The wind & the rain

...g,kr C"onoghe, S.S.E E:ln...

...Five issues in all were produced from Ampleforth, and until Michael Allmand was killed in Burma at the age of twenty-one, he remained the driving force...

...He had a strong distaste for that rigidity of mind, popular among some educationalists, which says that every moment of a boy's life must be planned...

...undlte Commumty %nan 'qnchael's College )oskn, Vermont ~urgundy hardand burgundy h sliver or gold es Priced from at your fawmte ore...

...Or, will there always be an uneasy sense of compromise...

...His appearance and manner were ascetic and scholarly in the extreme...

...In the catalogue in which they announced it, the publishers quoted an anonymous critic from The Times Literary Supplement who, in 1951, had summed up the magazine as "one of, the most exciting literary and ecumenical ventures of the period...

...Paul Nevill belonged to the great tradition of headmasters...

...Classes held here had a feeling of tutorials...

...Denominational loyalties when I was a boy were so intense that I frequently had the impression that it was worse to be a Protestant or an Anglican than an atheist or an agnostic...

...That was a view I put forward in a lecture on "little reviews," which I gave in 1953...

...A "little review" that is both literary and religious has to be prepared to pioneer in each sphere...

...I was about two and a half...

...Hugh Dinwiddy brought the poet Paul Dehn...

...He had the power to make each one of us feel an individual, and in 1952 when Ampleforth celebrated its 150th anniversary there was not an old boy who returned whom he did not instantly recognize...

...I dreaded lest the monks might hear her refer to them as "Roman monkeys" when she dropped me off at the school entrance...

...A cousin of mine, who was down from Cambridge on the long vac and who had a predilection for old-fashioned schoolboy slang, had given me these books and assured me that they would impress everyone at my new school...

...They were immediately confiscated...

...Bible study N x 2 THE NEW CATHOLIC STUDY BIBLE ", ST JEROME EDITION Features all these study helps: ~,: 9 A topical index to the people, places...

...Jerome Edition ts certamly umque Daniel A Murray...

...Add, too, that the rest of the play consists of set pieces, most of them by Aunt Dan, or brief scenes, presumably intended as thematic illustrations rather than emotionally absorbing mini-dramas...

...Had we known it, our definition of theology was close to Richard Hooker's in the seventeenth century: "the science of things 'divine.' "For note in employing the word "divine" Hooker avoids the limitations which the term "Christian" might have implied...

...The editors of over thirty journals, nearly all religious and mainly Catholic, were to reject Simone Weil's work before it at last found a place in The Wind and the Rain...

...TN 37214.1000the school XVs to read an Oscar Wilde play before a match...

...As the play opens, Lemon invites the audience ("little children") into her "little flat," into her life...

...the Biblical Cyclopedic Index was superb, good references, footnotes...

...No diagrams, he said, would be permitted...

...So, in 1939, with my father's portrait before me, I at long last knew where my literary aspirations came from...

...My only childhood memory of him was when he held up a tabby cat to the bars of my cot...

...It is where the Heavenly Council cannot decide whether the penguins have gained immortal souls as a result of being baptized by M~iel, until St...

...Then one winter's evening just after the 7:30 bell had gone, which meant the end of work for the day and that supper would be served in ten minutes, he turned to me and said: "We are fellow contributors...

...The inspiration for the enterprise came from Michael Allmand, and, after a year's planning, the first issue of The Wind and the Rain appeared in January 1941...

...Perhaps one advantage of The Wind and the Rain was that it was not a house journal like The Month run by the Jesuits, or Blackfriars run by the Dominicans...

...About eighteen months later I even submitted one to the New English Weekly, a paper which had T.S...

...No congratulation could have been better timed, because it gave me the necessary confidence, during my last year, to write round for reviewing...

...I knew nothing of their authors, for my favorite writers at the time were John Buchan, Rider Haggard, and H.G...

...tzed translation that has won "~ the hearts of many for its easy reading ~-~_ 9 Comprehensive Outlines to every book .*~ of the Bibl~ Helps the reader trace the de~.b '~ opment of each books message "%~%,~ 9 Study articles and charts...

...The St...

...Add that the material of Lemon's speeches -- a rumination on human nature that becomes a defense of the Holocaust -- is necessarily offensive to many members of the audience...

...One explanation for this attitude could be because it is easier to convert somebody from nothing to something, whereas it is far harder to persuade someone to exchange one set of beliefs for another, especially when so many of those beliefs, such as the acceptance of Christ's divinity or of life after death, remain the same...

...Once it was unmarked and highly polished, and as a boy of thirteen I carried it proudly to Ampleforth for my first term...

...He would lend us his copies to read...

...Instead of rows of desks, there are chairs, a long refectory table, and a bookcase at one end...

...Certainly had that been so, The Windand the Rain would not have come into existence...

...W' HEN I THINK BACK tO my days at Ampleforth, this seems the place to say something of my headmaster...

...These included lives of James Barrie, Hilaire Belloc, G.K...

...I was lucky with the Catholic Herald, and soon afterwards they began sending me poetry anthologies and books about the English countryside . . . . But to return to my first days at Ampleforth...

...After all, other boys at my preparatory school had widowed parents...

...I recall a particularly fine one, about a British bomber that crashed on the moors, which we subsequently published...

...In 1947 when he sent a poem to The Wind and the Rain -- by which time the circulation had risen to seven thousand -- he signed the accompanying note: "Starving and Forgotten John Betjeman...

...Their labor will contribute to" a deeper knowledge and apprectatmn of Sacred Scripture.~9 John Cardinal Krol Archbishop of Philadelphia 6~I1 find the study helps almost priceless...

...The only index of its kind for the Catholic Scriptures...

...Eliot on its board, and to which T. Charles-Edwardes, who taught history in the sixth form, was both a subscriber and a contributor...

...I consider myself fortunate to have been taught RI (religious instruction) for several terms by Fr...

...I I Stage I II BOBBING & INVADING AUNT DAN & BENEFACTORS T HE SUCCESS of Aunt Dan and Lemon is something of a surprise since Wallace Shawn does not make things easy for the audience...

...Yet I was afraid to ask any questions about him...

...My mother had packed it with my overnight things -and added an apple, a banana, and a bar of chocolate...

...I grew less nervous about showing my poems to a few selected friends and masters...

...As a boy I had no doubt that Fr...

...9 Full color Bible land maps...

...T. Charles-Edwardes taught in this room, and sometimes the staff would invite their friends to come and talk on their favorite subjects...

...Why did so much of the Catholic press appear dyed-in-the-wool conservative...

...study guides: subject headrogs...

...In his journals Evelyn Waugh describes the enthusiasm of a friend who, at the mention of any non-Catholic name, would say: "What chance of their coming in...

...Aelred Graham...

...Robin Atthill, another lay master, used sometimes to read us his own poems...

...Once a week he taught the IVth form a subject called modern history and would take as his starting point some item of news from The Times...

...I ought to explain here that I had two godmothers: the first I acquired when I was christened in the Church of England (my father was the young son of an impecunious clergyman), and the second I acquired a few years later when my mother became a Roman Catholic...

...This occurred in the Cadogan Hotel, I NEVILLE BRAYBROOKE, a British writer, editor, and critic, is presently at work on an autobiogrpahy...

...Recently, afirm that specializes in reprinting "little reviews" brought out The Wtnd and the Rain in three bound volumes, running to a total of 1660 pages...

...In 1941 "ecumenical" was an unknown word to US...

...99 661 applaud Thomas Nelson Publishers for their interest and mittative m pmducmg this Study Bible I offer my gratitude to all the authors who have given their tsme, effort, and talent to this very worthy project...

...q :, '"'i ,.n.., ,...:'.,r...

...Ampleforth is listed in Whitaker's Almanac and elsewhere as a public school...

...Yet there must have been something in his approach to us, of which we were quite unaware at the time of listening, which fired us when we were alone to discuss subjects far outside the RI syllabus...

...Clare Resource Center Lzttle Falls, Mronesota 661t us an excellent addition for the study of the Bible for our Church...

...CATHOLIC BIBLE PRESS BIBLE MARKETING DEPARTMENT j II 0386 PO BOX 141000, NASHVILLE...

...For his Rule makes it clear that educating boys or the brethren is neither a more nor a less monastic occupation than tending the crops or looking after the cattle...

...This was particularly obvious in the case of Shawn himself...

...The monks will think you a capital fellow," he said...

...Wisconsin 661 was truly dehghted with it and found nt hard to lay down As a hbrarlan 1 especially appreciated the following features well bound...

...When one of my aunts was staying" at Ripon and used to motor over to take me out to lunch on Sundays, I enjoyed the breaks -- but feared the returns...

...But basically, I am a cat man...

...In the paragraph below, there was a reference to his marriages -- the third had been to a poet -- and to the fact that he had written a number of biographies...

...t Catbob'es [or Cathob'es CATHOLIC BIBLE PRESS Please send your FREE CATHOLIC BIBLE PRESS CATALOG TO: I Name Address I c~ State " ZIP I MAIL TO...

...Then one day I heard a whispered conversation that changed everything...

...His subject Was modern poetry, and it was from him that I first heard of Louis MacNeice's "Bagpipe Music" and nearly drove my friends mad reciting the couplet: It's no go the Yogi-Man, it's no go Blavatsky...

...Shortly after you were born," he told me, "GK used to bounce you on his knee...

...We soon discovered that it was easier to find exciting poems and stories than exciting religious articles...

...He maintained, too, that the price of freedom was that some would always abuse it, and when he was asked what it was that distinguished Ampleforth from other public schools he replied, "We educate our boys for death by way of a Christian life...

...So, innocently and with simple pride, I presented my three...

...Later on, Emil Brunner, Gandhi, and Jacques Maritain were to be contributors...

...But the question arises, is this a satisfactory description...

...Rather, in retrospect, I now see Ampleforth as a school (and I am using that term in the widest sense) for the sons of St...

...Was Franco really a Christian crusader...

...Alban Rimmer, who taught history...

...Lemon is a young woman in her twenties, a recluse living largely on fruit and vegetable juices (a wall of jars full of colored liquids looms behind her, interior decoration as threat) and filling her days with memories -- most of them second28 March 1986:179...

...9 Over 500 pages of study helps9 helps, the modem Enghsh, the beautiful maps, the words of Christ in red, the chronology and the good word hst 99 Sister Margaret Marthaler, O S P St...

...That at least was the effect of the scenes when I saw the play, primarily because the doubling of the roles never allowed much differentiation in the characters...

...Years of ecclesiastical censorship in England had sent underground independent Catholic thought...

...Hugh Dinwiddy was a convert and had been educated at Radley...

...He mentioned the tower classroom -- and it brought back memories...

...good prnnt...

...In those days Betjeman was a cult figure...

...I have found this a consolation to remember whenever a dog or cat of mine has died...

...It remains the most testing task that I have ever been set as a writer...

...so unmistakably Shawn, physically and stylistically, the author-actor gave so forceful a reading of Lemon's father that he carded the character into the other, smaller roles he played...

...Few "little reviews" survive more than a decade without going stale, and by then I was ready to move on...

...The mixed religious background from which I came -obsessive Catholicism countered by bigoted Protestantism -perhaps made it inevitable that I should become associated with that group of boys in my house who were preparing to launch a magazine that would cut across all religious frontiers...

...Betjeman was an Anglican, and in the early 1940s, in Catholic circles, there was constant speculation about people"coming over...

...9 Plus, th~ " ,I,., I. Ir Version...

...During the Christmas holidays I set about reading them...

...After his death, I took over and carded on until 1951...

...Hugh Dinwiddy had been appointed to be the school rugger coach and to teach English...

...Had not Eastern religion something to teach Western...

...If our magazine had antecedents they were Bernard Wall's The Colosseum or Martin Turnell's Arena, although in 1941 we had heard of neither...

...M Y FIRST two years were spent in the junior house, and there I fell under the sway of a new lay master...

...Our greatest encouragement for the policies which we were pursuing at Ampleforth came from a lecture that Barbara Ward gave to the school in which she suggested that the Catholic ghetto mentality ofthe last century had been replaced in this century by an exclusive Catholic club mentality ("Will he join us...

...So had some of my mother's family -- but they were rabidly anti-papist...

...As a period footnote, I might add that in 1941 my housemaster used to dismiss the work of Lytton Strachey and Evelyn Waugh by saying: "They are both debunkers...

...The play begins and ends with long monologues -- very long ones (the closing speech runs almost eight pages in the printed play) -- and American audiences are not supposed to be able to listen so attentively...

...BOOTH?, 66 This Bible provides what any Catholic needs: the guidelines laid down by the Church and the insight of modem Catholic scholarship...

...He told me in his letter that we had introduced him to the work of John Betjeman...

...Indeed Chesterton to whom he was related, as I subsequently learned, had not only helped to pay for his education, but had used his influence to get him work on several Fleet Street papers...

...In a memorable line of Auden's that I have quoted before, it is a case of bringing together "the real world of theology and horses...

...Father Alban was the editor of our The Ampleforth Journal, and with him we discussed many of our editorial problems...

...Once he set us an essay to write on "How One Ties One's Tie...

...Yet there is one scene in Anatole France's Penguin Island which I have never forgotten...

...On it he has copied out a passage from a letter by William Cowper, dated 1781: "Man, especially man that writes verse, is born to disappointment, as surely as printers and booksellers are born to be the most dilatory and tedious of all creatures...

...Benedict -- both lay and religious...

...The Greene and the Huxley made little impact...

...Friends of mine in his teams spoke highly of the practice as a means of calming the nerves...

...Absolutely capital...

...Wells...

...9 Introductions to every book of the Bible Helps keep the context of each books m~e 9 Supplemental articles to establish the founda tional teac~-F~ :...a "-7.&;:--~ -,f t~e Ch...

...His aim was not so much to impart information, though he assuredly did that, as to stimulate a lively debate among us...

...All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi...

...Catherine of Alexandria speaks up for them and pleads: "Give them souls -- but tiny ones...

...Is a devotion like Fatima -- apart from its unfortunate name -- suitable to the Anglo-Saxon temperament...

...Chesterton, Noel Coward, Lord Alfred Douglas, and Bernard Shaw...

...He had taught Latin in the junior house, and later, when I was in the upper school, he sent me a postcard in the holidays that I still treasure...

...It has a beaten-up look...

...Only at Ampleforth did I discover the truth when, just before the outbreak of World War II, I saw a photograph of my father in a Sunday paper...

...where my Catholic godmother lived...

...At Ampleforth when I arrived in the autumn of 1936 there was a rule in force by which any books that you brought back had to be "passed" by your housemaster...

...My mother never referred to his departure -- and for some years I assumed that she must be a widow...

...Ampleforth has only one tower classroom...

...So we invited her to write about secular and religious freedom in our third number, and in our fourth issue we had Clifford Bax discussing Buddhism and the Buddhist attitude towards the soul...

...Her explanation of who she is and how she got that way will presumably enlighten us about what human beings are truly like...

...The conversation to which I refer took place between my mother and my Catholic godmother, and although it was whispered, instinctively I knew it was about my father and that he was still alive...

...My father happened to be in the audience, and after it was over he sent up a note introducing himself...

...S.TL, SSL ChaJnnanandProfessorofSacredScnpture St Charles Bormmeo ~mroary Phdadelphla, Pennsylvanua m both the quahty and quantity of ~cholarly material whmh supplements the actual text 99 S~ster Anta Dopkms Chairperson, Rehgnous Studies Vitebro College lacrosse...

...Later, when we talked and tried to bridge the many years since we had seen each other, he said that my view of editorship would have pleased Chesterton...

...At rugger I never distinguished myself-or even liked the game -- but it was his custom to encourage Commonweal: 176SEE US AT THE N.C.E.A...

...The essays of Beerbohm, Belloc, Chesterton, and Virginia Woolf I had never heard better read...

...Can a school which is primarily both monastic and Catholic be also a public school...

...I put in three books -- Brighton Rock, Crome Yellow, and Penguin Island...

...Not long ago I received a letter from Fr...

...It is for editors to present their aims and to defend their choices, but not to assess their achievements...

...The print-order was for four hundred copies...

...When I was a boy I used to hear it said that Ampleforth was "a school for the sons of Catholic gentlemen" -- which seemed to me both inaccurate and snobbish...

...So, too, was my father...

...things, events, doctrines, and teaehmgs of the Bible...

...You have blessed us by such a pubhcatson.99 Sister Julne Noonan, C S J, Diocese of Nashvdle, Cathohc Center Ministry Information Services Nashwlle, Tennessee 661 think it is excellent I wull recommend tt to the students here.99 Re...

...We were not to meet again for more than a quarter of a century...

...Coming over" meant converting to Roman Catholicism...

...lm~mlm,i...

...Readers of Father Aelred's postwar writings will Commonweal: 178find these questions treated with caritas and brilliant claritas...

...Aunt Dan and Lemon is a teaching play of sorts, but the lesson of the play is not the one that the title characters are teaching...

...When I protested that they did not belong to me, I was told that I could claim them back at the end of the term...

...I myself cannot speak too highly of Dinwiddy's power to generate enthusiasm for the English language...