A GRAVE IN BATTERSEA
Last August I attended a conference on J.R.R. Tolkien in Birmingham, England. That finished, I had to go to Aachen, Germany, but spent a few days in London. Courtesy of the Chelsea Arts Club, I was able to stay at Allen House, the seminary of the Archdiocese of Westminster, which takes boarders quite reasonably over the Summer (I could have stayed with friends in the suburbs, but the late taxi rides are murder on the wallet!).
In any case, Allen Hall is in Chelsea, a part of London I did not know well. What I did not expect to find was that I would be embedded (literally!) in four layers of history.
My first discovery was that the Seminary is in a former convent of the Soeurs d'Adoration Reparatrices ("The Sisters of Reparative Aodration" for the Gallicly challenged, an order of contemplative nuns who adore the Blessed Sacrament in atonement for the sins of the world). While the building itself is new, it sits on the site of St. Thomas MOre's "Great House." Although that structure was pulled down in 1740, in the garden of Allen House is an ancient mulberry tree that the Mores used to hang around at. There is also a surivivng wall of the house.
The neighbourhood is filled with St. Thomas More Memorabilia. As might be supposed, the nearby Catholic Church is dedicated in his honour. But getting there is truly half the fun. First, you pass by Crosby Hall, a mansion formerly in Bishopsgate, over in the City of London (as the square mile at the centre of town is called). St. Thomas More owned it and lived there prior to moving to Chelsea, and it was moved, brick by brick, to its present location in 1910. From there, you come to Chelsea Old Church, All Saints. Anglican since Queen ELizabeth reneged on her oath in the 1550s, it was the More parish. Inside, St. Thomas had erected an altar-tomb for his family, and moved his father and first wife into it (the second Lady More also ended up there). Although St. Thomas is not there himself (his body is at the Royal Chapel of St. Peter-ad-Vincula in the Tower of London, and his head at St. Dunstan's in Canterbury), his epitaph, which he himself compsed is. In it, he proclaims himsefl a friend to all save those who feared him --- murderers, thieves, and... The...represents a gap in the Latin. We know what he intended it to read from his will --- "heretics." But St. Thomas apparently kept it off as a rebuke to his former friend, Henry VIII, who of course had him judicially murdered. During the Blitz in World War II, the Church was bombed. The only thing that survived was the part containing the More tomb.
At that locale, one becomes very aware of all that St. Thomas gave up, apart from his life, to uphold the Papal Supremacy. Today, when, as polls tell us happily, 70% of American Catholics don't believe in Transubstantiation, want married priests, priestesses, pedophile priests (okay, so maybe not that one), it is sobering to compare ourselves, who gladly sell out the Faith for nothing, to St. Thomas More.
Allen Hall has yet another layer of sobering thought to add to our considerations, however. It is, together with Old Hall, Ware (a Catholic boy's school in the country, where my good friend, Alan Robinson, teaches)the successor of Douai, the college in France established in exile by 16th century Englishmen escaping St. Thomas More's fate. It was there that the Catholic Bible was translated into English. From its gates came a steady stream of priests who returned tot heir native land to aid the besieged Catholics of England. Many were martyred, and a list of these is posted in the refectory at Allen Hall. Those who were hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn Hill left relics that are venerated at Tyburn Convent, a house of Benedictine Nuns near Marble Arch. In any case, the French Revolution forced the school back across the Channel in 1793; it went to Ware, and the seminary section came to Chelsea in 1975, when the nuns left. But the contrast between them and us was heavy on me.
Unknowingly, I fell into another layer of history, when I crossed the Battersea Bridge in search of the Church of St. Mary's, Battersea. My reason for seeking it out was that it was where William Blake was married. But when I arrived at the place (although there has been a church on the spot since 800, the current structure only dates back to the 18th century; it is Georgian, and very reminiscent of any number of colonial Anglican churches in the 13 original states)the Church secretary said said, "Have you come for the American connexion?"
"What connexion is that?" I asked.
She showed me. Benedict Arnold is buried there, and there are a tablet and a stained glass window in his honour. Nor was that all. During and after the Revolution, Battersea was a facored refuge for Loyalists fleeing oppression in their homeland. Among the graves is John Vassall, onetime owner of the Vassall House on Brattle Street in Cambridge, Mass. As with most of the owners on the street (nicknamed "Tory Row"), the Vassalls had been forced out with most of their neighbours one cold night in 1774 --- before the war started. Their home in America is better known as the residence of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and I have been by it many times.
I have always had sympathy for the Loyalists. Their crime was to continue to hold the views that they and their fathers had always held --- and they lost everything for it. As our country continues to morph into something strange and unusual on many fronts, that sympathy has continued to grow. Whether it be gay marriage, or eminent domain for the sale of the wealthy, or not being able to say "Merry Christmas," what will be the straw that breaks our backs? Whateevr else one may say of the Loyalists, they showed a bravery few of us have.
Back in Chelsea, I wandered down King's Road. Now, those either very old, learned in history, or who have attended the rather risque ballet "Play Without Words," will know that this area was to London what Haight-Ashbury was to San Francisco, Greenwich Village was to New York, or Hollywood was to Los Angeles during the "Swinging '60s;" the epicentre. And no place had a better claim to be Ground Zero than Gandalf's Garden (http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/GG.html). Located in a section appropriately enough called "World's End," it had been located at 1 Daltrey Terrace. A coffee shop and commune that produced a strange magazine, it was recalled, lovingly or otherwise, by many older Londoners of my acquaintance.
Looking at the A to Z, I found WOrld's end, and a Daltrey Walk --- but no Terrace. I resolved to find the site if I could, although the Gardeners had long since decamped to other towns, other countries, and perhaps other dimensions. Proceeding along King's Road, I came to a venerable Second Hand booksllers, called the "World's End Bookshop." Supposing it to be of a like age to the Garden, I enquired of the young man behind the counter about the place.
"Well, sir," he said,"keep going about a hundred yards and turn to the left, and you'll be there. But you'll find it's chnaged since you were there." I took silent umbrage at this assumption of my antiquity, since I would have been 7 and 8 when the Garden was blooming. Certainly I was not in anything remotely resembling hippie garb. But never mind; it certainly had changed. The area is all Council Flats, and not even the streets are as they were. The World has moved on.
St. Thomas More, the Martyrs at Douai, the Loyalists, the Gandalf's Gardeners. The first two named died for a cause sublime, the third group for faith and unbreakable oaths, the last...um...well...many are still around. If we are not capable of the sanctity that brings martyrdom, or the loyalty that brought a lonely grave in Battersea, or even the bizzarity that brought bright colours to World's End, we have at least mediocrity. This mat not be pleasing, until we reflect that the mediocre are never lonely. One remembers the end of "A Man For All Seasons," when the character who represents the common man (More's servant, etc.) says, after describing the hrrible or at least unpleasant ends that engulfed the major players, says, "And me? I died in my bed --- as I hope will all of you." He meant it no doubt as a blessing, but by Arnold's grave in Battersea, it seemd more a curse.
In any case, Allen Hall is in Chelsea, a part of London I did not know well. What I did not expect to find was that I would be embedded (literally!) in four layers of history.
My first discovery was that the Seminary is in a former convent of the Soeurs d'Adoration Reparatrices ("The Sisters of Reparative Aodration" for the Gallicly challenged, an order of contemplative nuns who adore the Blessed Sacrament in atonement for the sins of the world). While the building itself is new, it sits on the site of St. Thomas MOre's "Great House." Although that structure was pulled down in 1740, in the garden of Allen House is an ancient mulberry tree that the Mores used to hang around at. There is also a surivivng wall of the house.
The neighbourhood is filled with St. Thomas More Memorabilia. As might be supposed, the nearby Catholic Church is dedicated in his honour. But getting there is truly half the fun. First, you pass by Crosby Hall, a mansion formerly in Bishopsgate, over in the City of London (as the square mile at the centre of town is called). St. Thomas More owned it and lived there prior to moving to Chelsea, and it was moved, brick by brick, to its present location in 1910. From there, you come to Chelsea Old Church, All Saints. Anglican since Queen ELizabeth reneged on her oath in the 1550s, it was the More parish. Inside, St. Thomas had erected an altar-tomb for his family, and moved his father and first wife into it (the second Lady More also ended up there). Although St. Thomas is not there himself (his body is at the Royal Chapel of St. Peter-ad-Vincula in the Tower of London, and his head at St. Dunstan's in Canterbury), his epitaph, which he himself compsed is. In it, he proclaims himsefl a friend to all save those who feared him --- murderers, thieves, and... The...represents a gap in the Latin. We know what he intended it to read from his will --- "heretics." But St. Thomas apparently kept it off as a rebuke to his former friend, Henry VIII, who of course had him judicially murdered. During the Blitz in World War II, the Church was bombed. The only thing that survived was the part containing the More tomb.
At that locale, one becomes very aware of all that St. Thomas gave up, apart from his life, to uphold the Papal Supremacy. Today, when, as polls tell us happily, 70% of American Catholics don't believe in Transubstantiation, want married priests, priestesses, pedophile priests (okay, so maybe not that one), it is sobering to compare ourselves, who gladly sell out the Faith for nothing, to St. Thomas More.
Allen Hall has yet another layer of sobering thought to add to our considerations, however. It is, together with Old Hall, Ware (a Catholic boy's school in the country, where my good friend, Alan Robinson, teaches)the successor of Douai, the college in France established in exile by 16th century Englishmen escaping St. Thomas More's fate. It was there that the Catholic Bible was translated into English. From its gates came a steady stream of priests who returned tot heir native land to aid the besieged Catholics of England. Many were martyred, and a list of these is posted in the refectory at Allen Hall. Those who were hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn Hill left relics that are venerated at Tyburn Convent, a house of Benedictine Nuns near Marble Arch. In any case, the French Revolution forced the school back across the Channel in 1793; it went to Ware, and the seminary section came to Chelsea in 1975, when the nuns left. But the contrast between them and us was heavy on me.
Unknowingly, I fell into another layer of history, when I crossed the Battersea Bridge in search of the Church of St. Mary's, Battersea. My reason for seeking it out was that it was where William Blake was married. But when I arrived at the place (although there has been a church on the spot since 800, the current structure only dates back to the 18th century; it is Georgian, and very reminiscent of any number of colonial Anglican churches in the 13 original states)the Church secretary said said, "Have you come for the American connexion?"
"What connexion is that?" I asked.
She showed me. Benedict Arnold is buried there, and there are a tablet and a stained glass window in his honour. Nor was that all. During and after the Revolution, Battersea was a facored refuge for Loyalists fleeing oppression in their homeland. Among the graves is John Vassall, onetime owner of the Vassall House on Brattle Street in Cambridge, Mass. As with most of the owners on the street (nicknamed "Tory Row"), the Vassalls had been forced out with most of their neighbours one cold night in 1774 --- before the war started. Their home in America is better known as the residence of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and I have been by it many times.
I have always had sympathy for the Loyalists. Their crime was to continue to hold the views that they and their fathers had always held --- and they lost everything for it. As our country continues to morph into something strange and unusual on many fronts, that sympathy has continued to grow. Whether it be gay marriage, or eminent domain for the sale of the wealthy, or not being able to say "Merry Christmas," what will be the straw that breaks our backs? Whateevr else one may say of the Loyalists, they showed a bravery few of us have.
Back in Chelsea, I wandered down King's Road. Now, those either very old, learned in history, or who have attended the rather risque ballet "Play Without Words," will know that this area was to London what Haight-Ashbury was to San Francisco, Greenwich Village was to New York, or Hollywood was to Los Angeles during the "Swinging '60s;" the epicentre. And no place had a better claim to be Ground Zero than Gandalf's Garden (http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/GG.html). Located in a section appropriately enough called "World's End," it had been located at 1 Daltrey Terrace. A coffee shop and commune that produced a strange magazine, it was recalled, lovingly or otherwise, by many older Londoners of my acquaintance.
Looking at the A to Z, I found WOrld's end, and a Daltrey Walk --- but no Terrace. I resolved to find the site if I could, although the Gardeners had long since decamped to other towns, other countries, and perhaps other dimensions. Proceeding along King's Road, I came to a venerable Second Hand booksllers, called the "World's End Bookshop." Supposing it to be of a like age to the Garden, I enquired of the young man behind the counter about the place.
"Well, sir," he said,"keep going about a hundred yards and turn to the left, and you'll be there. But you'll find it's chnaged since you were there." I took silent umbrage at this assumption of my antiquity, since I would have been 7 and 8 when the Garden was blooming. Certainly I was not in anything remotely resembling hippie garb. But never mind; it certainly had changed. The area is all Council Flats, and not even the streets are as they were. The World has moved on.
St. Thomas More, the Martyrs at Douai, the Loyalists, the Gandalf's Gardeners. The first two named died for a cause sublime, the third group for faith and unbreakable oaths, the last...um...well...many are still around. If we are not capable of the sanctity that brings martyrdom, or the loyalty that brought a lonely grave in Battersea, or even the bizzarity that brought bright colours to World's End, we have at least mediocrity. This mat not be pleasing, until we reflect that the mediocre are never lonely. One remembers the end of "A Man For All Seasons," when the character who represents the common man (More's servant, etc.) says, after describing the hrrible or at least unpleasant ends that engulfed the major players, says, "And me? I died in my bed --- as I hope will all of you." He meant it no doubt as a blessing, but by Arnold's grave in Battersea, it seemd more a curse.
posted by Charles A. Coulombe at 6:17 PM
3 Comments:
Mr. Coulombe! Cheers to you, my friend! I have recently completed John Paul the Great's book, "Memory and Identity", and he discusses various political systems, including Monarchy and Democracy, among others. Interestingly, he doesn't put democracy on a pedestal. On the otherhand, he doesn't even include socialism among the various "legitimate" political systems. St. Thomas Moore, of course, died opposing Henry VIII, a monarch. So Monarchy has unjust rulers, as does democracy. I find your defense of monarchy interesting since it is not even on the table anymore, for most people and governments. However, one cannot ignore all of the "beautiful fruits" that democracy and "freedom" have given us: abortion on demand, pornography, easy divorce, gay "unions" (soon to be marriages), etc. However, I wonder if a just monarchy is even a viable option in this technical, heavily populated day and age? You give absolute power to a guy like Bush or Clinton, and you have an oligarchy, or worse. I do agree that there we many good Catholic monarchs in the past, but I see many others who suppressed or down-right killed Catholics. I don't see how you could gather a good monarch in this day and age? Myself, I enjoy the Latin Mass more than the glad-handing, back-slapping Mass-light that most churches hold today--I guess I, too, reminisce about things past.
God Bless, Charles,and keep up the Lord's work!
Well put, but I understand that Arnold wasn't really a Loyalist - the British didn't like him because they thought he was dishonourable (it seems he betrayed his friends for egotistical reasons). Most Loyalists on the other hand were so on principle, just as you wrote - something Americans aren't taught.
They aren't taught that the War of the Rebellion was in many cases a civil war. Nearly 8,000 Americans served with honour in the British forces. I understand that especially in the South, the redcoats sometimes were Americans themselves.
Mr. Coulombe,
When in Blogger, you can highlight your text and justify both sides of text. That will make it look nicer and a bit easier on the reading.
Cheers!
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