The Secret Life: Being the Book of a HereticBisland, Elizabeth
Philosophy
The Secret Life: Being the Book of a Heretic
Bisland, Elizabeth
Diaries
5 A.M. Rise.
5.30 to 6. Meditation in Chapel.
6. Morning Prayer and Prime.
6.50 to 8. Celebrations of the Holy Eucharist.
8. Breakfast.
9.30. Terce and Intercessions.
12 M. Sext and None.
12.30 P.M. Dinner.
1 to 1.20. Recreation (in common).
4.45. Evensong.
5.15 to 5.45. Meditation.
6. Supper.
6.30 to 7.15. Recreation (in common).
8.30. Compline.
10. Lights extinguished.
And it is to permit them to spend their days in such fruitful fashion
that one is called upon to contribute the money earned by men who toil!
That many have already contributed is to be inferred from the fact that
this community has become possessed of seventy-five acres of valuable
land, and has spent some forty thousand dollars on the erection of a
monastery.
Of course, there are worthless idlers everywhere, but very few of them
in our practical day assume their indolence as a merit, or call upon
their neighbours to support them, in the name of the deeper sentiments
of life.
Hare, in "A Pair of Spectacles" remarks cynically, when asked to
help an indigent widow, "Oh, I know that indigent widow; she comes
from Sheffield." One knows these sturdy beggars. They come from out
the Middle Ages, when it was still felt that there was some special
virtue in abandoning the obvious duties of life to take up others more
appealing to the Saint; more appealing precisely because they were
anything but obvious.
The very name of Saint is a stench in my heretical nostrils. I never
knew or read of one who was not a vain egoist, with all the cruelty,
obstinacy, and selfishness of the egoist. Read the Lives of the Saints.
Not one of these absurd chronicles but is a repulsive tale of an insane
vanity trampling on the rights and feelings of others to achieve
notoriety. St. Louis is a sample of the type: renouncing his duties
to his unlucky wife, squabbling with every other monarch unfortunate
enough to be associated with him, and wrecking the expeditions in which
he joined because of some petty qualm about his meagre, unimportant
little soul.
The person who extorts my reverence is not Saint Elizabeth, but
that poor boy, her husband, bearing the torments of her hysterical
squeamishness with such noble patience and chivalry. One can picture
that tired, sleepy young fellow, busy with his duties of government all
day, dragged out of his proper slumber to behold his ridiculous wife
climbing out of bed to lie on the cold floor in her nightgown, while
the attendants stood about and crossed themselves in admiration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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