1949-12-17 — Page 15

15.

The Sun Co. Ltd.

THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1949.

28 YEARS IN A CONVENT

Shattering first visit

to a

Lunch with 'Uncle' Stanley Baldwin: How it con-

trasted with the convent: Learning not to be silent

Returning to the world after 28 years as a nun, MONICA BALDWIN visits her cousin Mr. Stanley (later Earl) Baldwin, former Prime Minister, at his country home in Worcestershire. As the sit at lunch, she recalls the elaborate ceremonial and discipline of meals in convent refectory.

the

talkie fil

film

NUN READING ALOUD

NUN SERVING

MAKE

S

by

MONICA

OME time

BALDWIN

after my lightly rolled return to the world not be cases

and pinned when

niy

FC.

Or the meals nerved to the I travelled down to

refectory of

large Worcestershire to stay with tigious house, the Lenten colla- the Stanley Baldwink att perhaps the most charne- Astley Hall

terlatte

In Lent, these who fast have theit principal meal at midday After Compline that is to say.

lusti

econd, light

A

Darlie" Stan had been to see the several times while I was a nun.

Iam Worrestershire born and meal, calleil Collation, is reeved

The afrontal

18371

rotuned may Bris won my home coming

for those wh emile drive

Th

Fa tha borger Juxurious tolle WINA adventure of the must breathi taking kanal The countryside sparkle in the frosty sunshine the upturnest Worcestershire soi

7313

Centra

porukes out half forgroten las

1M macha Shuuwie

The

at ou

star warge The hostizon,

the lovely 6*」] perzendered shapes of the Malvern, Bredon Hall Woodbury, and Ab-

funt

Nothing could be more austere as no vividly than this marad

remember it.

PRIORESS gives the signal

THE colectie am alangam

sher je west s Tunogy

14

bell 1 The show descending

khem neustá dom fed with

bum

Whit the great

light at sove for 13:e any flame of a lump that bugun before the image of soatu zaint

Excelery

We sat down to an excellent Junch This was rather an un deal I was slightly ninrmed! by the display of glass and sliver round the centrepiece of orchids

I wondered how on earth 1 should over law which of thosu Knives And forks and spoons I ought to use for what.

In the convent, one of each had to serve for everything. You nd your own, they were kept in small leather sheath round your table-nopkin Was

which

I

the Kreut ing profoundly to crucifix that hangs in the gloom above the prioress's table, it seems as though the stage were being not for some strange my alle drama of a bygone nge

Aza When

all are assembled long

other down YOWB

gives the sig- side, the prioresa

The reader sleps out of the shadown

"Jube Inne benedicere ray, sir, a blessing 3 The age-old benediction breaks the silence. Then the blessing is given "May a tranquill end he vouchsafesi to us by the Lerd Omanipulerat -

The white Bgures my line onen

ista! to the

go noiselessly to thear plers

A Pater and Are for De fors are recheid, the paturman touches the small brass bell mam

treble unel the pended over the sond begins

more

1

I

24

n perfect

ני

The perfectorian uses from her James Laws ceremoniously be fore the prioreas and goes to the hatch at the fat read of the *- fertory

The opening Her tramed in like a three-quarter-length For- celfaress bein

The Jaka

isirteal And the refertory Jong, cold,

stards, wiping and sombre a windows sluttet ed and curtained to keep out the dishes before handing them evenlig me

nl the guttering through the hate

There

is little dough- per-

The rest of the food is already on the tables: loaves of coaTSE

brown bread, butter and cheese, perhaps a dish or two of Age or dates,

READING of the Scriptures AGAINST the western wall.

The solemn ceremony «« refectory mark

and encountered me unexpec

tedly. tymder in the dark unk eleur voter above pulpit raises the round of scurrying footsteps and soft clash of dishes.

It may be a a pausage from the Scripture,

2

"Uncle" Stan spoke to the one day, which made about it me feel that something must be done.

Before a fortnight was ended, a treatise on the

I had taught myself to stamp up virtues or the life or writings of

+ bonyly

down stairs, rattle door soup!, or whatever it is, the rule ordnitis handles, and bang doors in such to make my presence that must be listened in al wise as tentively. Not to do so as a minor felt by everybody to the vicinity. It was extremely difficult, as breach of rufe.

1 had spent the greater part of my life in trying to be noiseles!,

During so gres? an oerupation the feeding of the body. It is long that the mind should be occupied

with spiritual things ASTONISHED at

That Is the central Iba lying bettled all the elaborate *nal.

Every movement in regulatet

well as Those who receive, na the who offer, the dishes, must Beli i one another with pro- found wri

speel No one may 314

muse her eyes. Should abo who is served before you help herself lo more than purtion from the dish of cherries, or the tun on your left spill ΠΟΕΙΣ

make 017

sucking Holnes with her teeth, you must contain yourself.

enlles in their mielent candle- sticks of burnished copper--two has a few dishes of boiled puta tu each table-casting grotesque toes with great jugs of vegetable shadows that leap over the cell- soup

ing and across the walls

It is extrordurily beneful, and when the long line of white- garbed mune fie in, ench inelin-

ladies it out The refertoriun into the title pewter porringers set at everyone's place as she passes by.

Saturday Night at the Diamond Horseshoe

When Uncle Charlie

took up

RECENTLY read ณ magazine plece entitled, What's Wrong with Modern

Marriage, in which the au-

thor opined that the divorce

rate would drop like an over-

knitting

by Billy Rose

ripe apple if the average How, my uncle was a broad- wife showed

點了 more interest munded

and hobbies.

Men WND.

When women

"Who's teaching”

ilhow much

you pay for cabbage?"

Five cents u bead"

Fuzarri's on Avenue A, "AL it's four cents."

Sunday Charlie put on his best de "Today I go with you to see Theda Bara," he said.

Is not necessary to go with. Said Friedu I got a date with The tuches"

her

the cinema

WITH LWO

young cousins 1

|| îá y rest visit to the

cinema.

In my girlhoud the cinema had not been a very enjoyable euter- thinnent.

To begin with, it had joggled rather badly and, as the talking nowhere near being fim was

were in invented, the draman dumb-show and one had to read long and sometimes rather tire- If you some captions between scenes, bread or

The technique, too, was in its salt, you mus only ask for it by crude and rather uninspiring the offelal gestures

of

Silence is absolute. Want more water or

Penances are enjinned for any who make a noise or spill things.

Indeed, the taking of food is transfigured almost into a sacra-

ment.

infancy.

pro-

Was Technicolour course, as yet unknown.

My astonishment may be In- agined as the afternoon's

unfolded it- gramme gradually pelt upon the screen.

The first film was a rollicking farce of the slap-and-tickle

CHANGED ways variety. Most of the jokes, need-

of the world

By the end of lunch with the D Baldwins I had leamed quite a number of useful tugs

with.

The

less to say, were rather beyond

me.

The next item was a super- gangster thriller in broad American. Its shootings, rescues, kidnappings, and double-cross-

as a guide to future behaviour, ings left me dazed and bewlider- old- cd. To begin |fashioned Trabit of sitting up

Finally a Donald Duck of the straight and keeping one's hands

most shattering variety. In all beneath the taste when not en-

my if I had never dreamed Bagest in eating had apparently such lurid colours, undreamed- old at

of situations or amazing nique.

One now

leaned back COM- fortatily or rested one's elbows on the table, joining one's hands "Where you go. I go," said as a kind of support on which to Well, mebbe so, but you can't

Charlie, my Uncle Charlie

in her husband's business began to bob their hair, his cont- "They want to ven- tilate Their neck, so let them but panochle well Diat WAR another matter. Nevertheless, he knew better than to talk bis wife outright

next, as he ex-

prove it by and my Aunt Frieta

Charlie

Frteria

#!

couple of oldsters who have plained the game to Friedu, the In a four-room flat plot began to hatch in lus head.

been livi

Ever

a 2006

huve been prin- enitied What's

as magazines Ing aruries Wrong with Modern Marriage. NEXT eventing he was hone since their nuptials early with a bag of wool and they've had at least one argi kalting needles. Frieda," har ent a day, and when they stop cald, "how you make n cable scrapping that's when I'll start stitch" worrying about them,

Half an hour later he was In

1 remember an evening back the kitchen tasting the soup. "It "You're giving me point-outs

in the days when I was knee needs a pinch paprika," he said, high to the Allen Street kerb-

stone when Aunt Frieda cime how to make soup?"

hone from the movies with an

air of unwavering nobility.

"Charlie," she said, tensely, i

how

is business at the shop:

good, bud or fair?"

"El-ph" answered my uncle. ("Eh-peh." I hasten to translate, means that things being what they are a man breaks even

he can consider himself a run- away success.)

"You can't push me out of your life," said Frieda. "Con- flde in me everything come thick or thin."

This 111 confide," said Charlte. "When I come home from the shop I'm tired out like a dog. Bad enough I live through the day without it should repeat on HC radishes."

However with my

цис

Aunt

Frieda, like Columbus there was no turning back. She kept pick- Charlie itemised

ing away t

until

the day's doings everything from punch-in to punch-out.

But that was only the begin- ning. The payoff came a few weeks Inter when Charlie was fixing to attend his weekly pinochle session.

"I want you should teach me how to play." Bald Frieda.

"Pinochlol" auid. Charlie. "Always you are saying pinochle is for lonters and no-goods."

"I ain't saying different," said Frieda, "but pinochio 15 your passion and I don't want · ft should take my place in your life."

Frieda afraní Charlie would humiliate her in from of her friends, pulled down the flug.

"Marriage

not simply a ball and chain," she said "You go your way and '11 go mine." Charlie moved in for the kill. "No more schmoose about the shup?"

"If a more cable stitches." "No more pinochie?"

"If no more tasting the soup." "You got an agreement," said my uncle.

And they've been fighting happily ever since.

-(Lonton Express Servlet

lean care's chin.

Then I noticed that I left my palato a great deal to clean for correct behaviour. (In the con- vent we had lu eat absolutely was humanly everything that swallowable.)

1 went up to my room feeling not only provincial but pro- historie.

My education

advanced with

the greatest rapidity.

I had not been at Astley Hall lung before I discovered that I had a habit of opening doors so quietly that nobody knew when

had entered a room.

This, of course, made people lurned round Jump when they

tech:-

People ought not to be taken to

Alm are their first Disney

sultable without

preparation. The shock is too overwhelming.

I sat there with my tongue cleaving to my dried-up palate, and my eyes popping out of my head.

I was more or less in the con- dition of a mental stretcher-ense cousing con-

when my young ducted me home,

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