 Hello fellow followers of Christ and welcome to the show that introduces you to the men and women behind history's greatest works of literature. Come along every week as we explore these renowned authors, the times and genre in which they wrote, why scholars praise their writing and how we as Catholics should read and understand their works. I'm Joseph Pierce and this is The Authority. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Authority. I'm your host Joseph Pierce where we continue this tour through some of the greatest authors of Western civilization and this week we are looking at Even in War, a great 20th century novelist and convert to the Catholic faith who's the author in author of what in my opinion is the greatest novel of the 20th century. Of course this is a subjective judgment. I would hasten to add by the way that the Lord of the Rings which is the greatest work of literature of the 20th century is not a novel. It's more like a prose epic. It has more in common with the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid and the Divine Comedy than it has with a modern novel. So the greatest novel of the 20th century in my judgment is Brideshead Revisited. So we're looking this week at the author of that wonderful novel and of several other wonderful novels Even in War. So he was a child of the 20th century. He's born in 1903 and died in 1966. We're going to go back and forth somewhat between Brideshead Revisited the novel which I'll be talking about at greater length later in the episode. But the autobiographical elements in Brideshead Revisited. So things that are in that novel that actually reflect aspects of war's own life. So although he made a point at the beginning of that novel saying that I am not I in other words did not try to read too much autobiographical, too much of an autobiographical dimension into the reading of the novel. Nonetheless, of course, novelists do draw from their own personal experience. The fact that Charles Ryder, the narrator of that novel is exactly the same age as Even in War went through some very similar experiences. This is something which is eyebrow raising and I will draw attention to. One of which is in Brideshead Revisited, the narrator Charles talks about how at school he lost his Christian faith because of his religion teachers not clearly not really believing in the religion of which they're teaching, basically casting doubt upon religious belief rather than elucidating it. Well, war went through this exact experience at Lansing College. So Lansing College is a public school. Now you have to understand that as Winston Churchill said that the American English and British English or the Americans and the British are two people divided by common language. In other words that the British English and American English are not always exactly the same. My wife, who's American said when she says to friends that when she married me, she started learning English as a second language. So the reason for that preamble is the word public school, obviously in the United States is a school which is a state run school. In England, a public school is actually a private school as nonsensical as that might sound. So he went to a public school, so one of the poshest private schools in England. Lansing College, it's called Lansing College, it's actually a high school and it's on the south coast and the south downs in Sussex has a beautiful neo-gothic chapel, part of that 19th century neo-medievalism and the Gothic revival in architecture. It's a beautiful chapel there, but it was that while evening war was a student at Lansing College that he lost his faith and he lost his faith because of his religion teacher, one particular religion teacher called Rawlinson, who clearly was a modernist in a theological sense. In other words, didn't necessarily believe in unchanging truths but in a church that has to adapt itself and adopt the ideas of the times. As G.K. Chatterton famously said, we don't want a church that will move with the world, we want a church that will move the world. Well, the religion teacher at Lansing College, someone called Rawlinson, wanted a church that will move with the world. He was a theological modernist and he cast doubt on many of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity and in consequence, one of his students, the young evening war, became an atheist, stop being a Christian from that moment. It says something by the way, the modernist bent in the Anglican church in the 20th century that this religion teacher, who's that, an Anglican clergyman did not prevent his being successful within the Anglican church. Indeed, he was later made the Bishop of Derby. That speaks volumes in itself. Then, having lost his faith, he went on to Oxford and lived a rather hedonistic, drunken and debauched existence as an undergraduate at Oxford. The lovers of Brideshead Revisited will see parallels again between Charles Rider's experience of Oxford just after World War One and even in war's experience at exactly the same time. War was a lover of the pre-Raphaelites. Again, in the 19th century, part of the birth of the Catholic cultural literary revival was the growth of Neo-Medievalism as part of the romantic reaction to the scientism and empiricism of the Enlightenment. One of those manifestations of Neo-Medievalism, we mentioned the Gothic revival, hence the wonderful chapel at Lansing College. But another was the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood in art and literature. The young Evening War had a great love for the pre-Raphaelites, and he wrote a study of them. His first book was a biography of the pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rosetti, pre-Raphaelite artist and poet. So this is how he begins. We see, if you like, at least an aesthetic sensibility and sympathy for things Catholic, even though at this point in his life, he is not a Christian. His first novel was called Decline and Fall. And again, as an autobiographical dimension, you see parallels between the character in the novel and the real-life young 20-something Evening War. The novel was published in 1928. In the novel, there's an account of an attempted suicide, which is quashed, which does not take place because of the fact that the would-be suicide was stung by a jellyfish not once, but twice. So in real life, Evening War decided it was time to end it all. He'd reached a low and thought suicide was the exit route from his miserable, dead-end life. And he decided to walk out into the ocean and then swim out in the ocean and drown. And he was stung once by a jellyfish and stung again. And so we see, if you like, the jellyfish as a mark of providence, God moves in mysterious ways. And these jellyfish actually save Evening War's life and save all those novels that he was yet to write from entering the oblivion of suicide. He then, however, having survived that experience, became embroiled in a romantic relationship, which very quickly ended in rather ill-advised and very short-lived marriage. His name's Evelyn. Americans sometimes say Evelyn. The British say Evelyn. And believe it or not, Evelyn married a lady called Evelyn. So they were known, not surprisingly, as he Evelyn or she and she Evelyn, or if you like, Evelyn and Evelyn. But this was a ill-advised and very tumultuous and short-lived marriage. And while War was writing his next novel, which would be published later as Ryle Bodies, in the midst of that, his wife writes to him to confess that she's been having an adulterous relationship. This is within the year of their marriage. With one of Evening War's friends, War is absolutely mortified by this experience. And for a while cannot do any writing, but eventually he picks up Vile Bodies. And if you look at Vile Bodies, I think you can detect, at least I think I can detect, where he stopped off writing when he was happy newlyweds or so he thought, with some sort of whimsical aspect to things, with this much much more wistful and almost sneering satire in the second half of the novel. But Vile Bodies, amongst other things, the Vile Bodies are those young people of War's generation in their 20s, who were living hedonistic existences, devoid of faith or ultimately reason. They were known as flappers in those days, the young ladies particularly, the bright young things was another group, another name for them. But we talked in our episode on T.S. Eliot, about T.S. Eliot, talked about the hollow men and how C.S. Lewis spoke about these hollow men as men without chests, and how Evening War introduces these hollow men, these Vile Bodies, if you like, into his novel, Dryad said we visited. So we see here that War is very influenced by T.S. Eliot, indeed his greatest pre-war novel, A Handful of Dust. The title of that novel is taken from some lines from the Waste Land by Eliot. I will show you fear in A Handful of Dust. And so we see the influence of T.S. Eliot's modernism, and this idea of this sort of rather pathetic, fatuous abandonment of chastity for no particular reason that we see Eliot talk about in perhaps in various parts of the Waste Land, but especially perhaps in the famous episode of the typist and the young man, Carbuncular, and how the typist just decides to throw away her virginity because it's a rite of passage that she thinks she has to go through. So rather pathetic and rather facile. Well, again, the Vile Bodies is about that. A Handful of Dust, 1934, is similar, but there's a maturity in A Handful of Dust, which is probably why it's my favorite of War's pre-war novels, pre-World War II novels has a maturity, but again, showing the faturity of modernity. But the reason is, of course, by between writing Vile Bodies and writing A Handful of Dust between 1930 and 1934, something mementos happened in Evening War's life. And that was his conversion to Catholicism. So I want to go over those aspects of what led War to rediscover his Christian faith, and this time specifically in Catholicism. And we have here a letter that he wrote to Father Martin Darcy. We should say something about who Father Darcy is. He was a Jesuit at the church of the Immaculate Conception in Mayfair, Farm Street in Mayfair in the west end of London. Very, very famous church for where the wealthy live. Mayfair in the British version of the Monopoly is the most expensive place to put up a hotel. So that will give you some idea of the area. Talking about a rather posh part of town. Father Darcy had a reputation for bringing fairly many high profile celebrities, we might now call them, into the Catholic Church or instructing them into being entered. So this is a letter and the character of Father Mowbray in bright every visited is based upon Father Martin Darcy. So here we have even more writing the Father Darcy he says, as I said when we first met, I realized that the Roman Catholic Church is the only genuine form of Christianity. Also that Christianity is the essential and formative constituent of Western culture. But the trouble is that I don't feel Christian in the absolute sense. The question seems to be must I wait until I do feel this? Or can I become a Catholic when I am in such an incomplete state? And so get the benefits of the sacraments and receive faith afterwards. That's the question and what I write here one can surmise the nature of Father Darcy's reply from Wars later comment that Darcy quote, saw it was no good hoping for much. And the thing to do was just to get the seed in anyhow and hope some of it would come up. I would I look back aghast war wrote two decades later at the presumption with which I thought myself suitable for reception and with wonder at the trust of the priest who saw the possibility of growth in such a dry sold end quote. Soon after his return from Ireland, war broke the news of his intentions to his parents. After war recorded in his diary that his wife was very, very sad over news of evening success cess session to Rome. War was received by Father Darcy at the Church of the Immaculate Conception Farm Street on the 29th of September 1930. According to his own account, the step had been taken quote on firm intellectual conviction but with little emotion. You might actually see a pattern if you've been watching some listening watching or listening to some of these earlier episodes, the same sort of submission to the church on grounds of reason but with not necessarily a lot of emotion going with it. We see it in the conversion of of Saint John Henry Newman. We see it in the conversion of Robert Hugh Benson and in Graham Green. One is reminded of Robert Hugh Benson's unemotional reception into the church a quarter of a century earlier quote. I do not suppose that anyone ever entered the city of God with less emotion than mine. There was the truth as a loof as an ice peak and I had to embrace it end quote. In fact, Benson and war shared more than their vastly different temperaments and writing styles might suggest. Both had a deep love for the old Catholic nobility of England, their houses and their traditions and war's price had revisited was to conjure up the same atmosphere as that which permeated many of Benson's novels. So, parallels between these two great novelists. I'm not going to go into conversion. All right, isn't this is wonderful quote by war about his conversion which actually uses the epigraph to this whole book literally converts. Conversion is like stepping across the chimney piece out of a looking glass world where everything is an absurd caricature into the real world God made and then begins the delicious process of exploring it limitlessly. Okay, so war's conversion. I'm now going to go on to discuss and it's been something of the way we've done things sometimes. Just one of the works in greater depth and this time it's Bright's head revisited and a few things I want to say about that is first of all the title. Bright's head literally in the story is the name of a castle, a stately home in the countryside in which the flight family of this Lord Marshmains family lives. But of course the name Bright's head even if one made up then why choose that particular name? Well, the bride's head of course is the bride groom and as Christ says in the Gospel that he is the bride groom and the church is therefore the bride. So in Sun Sun and the church, one of the titles of the church is the mystical body of Christ as well as being the bride of Christ. That fusion the one flesh of marriage which is a mystery in itself but that mystical marriage makes the Catholic church both the body of Christ and the bride of Christ. That fusion between the two. So in some sense Bright's head represents or signifies the church and that the the church not in its transcendental ultimate spiritual sense with the Catholic church is the church triumphant in heaven, the church suffering in purgatory and the church militant on earth. This is the more limited understanding the church on earth where we see in the flight family the they're all Catholics but of very different types from the devout but perhaps devout but inept to the very much undeveloped those who find their faith a burden. So these people to one degree or another are living or failing to live the faith but they are at least all part of that family. Bright's head, the bridegroom, the church. The other very important thing isn't that the preface to the second edition of of Brightly Visiting, Revisited War says explicitly that the theme of the novel is the the working of providence in other words divine grace in the lives of some closely connected but different individuals. So so what war saying there actually is the protagonist of the novel is an invisible protagonist it's the invisible hand of God moving through events moving through the lives of the other characters which ultimately is the protagonist the one who's making things happen the hand of providence. So Brightly Visited we have little choice if we're going to read it as war wrote it but to try to read it spiritually to see the presence of God in the story. Another key factor when I when I teach Brightly Visited I always one of my favorite paper prompts to give to the students is Lady Marshmane, innocent or guilty and give the case for the prosecution, the case for the defense and then act as the judge summing up the evidence and passing your verdict. So who was Lady Marshmane? Well she's the the the matriarch of the family so she'd been deserted by her husband who went off to fight in World War I and never came back. He's now living in Venice with a concubine living in sin if you like, deserting his wife and four children two sons two daughters. Lady Marshmane is his wife she's very devout but somewhat cold in the loof and somewhat socially inept and one of the questions is to what extent is she responsible for the the troubled relationship that these two of her children have with the Catholic faith? Is she partly responsible for this? To what extent is that her husband responsible having deserted the family? These are good good questions and in part of summing up the evidence on Lady Marshmane you know it's not just what what she does it's what she says but more to the point and more dangerously what other people say about her what other people say she does and and she says and why do they say it? So in other words you're trying to find out whether she is positive or negative impact on the story is one of the mysteries of the story. The only thing about the story is that the first half of the story and it's entitled Et in Arcadia Ago I also lived in Paradise effectively. Everyone is drifting further and further away from the church from Christ and the second part of the story a twitch upon the thread everyone is moving back towards Christ. The twitch upon the thread is an intertextual reference to a Father Brown story by G.K. Chesterton where Father Brown says that the sinner will wander off to the ends of the the the earth but God can still bring him back with a twitch upon the thread so the role of God is a fisherman here and although we wander far away from him we're still on the line that line of grace if you like but that tug on the line that twitch upon the thread is of course a moment of suffering when we're not allowed to go where we want because we're prevented from doing so. So it's the importance of suffering in conversion. So another very powerful metaphor in in Bricefully Visited comes up towards the end and it becomes a motif repeated three times is of an avalanche where Charles and Julia have this nice cosy relationship they're having an extra marital affair with each other they're both married but they're looking forward to their divorce and then they can they can move forward but this little cosy manage which might might offer them the the hope of worldly happiness is destroyed and it's destroyed ironically by the hand of grace. So I don't want to give too much of the story away but there's this connection between suffering and conversion and how they're the discussion of happiness is it about happiness is life about happiness and if it is about happiness what sort of happiness is it about so you see here some this in this wonderful novel which I could say much more about it's what it be some of the deepest aspects of what it is to be human what it is to be a son or daughter of god a relationship with god a relationship with our neighbors etc. Well I'm going to conclude this episode even more by looking at his response to some of the madness that happened in the 1960s and 91 not 1970s he died in 1966 but the beginning of the madness the so-called spirit of Vatican II the modernist nonsense that was going on which was not even part of the authentic teaching of the Second Vatican Council. So how did the evening wall respond to particularly the changes to the mass to the holy sacrifice of the mass so Pope John the 23rd evening wrote in a letter to his friend Anne Fleming concerning the Second Vatican Council quote had no idea of the Pandora's box he was opening and as we move on war whites then talking about the traditional mass this was the mass for whose restoration the Elizabethan martyrs had gone to the scaffold St Augustine, St Thomas Becket, St Thomas Moore, Chalena and Newman would have been perfectly at their ease among us were in fact present there with us their presence would not have been more palpable had we been making the responses allowed in the modern fashion and then war dismissed the detergical reformers as quote a strange alliance between archaeologists absorbed in their speculations on the rights of the second century and modernists who wish to give the church the character of our own deplorable epoch and to continue he wrote he wrote a letter to the tablet a catholic magazine will you promote and appeal to the Holy Sea for the establishment of uniate latin church we shall observe all the rights as they existed in the reign of Pius IX and then in another letter he says some people like Penelope Betjeman that's the wife of poets the John Betjeman like making a row in church and I don't see why they shouldn't just as the Abyssinians dance and wave rattles I should feel jolly shy dancing and I feel shy praying out loud every parish might have one rowdy mass a Sunday for those who like it but there should be silent ones for those who like quiet the uniate churches are highly relevant they are allowed to keep their ancient habits of devotion and to have a ritual in languages like syriac by as I'm trying greek giz slavonic which are much deader than latin why should we not have a uniate roman church and let the Germans have their own knock about performances and then this is something which prefigures the writing of the great Benedict the 16th on the spirit of liturgy uh even in war says active participation doesn't necessarily mean making a noise only god knows who is participating people can pray loudly like the Pharisee and not be heard much more here so let's carry on reading here on 6th of august the day before his own letter appeared in the catholic herald war read a letter in the times from a correspondent who was distressed by the news that the catholic church was officially to adopt english as the language of the mass quote this will cause a real distress to many people after near 2 000 years of a universal latin mass the correspondent had written and as the use of the vernacular is to obtain in all countries we shall be strangers in each other's countries where till now we have been at home when we go abroad the innovation will split the roman catholic church in england from top to bottom again it's another irony here of course that in our globalized culture the traditional mass is the same all over the world with one language for all peoples so we can be in italy or germany or africa and have the same mass and know what's going on and exactly the time when we live in a globalized culture the church abandons its globalized language which is curious um so again evening war we're going to finish a bit more in this frame of mind war could gain little solace or joy easter his diary entry on easter sunday was that of a psychologically battered and broken man a year in which the process of transforming the liturgy has followed a planned course protests avail nothing cardinal nina he known has been double faced in the matter i had dinner with him adieu in which he expressed complete sympathy with the conservatives and as i understood him promised resistance to the innovations which he is now pressing forward how does he suppose the cause of participation is furthered by the prohibition of kneeling at the incanatus in the creed the catholic press has made no opposition i shall not live to see things righted but he says later on here the church has endured and survived many dark periods it is our misfortune to live in one of them um and then um he gets permission to have a traditional mass set at easter sunday 1966 um and he goes to confession goes to mass and i just want to give the final moments of evening war's life to conclude it's a glorious way to go on easter sunday 10th of april at 10 o'clock in the morning father caraman celebrated a latin mass at the catholic chapel in uh with with veliscombe five miles from the war family home only a few friends and family were present as they came out of church several of those present noticed how cheerful war seemed father caraman remarked how calm and contented he appeared his depression evaporated almost as though he had finally come through some dark night of the soul he was benign and at peace with a kind of tranquility and serenity that as a priest one often meets in people who are dying war war collapsed that was a quote by the way by father caraman war collapsed and died an hour or so later so having been shriven having uh gone to confession having received holy communion the traditional mass an hour or so later he collapses and dies i think he had been praying for death for a long time and it could not have happened more beautifully or happily for him his wife wrote to lady diana cooper so i can only thank god for his mercy but life will never be the same for us without him margaret his daughter also wrote to lady diana cooper in words more of joy than sorrow don't be too upset about papa i think it was a kind of wonderful miracle you know how he longed to die and dying as he did on Easter Sunday when all the liturgy is about death and resurrection after a latin mass and holy communion would be exactly as he wanted i'm sure he prayed for death at mass i'm very happy for him so there's the sublime ending to the life of evening war which matches the in its miraculous nature perhaps the sublime ending of some of his novels not least of perhaps the um the uh the deathbed conversion of lord marsh main in price have been visited so thanks so much for joining me in this episode of uh um the authority please do join me next time and until next time goodbye god bless and good reading this has been an episode of the authority with joseph pierce brought to you by tan for updates on new episodes and to support the authority and other great free content visit the authority podcast dot com to subscribe and use coupon code authority 25 to get 25 off your next order including books audiobooks and video courses by joseph pierce on literary giants such as Tolkien cheserton louis shakespeare and bellach as well as tans extensive catalog of content from the saints and great spiritual masters to strengthen your faith and interior life to follow joseph and support his work check out his blog and sign up for email updates and exclusive content at j pierce dot co and thanks for listening