Alice Meynell

“ To have been as a casual visitor for an hour in this refuge is to take away an alms not explicitly intended by the Order. For to live in a great city is to live surrounded by horrible evils—frenzied self-indulgences, cruelties, pangs in the hearts of the helpless, the acquiescence of children to despair, religious egoism, and other things that "make a goblin of the sun." And there often arises the foolish wish to breathe air not so burdened and darkened. ”

“ And all this little population—more than poor, more than forlorn—is dependent upon the foresight, the skill, the vigilance, the constant tenderness of the Sisters of Nazareth. All these meals, all these garments, and many a little indulgence which sick infancy and extreme old age can scarcely live without, are gathered by the Nuns—humble labourers, voluntary mendicants, who follow gleaning in the wake of the pageant of luxury and wealth which goes "to and fro in the world, and up and down in it."
The forlorn women taken into the refuge are always called "the old ladies." ”

“ Her keys are not her permanent charge, for the office is held by the Sisters in turn, as is every office in this gentle Republic. Once in the enclosure, the pilgrim feels the peace that comes of sacred continuity, never to be felt in a world that does its various will and caprice morning by morning. ”

“ And all this is done in the difficult cause of charity—of that charity which is so attractive when glanced at from without, so full of disappointments and disillusions within. But it is done in the Divine strength that cannot tire, by women whose ideal is in Heaven, and who therefore do not take to heart the shortcomings of earth, and who mingle the practices of the cloister and the choir with those of the ward and the nursery. Assuredly it is no slight power of head and hand that keeps such a charity as Nazareth House in its state of daily life and vigour. ”

“ They have jokes on one another's little failings, much enjoyed by the subjects. To a very few, old age has restored a gaiety more pathetic; they have childish impulses, all in the direction of jollity. One expresses her satisfaction with the disposition of the world by which she has been landed in an almshouse, a pauper after a life of labour, by improvising a dance. Another, "Grannie," who is blind and a great pet, sits in her perpetual darkness waiting only for the step of one of the Nuns, her special love. ”

“ If there is one among them who has a face beautiful in form or expression, the Nuns do not fail to draw their visitors' attention to it; and some of these faces are in fact most beautiful and spiritual. Even those who are suffering are peaceful; those who are passing into eternity without pain look like old saints, pale not with the difficulty of common life and poverty, but with seventy years of prayers. Some other old ladies, who are dressed and grouped at work and talk in the long sitting-rooms, have a cheerfulness much more of this world. ”

“ Not only were the Nuns obliged to refuse entrance to forlorn ones whom they could undertake to feed if they had the room wherein to gather them, but the inmates of the house were crowded together in a manner that hindered the liberty of the children and disturbed the silence of the dying. Nazareth House was no longer entirely the house of peace that the Nuns intended to open to the unfortunate; they could not refuse the risk of building, even though debt is the one fear of a Religious Community, and to avoid it they will deny themselves everything except their charities. ”

“ Reticence there must be, reserve, and silence as to the spiritual experience of these consecrated Sisters, but it is never made apparent. The note of the place is simply—simplicity; divine quality, which not every child possesses, and the lack of which makes middle life in the world chiefly an uncharming passage from the probable simplicity of childhood to the possible simplicity of old age and the certain simplicity of death. That Nuns are simple is one of their ways of making amends for the pranks of the world. ”

“ Sometimes the inmates have voluntarily given up their share, the food which is inevitably an important incident of their days, to the outsiders—men cowering in the hard frost, and in some cases literally fainting from famine. One thousand nine hundred persons, all told, have eaten their bread in one day in Nazareth House, until the last of all the fragments has been consumed. The soup-kitchen is absolutely free. The Sisters found that in the conditions of the unemployed it was best to put no obstacle, not even that of a ticket, in the way of approach to this daily food. ”

“ The Sisters, in passing, praise the taste of this one in colour, and of that one in design; and altogether nothing could be more unlike a corvée. These workers are, of course, the younger of the aged; among the elder there are too many hands crippled and deformed with the general affliction—rheumatism. These show their sorrows to the visitor with a certain sense of distinction probably not without its consolation. In this house the sufferer is considered to be favoured by God, and there is no shame. ”

“ Nor was additional space needed for the children only. The old men and women overflowed the rooms in which they were first gathered. Old people live so long under tender care that those who come knocking at the door for admittance are more numerous than those who pass away to the only refuge which is still quieter. At Nazareth House there is none of the voluntary or the involuntary unkindness; there is none of the inevitable impatience that in the homes of misery outside shortens disease, and hurries old age, and "speeds the parting guest;" here the dying are in no haste to die. ”

“ As with the old people, so with the children, there is no religious test whatever for admission into Nazareth House. The wishes of parents—when there are parents and when they have wishes—are carefully respected. But children are not kept within the Home after the age of First Communion unless they are Catholics, or unless their parents are willing that they should become such. The Nuns find that it is not possible for them to take the responsibilities of consciences more than twelve or fourteen years old, and unguided by the rules of definite religious order. ”

“ Nazareth House, Southend.obviously be not only grave and modest, but adapted to hard work of various kinds, when it is worn by women who do all that is done by the Nuns of Nazareth House. And it is one of the graces of the house that while some women in the world are asking, with all the energy of intending acrobats, for emancipation from their draperies, these Sisters contrive to do everything, and to do it well, muffled in close caps and hanging veils, checked by starch and enveloped in folds, and yet to keep the health and strength that make their hard life possible. ”

“ The factory is hard enongh, but the "hand" himself has holidays—has some and steals others—in mitigation of a rule the yoke of which is further lightened by a kind of revenge of occasional self-indulgence. And then the peasant, who leads one of the hardest lives endured in the modern world, has at least the inevitable variety of nature, and the cyclic changes of the seasons, with the events of seed-time and harvest. Life in a convent has none of these. ”

“ It may still be permitted to wonder whether even a Cardinal would not find the burdens of his fatigues increased if his head were encased in tight empesé linen, and his brows so bound as to prevent that relief of grasping his overworked forehead which the most ascetic of mankind permits himself. ”

“ The little ones are full of interest. About a lady visitor they will cluster eagerly, to look at her ornaments, to open her parasol, and gather in a group of sweet faces under its shadow; to clasp her knees and win her to a romp with them on the floor. Each child is carefully dressed—not only in clean garments, but in pretty ones. ”

“ For one Sister, at least, in every twenty-four hours the day never ends at all, each one taking in rotation her turn for watching the wards at night, a duty which excuses her from nothing of the routine of the following day's labours or prayers. At five the Nuns, who rise from straw mattresses, gather in the chapel, where half-an-hour's meditation follows the morning prayer and precedes Mass. After Mass comes the Office, with other prayers, and thanksgiving, and not till then do the Sisters take their breakfast of bread and butter. ”

“ And the less sweet ways of discipline which less wise women can hardly do without, if they have a brood of four or five to keep in partial subordination, seem to be quite unnecessary here, where a hundred or two have to be kept in the absolute order without which such a mob would fall into a state of infantile anarchy and nihilism. And the listlessness common to luxurious children outside, and the other kind of apathy which belongs to the poor, are unknown here. There is not a look to show ennui or restlessness or discontent. ”

“ The rules of the Novitiate are the result of the experience of monasticism in its long life; and who shall say that their severity is a harder preparation than is necessary for the dying life which the Nun must lead? To the outsider the isolation of the Novices is very striking. They form together a little school under the care of the Nun who is appointed Novice-mistress, and with the other Sisters they hold no communication of companionship or speech. ”

“ And what the Quest implies of detailed and minute labour can be but vaguely imagined by those who have not had to pick over and classify and work at the baskets of fragments that remain from the daily breaking of bread in the great consumption of London at its dinner. Everything here is made of scraps, and yet nothing is made of refuse. ”

“ But meanwhile, without show or clatter or fanfaronnade of any kind, Religious Women have been submitting, in large bodies, to rules far more general and inexorable than any dreamed of in the world's affairs; have been resigning all of their individuality which could not be brought under strict rule; have been obeying a woman, in union with women ”

“ But this charity is doubtless better known and more attractive to the Catholic poor than to the rest.
The separation of the very old people from the very young ones has made Nazareth House a complete home. The noise
Veterans.which breaks out of the nursery and the schoolroom alike convinces us of the necessity. Extreme old age has slumbers which are light and short and few; it watches with wide-open eyes the flickering of a lamp through a long night, and if the wished-for sleep comes "when day is blue in the window-blind," it is hard to have it broken. ”

“ The "Taking of Vows," which is one of the artist's drawings, shows the scene which appeals most strongly to the interest of outsiders. There is an obvious poetry in the bridal costume of the young creatures who have passed through the necessary severities of the Novitiate, and who are to be clad for ever after in the dress that denotes their death to the world. "There is no poetry in our after life here," says the Mother-General; "it is hard, practical work, and we pray that Heaven may send us none but Novices with sound common sense." ”

“ They pause in their playing and dancing down the long gay room, and run forward with a confidence that has an infinite significance. Children that do so have never been snubbed or discouraged or suppressed, or oppressed by the sadness of minds less innocent than theirs. ”

“ But among such a motley gathering of generally undisciplined tempers and minds more or less irresponsible, is there no grumbling, is there neither jealousy nor friction, neither the common fastidiousness of the destitute nor the ingratitude of the helpless? ”

“ With the old people, who have none outside in the world to decide for them, the religious test is not applied at all. On Sundays they go at will to their various chapels, and their death is tended by their own ministers. ”

“ Doubtless the immunity of Nuns from all the inconveniences of vanity helps them to bear those of their quasi-Oriental disguise and concealment. Nevertheless an audacious fancy may sketch for itself a future when a Pope at Chicago may legislate for Sisterhoods living under the ancient interior laws, but in the midst of new and Western exterior conditions, set free from much that must be a waste of strength. ”

“ She pretends to scold her Nun for a long absence, and one imagines the playful little scene to be enacted day by day, with the sweet-humoured persistence of the aged, who never tire. Another noticeable figure is that of a graceful old Frenchwoman, whose white hair, very carefully dressed, suggests a coiffure of the last century, and who speaks with an educated accent. ”

“ Here and there in the women's wards are bird-cages, for there are crumbs left over from even the table of the poor; and no doubt it is a welcome variation of experience for those who are dependent upon others for the necessities of every day to have a linnet or a canary dependent upon them. The hands of most are busily employed, and in no distasteful work. ”

“ The depression of the times has affected even the supply of candidates for Religion; for a dowry is obviously indispensable for women who debar themselves from ever earning a shilling for their own use, and who support their poor by begging. In certain unusual conditions the dowry may be dispensed with, but it is evident that this cannot be done unless the times are unusually good and the alms-boxes overflowing.
The days and nights of Nuns and Novices are ordered with a regularity hardly attained even by the most severe rules outside of Religion. In prisons perhaps men live as regularly. ”