THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1949,
The amazing changes that faced a woman who came
Out into a new world after 28 years
in a
convent
You can't be complejols superintended the transforma wrapped up in God, unless you' tion of my elflocks into an Eton are un-wrapped-up in what this crop. world has to offer you,
This gave me the beginnings of self-confidence. ·
*
In convents, this process of un-wrapping is effected by a system of remorseless separailon The change in the shapes of from everything that is not the cara and buses struck me as God.
1 most peculiar. They looked
All intercourse with the out- rather as if they had been fot- sklo world is reduced to the tened up, liko ducks. absolute minimum.
Her first introduction to the clothes of today : She finds
that girls have changed, but men remain
same
the
: Why women become nuns : 'A foretaste
of the bliss of Heaven'
MISS MONICA BALDWIN, cousin of Mr. Stanley (later Earl) Baldwin, British Prime Minister, bas returned to the world in her fifties, after spending 28 years as nun behind the convent walls of one of the most strict enclosed orders in the world.
A
She was released by a special rescript issued by the Pope, dispensing her from her vows, on her praver that she had realised after all the long years that she was not made for a religious life. She remains a practising Catholic, toleraring no criticism of the nuna she has left bebind. "They tried terribly hard," she says, "to be as good as they possibly could. The failure was mine."
MONICA BALDWIN
by
wan Detober 26, 19.11. that left the convent, where for 28 I had lived in the strirtest possible enelesure, and eine cut to the workl Train
APATS
I thought it a great pikore ment on the 14th venitaty desa The only drawback Way t you had to insert your person
it serpent-fashion, as it had Estenings
What bothered me troet wer
The kind was heki
se to were enormous thujaks. fac Backer than these mach wraz
truwal tramping the
MONICA BALDWIN -- today.
It was gathered in closely at love the neck and then frilled 1
My sister Freda came to Tell me away, and brought us by repeated fo
the whope and stericy "[ Wellington boods,
with her the clothes
inter
which I was to change.
The crescendo of shorks
{י
can't'
which awaited me began The part with which Freda abruptly with my first in had provided me were of milk.
k! Ka frans troduction [1 p-to-date ski-la
thal I wondered why underwear. Frankly, I was Parent
anyone hollered to wear appalled.
things wit
the
I said firmly. "Fresta. I can't The garinents to which !
They WAS Becustomed had been possibly go it in these. contrived by thorough-going make my legs kok naked
She smiled, patently. ascetics in the 14th century. "Nunsense," she said. "Every who considered that n er, one wears them If you went you'd thick, long-sleeved "shift" abot in anything else
collect a d
of rough, scratchy serge was the right thing to wear CONE WERE the next in your skin.
Boned stays
11
clothes I wore
PY this time I act Box B
HOW WIC
Jettera
The some applies to visits and which the Superior is free to censor or suppress, as she
links t
One lives as far as is human- ly possible-oblivious of what Ог outside the convent
Koes
walls,
They had lost their angles (this, my sister told me, was "streamlining"), and they car ried their bodies so low that they almost dragged on the ground.
I was much Impressed by the tidy way that the traffle kept stopping at regular intervais, į apparently of Ils own record.
When Freda showed me the mirgu- traffic lights winking lously I was spellbound.
Changes
The shops left me speechless. Gone were the frock-coated shop-walkera who had once thronged one's path like ob sequious black-beetles; gone the satin-gowned moddoming ladies
cretlible coiffures,
AWAY from the with swishing trains and In-
news for years
Instead, a few rather disdain- ful elderly women and scornful blondes in their treng had taken
Low
over
DECAME a nu only a
months before the invasion of Belgium in 1914. The war
The older ones trented you
brought many sensationui hap with condescension: the younger, penings to the community: but with unconcenied contempt.
And nobally ever said beyond those in which I was "Modom" to you at all. necessarily involved I knew next
to nothing of what was going
חו
Now and again a nun would
be sent for by Reverend Mother art told that some relation had wounded or killed; bul been
reading a the during
THE MEN were much the same
ONDONERS, on the whole,
Hove ITM! A tut to think about, especially their strained blitz-haunted feers and fired,
Such
were In men as there rireulallon struck mẹ në very much the rame as those I re- Their
I can't remember single newspaper whole four
years. Then one day bells were rung eyes. and Reverend Mother announced us that the ghung 10 ended. Afterwards we went to its the choir and sang the Te Deum
in thanksgiving.
Was
A quiet, well-ordered
membered 28 years ago. oul existence, with heaven.
as far as the shoulders beneath goal. the starched barbette.
Det thum rrection
pinned
black
пл
ThR1, for me represented often World War Number One.
best They do not make the
lead an buns, but they certainly quite cashmere Kd lives, and which fell, gables wise on each arrive at a surprising degree of side of the bend to just above holiness, the elbows,
linen
WOR
2
'Chosen'
*
*
Se much for exterior separa- Between this and its lining of
The second class is the larger tion. Tirs In- starched white double
more interesting. I terior separation Cardboard stiffening and the with strips of colton, forted consists of the people who enter cut deeper st
convents Jess because they with yet mors starch.
Finally, the vell proper of themselves choose to do so than they are chosen by thin, black materinf. rather like becauSS
mounted
The God. on lon
necured These are the real "vocations:
Some spiritual adventure hea undervei! and firmly with pins.
Eight thicknesses in ail In happened to them: some vital semnar it was apt to give one encounter has taken place be
wonder, of tween their souls and God. headache. The
that, having worn course. WLS
-WIN
They know, beyond ali posal
it for so many years. I had buty of doubt, that God is not any hair left at all.
Just soppe Vague,
remote,
TI
For about two months before
chuig spurttun: ideal, but a bving Per-
exodus. however. allowed my hair to grow
Almost tha
first thing that the mistress of
novices explain-
ed to the was
the importance
of being exact
about, even the smallest details of the Rule,
up
She said, "You give muist your own tastes They therefore become pos- and habits and Uy a kind of burning allow the Rule and thirst for God, to mould you ac- which only He has:]f ccording to the pattern ot the The soul
Order to which you belong."
The restilt was that my hand how resembled that of a modh-enten
sessent hunger
**
satisfy.
Now
བྷཙི ཝཱ མ
were
vita
the
My shifts. when new,
Eve reached almost to my However, lord washing tak rier Jerve that the generns much indisertrainate patching
forms whoch aired the tr mentioned and shrunk that Jones in which I
ago have gollower ul they all bart stood up by shivering must long
erapped the kind of garments emselve
1 had worn as a stirl shoulder-strapped int Stays,
wondered what severely ironed, concealed une's
Ebe me then, two
1507 neige petreats securely realid one a waist.
they had long does
neck-high lash camisoles. with thir Tussy U mnoge e luce and testin There Jarresibly ample. Last came the ampte halat- cast of besky mufh, tepped by long-legged white coton draw-
sumya, and linen het Startched barberte folded into a serpent tiny turks and plents at the nech
carubr.
The answer turned out in be any ry nothing called "en knick "
made, apparently, of cobweb. I tell my teeth begin ming to chatter as I put 1-or should one any "theme"
*
#
al-
in y
с
I had just clappert of him cannot
irrevocably, wings and Ine, utterly every single thing which, frg 28 years, hed mud, up my life.
Henceforward I was a bring So when my sister landed
without a background No one
21115 fot actually me a wisp of gossamer, about
that Rensation the
pertenced size and subsinter of
know how grin it is. spider's web, I was started.
said. "Here's
I crossed the courtyard and your She foundation garment, Actually. The worst problem was my went out into the pole Octub.r
pants hair. For 28 years it had been sunshine. must people only wear
beneath and a brassiere, but It's cold cropped convict-wise
threshold
To those who have never had As I erased it the thought gecurred to me that the doma than experience, such an idea As I was cx- being locked behind me wi, hol will portably serum fantastic.
Iremely lively dur hut a guillotine
Hut the fact remains that you and
much the reindd
lives und
tached to K saints and Gwn
way mystics without repeatedly looking at things, I found this cliffs coming up against the assertion
that, evin in this life, it is pos- cull. And it was sible for the human soul to enter some time before into what is, literally, a con- what are called of
My hair
-oti
whu
contact The Rules experimentul with God.
Modesty man- And those white
Ex- huve
nged to trans- perienced
this contact declare form my worldly unanimously that it can only bo manners into a
terior.
today so I thought we'd better the incredible system of trend- WHY GIRLS go described as a foretaste of the
start you with a vest."
10 Rear exacted by the under which I belonged.
3
into .convents
1 examine the abject, re- memberlin 1914, before I went As a loundation. a "snood," behind the convent walls. In or long, narrow strip of linen. MOST people
days, Those
Kris "alce" il
girl was wound two or thrie times
Over this "started" with long, woolly round the head.
cause of an unsuccessful combinations.
like affair. Possibly some neck-high end close-fitting cab-rother
bathers--was they are the rare exceptions. elbow-sleeved, decorated with a those worn by
1 myself belleve that row of neat pearl buttons down pulled down to the the front.
bliss of Heaven
It is, of course, for this type
convents primarily exist.
at person that contemplative
imagine that go into convents be- They are organised, down to love the very smallest details, with do; but one object in view-to provide for those who live in them the most kind of life which will best en- because able them to attain their end. A piece of fine cambric, call people become uns
The discipline bound they belong to one or other of
19 extremely Next my sister handed me the ed a "tip." was then
God is pure Spirit; rigorous. version of the corset, tightly across the forthed and two clusses. modern It was the merest strip of elastic tied at the back with strings, The Best and smaller class therefore. If contact is to be brocade from which auspenders,
in
л
dangled.
cars.
"religious"
• x-
Our hands
Next came the "head"-s kind consist of those who are natural- established. the counter-attrac- the glous".
surprising number, of wimple-which covered the lý devout Marriage does not tion of the senses must be over
head and ears.
particularly attract them. They come.
KEEP OUT
THE PEACE-LOVING PEOPLES.
was
kind of
trousers were baggle, and some of them baby moustache.
wore a new
AS A GIRL of 17 when
she entered the convent.
Among other these things, "Rutes" decreed that when walk- ing you might never swing your arms.
Instead, your hands must be
I noticed one youth wearing kept meekly clasped together at quite the most hideous garment of your waist. This I had yet encountered. I pointed tim out to my sister in some To hurry was another breach excitement. of decorum. You were obliged "Plus-tours." to take short, measured steps head bent just a little forward and eyes invariably cast down.
Thus "custody of the eyes"
considered
so important that to raise them, even for a moment, without strict necessity, choir or refectory, was minor breach of rule
was
ย
Stre
murmured:
I had no idea what she meant
1/2
With the women things were different, The type had altered. When I left the world Lily Eiste and Gladys Cooper had set the beauty standard; rounded faces, large, melting eyes, soft mouths, The Idea behind all this and low-piled hair. rigorous guard of the senses wes Now women appeared to bo- that distracting thoughts inter long to a different elvilisation. rupt the unbroken application of They had narrow faces, :high the mind to
God
heavily This, of check-bones, wide, course, is the ideal of the son painted mouths, and slanting templative.
vyes.
Of course, the result of all Their chin jutted. Their this was that when I returned nozes. wero strong and sljort: to the work and was forced to Their hair-invariably waved or sil up and take notice of what curled-hung loose on their was going on with the utmost shoulders. And most of them rapidity and violence; on every: had terrible, claw-like, purplas side- neurly, went crazy.
painted nails.
NOW for the shops
URST thing to do when I left
the convent was to go shop
ping.
Thoughts
Among their faces. I noticed A curious similarity. Their features differed, but thele ox-! pressions were the same:
It suggested that they all thought the same thoughts, looked at, listened to and were.
I dreaded the ordeal. All Influenced by very much the
sense of tile value of money had same things. left me. I hadn't the vaguest
ides what to buy,
The power, speed, noise and general ruthlessness of London when wah reached vitt overs whelmed
ני
Freda started by whisking mO voir to a hairdresser," where slic
World: copuright]
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