FATHER LIAM SAYS:
J B Morton (Beachcomber) loved
Sussex. While living in Rodmell,
between Lewes and Newhaven, he met Peter Belloc, the second son of Hilaire
Belloc. They were to be close friends
until Peter’s death while on active service in 1941. At Christmas time in 1922 Morton was
delighted when Peter invited him to his parent’s home in Shipley, near West
Grinstead. Morton was a great admirer of
Hilaire Belloc’s writings. Hilaire was
fifty-two at this time and had already written about seventy books. Shaking hands, with a low bow, he said to
Morton: ‘what will you drink, Mr Martin?’ and later ‘Mr Martin, I must know
your plans. You can stay as long as you
like, or go as soon as you like, but I must know your plans.’ Morton wrote of him: ‘The black clothes,
black tie and old-fashioned stiff stick-up collar made him look like a
Frenchman of my boyhood. But the ruddy
complexion and the broad, square shoulders and massive body gave him the air of
an English farmer.’
Hilaire
Belloc, in fact, was born near Paris in 1870 and his family moved to England in
1872 during the Franco-Prussian War. He
was educated at the Oratory School in Birmingham under John Henry Newman, later
Cardinal and now Blessed. He studied at
Oxford and did military service in the French Army and was a Liberal MP for
South Salford (1906-10). He was a close
friend of G K Chesterton – both enormous Roman Catholic apologists. Hilaire’s wife, Elodie, died in 1914 leaving
him five children to bring up. He kept
her room as a shrine, making the Sign of the Cross on the always locked door as
he passed it and wore black for the rest of his life.
This
is Belloc’s description of Christmas when he was living near West Grinstead
after the war in which his son Peter was killed. The chapel in which the three Masses of
Christmas were said may have been in the school nearby where a Religious Order
ran a Residential School for disadvantaged children. ‘The people of the house, when they have
dined, and their guests, with the priest who is to say Mass for them, sit up to
near midnight. There is brought in a
very large log of oak...This log of oak is the Christmas or Yule log, and the
rule is that it must be too heavy for one man to lift; so two men come,
bringing it from outside, the master of the house and his servant. They cast it down upon the fire in the great
hearth of the dining room, and the superstition is that, if it burns all night
and is found still smouldering in the morning, the home will be prosperous for
the coming year.
With
that they go up to the chapel, and there the three night Masses are said, one
after the other, and those of the household take their Communion. Next morning they sleep late, and the great
Christmas dinner is at midday. It is
turkey and plum pudding, with holly on it and everything conventional and
therefore satisfactory, is done.
Crackers are pulled, the brandy is lit and poured over the pudding till
the holly crackles in the flame and the curtains are drawn a moment, that the
flames be seen. This Christmas feast, so
great that it may be said almost to fill the day, they may reprove who will,
but for my part I applaud.... This house
where such good things are done year by year has suffered all the things that
every age has suffered. It has known the
sudden separation of wife and husband, the sudden fall of young men under arms
who will never more come home, the scattering of the living and their
precarious return, the increase and the loss of fortune, all those terrors and
all those lessening and halting and failures of hope which make up the life of
a man. But its Christmas binds it to its
own past and promises its future, making the house an undying thing of which
those subject to mortality within it are members, sharing in its continuous
survival.’
Let
us give the last word to John Betjeman (1906-1984) who was knighted in 1969 and
became Poet Laureate in 1972.
Advent 1955 (Abridged)
For
now we feel the world spin round
On
some momentous journey bound –
Journey
to what? to whom? to where?
The
Advent bells call out ‘Prepare,
Your
world is journeying to the birth
Of
God made Man for us on earth.’
And
how, in fact, do we prepare
For
the great day that waits us there -
The
twenty-fifth day of December
The
birth of Christ? For some it means
An
interchange of hunting scenes
On
coloured cards. And I remember
Last
year I sent out twenty yards,
Laid
end to end, of Christmas cards
To
people that I scarcely know -
They’d
sent a card to me, and so
I
had to send one back. Oh dear!Is this a form of Christmas cheer?
The
only cards that really count
Are
that extremely small amount
From
real friends who keep in touch
And
are not rich but love us much.
Some
ways indeed are very odd
By
which we hail the birth of God.
‘The
time draws near the birth of Christ’,
A
present that cannot be price
Given
two thousand years ago.
Yet
if God had not given so
He
still would be a distant stranger
And
not the Baby in the manger.