Contents
HILDA VAN STOCKUM’S ROAD TO DAMASCUS, 1933 1
1933 Letters to ERM from Dublin 1
May 21, 1933: Fr. Colquhoun, Sandymount Church, Evie Hone, Grene 1
May 25, 1933: Violet, Rachel, Fr. Colquhoun, Weatherhead 2
May 26, 1933: Fr. Colquhoun, Oxford Group 3
29 May 1933: Oxford Group 4
2 June 1933: Commissions honest; exhibitions not 5
4 June 1933: Sandymount Church, Fr. Colquhoun 6
13 June 1933: Visit from Han and Hilda de Booy, Alfred Adler Talk 7
20 June 1933 Unfinished transcription 9
HILDA VAN STOCKUM’S ROAD TO DAMASCUS, 1933
1933 Letters to ERM
May 21, 1933: Fr. Colquhoun, Sandymount Church, Evie Hone, Grene
21 Upper Mount Street [Dublin]
D.[ear] Husband,
I have really found the church that is going to help me. You know I met Father Colquhoun. This Sunday I went to early communion. The church is about 3 quarters of an hour away and I ran most of it because I was late. The service was beautiful. All the things that irritate me in the ordinary church.of.Ireland service were left off. There were no loud voices and there was lots of quiet. The words were uttered in the rhythmic murmur of a Catholic priest and not pronounced with a painful attempt at "feeling." Then, we didn't get a silly little cube of bread from which crumbs drop between your fingers but a real holy wafer—with a picture of the Eucharist on it. Something leapt in me when I saw it, a happiness filled me which I can't explain.
Evie Hone was there and took me back in her car to breakfast in her place. The sun shone on the profusion of flowers and in my heart. Evie told me that the wife of Father Colquhoun married him before he was an Anglo-Catholic and that she is terribly against his church. It is a great tragedy. I promised to pray for her. Mother, Violet and I went to High mass there at 11.30. Evie had given me an Anglo-Catholic prayerbook and all the devotions are in it! The Hail Mary, the Rosary and the Stations of the Cross!
The High Mass was very beautiful. Father Colquhoun preached with strength and simplicity, but for the rest it was singing, burning candles and quiet times. Mother said it was the first time she felt reverent in a church and that she realised there was a side to God she knew nothing about. As for me, it was as if I were a starving babe and milk were slowly poured between my lips. Just think, I can have communion there every day! And I'm going to confession and to the retreat and I'm going to keep the fast days and novenas.
You see, I've surrendered again and again but it isn't enough. My own fault [? soul?] is not enough. I want the support of others. The Oxford Group here is so weak, I feel I have to give there, but this church is going to feed me. If you read Evelyn Underbill’s book, "The life of the Spirit and the life of today,” you'll understand more about it. Oh, I'm so happy. I may make the sign of the cross, I may have a rosary, oh, I'm so happy.
The Oxford group has had a quiet time about whom to send to Waterford and they have chosen Mother and me. So we're going next week-end in a couple of cars, great fun. Yesterday I had a lovely walk with David through the park. All the hawthorns were in bloom and we rested in a sunny little valley with bridal trees in a row. We had a heart to heart talk. David [Grene, went to University of Chicago] likes Pic [Gwynne] very much, thinks she is just the girl for Willem.
May 25, 1933: Violet, Rachel, Fr. Colquhoun, Weatherhead
D. H. [Dear Husband:]
I've heaps to tell you, it was quite an eventful day yesterday. First Father Colquhoun came to tea. Mother and Violet liked him extremely and we immediately started to talk about religion. I'm afraid I was rather irreverent in bits — but I made rather a good pun (though a wicked one).
Rachel, Violet's friend, and I had had a discussion the day before about life after death. Rachel thought she would meet Jerome, her beloved there in the flesh, so to speak. She was indignant when I said did not believe I would live on in my present form, nor that I would be able to embrace you in Heaven. My idea of being sunk into God's reality and finding Him everything we found on earth and infinitely more, did not appeal to her. Afterwards I said to Violet that she would probably rush at Christ as soon as she'd entered Heaven, calling "Jerome! Jerome!" and she would never even look at the poor soul answering to that name.
We discussed this question with Father Colquhoun and, he professed to lean towards my vision of Heaven. He said we ought to try even on earth to love God as manifested in people. After all, a lot of our possessive love is self-love. But he thought we might retain more of our individuality than I believed.
"Oh, yes," I said casually. "If I meet a piece of God which is very like mother I'll know it's her."
Here Father Colquhoun smiled and said: "That's extraordinary, isn't it? A piece of God! A piece of the Infinite."
So, slap-boom, I said: "Obviously a piece which passes all understanding!"
I’m afraid he looked non-plussed. He is an absolute dear, I think he likes having me in his church. I will have to go to confession and I like that but some things in the service still stick in my throat. I'll have to talk about them and get more light.
We heard Weatherhead speak in the Wesleyan church on Stephen's Green. It was wonderful. We went there very early and took seats where we could have a good look at his face. The hall was packed, heaps of Church of Ireland, Oxford Group and B. U. people were there, also your friend Ginger Darling. And down below we saw Jan [HvS’s younger brother, at Trinity]. He had come of his own accord because he liked Weatherhead's book, Psychology in Service of the Soul, so much.
When Weatherhead appeared there was a hush. He must be nearing forty but he looks like a lad of twenty — slight and tall with a dark head formed like Jan's and a long narrow face with beautiful starry eyes. His whole face is bathed in spiritual light. Then he began to pray. His voice was like violin music. After some hymns and the first chapter of St. Paul to the Corinthians he started to speak. I can't possibly convey the charm of his words, the boyish way he gesticulated and the sincerity behind his words. He spoke of the power of God which is manifested more in the freedom he allows us than in displays like a thunderstorm. Afterwards he prayed and the congregation was mouse-still.
,
Afterwards I had a long talk with Jan. Weatherhead had moved him deeply. He ackknowledged that he had tried to approach God too much intellectually and he is now going to pray.
This morning I went to 6.30 High Mass at Sandymount and had communion. The discipline of daily communion is excellent but I feel some forms in the service are rather archaic. After Weatherhead's sermon I winced to see Christ held up as a sacrifice like Abraham but how can we offer Christ, when we ourselves have killed Him?
May 26, 1933: Fr. Colquhoun, Oxford Group
I've been to confession today. I was very nervous but it was beautiful. Father Colquhoun reminds me very much of a saint. He has a beautiful, loving atmosphere around him and I did feel strongly a spiritual help coming from the absolution. I cried like anything after it and felt as though I'd been washed clean. Now I walk every day the hour’s walk past the sea to the church at Sandymount and take H. Communion. It's so much easier to think of Christ and serve Him when you have a definite thing to do every day. Otherwise we so easily step back into the old ways. It's funny, since the confession I feel as though some queer power of love is being released in me. I feel I'm going to grow through the sacraments. Intellectually I'm not quite clear about them yet but I feel that will come, it's the humble acceptance and practice that counts.
Our Oxford Group is my discipline and my cross. I like the ladies in it and they all seem sincere but they are so different from myself that it really taxes my strength. But that is a good test of my charity and devotion are released through the church. Yesterday, in the cinema with Willem and Violet, I got frightened at the picture, which seemed full of the horrors of life.
Then the cross suddenly drew near and I got a glimpse of something. My heart began to sing a hymn of love, big gulfs of strength were poured into me, all in a crowded cinema with cigarette smoke and organ-din. Later it faded but these moments are more and more frequent. I'm beginning to hope — to hope — you see it takes practice to draw near to God. Some of these Christians seem to think: surrender - Hups - guidance, hups - convert others - hups - and all is well.
But to me it seems a more laborious process. Before I can change others I must first change more myself and certainly have a firmer grip of God. Unless you have a selfless love for God He can't use you but that's not so easy, you can't give it to yourself. But you can pray and live a sacramental life and then God will not let you thirst in vain. I'm so happy.
29 May 1933: Oxford Group
I've been to the Oxford Group meeting in Waterford this week-end. It was very hectic. We left here at about 2 and arrived there at 5.30. We had tea, quiet time, supper and a group meeting. There were many people invited and we all shared something. I said little for the more sharing I hear, the less words I think necessary. Just that it is a good thing to point out that it is sin which keeps us from God and not God's lack of interest.
There were a lot of old gentlemen with beards there who looked like pious prophets, but I suppose their beards hid sinful hearts. I don't think the meeting was very exciting. The next morning I went to early mass (I have to go to mass every Sunday since I joined the Anglo-Catholic church) and was irritated by the rather vulgar atmosphere, not like some RC Churches in Dublin.
When I came back we had breakfast and Quiet Time and then we all went to a Quaker meeting. It was rather interesting the Quaker idea is very like that of the Oxford Group. But dear me! To sit quiet for an hour in a musty hall when the sun is shining and the birds twittering! I thought it an ordeal! I think their spiritual ideal lacks the humility of accepting our human limitations. I was homesick for my little Sandymount church.
Hilda Marsh came in and was delighted to see us. Mother and I went with her to her house. She lives in the school head's house with a lovely garden behind it and a way through to the school ground and the school. We had our meals with the school children in the dining room and Mother made them all laugh telling of my pranks of long ago. Hilda didn't seem altogether happy. Her husband seems kind but unresponsive and I feel she is rather lost in the school curriculum.
The Sunday Afternoon meeting of the Oxford Group was rather good - though Mrs. Lamb led it and Mother and I both think she is not quite cured yet. She talks and talks and talks. No one else has a chance. Yet I like her. Mr. Pit did a grand thing. An enemy of his was at the meeting and at the end he explained this and how he had acted wrongly towards this man and advanced with outstretched hand to make it up. The man hardly responded, very ungracious, but it was grand to see Mr. Pit.
When we went home at last we were all dead tired. We sang hymns most of the way. Mother is rather upset by the Group. The people in it disapprove of her because she does not believe in the atonement. I'm afraid our group is not what it should be.
So I've decided, especially since you've encouraged me, to spend the rest of my money for Violet's portrait on going to the Oxford Group meeting in Oxford with Mother. I've another commission from Mrs. O' Connor, she is delighted with the picture of herself— thinks it's the best thing I've done. But she is going down to the South this week, as her husband has been transferred to Cork. So she has invited me to stay at her place in Cork and do a picture of herself and husband there. She has a huge park with a lake and a river. It'll be fun. She invited me for the whole month of July.
2 June 1933: Commissions honest; exhibitions not
Here life is jogging on. Mrs. Conner’s portrait is getting good. It's the kind of portrait that make people take notice. Very big with draped curtains, satin chair and big landscape in the background. We had the first really nice Oxford Group meeting in our house Wednesday evening. It is mixed and I do think one needs mass [?].
They all were delighted with my work and Mrs. Lamb is thinking of giving me a commission to do her daughter. Mother [Olga Emily Boissevain van Stockum] is now converted to the Anglo-Catholic Church. I believe it will do her a lot of good. She is losing her fear of the supernatural. Aunt Hilda and uncle Han [de Booy; Hilda is Olga’s sister] are coming over in the middle of June.
It will be great fun. Little Christie Coyle is going to have her first communion on Saturday. Mainie Jellett and I had a discussion on art today. We came to the conclusion that the only decent way to live, for an artist, is to live by commissions —- that exhibitions are of the Devil. Fancy making a lot of work on chance that someone might like it, and then show it like a pavement artist! I feel lovely when I do work for Mrs. Conner, knowing that I am fulfilling a demand and am worthwhile.
We also had a discussion on modern art. It seems that the latest abstract paintings are very like close-up photographs of serge or corduroy, so we both think the end will be that the canvas is left in its maiden beauty and admired for its own sake [Yes, that was the end… of the beginning—JTM]. We talked about the future of abstract painting. Mainie thinks it will be useful for decorating modern architecture. I agree with her, only modern architects hate their creations being decorated.
She said it is such nonsense, people saying they don't "understand" modern art—for they don't understand old-fashioned art either. I replied that art is not only for connoisseurs. My mother and our nurse had both an admiration for Dostoyevsky but on different levels. Mother understood D.’s astounding insight into spiritual realities and Miss Moonch thought he wrote thrilling who-done-its. Old masters always do, sometimes, to me but there are so many people who don't understand it at all. Mainie agreed that abstract painting will never supersede natural work.
4 June 1933: Sandymount Church, Fr. Colquhoun
On Saturday morning Christie got her first communion. She looked lovely in the clothes I knitted and her sister and I went with her. I brought her a rosary, I hope she'll use it. The family is not very religious.
The Conners came for lunch that day and admired all my pictures. They are very appreciative. From three to seven I had a retreat at Sandymount Church. That was lovely. Father Colquhoun is really a first-rate Peron and his addresses are wonderful. I started being very sleepy—getting up at 5.30 every day does make one seedy after lunch — but at the end of the retreat I was wide awake and happy as a lark. Father C.’s last sermon was very useful and to the point— it was about spiritual progress.
His first one had been about "faith" and his second on conversion. He started his last one saying that our first conversion does mean a turning of the Will towards God but does not mean the highest spiritual grace. He said it is only through long growing towards God that we attain real spiritual heights and therefore he was going to give me some hints as to what we must do:
I - Self-examination. This has to be done every evening but need never become morbid since we would find, besides faults, also the beneficient working of the Holy Spirit in us. It need not take long but was necessary as a daily exercise. It would lead to continual penitence, which is an attitude of the soul and not a momentary emotion but self-knowledge, without which no one can grow.
II - Mortification. This, he said, is no morbid thing either. Every athlete who wants to attain something has to practice it. It means the emptying of self. Without discipline the soul is of no use to God. There are two kinds or mortification, external and internal.
External
A - Avoidance of sin - and its occasions, which is by no means easy and will result in bearing a real cross,
B - Effort to fill our soul with the opposite virtue, for the Devil is only banished by the presence of the Holy Spirit.
C - External mortification, which means the mortification of the senses. The example he gave was that of sight. He said we had to learn to see what was truly significant and to turn our eyes away from mere distraction or we would become prey to senseless curiosity. This would lead to true observation which is attending to the significant. We must have out attention under control.
D - Mortification of the tongue. Of course this would not be necessary if we were wholly charitable in our hearts but as long as we are imperfect it is necessary that we should realise our responsibilities and not say hastily things of which we would only become ashamed or harm others with. The best way to overcome this is to make a habit to speak as though in the presence of God.
Interior
Then there is the interior mortification of heart and mind, to make the will united with the Will of God, the response to the guidance of God, the intention to abandon immediately for the love of God whatever is evil or dangerous.
A - Mortification of thought. By making God and God's things the centre of our interest. It is impossible to prevent wrong suggestions or imaginations but it is possible to reject them.
B - Mortification of desire. Mortifying our natural attractions and aversions; our hopes, fears, depression, anger, etc. which drive us into sin and which come from lack of mort. of desire. We must realise that our life is supernatural which must involve mortification of instinctive desires. All desires can be sublimated to the love of God and to do that means the mortification of self.
C - Mortification of judgement; it is generally warped by prejudice and peculiarities. Judgement is only right if it is in accord with God's will.
D - Detachment which means the acceptance from the hands of God. Any suffering and troubles which may happen to us.
And then, he said, there are three last things: 1 prayer, 2 meditation, 3 sacraments.
- Prayer. We must pray without ceasing, with perseverance.
- Meditation. We must set aside a definite time each day for meditation.
- Sacraments. We must use the sacraments regularly whether we are in the mood or not, they don't depend on our mood but on our will.
Don't you think this good advice?
I am discovering Thomas à Kempis.
Things are developing here - Grene has proposed to Violet. I hope she accepts him.
13 June 1933: Visit from Han and Hilda de Booy, Alfred Adler Talk
(21 Upper Mount Street, Dublin)
My own dearest husband,
Thank you ever so much for your last letter, you are a dear. I like the way in which you are giving away our children before we've yet properly got them. I have already given you permission to give away any of my worldly possessions which you may think fit.
Mine are yours and yours are mine, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness in health, till death do us part, amen.
I'm glad that you approve of my Anglo-Catholic faith. Mother has made her confession too, and she is terribly happy. Of course I'll go to Calvary [Episcopal Church, in Chelsea, New York City?] with you every Sunday. I want the Anglican church for daily Holy Communion, which is becoming a necessity to me, and for confession.
I enclose a letter from the American couple that had tea with us. Who knows, we might meet them again!
I have to tell you something very sad about the boy I wrote to you about some months ago. The one that told us about that self-governing school. We had not seen him since, for he did not like walking, and mother did not know how to entertain him. Jan could not get on with him, because all he was interested in was Jazz music, motor racing, etc. He used to tear along the roads on his motorbike and two days ago he smashed against a motorvan and got killed on the spot.
When I heard it I felt terribly guilty, for I had forgotten him in our prayers, and mother felt the same because she had not invited him again. It is so terrible never to be able to make up for an omission like that.
I'm beginning to believe in evil spriits, and I believe that it was them that Christ delivered us from, when we, through our foolish sinfulness had given them power over us. I believe the Cross was Christ's victory over Satan and that if we make the sign of the Cross when we are tempted the evil goes. What otherwise do the words Christ spoke: forgive them for they know not what they do! mean, if it is not that we in our weakness have played into the hands of Satan far more terrible than we in our blindness can see?
And, as Leslie Weatherhead points out, if it was not something supernatural, something far greater than any of us can comprehend what happened to the Cross, why did Christ shrink so from the ordeal? Has not Socrates died calmly, and have not countless martyrs gone singing to their death? If you feel God not quite near yet, try the Anglican way with confession and communion, it is helping me where my own efforts have grievously failed. I'm really beginning to feel Christ growing in me.
Oom [Uncle] Han [de Booy] and tante Hilda have arrived, and it is such fun! They are greatly in favour of the groups, and tante HIlda is thrilled to witness one of our meetings on Wednesday.
They went in raptures over my story (I sent away the pictures today, with all the new black and white pictures. Take care that none get lost, some of them are quite small.) Tante Hilda was also very interested to see the work of my National School [Dublin] pupils, which has progressed amazingly. She is going with me on Saturday to see them work. I will enquire about those scholarships or whatever they are.
Dearest, let’s both hold our [first] anniversary of marriage [June 27] in a special way. Let’s spend it in prayer.
Later. Pic Gwynn and I were walking in the coronation plantation yesterday where we picnicked with tante Hilda and Oom Han. She said something very true and significant. She said: “Believers and unbelievers both err in trying to pin God down. You can't pin Him down.”
We also talked about my father [Captain Abram van Stockum]. She said if anyone made you believe in supernatural values it was he. Pic is a darling. She can quite understand and speak Dutch now with such an adorable accent!
Tante Hilda told us very interesting things yesterday. Pic took us out in her car and Tante HIlda told us that Alfred Adler, the famous psychoanalyst [noted especially for his theory of the inferiority complex—JTM] has been visiting Holland. One afternoon he devoted to explaining cases of difficult children, written down on pieces of paper by the parents. Tante HIlda says it was marvelous what he could deduce from a few difficulties, dreams, etc. The whole character of the parents and all sorts of facts which weren't mentioned.
Tante Hilda treated Ot to this lecture and Ot sent in a paper with difficulties about Tompie and Elsbeth. It seems Tompie is developing all sorts of queer traits and Elsbeth is also difficult. Tante Hilda says there was an awful silence while Adler explained the case. He said: “This is a very nice little boy, gentle and good of full impulses but he has been spoilt by his mother when he was very small and is now jealous of his little sister. But there is no harm in him. And now I must say something terrible - something cruel. The Mother beats this little boy.”
Tante Hilda says a shiver went through the audience the way he said it: "Why does she beat such a boy? There is no necessity for it. Who should be beaten?" And then the whole audience shouted: "The Mother!”
Tante Hilda says it is awful the way Tompie is beaten and the senseless way he is punished when he has done nothing very wrong. She says she went on her knees to Ot once, telling her that the boy was not the kind of boy who should be beaten. Tom generally does the beating but Ot allows and encourages it. I was horrified, aren't you?
Adler said: "And then the parents excuse the beating of their children by saying the children want it. Of course they want it! It's often the only way in which they get undivided attention. When will parents stop punishing their children, realising it does not help? The only way you can bring up a child is by eliciting his cooperation - not making a slave of him. In the end it is only the parent who will be the slave.
20 June 1933 Unfinished transcription
