Maisie Ward (1889–1975)

I first encountered the persona of Caryll Houselander forty years ago when I chanced upon Reilly: Ace of Spies, a British series broadcast by PBS in this country as a feature in their Mystery series hosted by Vincent Price and based on a 1967 biography by Robin Bruce Lockhart. Lockhart's father Robert Bruce Lockhart was a British diplomat who had been arrested and imprisoned for a time as the supposed author of a plot to assassinate Lenin. Reilly and Lockhart were subsequently tried in absentia and sentenced to death by the Bolsheviks.

In the televised version which starred Sam Neill in the title role, there is an episode that features a fairly wild party hosted by Reilly whose guests were celebrating the Armistice that brought World War I to a close. A woman carrying a portfolio of what turns out to be sketches concerning Reilly and his recent adventures in Russia enters the house to keep a previous appointment to display her wares. The woman turns out to be Caryll Houselander. Reilly is suitably impressed, follows up with a visit to her home, and gives her a pair of earrings that belonged to a female friend of his in Russia who had been executed by the Bolsheviks. Houselander, it seems, is something of a mystic, who has the gift, or curse depending on one's point of view of seeing visions. After he departs she kneels before a makeshift altar and holds the earrings in her fists. She awakes from her visions with bloody wounds in the palms of her hands and sketches what she has seen. These turn out to reveal nothing about the fate of Reilly's friend, but in fact, foreshadow Reilly's death in a snow filled field on the outskirts of Moscow.

In a later episode following Reilly's return to Russia, arrest and imprisonment, there is a scene in a London hospital in which Houselander is suffering what can only be called vicarious torture with her back visibly bruised with the results of the beatings that Reilly was in fact receiving in his jail cell. Following her recovery and his demise she visits Reilly's wife to confirm his death.

Forty years later I encountered Caryll Houselander as an author of some renown in the genre of Catholic literature, with multiple volumes to her credit addressed to both adult audiences and young children. Before tacking any of her works I decided to crack open a biography of Houselander by Maisie Ward, one half along with her husband Frank Sheed of the founders of what was a very prominent Catholic publishing house, Sheed & Ward.

Of course, I was to some degree prompted by a desire for independent confirmation of the events depicted in the Reilly series. Indeed, there is a chapter that does briefly describe her infatuation and love affair with Sidney Reilly, although it does not provide any support for the spectacular scenes described above. Nor, as a matter of fact, does Lockhart's biography of Reilly, so I can't say that these episodes have any documentary support or if they were embellishments contrived by the series writers to enhance the dramatic impact, in which case they succeeded admirably.

Leaving Sidney Reilly aside I dove into Ward's biography, and I am delighted to say that this is a beautiful book about a beautiful soul. Nowadays it is not unusual when someone completes a personal profile to answer a question about religion with a response of "spiritual". This indicates a reluctance to confess to any particular religious set of beliefs but an unwillingness to publicly state that the individual profiled believes in, well, nothing. Caryll Houselander was a spiritual person and a committed, devout Catholic. She was also an artist who created primarily in the art of wood carving and an artist who for a time scratched out a living in her 20's by selling her drawings. She was an accomplished writer of poetry, non-fiction and fiction. Her books and poems provided her with an income later in life and also financed her charitable works which were many and varied. She was sought after by friends, acquaintances, total strangers for advice, guidance, consolation and spiritual healing. She had patients referred to her by psychiatrists who felt that she could provide what was needful. She opened a school for troubled boys, worked closely with the insane and the mentally impaired victims of the two world wars. She organized a charitable group modeled on the New Testament story of the loaves of and fishes. She served in a volunteer capacity in World War II and survived the terrors of the blitz. Oh, and until the last stages of her illness that claimed her life at the age of 53 in 1954 she was a daily attendee and communicant at Mass. She was a woman in full and if not a saint I would be hard pressed to believe in sainthood.

Caryll was born in 1901 and enjoyed at first what promised to be a comfortable upper middle class existence complete with nurse, then governess and her first school a convent school run by an order of French nuns. What promised to be an idyllic childhood was disrupted by a separation between her parents. She was transferred to a convent school run by English speaking nuns which was not a pleasant experience and Caryll was farmed out by her mother to a nursing home under the care of a Dr. Paley with whose family Caryll was to form a lasting attraction.

After leaving school at the age of sixteen, Caryll began to earn a meager living as a commercial artist. It was her work as an artist that led to her meeting up with Sidney Reilly through a mutual acquaintance. It was also during this time that Caryll was to experience that was to profoundly impact her spiritual outlook. She describes this vision as follows:

"I was on my way to buy potatoes, hurrying because I had been warned that they were wanted for dinner, and so I must not linger. Suddenly I was held still, as if a magnet held my feet to a particular spot in the road. In front of me, above me, literally wiping out not only the grey street and sky but the whole world, was something which I can only call a gigantic and living Russian icon. I had never seen a Russian icon at the time, nor, I think, any reproduction of one. I have seen very many since, but none that has approached this one in beauty.

It was an icon of Christ the King crucified."

Shortly thereafter she saw posters announcing the assassination of Tsar Nicholas II and then saw pictures of him in the newspapers. The face in the newspapers was the same face that had appeared in her vision.

Through her experience of subsequent visions, her studies in theology, philosophy and psychology, Caryll came to a firm conviction in the Catholic doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ., that is to say that Christ exists in every human being. It was this belief that informed all of her subsequent work, friendships, faith and her spiritual writings. She became known throughout the English speaking world, was sought after for by advice and consolation by close friends and total strangers. One of Britain's most distinguished psychologists, Dr. Ernest Strauss, referred his patients to her and what he characterized as her "natural genius".

There is so much more to the story of Caryll Houselander than I can convey in this brief essay. Her life and works are well chronicled by Maisie Ward and this biography was as well written as it was fascinating.… (més)

The English Way is a nice collection of biographical essays covering English saints and other holy worthies, stretching from St. Bede to John Henry Cardinal Newman. The focus is probably on medieval luminaries, Because each essay is written by a different author, some famous like Chesterton and Belloc; others who were well-known then but have since faded into obscurity, they are somewhat uneven in quality, but none of them are truly bad. If you're looking to learn a bit more about English saints as part of devotional reading, this is a very useful volume to have.… (més)