) maintained the Catholic problem/menace caused him to lose his mind.  George IV had visited Ireland in August 1821 (the first reigning monarch to do so since Richard II in 1399) and his behaviour and hints to the Irish suggested movement on Emancipation. By the end of his reign, however, he was as firmly opposed to it as his father was. Then there were the royal brothers (George III had nine sons), Frederick, Duke of York - the bulwark of the Protestant cause; William, Duke of Clarence - a more liberal figure altogether; and Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. York and Cumberland were both firmly anti Catholic.

Lord George Gordon, the sixth child of the Duke of Gordon, whose long red hair to his shoulders and slightly protuberant blue eyes and libertine private life gave a certain flamboyance but erratic (Fraser suggests he might have been bipolar) leadership to the 1780 rioting. Arrested and indicted for High Treason, he was subsequently acquitted. Repeated misbehaviour meant further imprisonment and he died of a fever, aged 42, in Newgate.

            

               Lord George Gordon                                     Daniell O'Connell                       

Hovering over everything was the ever-present problem of Ireland. Wolfe Tone's leadership of the Irish revolt of the United Irishmen against English domination in 1798 can be contrasted with the more measured, and politically skilful, movement led, firstly, by Henry Gratton and then by Daniel O'Connell. The latter, in particular, knew how to sway and lead opinion, (his big, burly figure indicated health and strength) by personality, compelling oratory and sound political judgement. Not for nothing was he known as King Dan or the Liberator (he much admired, and copied, Simon Bolivar of South America).

On the Catholic side there were other fascinating figures. Bishop John Milner, rigid believer in the dominance of the (Catholic) church over the aristocracy, possibly seeing himself as a Catholic Moses, leading his flock out of bondage and the wilderness. He was to prove a thorn in the flesh of the Protestants and, often, an embarrassment to his own side. His approach contrasted with the  English Catholic aristocrats - Lord Petre of Thorndon Hall in Essex, who had a Jesuit chaplain, was Grand Master of the Masonic Order, but regarded as a true and liberal Christian. The Weld family were based at Lulworth Castle in Dorset. I have been to the Great Chapel in the castle grounds, which Thomas Weld had started to build in 1786. The story was that George III, on a visit had, with a wink, suggested that it was going to be a free-standing family mausoleum. Other ancient Catholic families included the Stourtons, Stonors, Gages and Throckmortons. Many of the family leaders joined the Catholic Committee - loyal to the Crown, maintaining that the Catholic clergy's authority, like the Pope's, was to be spiritual only. Cisalpine rather than Transalpine. 

Charles 11th Duke of Norfolk

Ranked above them all was the Howard family, at its head Charles 11th Duke of Norfolk. He declared that if he was going to hell, he would rather go to hell from the House of Lords than anywhere else; he who preferred an 'ambivalent' status. Also important was the papal delegate, Cardinal Ercole Consalvi (the first cardinal to set foot officially in England since Reginal Pole), who built up a useful rapport with the Prince Regent. Antonia Fraser estimates that there were c.70,000-80,000 British Catholics in the 1770s out of a population of some 7 million.

Sir Robert Peel                   Duke of Wellington

Apart from O'Connell, the two men who did the most for Catholic Emancipation, by persuading a weeping George IV grudging to give way, were, ironically, diametrically opposed to it throughout their previous political careers.The Duke of Wellington (and brother Richard, Marquess Wellesley, whom the Duke referred to as 'whoring'! and who was far more favourable to the push for Catholic rights) and Robert Peel, Chief Secretary to Ireland and, later, Home Secretary, whose early contempt for the Catholic aristocrats and opposition to Catholic Emancipation gained him the nickname Orange Peel. His record of opposing Catholic Emancipation was both long-held and publicly held. Antonia Fraser heads a late chapter From RPeel to Repeal. (Political) common sense prevailed - others would view it as trimming sails to the prevailing wind. If so, not the first nor the last politician to do so. In more recent times the Rev. Dr. Ian Paisley (1926-2014), a Protestant firebrand, known by some as the Northern Ireland Ayatollah - who was on record as saying that Catholic homes caught fire because they were loaded with petrol bombs and that Pope John Paul II was the Antichrist - ended up 'in bed' (or, rather, government) with an arch enemy and Catholic, Martin McGuiness (1950-2017), so much so that they were nicknamed the Chuckle Brothers. Leopards can change their outward spots at the very least.

I came away from reading the book with a much clearer idea of why Catholic Emancipation succeeded, but equally aware of why so much trouble was to blight relations between Ireland and England for another two centuries  It is still a smouldering pot - the ashes have not burnt out.

William Thomson's 'The Little General and the Rousay Crofters' 1981

 

John Donald Publishers first edition - 1981

Reading and blogging on John Prebble's The Highland Clearances, brought vividly to mind a holiday when we stayed on the Orkney island of Rousay in the 1980s. In fact, we were so attracted to Orkney that we returned three more times, once to stay in the remote North Ronaldsay. On the two occasions Rousay was our base, we bed and breakfasted at the Old Manse at Sourin. Close by was the bird-infested and virtually derelict Free Church. 

The Free Church and Manse at Sourin

We learned that this had been the centre of nineteenth century crofters' opposition to the laird Frederick William Traill-Burroughs, whose island home was Trumland House (built 1873-6). To visit it we had to trespass - it was up for sale, a forlorn, deserted reminder of what had been. Burroughs had the reputation of being the worst of the Orkney lairds and change was particularly traumatic with crofters and cottars the victims of ruthless 'improvement', during the transition from a peasant economy to a more modern system of farming. When a Royal Commission visited Rousay to enquire into the situation there, its findings (added to information from other areas) led to the Crofters Act.

Frederick William Traill-Burroughs

The Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act of 1886 created legal definitions of crofting parish and crofter, granted security of land tenure to crofters and produced the first Crofters Commission, a land court which ruled on disputes between landlords and crofters. By granting the crofters security of tenure, the Act put an end to the Highland Clearances. Burroughs arrived at Rousay in July 1870 with his bride. He had already been laird for 23 years but he was almost unknown to the islanders since he had spent his time in the army. His tenants were soon to know him, nearly always in a negative way.

Whilst on Rousay, I purchased (one of the very last copies the author told me) of The Little General and the Rousay Crofters: Crisis and Conflict on an Orkney Estate (1981) by William P.L. Thomson, (1933-2016) Rector of Kirkwall Grammar School (1971-1991). Because it concentrated on a small island, on one major laird and his factors and on a small, if vociferous crofter opposition, it was more understandable than the wider canvas of John Prebble's book on the Clearances. Particularly memorable was the story of the Quandale and Westness Clearances. There a small group of crofters lived on more or less equality not overshadowed by the presence of big farms. The whole community was forcibly removed to make way for sheep. The House of Tafts stood at the centre of Quandale.

The remains of Tafts

This time it was not Burroughs, but his uncle George William Traill, who was responsible in the 1840s for the Quandale Clearance. Tafts was one of the earliest two-storied houses in Orkney. Increasingly engrossed in Thomson's book, I persuaded my wife to go over to Quandale to have a look at what might remain. There was no sign of human life - I can't recall if there were even any sheep! Tafts was a pitiful jumble of stones in a vast uninhabited landscape. It really brought home to us what 'Clearance' meant. The rest of the book was taken up with long, drawn-out disputes between Burroughs and his tenants. Just as there was a 'villain', there was a 'hero'. James Leonard (1835-1913) was a stonemason, weaver, Free Church precentor, Temperance lecturer and evicted crofter. He was also Burroughs' implacable opponent. He lived not far from the Sourin Manse and had worshipped in the nearby Free Church. Whilst it was hard to keep up with the various names in Prebble's vast canvas, Thomson's account, by its very nature, was more specific and, thus, 'human'.

I wrote to the author and had a charming reply, dated 3 October 1989. He said it was a model research 'package' - estate accounts, personal letters, memoirs, newspaper cuttings, and a really good story line. Well, I think he produced an excellent, well-researched story line himself. Just two years before this correspondence, in 1987, he published a full-length History of Orkney (The Mercat Press, Edinburgh). It was equally well researched and written. When he died in July 2016, he was rightly feted with the initials OBE; MA; M.Univ; Dip.Ed.; and FSA Scot.

John Prebble's 'The Highland Clearances' 1963

 

Secker & Warburg first edition - 1963

John Prebble (1915-2001) appears to be a 'marmite' character amongst Scottish historians. In the early 1980s the Historiographer Royal, the late Professor Gordon Donaldson of Edinburgh University, described Pebble's work as utter rubbish. More recently, Tom Devine, the Scottish academic and author, argued that there was no evidence of any original research in Prebble's book, it relied on late nineteenth century accounts, and was politically motivated. Devine called it 'a sort of faction' - a mixture of fact and fiction. (I will be listening to Devine on Sir Walter Scott at the Caledonian Club in London in September - I may well slant a question at him!) Perhaps his comment on political motivation holds one key to the appraisal of Prebble's works. Brian Wilson (b.1948), the ex-Labour politician who served in Blair's government, wrote a long appreciation of Prebble in 2001, a few days after the latter's death. He wrote: Particular recognition is due to John Prebble for his massive contribution to popular awareness, at home and abroad, of Highland history and the unwelcome challenge which this presented to Scottish academic historians. There is no doubt that Prebble did more than any individual to restore recognition of the brutal forces, largely generated from within Scotland itself  (I shall return to this further on), which had driven Gaelic society to the verge of destruction...

John Prebble

Prebble's own early life and career explains much. Although born in Edmonton, Middlesex, he emigrated with his parents to the predominantly 'Scottish' township of Sutherland in rural Saskatchewan, Canada . Only there for a short time, he learned through family lore of the Battle of Culloden and the later Highland emigration to Canada, Australia and elsewhere. Returning to England, he became a journalist in 1934 and also joined the Communist Party (leaving it after the War). He wrote seven works of fiction between 1944 and 1959, but it was his first big success - The High Girders (1956), a description of the 1879 Tay Bridge Disaster - which cemented his interest in nineteenth century Scottish history. So by the time he came to write The Highland Clearances, it was no real surprise that the book turned out as it did. Family lore, a left-wing slant, a novelist and journalist style and approach and, most recently (as a result of a visit to Culloden in the 1950s), his first book of what was to become the Fire and Sword trilogy - Culloden (1961. As an aside, I was interested to read that Prebble was not only the co-scriptwriter for the movie Zulu (1964), but was also a contributor to the TV series The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970), Elizabeth R (1971) and The Borgias (1981), and the adapter of John Buchan's The Three Hostages for television in 1977.

The Highland Clearances describes in awful detail the usually heartless actions of the lairds and their factors against their tenants. There were two main periods: 1782-1820 - which included what became known as The Year of the Sheep in 1792 and The Year of the Burnings in 1814. Neither were pleasant, but neither were the cholera epidemic in 1832 and widespread famine condition in 1836. The speed and scale of the seizures of land (and brutal expulsion of the peasants from their homes) increased markedly after the 1820s until the 1850s - the second period. Prebble makes it very clear in his Introduction as to his objective in writing the book: This book, then, is the story of how the Highlanders were deserted and then betrayed. It concerns itself with people, how sheep were preferred to them, and how bayonet, truncheon and fire were used to drive them from their homes... More than a shade of Thomas More in his Utopia: your sheep...be become so great devourers and so wild, that they eat up, and swallow down the very men themselves. I felt, occasionally, that Prebble was repetitive, but, surely, that was the tragedy - the tsunami of sheep kept on repeating itself, until, later on in some areas, they were replaced by a deluge of deer.

Prebble's account, if not quite a polemic, is certainly partisan. His attacks on the Dukes and Duchesses of Sutherland and their factors, such as Patrick Sellar and James Loch, are furious and sustained. He has near contempt for the famous American authoress, Harriet Beecher Stowe, in her support of the second Duchess. He gives ample space, and tacit backing, to the main opponents of the Clearances - Donald Macleod, Donald Ross, David Stewart of Garth and the eccentric, Thomas Muloch, who deserves a book to himself! The journalism in him ensures that Prebble writes good 'copy'. He also makes it clear, to their detriment, that many of the Scottish Ministers of religion worked hand-in-glove with the factors to drive their flock off their land. Several were rewarded with upgraded Manses and extra/improved glebe. However, Prebble was equally forthright in pointing out that the Clearances were invariably executed by Scottish high heid yins, especially aristocrats. Sections of the labour and trade union bureaucracy and the SNP attempted to focus working class opposition in Scotland to job losses and social inequality along nationalist lines. Prebble's work was used to encourage the view that England suppressed Scotland (it is remarkably effective these days) - but they (deliberately?) misread what he was writing. It was not jingoistic propaganda.

Two final points of interest. When the Crimean War broke out, London looked to the Highlands yet again to replicate the stream of soldiers as had occurred during the Napoleonic Wars. Between 1793 and 1815, 72,385 Highlanders served in forty line, fencible or reserve battalions, seven regiments of regular militia, and a number of companies of local militia. In comparison, of 33 infantry battalions sent to the Crimea, three only were Highland. Districts once home to thousands of potentially young soldiers were now home to shepherds and sheep. The men told the parsons "We have no country to fight for. You robbed us of our country and gave it to the sheep. Therefore, since you have preferred sheep to men, let sheep defend you!" Secondly, Sir Walter Scott is mildly mocked. The rich inspiration for Fergus MacIvor, the young Highland chieftain, in Waverley was one Alistair Ranaldson Macdonnell. In real life, he was an absurd, heroic, impossible man, heavily in debt, always quarrelling and living unproductively in the past (he hated the Caledonian Canal). Prebble also regarded Waverley as feeding its readers with pictures of a never-never Highland past, peopled with proud and noble gentlemen, and an amusing and simple peasantry that gave its betters the right amount of service and devotion.

Prebble never claimed to be an historian and admitted that his methods were idiosyncratic. He gave little thought or space to discussing any economic imperative about the Clearances. But his Highland/Gaelic 'people's nationalism' (shades of his Communist past) and his effective journalist's approach, made a great impact on readers' thinking. He ended his book, The Lowlander has inherited the hills, and the tartan is a shroud.

Henry Hudson's 'Wild Humphry Kynaston' 1899

 

Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. first edition -1899

A very uneven book! I tried to find out something about the author, Henry Hudson, but the Internet search only directed me to William Henry Hudson, the famous naturalist and regional writer. Neither was there anything about this novel. It certainly feels like a 'one off' effort, by one who is not a natural novelist. The title is rather a misnomer, as Kynaston is rarely centre stage. The main (rather haphazard) story is a romance between Clifford Ainsleigh, junior officer of His Grace King Henry the Seventh's brig of war "The Vulture" and Mistress Dorothy Baldwyn, daughter of Squire Baldwyn. Frankly, she comes across as a bit of a milksop - albeit a tall, fragile maiden of some nineteen summers...with a lithe, erect and graceful figure. Notwithstanding an exceedingly brief glimpse of her, Clifford falls passionately in love and when she, almost as speedily, reciprocates, it's all systems go.

Apart from Kynaston, the only character with any real interesting aspect is Geoffrey Burgoyne, Clifford's friend and shipmate: of squarer and stronger build, his breadth of shoulder and depth of chest indicating a more robust constitution than Clifford's...the glow of health shone through the almost olive tint of his sunburnt cheeks; his eyes...indicated a firm determination of character and an inflexible will.

An ideal late 19th century Public Schoolboy type then; just the right image for the dedicatee of the book, Lieutenant Colonel Thorneycroft, JP, DL  whose photograph adorns the page opposite the first Appendix. He is pictured mounted on a black horse in full military regalia. In his Preface, the author states that his mother's maiden name was Frances Kynaston and it was she who told him stories woven round her [in]famous ancestor. Henry makes a brave stab at a tale, but he is no natural novelist.

The most irritating aspect of his style, is the assumed olde worlde language he uses whenever any character speaks, viz.: then another danger thou wottest not on doth threaten thee. He also interposes authorial advice every so often, which is rarely needed and often gives too much away as to what was to follow. The sheer unlikelihood (impossibility?) of Bella, an old crone who passed as a witch, turning up at Kynaston's deathbed, casting aside her disguise and revealing the young and pretty features of his wife, "I am thy lost Isabella" my dear Wild Humphry, is too amusing for words. Nearly as unlikely is Dorothy and others failing to recognise Clifford after only three years away, even if he had now broadened out, improved his beard, got a sun tan and a large facial scar.

Early on in the book, the author beseeches us: Gentle reader, if I weary you not with my simple narrative, follow me through to the end and learn, yea learn, how true love and manly devotion ennobles frail humanity. Well I followed his advice, and enjoyed the simple canter.

Mrs Humphry Ward's 'The Case of Richard Meynell' 1911

 

Smith, Elder, & Co. first edition - 1911

This is the second novel I have read by Mrs Humphry Ward (née Mary Arnold). Once again, like Helbeck of Bannisdale in 1898 (which the author first imagined as romantic, and haunting and original), it deals with love - carnal, romantic and spiritual - and religious turmoil. Before I put down my own thoughts on the book, I looked on the Internet to see if there had been any contemporary reviews available. The only one I found was a smug, nearly caustic appraisal in The Churchman (December 1911). It reeked of the Established church's complacency: the new novel was marked, like so many of her books, by the unpleasant people who figure in it, and the unpleasant moral situations that it discloses...[it] leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth...she has, or she thinks she has, a religious mission. The journal's position was that the 'hero' and his Modernists behaved without any semblance of authority (my emphasis) ... the Church of England does not want, and will not welcome, either rationalism or Romanism. The Churchman, founded in October 1879, became just Churchman between 1977 and 2020, and now goes by the name of The Global Anglican. One wonders what its UK circulation is! The attitude of the majority, just over one hundred years' later, to the C of E is one of indifference. The public only get mildly aroused when one or both of the archbishops (or the occasional bishop) peddle left-wing or 'woke' sentiments. Not so in 1911.

A key to Mary Ward's writings lies in her maiden name. She was the daughter of Tom Arnold, niece of Matthew Arnold, and the grand-daughter of the famous Dr Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby School. Through the mouth of the fictitious white-haired Bishop of Dunchester, the author wrote (p.460): just before I was born there were two great religious leaders in England - Newman and Arnold of Rugby. Arnold died prematurely (before Mary was born), at the height of bodily and spiritual vigour...today we have been listening again, as it were, to the voice of Arnold, the great leader whom the Liberals lost in '42....a church of free men co-extensive with the nation, gathering into one fold every English man, woman and child, that was Arnold's dream, just as it is Meynell's...and, earlier in the book (p.173) 'Meynell has always gone for the inclusion of Dissenters.' 'Well, it was Arnold's game!' said the Canon, his look kindling. 'Don't let's forget that. Meynell's dream is not unlike his - to include everybody that would be included.'

True - Methodists (mainly Primitive) and other non-conformists flock to hear Richard Meynell preach and avidly read his writings. His last great sermon, at the end of the book, charges the Modernist supporters to stand firm: ...just as science, and history, and philosophy, change with this ever-living and growing advance, so religion - man's ideas of God and and his own soul...the sons of tradition and dogma have no monopoly in the exaltation, the living passion of the Cross! Thus the Rector of Upcote, the 40 year-old Meynell, soon probably to be defrocked with other clergy, takes his stand. And standing with him is Mary Elsmere, a 26 year-old, whose bright reddish hair mingled charm and reticence and whose eyes were sweet and shy...the shyness was the shyness of strong character, rather of mere youth and innocence. This is the love story which permeates the entire book; it is based on intellectual and philosophical coming together, as much as passion. Her mother, Catherine Elsmere, widow of 20 years from Robert Elsmere (the subject of Mary Ward's most famous novel), tall, very thin, her brown hair very lightly touched with grey and arranged with the utmost simplicity...the mouth austere and finely cut, is a believer in tradition and only slowly comes round to her daughter's choice. Both women are touchingly drawn (the last line in the book signals Catherine's death) and realistic.

Others who support Meynell include Hugh and Rose Flaxman, Catherine Elsmere's brother-in-law and sister. Hugh plays a major role in sustaining Meynell in times of trial and helping him to defeat the enmity of Henry Barron, Squire of the parish and a wealthy man  of the White House, Upcote Minor, who is determined to bring Meynell down by fair means or foul.. His deaf daughter Theresa, nearly 30...passed generally for a dull and plain woman, ill-dressed, with a stoop that was almost a deformity, and a deafness that made her socially useless is also a life-like character. Perhaps the eldest son, Stephen Barron, a local clergyman devoted to Meynell and the Modernist movement is not so well delineated. The younger son, Maurice Barron, is a cad - deceitful, the originator of an untruthful tract against Meynell which circulates around the area and then reaches the national press. He rightly gets rumbled and his comeuppance. 

Woven into the above - the Modernist-Traditional clash and the love story - is the tragedy of the spinster Alice Puttenham, whose illegitimate daughter Hester was passed off as the offspring of the late Sir Ralph Fox-Wilton and Lady Fox-Wilton (her sister). Hester is now 17-18 year old, vivacious, headstrong, disliked by her 'parents', whom she cordially dislikes too, and doomed to a sticky end. Meynell has promised to look after her as her Guardian, in response to an appeal from her father (who then committed suicide soon after Hester's birth). Matters are further complicated by the present occupant of nearby Sandford Abbey  5 miles away- Sir Philip Meryon (his mother Lady Meryon and the Rector's mother were sisters) ne'er-do-weel... dark, slim fellow, finely made  BUT modified by certain loose and common lines in the face. He seduces Hester and this dark drama regularly diverts Meynell from 'the cause'. Perhaps the scenes relating to Hester's death were guilty of purple passages, but at least she was able to "call me mother" before she expired.

Hester goes to her doom

Another sympathetic character is Francis Craye, Bishop of Markborough, physically a person of great charm. He was small...never detracted from the reverence inspired by the innocence and unworldliness of his character. I found the arguments meted out between the main antagonists and the soul-searching and compelling. Unlike The Churchman, I approved of Mary Ward's leanings. I recall my father, a much milder man than myself, angrily producing a broadsheet in 1950 against Pope Pius XII's absurd declaration of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. To that I could add Papal Infallibility, the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection. These definitely don't preclude the historical fact of Jesus being an inspiring teacher and prophet. All religious dogma/doctrine is man made and, certainly, not infallible!

Inspired by Helbeck and Meynell, I have purchased John Sutherland's biography of Mrs Humphry Ward (Clarendon Press, 1990) and look forward to reading it before too long.