A Roman Courtship

VOLUME 156

NUMBER 3

SEPTEMBER 1935

BY ESME HOWARD

LATE and in November 1895 my mother and I decided to spend Christmas at Greystoke, and after the New Year to go as usual to Italy for the sake of her health, which was clearly far from strong.

Apart from the fact that my mother’s health required a warmer climate in winter and that she preferred Rome to any place on the Continent, I had my own particular reason for wishing to revisit Rome.

For some time past I had felt more and more attracted by the lady who was to become my wife. Though as yet I entertained no definite plans for the future, and though I was sure she had never even thought of me as a possible suitor, yet every time I left Rome I felt restless until I could return there.

I was over thirty-two years old in the spring of 1896, and therefore no longer of an age when a man of sense rushes into matrimony without weighing pros and cons. Profoundly though I felt the personal attraction, I could not but admit to myself that, even if she would take me, to transplant to a small household in England — which was all I could offer — a girl who had been living dans le grand monde in Rome for some years (for her father, Prince Giustiniani-Bandini, kept open house) might be an experiment involving considerable risk for both parties. So I resolved for the time being to try to become better acquainted with her, and said nothing about my feelings even to my family.

Courtship—to me a good oldfashioned word now fallen into disuse — was in Rome, even as late as 1896, no easy matter. There was no opportunity for a tête-à-tête, let alone a heart-to-heart conversation. It was not considered correct even to talk to unmarried girls for more than a quarter of an hour. ‘Sitting out’ at a ball was taboo. So strict, indeed, was the supervision in my father-in-law’s house that his elder daughters have told me that they were never allowed to cross the anticamera or entrance hall of their house in Rome without a maid or a governess, because a footman was always stationed there to the door for guests.

Copyright 1935, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass. All rights reserved.

As to meeting and talking out of doors, this was, if possible, more difficult still. We occasionally met at tennis parties, but here also ‘sitting out’ between sets was quite as much against the law as at a ball, and to talk of the affairs of the heart while patting the ball over the net in the style of the eighteen-nineties seemed to me out of the question.

So through that spring I waited and watched for opportunities of closer acquaintanceship which never came, frequenting Casa Bandini and any other Roman house or embassy where I might have a word with ’Donna Isabella,’ also listening eagerly to all that was said about her. In this I was lucky, for she had among the English Catholic families several friends whom I knew well enough to be able to ask about her, and from one and all I heard nothing but admiration and affection. I was especially struck by the way old ladies, too often critical of the younger generation, were unstinting in their praise of her.

The result of all this was, naturally, that I, already so attracted by her, fell ever more in love — but still, so far as I could see, without hope of having a heart-to-heart talk.

I was beginning to despair when, soon after Easter, my mother’s health, which had been getting slowly worse, began to cause us serious alarm, and she said she wished to go back to her house at Ravenstone in Cumberland. I left Rome feeling more unsettled and dejected than ever before in my life. Much depressed about my mother, very unsettled as to my own plans for the future, I felt that, in the circumstances, I could make no move toward my heart’s desire or even toward taking anyone into my confidence about it.

We traveled home slowly by stages — Florence, then Portofino (of happy memories, which my mother loved), and finally Ravenstone, the peace and quiet of which seemed for a few weeks to do her good. In June, however, it became evident to the doctors that the end was not far off, and on July 24 it came. All her children were with her, and her strong faith in the mercy and goodness of God enabled her to meet it serenely and without flinching for a moment. Indeed she was almost glad to go.

My mother used often to say that the world seemed to her so evil a place that she wished to be released from it. Seeing that she had had, all things considered, a really happy life, I could not as a young man understand this, and I used to tell her that the world seemed to me not such a bad place to be in. But she would reply that the old feel the burden of evil more than the young, and that if I lived I should grow to feel as she did.

I confess now that she was right, and that after living through the horrors of the Great War and the intolerable weariness of its aftermath, after having had experience of the infinite folly of men who have not yet learned their lesson, but are willing to repeat this fatuous beastliness on the ground that through it human nature is exalted — after going through all this, and with a sense of nausea at the futility and selfishness of mankind, I would now readily join her in her daily prayers for a speedy end of the world but that I believe it is for us to carry on according to our lights to the end, no matter how bitter it may be.

There are, I suppose, few men of thirty-three to whom their mother has meant more than mine to me. We had been constant companions from my earliest days, and though we did not see eye to eye on many subjects, such as religion and politics, that never altered our intimate and happy relations. We were both travelers by instinct, and the many driving tours I took with her are among my happiest memories. But when she, always active physically and mentally, was threatened with a long and wearisome and at that time incurable illness, I hardly knew what to wish for — prolongation of life at that price, or release, which she herself desired. One summer afternoon she had been sleeping on the sofa in the drawing-room at Ravenstone; I was reading near her. Looking up, I was suddenly struck by the change that had come over her face. The tired expression, the lines of pain to which I was quite unused — I could not take my eyes from that suffering face. Suddenly she must have felt the thoughts passing through my mind, for her eyes opened and caught mine. Then her face changed and lit up with the beautiful smile I knew so well. Neither of us spoke, but it seemed to me that she understood my conflicting feelings and wished to tell me that I must not be troubled for her sake, for all would be well. I can see that smile quite plainly as I write these words.

When the break which I had dreaded really came, I felt that it was the end of the life I had lived till that day, but — I confess it to my shame — I also realized, with a greater interest in the future, that I should now be free to carry out my plans and live an independent life, which I could never have done had she continued to live tied to her bed or sofa at Ravenstone. My feelings, quite genuine in one direction, were thus moving in another by these reflections, and I understood perhaps for the first time how immensely difficult it is for us to judge others when our own most natural and sincere emotions may be so completely sundered and divided by contradictory sentiments.

Summing up the situation with regard to the future, I determined on two lines of immediate action. First, I would return to Rome as soon as possible and decide my fate with ‘Donna Isabella.’ Second, I would carry out a plan I had long been considering to plant rubber in the West Indies, being convinced that Fate had clearly pointed out this road to me so that I could give my wife the sort of surroundings to which she was accustomed, and which, not then knowing her genuine simplicity of character, I feared she might expect as of right.

Without delay I set about making preparations for putting my rubber plans into execution. This is not the place to describe my journey to Brazil, the West Indies, and Mexico to inspect rubber plantations. Suffice it to say that early in 1898 I returned to England, formed a syndicate for the planting of rubber in the West Indies, and was then free to give my thoughts wholly to the more absorbing affair of my marriage.

My last visit to Rome had not advanced matters greatly. I was still too uncertain as to Isabella’s feelings for me to dare ‘ to put it to the touch to gain or lose it all.’ But now I felt that I could not evade the issue any longer.

Accordingly, early in the spring of 1898, I started for Rome with my mind made up. On arrival, I thought I detected a warmth of greeting that I had not noticed before, but still the old difficulties of approach existed.

After some weeks, however, I did what I supposed a young Roman in similar circumstances would have done, and wrote to Princess Bandini, saying in Grandisonian style that I wished to marry her daughter Isabella,and asking if I might speak directly to her whom Sir Charles Grandison would have described as ‘the object of his affections.’ I regret that I did not keep a copy of the letter, which would no doubt later have given Isa and me, and particularly my sons, much food for merriment.

I received a most friendly reply, to the effect that I might say what I had to say to Isa herself, and was given a day and an hour.

This was so unexpectedly favorable that, at the appointed time, I walked on air to the Palazzo Bandini in the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, which is now the official centre of the Fascist Party. I wonder what all those reception rooms, which I used to know so well, look like now.

Strange to say, everything went as usual. The porter in the courtyard with the Roman statues round it (they are still there) did not seem to think that anything earth-shaking was about to happen. The footman in the anticamera, who admitted me, looked as unconcerned and aloof as if nothing special were taking place, and another, also as uninterested in the great events passing around him as a goldfish in a bowl, showed me into the salottino rosso, where in a state of mind that need not be described I collapsed into a carved gilt chair in red brocade, presumably of Italian Louis XV style, but of this I cannot be sure. Considering the circumstances, this lack of observation was perhaps not unnatural.

Presently in came Isa, and for the first time, from the smile with which I was greeted, I realized that all was well. From the extreme of uncertainty I now rushed to the other extreme of absolute sureness. I told her that I had been in love with her for three years and asked point-blank if she would marry me. She replied, with that outspoken simplicity and straightforwardness which is, unexpectedly yet frequently, characteristic of Italians, that I had never spoken to her of my affection before, but only of travels, of social questions, or of indifferent matters, so how could she guess what my feelings were? I excused myself as best I could for my long silence, but as the ice was now broken I begged to know whether I stood any chance of success.

Then she answered that indeed she would marry me, but first she must know what I thought about religion. Her religion, she said, — and I was sure that what she said was true, — was the most important thing in the world to her, and she could never marry a man who did not share it with her. To do so would create a division which would but increase with years.

I replied that while I had a great respect for those who felt strongly, as I knew she did, on this subject, I myself had no convictions. I was, indeed, without any definite faith except an innate belief in a God who was just and merciful, and I was ready to leave my future in His hands provided I did what seemed right, honest, and kind according to my lights. In fact, I more or less quoted Robert Louis Stevenson’s well-known Christmas sermon. Beyond this I promised never to interfere with the exercise of her religion, or with the religious education of any children. She should have her own way altogether in those matters.

But she was not to be satisfied. Religion must be, she argued, the foundation of the unity of the family. If the family were founded on a broken stone, how could it last ?

‘If you have no strong convictions of your own,’ she asked, ‘why not at least examine mine and see what they consist of? Do you know anything about Catholic beliefs?‘

I admitted that I really did not, but said I did not think it possible for me to become a member of any church which insisted on such definite articles of faith as I understood the Catholic Church did.

‘ If you know nothing about it,’ she continued, ‘why not, before deciding, learn a little?’

She could not change her conviction that marriage with one, however much she loved him, who was not of her faith could not be happy either for her or for the other. If, however, it were possible for me honestly to accept her faith, then indeed she would be my wife.

When I still hesitated, she insisted, ‘Cannot you at least, for my sake, look into this?’

Yes, I said, I would look into it. Still I could hold out no hope of a change in my views. But who would tell me about the Faith? I knew no one.

She then suggested Monsignor Merry del Val, whom I knew slightly as a young Anglo-Spanish priest who had been educated in England and was a special favorite of Pope Leo XIII. He had already been sent on an important mission to Canada, where he had acquitted himself of a difficult task to the satisfaction of all concerned. There was no one with whom I would rather have spoken on such a subject, and I readily agreed. I said I would at once ask him to let me see him, and we parted in sad uncertainty as to the future.

I don’t know and have never asked what her feelings were. I know that I felt as if ‘the heavens above were falling,’ as if ‘ the earth’s foundations fled. The footman in the anticamera and the porter in the courtyard with the statues seemed as uninterested as before.

In two or three days I called, as arranged, on Monsignor Rafael Merry del Val. He lived in two rooms on the top floor of the Vatican Palace, commanding a most magnificent view over the city of Rome and the Campagna beyond to the Alban Hills on the south and the Sabine Mountains on the east and northeast.

Whenever he could spare an hour from his duties as one of the private secretaries of the Pope he would give it up to me. Often, however, I had to sit and wait for him in this eyrie under the roof of the Vatican and had time for meditation while lifting my eyes unto the hills.

After this lapse of time it is very difficult for me to remember the precise tenor and sequence of our conversations, which extended over many interviews during some four weeks, and in any case this would not be the place to attempt to transcribe them at length. I think, however, that I may describe them briefly somewhat as follows: —

He began by asking in what religion I had been brought up. I said, ‘In the English Church.’ He asked me if I was still a member. I told him that since I left school I had ceased to attend its services except to accompany my mother. He asked if I belonged to any other communion; I said I did not.

In reply to his question why I had left the Church of England I said that having found, even as a small boy, that its teaching and practice were not in agreement with those of other Protestant communities, I ultimately came to the conclusion that none of them taught the religious truth they claimed to teach. As one sample of these differences, I said it had particularly struck me as a small boy that, whereas I was told that to have a crucifix in church or in one’s room was almost tantamount to idolatry, I found both crucifixes and candles on the communion tables of Lutheran churches in Germany, which my mother always attended, without their presence seeming to trouble her in any way. When I asked if this was right, my mother said that it was the practice of the Lutheran Church, and that Lutherans were good Protestants, but I could never understand why a practice which was apparently good and praiseworthy in Germany should be idolatrous and abominable in England. That was the beginning.

Then I began to find out that Presbyterians, whose churches my mother always attended when we were in Scotland, were, in many points that seemed of great importance, quite at variance with Anglicans to the south of the border, while the Sovereign of Great Britain was the recognized head of both churches. Was there ever anything more illogical? In the same way in Switzerland, Protestants were divided between Lutherans, Calvinists, and Zwinglians, and possibly more. One valley followed the truth as preached by one reformer, another valley the truth as preached by another, as though truth were a matter of geography, and as if two and two, which made four in one canton, could make five in another. If I was to believe in a supernatural religious truth at all, I felt it must be revealed from above and not be merely the guesswork of any man, however intelligent or studious.

Had I remembered Newman’s Apologia pro vita sua I should have quoted perhaps one sentence of his when a controversialist declared that Dr. Arnold vouched for his interpretation: ‘Dr. Arnold vouches for his interpretation, but who vouches for Dr. Arnold?’ There is the crux of Protestantism. Who vouches for Luther, for Zwingli, for Calvin, for John Knox, for Cranmer, for Parker, or for any of the other leaders of Protestant thought? The Protestant communities have become largely the purveyors of trulhs having geographical limits; with them (ruth is not universal, although this is one of the essential qualities or characteristics of real truth.

One thing which especially dissatisfied me with the Anglican Church was that it was ‘by law established.’ Bishops were appointed by Prime Ministers, who might not be of the Church at all, and the very prayers of the Prayer Book and the rubrics of the services had to be accepted and approved by Parliament, which might well be composed of Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics of all kinds. That was something I had never been able to swallow.

Monsignor Merry del Val listened in silence to my flood of speech — I had never had so good a listener before. Then he said, with a smile, that he understood there was little for him to do in order to detach me from the Protestant position.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘as you feel you can no longer belong to any Protestant community, is there anything that prevents you from joining the Catholic Church?’

I at once replied that I had two difficulties which seemed to me insuperable. First, the belief in eternal punishment, which was, I understood, a part of the Catholic Faith. Second, the belief that all those who did not die in the Catholic Faith were condemned to eternal punishment.

He said: ‘Let us take the second question first. When you say you cannot accept it you are, no doubt, thinking of some particular case of those near and dear to you.

I answered that I was thinking particularly of my mother; that I would not and could not accept any faith which condemned her to eternal punishment because she did not die professing the Catholic Faith; that wherever her spirit was, there I should wish to follow.

Monsignor Merry del Val then said that no Catholic may say of any soul — no matter what its beliefs or its actions on earth — that it has been condemned eternally. It is for God alone to judge in the last resort, and not for any man, even the Pope, who can only excommunicate — that is, declare a living person no longer a member of the Church on earth. Our Lord Himself on the Cross never declared that those who crucified Him and reviled Him would be damned. On the contrary, He prayed for them because they knew not what they did. The only declaration as to a future state He then made was the definite one that the penitent thief would be saved. The Church taught only that the Catholic Faith was true, and held, what the Apostles taught, that to believe in it was necessary for salvation. At the same time the Catholic Church taught that those who through no fault of their own had lived in invincible ignorance of the truth of Catholic doctrine, but yet lived an upright, charitable, and righteous life according to their lights, would undoubtedly be pardoned by God for the offenses they had committed.

It was impossible for us, he continued, to know by what ways God the All-Merciful would condone offenses, even want of faith in Him and in the truths revealed to His Church. Only one thing we could say without doubt: this was that those who, having seen the light, having understood the glory of God, deliberately and consciously turned their backs on Him and professed the Devil and all his works could, clearly, not be pardoned their offenses, because they themselves did not wish it.

All men were given at some time or other the freedom, the complete and clear freedom, of choice between God on the one side and the Devil on the other. Once they deliberately rejected Him, no further hope was possible. They got that which they themselves had chosen. We could not tell how or when God would so reveal Himself to us. It might be for us a long process, a matter of years; it might be done in the twinkling of an eye at the very moment of death, for time was nothing to God; a thousand years were as a day in His sight.

Therefore we mortals could never say that any man was condemned. All we knew was that God was both all-just and all-merciful. It was for us to act in such a way as to deserve His mercy if we could. We should, indeed, all have to pay the penalty in Purgatory for our temporal sins, but, unless we committed the unpardonable offense against the Holy Ghost by refusing to accept God when He was revealed to us, we need never despair, either for ourselves or for others.

I said that I had never understood the Protestant objection to the doctrine of Purgatory; indeed it seemed to be logically necessary in a system built upon worship of a God who was both all-just and all-merciful. Explained as Monsignor Merry del Val had explained it, the doctrine of eternal punishment by eternal exile from the presence of God because that exile was deliberately and knowingly chosen seemed to me not only believable but logically unanswerable.

I then asked for the explanation of the existence of suffering and sin in the world. It was explained to me that when God gave men freedom of choice between good and evil, which they undoubtedly had, so that they might be to that extent in His likeness and higher than the angels, sin and suffering, which were the corollary of that freedom, had to take their place in the world. Suffering was indeed, for man, rather a privilege than the reverse, for just as Our Lord offered His sufferings on earth as a sacrifice for mankind, so each one of us could make use of our sufferings by offering them up to God on behalf of our friends in imitation of the action of Our Lord. There was no such consolation in suffering as the knowledge that by offering up our sufferings humbly and readily we could, for instance, reduce the pains of Purgatory for our friends and relations.

Regarding sin, however, it was our duty, in accordance with the rules of the Church, carefully to examine our consciences to see in what we might have offended, and then to make a confession of our offenses with a humble and contrite heart and accept whatever penance the priest might impose. This was a wise and necessary decree of the Church so that men should realize the more readily how they were offending God.

My lessons, if I can call them such, covered a period of three or four weeks, generally lasting an hour in the morning.

One day I asked how I was to know that the Church differed from other self-styled teachers of revealed as opposed to natural Law. He asked me if I believed Christ to be the Son of God, and I declared I did because He spoke as no man had ever spoken and because He clearly taught that He was the Son of God. ‘Then,’ he said, ‘you must believe Him to be infallible and no word of His can have been spoken in error.’

I replied that of course I believed that. And then we proceeded to go through the various texts of the New Testament on which the Papal claims for the infallibility of the Church, not only at that time but for the future, are based.

I remember naturally the tremendous and overwhelming force of the great text: ‘Thou art Peter (the Rock) and upon this rock I will build my church.’ I thought how I had puzzled at school over this apparently meaningless saying: ‘Thou art Peter and upon this rock.’ What rock? I was always taught that the Apostles were equal, therefore this particular text was simply slurred over and no explanation was attempted because none other than the Catholic could be given or accepted by any unprejudiced seeker after truth. If it is read, indeed, without prejudice by a non-Christian (whom I take as an impartial witness between Catholic and Protestant), there can, in my opinion, be no doubt that the Petrine text must be considered as decisive in favor of the Catholic position.

Thus we went on from point to point.

After my almost daily lessons in Catholic doctrine under Monsignor Merry del Val, I used often, on leaving the Vatican, to wander up the Janiculum and sit under Tasso’s oak, where, according to the memorial stone, Saint Philip Neri used tra liete grida to play as a child among the children. There I could meditate quietly on what I had heard, looking out over the city and the Campagna to my beloved Alban and Sabine Mountains.

One day here, after I had been convinced that there really was an inspired authority for Christian truth and that this authority could be no other than the Catholic Church quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, I felt myself for a short space surrounded by and breathing in, as it were, the sense of the presence of God. Motionless I sat, feeling now certain that God was not only far away in Heaven, but also on earth, helping those who asked Him with a real desire to draw near. It was a sensation as of being buoyed up in a boundless ocean or floating through an infinite space, supported and sustained by clear certainty from which all doubt was banished.

Ever since that day, Tasso’s oak — now, alas, but a dried shell — has been a sacred thing for me.

No doubt this experience may be ascribed to the somewhat exalté condition of mind in which I found myself at the time. I do not for a moment wish to suggest that I was the subject of any unusual mystical visitation. Once again, later, I experienced the same sensation, which shall be recounted in its proper place.

Meanwhile I must add this one point more with reference to these conversations. I suppose that each of those who have, after passing most of their lives in the ‘freedom’ of Protestantism or complete unbelief, ‘submitted to the yoke of the Catholic Church’ have found some part of its doctrine and practice which specially appealed to them, becoming, as it were, a sort of nucleus round which the rest of their religious life revolved. So at least it was with me.

As soon as, with Monsignor Merry del Val’s help, I had gone over all the well-known texts in support of the doctrine of the real Body and Blood of Our Lord actually being in the bread and wine of the Eucharist in accordance with His promise to remain with His Church on earth forever; after I had studied the sacrifice of the Mass and seen how this differed from the purely human services of other churches, I felt that this was the lodestone that would draw me irresistibly into the arms of the Church. Surely nothing so spiritual and at the same time so genuinely tangible could have been ‘invented’ by any mere man.

Our Lord’s words in regard to this seemed to me perfectly clear, and their meaning not open to doubt. Those who would not accept them in their obvious significance He allowed to leave Him without any word of explanation in a Protestant sense. In fact, those disciples who left Him at Capharnaum over this question and ’walked no more with Him’ became for me the first Protestants.

It might be a hard saying, indeed, but what a marvelous help and support when once accepted with mind and heart and soul! It is quite incredible that any mere man should have conceived so amazing a thing as this, so utterly simple and yet so utterly divine.

For this reason, if for no other, it appeared to me to bear the stamp of divine truth, to deny which was to deprive oneself of the greatest assistance which the Saviour left behind Him on earth for men.

The definition of this mystery mattered, I confess, little to me. Whether it was to be defined as the presence of Our Lord in the species, or whether the substance of the species was changed, was a question I was quite content to leave to the infallible Church. What did matter to me was that there in the bread and wine on the altar was truly Our Lord Jesus Christ coming again and again to us in accordance with His promise. Then, when I thought that in every part of the world from before dawn to midday Our Lord was appearing thus in this most humble guise to His faithful, making a girdle of His presence round the world, I realized as in no other way the grandeur of the Universality of the Holy Catholic Roman and Apostolic Church — Holy because inspired from above; Catholic, quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus; Roman because her Head, the Vicegerent of Christ on earth, was the Bishop of Rome, the successor in direct line of Saint Peter, the rock on which Our Lord founded the Church; Apostolic because her descent from the Apostles could be historically proved.

So at Mass, which I began now to attend frequently, these thoughts filled my mind. I worshiped there the presence of Jesus the Son of God, and rejoiced to think that I was about to be privileged to be one of the millions who could so worship Him, all in the same way and with the same words, no longer a member of a mere national church, dependent on questions of latitude and longitude for what I was to hold as truth.

I look back to that time as the happiest of my life, and to those hours spent with Monsignor Merry del Val as undoubtedly the most supremely useful I have ever passed.

For him I have always felt the liveliest gratitude and affection. His was a really wonderful personality, combining the most essential qualities of a Christian priest and the characteristics of an entirely human-hearted man of keen mind and much erudition. He had a quite exceptional charm of manner and a great gift for various languages — Spanish and English were his father and mother tongues. He spoke also perfect Italian and French, and, I believe, excellent German, so that he was well equipped for his post when, some years later, Pius X appointed him his Cardinal Secretary of State at an unusually early age. He desired no honors; indeed he most of all wished to be a parish priest in some poor district in England.

When the time came for me to return to England, I told both Monsignor Merry and my fiancée — for matters had now proceeded so far between us that I could call her so — that I would but read a few more books recommended to me by the Monsignore and then make my ‘submission’ to the Church. My mind was fully made up, but I still wanted to be better instructed in the doctrines and history of the Church, particularly with regard to the very important point of continuity from Apostolic times. Monsignor Merry agreed with this.

So I left for England to prepare for a second journey to Trinidad with my good friend Thorleif Orde, in order to select and purchase an estate on which to grow rubber and cocoa and start the plantation before returning to Rome in the autumn for my marriage.

(To be concluded)