Baldwin - I Leap Over the Wall

I AM not the first member of my family to leap over a wall.

Nearly four hundred years ago, my ancestor, Thomas Baldwin of Diddlebury, leaped to freedom from behind the walls of the Tower of London, where he had been imprisoned for taking part in a plot for the escape of Mary Queen of Scots.

His name, with an inscription and the date July 1585 can still be seen where he carved it on the wall of his cell in the Beauchamp Tower. Later, he added a motto to his coat-of-arms, PerDeummeumtransiliomurumBy the help of my God I leap over the wall.

It has been the family motto of the Baldwins ever since; but the wall that I leapt over was a spiritual and not a material obstacle.

In 1914, my cousin, William Sparrow, who disapproved of my entering the convent, wrote to me:

Knowing you as I do, I can safely predict that it will be with you as with another fair and foolish female, whose unwisdom caused her to languish long behind prison walls. Your End will be your Beginning. I commend these words, with those of the family motto, to your meditation. Taken together, they may suggest a course of action in years to come.

In the following pages I have tried to describe what happened when my cousins rather ambiguous prophecy was fulfilled. It is a rash and foolhardy undertaking, in the circumstances, for I really know nothing about anything, except, perhaps, what goes on behind high convent walls.

My only excuse is that so many, and such different kinds of people, have urged me to attempt it.

Some of them said to me, Because of your past environment, your angle is unusual. It should interest people. You ought to write about it.

Others simply bombarded me with questions. It is chiefly on their account that I have embarked upon this book. Some of the remarks made to me revealed such fantastically wrong ideas about nuns and convents that I began to feel something ought to be done to put the monastic ideal in a truer perspective for those who know little or nothing about it.

So I have tried to write accurately and fairly about life in a strictly enclosed convent, as I myself experienced it. To do this it was necessary to describe not only the wonderful and exalted spiritual ideal which inspires that life, but also certain aspects of it which, for various reasons, may perhaps leave something to be desired.

I do not feel that I have done my subject justice. If, however, these pages help to straighten out even a few of the curiously crooked notions which so many people still appear to retain about convents, I shall be well satisfied.

One fact I must make clear from the outset. I describe the religious vocation from the point of view of one who had no such vocation. The alternative title of this book might well be ImpressionsofaSquarePeginaRoundHole.

L EAPS over wallsespecially when taken late in lifecan be extremely perilous. To leap successfully, you need a sense of humour, the spirit of adventure and an unshakable conviction that what you are leaping over is an obstacle upon which you would otherwise fall down.

My own leap was taken on October 26, 1941.

On that day I left the convent, where for twenty-eight years I had lived in the strictest possible enclosure, and came out again into the world.

In reality, it was not necessary to do any leaping, either of walls or of anything else. As soon as the customary formalities were ended, the doors were opened and I simply walked out.

The story of what led me to do this might be interesting: this, however, is not the place for it. This book deals with what happened after the convent doors were closed behind me and I stepped out into a world that was just beginning its third year of a new and particularly devilish kind of war.

Naturally, everyone whom I consulted assured me that I could not have chosen a more unsuitable moment for my exodus. What with clothes coupons, food rationing, travelling restrictions and the appalling rise in the cost of living, how on earththey askeddid I imagine I should ever be able to cope?

I looked at all this, however, from another angle. Just because the world appeared to be in such a crazy turmoil, I felt that it was exactly the background that I required. Everybody was rushing round doing unprecedented things. Old standards had already been swept away. How easy it would be to plunge into the seething waters of the war deluge and splash about unnoticed, listening, looking about, experimenting, learning about things, till the floods died down! Afterwardsalways provided that anything of the universe still remained to be lived in, which just then seemed unlikelyone might perhaps start trying to construct a life.

In my opinion, it would have been far more difficult to adjust oneself to the comparatively ordered rhythm of the pre-war world.

My sister Freda came to fetch me away, rather appropriately, on a cold and frosty morning. She brought with her an atmosphere of faint disapproval and a suitcase containing the clothes into which I was to change before finally going forth into the world.

The crescendo of shocks which awaited me began abruptly with my first introduction to up-to-date underwear. Frankly, I was appalled.

The garments to which I was accustomed had been contrived by thoroughgoing ascetics in the fourteenth century, who considered that a nice, thick, long-sleeved shift of rough, scratchy serge was the right thing to wear next your skin. My shifts, when new, had reached almost to my ankles. However, hard washing and much indiscriminate patching soon stiffened and shrank them until they all but stood up by themselves. Stays, shoulder-strapped and severely boned, concealed ones outline; over them, two long serge petticoats were lashed securely round ones waist. Last came the ample habit-coat of heavy cloth, topped by a linen rochet and a stiffly starched barbette of cambric, folded into a score of tiny tucks and pleats at the neck.

So, when my sister handed me a wisp of gossamer, about the size and substance of a spiders web, I was startled.

She said, Heres your foundation garment. Actually, most people only wear pants and a brassire, but its cold to-day so I thought wed better start you with a vest.

I examined the object, remembering 1914. In those days, a nice girl started with long, woolly combinations, neck-high and elbow-sleeved, decorated with a row of neat pearl buttons down the front.

Next came the modern version of the corset. It was the merest strip of elastic brocade from which suspenders, in a surprising number, dangled. I thought it a great improvement on the fourteenth-century idea. The only drawback was that you had to insert your person into it serpent-fashion, as it had no fastenings.

What bothered me most were the stockings. The kind I was used to were enormous things, far thicker than those men wear for tramping the moors and shrunk by repeated boiling to the shape and consistency of a Wellington boot. The pair with which Freda had provided me were of silk, skin-coloured and so transparent that I wondered why anyone bothered to wear the things at all.

I said firmly, Freda, I cant possibly go out in these. They make my legs look naked.

She smiled patiently.

Nonsense, she said. Everyone wears them. If you went about in anything else youd collect a crowd.

By this time it had become clear to me that the generation which affected the transparencies in which I now was shivering must long ago have scrapped the kind of garments I had worn as a girl. I wondered what they had done about the neck-high camisoles with their fussy trimmings of lace and insertion and those incredibly ample, long-legged white cotton drawers.