poems and songs in German as we could. Even now, though I never really learnt the language, which is too complicated for a simple Englishman like me, I still remember many of those poems and songs, which I can recite with the correct German pronunciation. Once on my way out East, on a German ship, I found myself on deck standing at the rails next to a German member of the crew. The stars above us were shining so brightly that I exclaimed in my broken German, “Die Sterne sind sehr – “, but then I had to break off, having forgotten the word for “beautiful”. So he chimed in with “schon”. It was so romantic – or it might have been if he himself had been a pretty girl like Rosalind!
From School to Church
The one reason for our removal from Barnes to Wimbledon, from Tudor Gardens (which I only remembered as “Chicher Gardens”) to Devas Road, was that of schooling – for myself and my two brothers at the College, and for our baby sister at the Convent. But once we were settled in 11 Devas Road, larger than either College or Convent loomed the Church. That was also, like the College, on the slope of Edge Hill. And like the College, being a Jesuit institution, it was dedicated to the Sacred Heart. For the Jesuits were committed, since the late seventeenth century, to the devotion of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It had been specially revealed to St Margaret Mary in France and it was preached by the Jesuit St Claude de la Colombiere both in France and in England as the queen’s chaplain at the Court of the Catholic King James II. Our Church was, moreover, the center of this devotion in England, with a specially privileged altar of the Sacred Heart behind the high altar.
That Church was a center of devotion for numerous Catholic families of the area, who were mostly connected in one way or another with the College and the Convent. It was, as we say in the common cliché, “a hive of activity”, with so many bees coming in and going out in exploration of devotional honey. And we soon became one of those families. Our church-going was twice every Sunday, once in the morning for Sunday Mass and once in the evening for “devotions” and Benediction. Together we would walk along Worple Road as a family, I with my hand in Dada’s, and together we would occupy a whole bench towards the back of the church. Dada I remember using the traditional “Garden of the Soul” prayer-book, while Mama had some kind of missal, with which she would point out the different parts of the Mass in a whisper for my instruction.
The interior of the Church was so impressive. It was a large church built in the Victorian Gothic style towards the end of the nineteenth century, at the same time as the Jesuits acquired the College further up Edge Hill. The pillars on either side supported statues of Jesuit saints in between the clerestory windows. They led up to the sanctuary at the far end, where one step, then three steps, then across the carpeted floor to three more steps up to the altar. And thither the priest would come with his servers from the sacristy for the celebration of Mass. Behind the altar, too, there were more steps leading up to a pedestal in the middle, above the altar and the tabernacle, for placing the monstrance containing the sacred host at Benediction. Then, above the altar, enclosing the whole sacred space was what was called in Italian a “baldachino”, culminating in a pinnacle close to the roof. Thus everything was raised “higher still and higher”, pointing to the final goal of all human activity in heaven.
Dividing the sanctuary from the nave or main part of the Church were the altar rails, where we would come in the course of the Mass and receive holy communion at the hands of the priest. There, high above those altar rails was an architectural remnant of the traditional rood screen, with Jesus on the cross in the middle, and two pedestals on either side for Mary his mother and John the beloved disciple, while crouching at his feet was the figure of the weeping Mary Magdalen. From my place in the bench at the back I would often gaze up at those figures and wonder how dizzy I would feel if I were perched on one of those pedestals. Lower down, on one side, in front of the pillar to the left was the pulpit, from which the priest would read the Epistle and the Gospel in English, whereas the rest of the Mass was in Latin, and then preach a sermon on the Gospel. Also in front of the pillar to the right was another statue of Our Lady in white marble, as she is said to have appeared to the little Bernadette at Lourdes in France, with the words, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
There was indeed so much to draw the fascinated gaze and imagination of a small boy in and around the altar of the Church. Also, when the priest came in for the morning Mass with the altar boys, there were other priests following him with other altar boys and proceeding to other altars. Behind the high altar there were three altars dedicated to Our Lady, to the Sacred Heart, and to St Joseph. To the left of the sanctuary there was an altar of the Holy Souls (in Purgatory) down a few steps, and to the right there was another altar of the English martyrs, mostly put to death for the “old faith” in the course of the English Reformation under Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, with their respective statues, some taller, some smaller. Also to the left, half-way down the nave there was an altar of St Ignatius, the founder of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), beneath a painting of him in a black biretta and soutane. Up there he looked so austere, so severe, even so sinister, as though justifying the common calumny of the “Machiavellian” Jesuit of old. And yet, in spite of that dark impression of my early boyhood, which has lingered at the back of my mind till now, I committed myself and my life to the order he founded. After all, how could I help it, after having been formed – one might even say “brain-washed” – at the College and the Church?
Nor was it long before Richard and I, and then Tiny, were roped in by the ever alert sacristan, Br Parker, as altar servers, not only for Mass and Benediction on Sundays, but also for daily Mass every morning during the week. He was always on the look-out for such servers, and here were three brothers ready prey for his eagle glances. For the morning Masses we would gather in the sacristy beforehand and be assigned to different priests at different altars. When the bell was rung on the hour, wearing a white cotta over a black cassock, we would each lead our priest to the respective altar and serve him during the half-hour it took for him to say what was called “low Mass” (as contrasted with the solemn “high Mass” on Sundays). As for Br Parker, he was so devoted to his task, which kept him busy almost the whole time, except when he was free in the afternoon to take his devoted dog Bill on their constitutional walk. In the course of time, we noted how the dog came to look just like his master, and his master just like the dog, in a mutual partnership.
Not all Sundays were alike, but there was so much of what Shakespeare calls “variation and quick change” in the course of the Church’s liturgy, centering as it did on Christmas and Easter. At Christmas Br Parker took great pains in constructing the Christmas crib, which took up the whole space of St Joseph’s altar, leaving plenty of room in front for the gifts brought by the children of the parish for the poor children in Africa. On Christmas Eve there would be a special ceremony for the opening of the crib and the singing of Christmas carols. And from Christmas onwards up till the feast of the Epiphany, there were the “twelve days of Christmas”, as identified in the carol of that name. They were also days of holiday from school. Then in between Christmas and Easter there was the lean season of Lent, marked by a change in the color of vestments worn by the priest. For the great feasts the color was white for rejoicing, but for the seasons of Advent before Christmas and of Lent before Easter the color was purple for mourning. After all, as the Wise Man says in the Bible, there is a time for rejoicing and a time for mourning, and the one depends on the other – just as in Shakespeare’s plays there are both comedies and tragedies, with marriages at the end of the former and deaths at the end of the latter. But then, just before Easter there is the special period of Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday commemorating the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, continuing with Maundy Thursday commemorating the Last Supper, when Jesus instituted the Mass and gave the disciples his new commandment (in Latin mandatum), and culminating in Good Friday, commemorating the passion and death of Jesus by crucifixion. On these three days we would have the service of Tenebrae (Latin for “darkness”) for the Church’s daily office of Matins and Lauds, with the singing of the Psalms in the Gregorian plain chant. That, too, was so impressive. Then one felt what a privilege it was to be an altar server for Br Parker.
Needless to say, such liturgical feasts weren’t restricted for their celebration to the Church, but they were also extended to Home. Needless to say, our house at 11 Devas Road was duly decorated for Christmas, with festooning and ornaments,