Letters to a Sister by Constance Babington Smith

Author:Constance Babington Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1964-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

20, Hinde House, Hinde St, W.1 28 August, [1956]

Dearest Jeanie,

... I am glad you are getting on with The Towers, and like it. John Connell told me today that he supposed Laurie to be a man till the mention of Vere; he thought Vere a male name so that L. must be female. Actually Vere, like Laurie, can be either. He likes it, and is reviewing it in the Evening News soon. I also met Paul Dehn in the street, he is on the ‘Critics’ just now, and says they want to do the book, not next week, as they are doing the Edinburgh Festival, but probably the week after. We must listen to that. I expect the two Sunday papers may do it this Sunday, or possibly not; if so I will bring you Sunday Times. The reviews will be interesting. Some people think it is mainly funny, which I didn’t mean, though no doubt a few jokes got in as I wrote. I am a little nervous about R.C.s, tho’ not really about Moslems. I had a letter from Stewart Perowne, whom I mention in the Jerusalem part, as he was there when I was; he is very pleased at being in a book, and I hope the others I mention will be too; I don’t say any harm of any of them.

An odd thing seems to be happening to me, I am getting Lower Church. Where will it end? Perhaps in All Souls’, Langham Place, sitting under Mr Stott.114 I am getting annoyed with all these absurd extreme Anglo-Catholic ways. Not with incense etc., but with such absurdities as [those which] Kensit mentions, which are copied straight from Rome, and with the materialistic view of the sacraments; I am not pleased when the bell goes during consecration. Actually I suppose it isn’t Low but Broad that I am growing increasingly, though always pretty broad before, but now so broad that all the bowing & holding up trains that goes on at All Saints’ [Margaret Street] worries me. It is time I returned to St Paul’s and Grosvenor Chapel; All Saints’ is too high for me.

Do you mean that 40 bombs over remote seas will make us ill in Britain? It must be stopped at once.

I am rather sorry Archbishop Mathew is abroad in the Aegean just now, when all the hierarchy must be agog to get Westminster and the various jobs that will become empty owing to the general post.115 He should have been in the Cathedral at the Requiem, with the other bishops etc. Still, he certainly wouldn’t get Westminster. I wish he would; it would be splendid for the Church.

Someone writes that my book is very persuasively Anglican. I hope it is. How splendid if it was read by chemists, who took my criticisms of unlabelled Pills to heart! It is a very silly and dangerous practice.

I shall come on Friday. I do feel pleased that you like The Towers. I should have been very sad about it if you didn’t.

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