Читать книгу Pitfalls of Memory - Peter Milward - Страница 10

There is a story about a mother seeking the advice of a Jesuit priest about her son’s vocation. She tells him her son wants to become a priest, and she asks him how he is to go about it. The Jesuit answers that it depends on what kind of priest he wants to become. If it is to become a diocesan priest, it will require six years of study. If to become a Benedictine, it will take two more years, allowing for a noviceship and the study of the Rule of St Benedict. If to become a Dominican, it will take a little longer, for the study of St Thomas Aquinas. But if he wants to become a Jesuit, it will take upwards of twelve years. Then the mother replies, “Well, in that case my son must become a Jesuit, as he’s rather stupid.” As for myself, I have to confess that it took me seventeen years from my first vows in 1945 to my final vows in 1962. So I must be extremely stupid! How so? Well, in the course of my Jesuit formation after spending two years as a novice and taking my first vows, I spent another two years as a junior, then three years in the study of scholastic philosophy, before going up to Oxford for the study of the Classics and English. Then, after making my way to Japan in 1954, I had to spend two years on the study of Japanese and four years on the study of theology, during which time I was ordained priest in 1960. Finally, I still had to undergo a third year of noviceship, called “tertianship” (nothing to do with “tertian fever”), before taking my final vows and entering on my career as teacher of English at Sophia University.

So now I have to speak about my memories of the “juniorate”, or period of study as a junior scholastic, which took place “between two houses”, one year at St Beuno’s (when the novices returned to Manresa House) and another year at Manresa. I should explain that among Jesuits “scholastic” is the term still used, from medieval times, for students up till the time of ordination as a priest. I should add that by the time we took our first vows on September 8, 1945, the war had just ended. That morning I had come to the cup-room to help prepare the refectory for breakfast, when the brother in charge curtly informed me, in his Lancashire accent, “Bruther, the war’s ended!” Later, we heard fuller details from our maths teacher in the juniorate, an elderly astronomer, about the atomic bomb – he was fairly bubbling with enthusiasm about the discovery of nuclear fission – and we were treated to a reading of Ronald Knox’s recent book on the subject during meals. Otherwise, we were cut off from all news both as novices and as juniors.

For me, it was such a relief to have taken my first vows and to have become a junior, for two special reasons. The first was that I was now no longer subject to the commands of the Master. From the beginning of my noviceship, the Master had noticed that I was rather too thin for my age, partly because my parents were both on the slim side, partly because during the war there had been little food to make us fat. So he commanded me to eat as much food as possible, even till I felt myself “bursting” – that was the very word he used. Never in all my Jesuit life have I received such a difficult command, which I understood as applying to me for the duration of my noviceship, though we had another Master in our second year. But now, with my first vows, I considered myself freed from such a difficult command. The second reason was that from now on we were freed from the laborious outdoor work of the noviceship and enabled to resume a life of study, for which I had more aptitude. This study was, moreover, in the world rather of humanism than of science, and that was also welcome to me as I was always more of a humanist than a scientist. So we took up the study of the Classics, English and French literature, and Church history. English literature naturally meant Shakespeare, but our teacher chose to take the text of the dramatist’s least inspiring play of King John and to compare it with its supposed source The Troublesome Reign of John. Later on, I had the opportunity of attending Shakespeare’s play in Stratford, and I found it so boring, I couldn’t help wondering if the great dramatist had really written it all. What really attracted my interest were the classes of Church history, which aptly supplemented the study of English history we had been taught at the College. They provided me with the necessary framework for all subsequent study of literature, both the Classics and English, as well as my study of scholastic (that is, medieval) philosophy and theology.

A more practical change from the noviceship to the juniorate was a matter of clothing. As novices, we wore a Jesuit sleeveless gown (with “wings”) over our ordinary clothes, with a kind of skull cap on our heads. But as juniors, we were issued with black clerical suits and a Roman collar (popularly known as a “dog collar”), to wear beneath a new gown, as well as a biretta on our heads. We now looked quite “spick and span”, quite self-consciously so. We wore our birettas both in the refectory and during recreation after meals, and we would solemnly doff them at the holy name of Jesus. For our walks we could now go out in twos instead of threes, and of course we didn’t need our gowns or birettas – only our clerical suits and dog-collars. Also now, as juniors, there were no more novices for us to look down upon, as they had all departed for Manresa, but there were tertians for us to look up to, as it were reflecting in our combined presence the beginning and the end of the Jesuit formation – while we maintained separate communities.

One thing that particularly impressed me during this first year of juniorate remaining to us at St Beuno’s was our participation in the liturgy, especially during Holy Week, and especially for the office of Tenebrae on the three days of the Sacrum Triduum (Thursday, Friday and Saturday). It was all directed by the above-mentioned astronomer, who also taught us maths, and who was also an expert in Gregorian chant. Thus it was that during those three days our Jesuit house was as though changed into a Benedictine monastery, and from my days in Wimbledon I had been extremely fond of that chant. Once we moved back to Manresa to join the novices, however, we had another priest to direct us in these ceremonies, who professed to be an expert in the Gregorian music of Solesmes in France. But his ideas clashed with mine, formed as I had been on the ideas of our astronomer. So I forbear to mention their names.

In the juniorate, as in the noviceship, we had a superior of our own under the Rector of the College. Just as the novices were subject to the Master, so the juniors were subject to the Prefect of Juniors. He was a stern man with bushy eyebrows, but with a fine sense of humor – unlike our first Master. According to the political situation, as he read it in the daily newspapers – though we weren’t yet allowed to enjoy the distraction of the daily press – he would wear his biretta at class tilted now forward, now backward. Forward was good, backward was bad. He taught us the Classics of Greece and Rome, but such was his teaching that I have forgotten everything he taught us – unlike our teacher of Church history. He had the odd habit of calling everyone “My dear”.

By way of relaxation, sometimes instead of going for walks, we had the opportunity of playing cricket, even in that hilly country. Even on the slope of the hill behind the College, the theologians of the past had levelled out a cricket pitch, with the ground rising on one side and falling on the other. As for the equipment for cricket, in our second year as novices we discovered what the theologians had left behind, and our new Master gave us leave to make use of it. At that time it so happened that I had been entrusted with the unimportant office of Mag.Lud. (for Magister Ludorum, in charge of games), and so it was I who now supervised the playing of cricket for the novices. I was by no means the one novice with an interest in cricket, but there were several others who were no less sold on the game than I was. Anyhow, I could claim to have brought about a revolution in the noviceship, which hadn’t been heard of since the old days of Fr Marmaduke Stone – though it was sadly discontinued by the novices once they had repaired to Manresa. But for us it provided a continuity between St Beuno’s and Manresa. At St Beuno’s it was merely one of many attractions in noviceship life, but at Manresa during our second year as juniors it proved to be a major distraction, which I remember when I have forgotten everything else. (Incidentally, isn’t that the very definition of “education”, what you remember when you have forgotten everything else?)

Thus it was that, all unwillingly, we also repaired to Manresa – I suppose by train from Rhyl to Euston, and then somehow or other to Roehampton, but I have completely forgotten. Here everything was different from what it had been at St Beuno’s. We approached the house by an L-shaped drive, going so far from the gate before turning due right. The house itself was classical in architecture, dating from the eighteenth century, in contrast to the imitation Gothic of St Beuno’s. Passing a Jesuit cemetery on the left, we came to the entrance at the ground level, without any steps. More impressive was the entrance from the other side, facing Richmond Park, with steps leading up from either side to a main hall. It had been the town residence of some earl or other before the Jesuits acquired it for their noviceship in the mid-nineteenth century. On entering the house as we did from the ground floor, we found a stone-flagged corridor leading in either direction, right to the refectory and left to an imposing baroque chapel.

What was most impressive for us, in contrast to our previous experience of life at St Beuno’s, whether as novices or as juniors, was the exceptional number of novices, who now far outnumbered us. We had mostly come from Jesuit schools and were still young in experience. But most of these new novices were men of experience, formed in the school of adversity as members of the armed forces, including even majors and colonels, now demobbed and seeking a new religious life. They numbered upwards of a hundred, whereas we second-year juniors were a mere handful. But as at St Beuno’s, we were kept separate from them in our own little community. At St Beuno’s there had been only rooms, and we had been two in a room, but here at Manresa we were relegated to cubicles lining a large dormitory, with desks in the middle for our studies.

All the same my memories of this year are for the most part outside the house. For our games of cricket, we had a much better cricket ground on the far side facing the trees of Richmond Park – with a “ha-ha” in between. (A “ha-ha” is a long trench dug in the ground and serving as a boundary, prompting the exclamation “Aha!” when one comes up to it.) Instead of afternoon walks, we had the opportunity of taking a bus from its nearby terminal all the way into London. There my favorite pastime took the form of visits to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, chiefly for my favorite paintings of John Constable and William Turner. Occasionally, I might get leave from the Rector to walk across the Common to visit the family in 11 Devas Road – though the permission was somewhat reluctantly granted. Those were the old days of the Society of Jesus before the renewal of the Church in Vatican II and the advent of Fr Pedro Arrupe as General of the new Society.

Finally, one thing I have forgotten up till this very moment was our summer “villa” at the end of our first year as juniors. Then we spent two enjoyable weeks at Hodder Place, the primary or preparatory school for the nearby College of Stonyhurst. There we had somehow to fit into the beds occupied by small boys during the term-time. The Lancashire countryside was green and lush with vegetation, and it was hilly. During the day we went out on bicycles, to explore this part of the Pennine Range. Often we had to get off the bicycle and push it uphill, before descending at full speed, relying on the quality of our brakes. One of us found his brakes weren’t working properly as he hurtled on the downward descent, and he came “a cropper”. Somehow word came to Hodder that I was the poor casualty, and from there the same word was relayed to my father in Wimbledon. On my safe return to Hodder I was informed that my father had been and gone. He had come all the way there out of concern for me, and he was so relieved to find it wasn’t me after all, that he had hastened home to relieve the feelings of the family. Indeed, it was just the sort of accident for which I might be blamed, in the way I had been run over by a car in my boyhood. And indeed, I had much the same experience at a subsequent villa in North Wales, when I was also hurtling down a hill at break-neck speed, only to find my brakes broken. Then I just missed hitting a cliff on one side before plunging into the thick vegetation on the other side – with more damage to my bicycle than to myself. I was quite irrepressible!