Aubrey Beardsley at London's NPG

Miguel Cullen writes about an exhibition of Aubrey Beardsley's portraits at London's National Portrait Galley in The Catholic Herald:

A small exhibition of portraits of Aubrey Beardsley at the National Portrait Gallery reveals a touching detail involving the socialite illustrator’s premature death. There is a picture of him in the Hotel Cosmopolitan, in Menton, France, where he died of tuberculosis aged 25. To the left is a crucifix: Beardsley had converted to Catholicism a year previously, and died with a rosary in his fingers. The next day his mother and sister arranged a Requiem Mass for him at Menton Cathedral; he was buried in the adjacent cemetery.

Beardsley’s passage “from Decadence to Catholicism” was one that was well-trodden. After him came Lord Alfred Douglas; John Gray, the poet and translator of Verlaine’s Catholic poems; the writer Ernest Dowson and Oscar Wilde’s friend Robbie Ross. All were artist-converts of fin-de-siècle England.

Beardsley was the ultimate Victorian hipster. He drew spindly, Japonism-inspired subjects taken from mythology on a flat perspective. His circle was inextricably linked with Oscar Wilde’s. When Wilde was arrested at the Cadogan Hotel, headlines screamed : “Oscar Wilde Arrested: Yellow Book Under His Arm”. Beardsley was art editor of The Yellow Book, an avant-garde magazine. In the public’s eye, they were arrogant, too-clever-by-half peddlers in obscenity (according to the Daily Mail). On the day of Wilde’s arrest, offices of the similarly “obscene” Yellow Book were vandalised by crowds.

With that list of "artist-converts of fin-de-siècle England" moving "from Decadence to Catholicism" Cullen almost references the title of Ellis Hanson's 1998 book from Harvard University Press, Decadence and Catholicism, which included Beardsley's "The Ascension of Saint Rose of Lima" on its cover. At least one reviewer found it a deeply flawed and confusing work, noting that:

In Decadence and Catholicism, there is no faith but Catholicism and these decadents are its prophets. Hanson frequently uses 'Catholic' as a synonym for 'Christian,' slipping between these terms in the same paragraphs (68, 231, 368-369). Indeed, virtually any reference to souls, faith, religion, guilt, spirit, or sin is triumphantly adduced as proof of underlying Catholicism -- regardless of the fact that these terms were fashionable in their own right in the nineteenth century or that they occupied a common lexicon shared by anyone with religious training or operating in the Anglican-based cultural environment of nineteenth-century Britain. In Hanson's world, anyone with the slightest interest in the soul must be a closet Catholic. Nor does he ever extend to other religions the kind of respect he gives Catholicism. Any decadent man who is not Catholic is just a proto-Catholic or a might-as-well-be Catholic, with no understanding of how an upbringing in particular Protestant denominations (or, in Raffalovich's case, in Judaism) might have specifically shaped religious experience. This unremitting Catholic-centrism leads him to make identifications that are unintentionally funny, as when he calls Gilbert and Sullivan's "Patience" a "religious satire" (242) -- presumably because "Patience" parodies the medieval revival, which Hanson equates with ritualism, thus Anglo-Catholicism, and therefore Catholicism itself.

While Hanson tends to spy Catholics under every bed, he is curiously ambivalent about their faith. With an introduction and conclusion sure to alienate Catholic scholars with its provocative attack on the Church (amongst other things, he views the Church as a corporate behemoth and "the bulwark of reactionary politics throughout the world" (371)), he spends the rest of the book giving heartfelt, emotional testimony about the power and beauty and necessity of what he calls 'the Faith' in a way sure to make poststructuralists uneasy.

Men and women don't convert to any religion because of the aesthetics of art and architecture, ritual and music--those change. Gerard Manley Hopkins protested that his conversion was not to the beautiful liturgy and churches of Catholicism; the newly re-established Catholic church in England didn't offer those glories. If he wanted beautiful churches and liturgy, the ritualistic movement of the Tractarians provided that, with incense and candles and ceremony.

There has to be some content, some meaning beyond the surface if the conversion is going to be real, effective, and lasting. A surer guide to conversion than Walter Pater's aesthetics or the pre-Raphaelite fascination with the Middle Ages was needed, and this author suggests it was Blessed John Henry Newman, but even he doubts the depths of these decadent conversions:

John Henry Newman (1801–1890) had a considerable impact on English Catholic thinking throughout the Victorian period and after. For fin de siècle Catholics, he was the glorious forebear and the fatherly reference. As the leading figure of the Oxford Movement, he played an essential role in the Tractarian attempt at restoring a sacramental spirituality and re-establishing the authority of tradition. The Movement, whose ideas were expressed in the Tracts for the Times published between 1833 and 1841, was in the end torn by internal conflicts that led to a number to conversions to Roman Catholicism, the most famous of which being Newman’s in 1845. The Ritualistic phase followed the Tractarian moment in the second half of the century, focusing on liturgical reforms and introducing ceremonials in which the sacramental emphasis marked an appropriation of Roman doctrine. 

All fin de siècle Catholic literature is influenced by Tractarian thought. The Decadents share with the Oxford theologians the rejection of modernity and religious liberalism. They are also highly receptive to the Tractarian focus on rituals and sacraments, on the sacred role of the ordained priest, and on the antiquity of the Christian religion; they also have the same admiration for the mediaeval Church as Tractarian authors like Richard Hurrell Froude. The refusal of any form of compromise with contemporary society and the importance given to the liturgy had a profound impact on the vision of Catholicism that can be found in Decadent writing. The ritualistic dimension of late Tractarianism certainly left a more lasting imprint on fin de siècle converts than the dogmatic and ecclesiological reflection with which the movement had started and which they did not show much interest in, with the notable exception of Lionel Johnson, who was according to W. B. Yeats the theologian of the group (“Lionel Johnson was to be our critic, and above all our theologian, for he had been converted to Catholicism and his orthodoxy, too learned to question, had accepted all we did.”) . . .

The Decadent converts drew their inspiration from a variety of sources, preferring the “Art-Catholic” works of Rossetti, the French poetry of Parnassians and Symbolists and the writings of Newman over the great English and Protestant tradition represented in the 19th century by Arnold, Ruskin, Browning and Tennyson. And of course, there is also the seminal influence of Pater, which led many critics, most famously T. S. Eliot in his essay on Arnold and Pater, to dismiss fin de siècle conversions as superficial and unsubstantial. Eliot’s rebuttal of “aesthetic religion” is unfair, though, as these authors’ various spiritual itineraries often reflect a real and profound search for religious meaning. Although their quest was expressed in aesthetic rather than theological terms, although the subjectivity of experience often took pre-eminence over the sense of ecclesiastic belonging, although their beliefs and modes of life were at times rather eccentric, their religion was in no way less valid than the more orthodox and dogmatic faith of later Catholic writers such as G. K. Chesterton or Hilaire Belloc. The importance given to aesthetic emotions as part of religious experience is not only the fruit of a superficial reading of Pater’s writings, as T. S. Eliot seems to imply: it also bears the imprint of a theological tradition going back to Newman (who is rarely accused of shallowness), which places the emphasis on the personal dimension of faith rather than on intellectual obedience. One might argue that this focus on the individual over the ecclesial is fundamentally Protestant. The literary converts of the Decadence, despite their vocal rejection of the Reformation’s heritage, were all deeply marked by their Protestant upbringing, and their writings often represent a rather un-Catholic Catholicism, as if their vision of the Roman Church was distorted through a Protestant prism. The over-dramatic, romanticised religion that they describe is often closer to the depictions that can be found in the Gothic novel and in anti-Catholic pamphlets than to the actual faith practised by the average Catholic under Victoria’s reign.

Father John Henry Newman, among the working-class families of Birmingham, would have been a model for that "actual faith".

The Casting of Dorian Gray

Turner Classic Movies showed the 1945 MGM version of The Picture of Dorian Gray Saturday night. The crisp black and white film gives way to technicolor for the sight of the famous portrait and Dorian Gray's Mayfair house is gorgeously filled with works of art and culture. Hurd Hatfield plays Dorian and according to the TCM article, his casting as the evil Dorian Gray was thought so perfect that it hurt him for other roles. He did play Pontius Pilate in King of Kings, but did not have the career success expected from such a good beginning, although some critics said he was too impassive and restrained.

MGM added a subplot: a romance between Peter Lawford and Donna Reed. After I watched the movie, I wondered if Peter Lawford should have played Dorian Gray instead of Hurd Hatfield. His physical beauty equaled Hatfield's and he would have added some joie de vivre to the role. Lawford as Gray would have been more emotional and moved by the pleasures he sought. It would have been unexpected casting and could have even affected the audience more to see such a handsome and wholesome looking young man turn to such evil hedonism. Hatfield seemed so different from the start, such a pristine and perfect Adonis, as Lord Henry Wotton called him. As Lord Henry, George Sanders is perfect from the beginning of the picture, reading Les Fleurs de Mal in his carriage and proclaiming Wilde's "mal mots" with world-weary languor and humor.

Some Relevant Current Events

1)--This story from the BBC:

A collection of centuries-old skeletons excavated in Oxfordshire and stored in a museum are to be reburied as part of a "celebration" mass.

The human remains were found during the extension of a church graveyard in Eynsham, leading to excavations between 1989 and 1992.

Father Martin Flatman, of St Peter's Catholic Church, said he was pleased he could give them a "proper burial".

Six bodies are thought to be monks from the medieval Eynsham Abbey.

The remains of two women and a man have been dated to after the Reformation, and are believed to have been secretly buried in the consecrated ground.

The Catholic church was built on the site of the ancient abbey in the 1940s.

'Rib fractures'

Father Flatman said: "Suddenly it dawned on me that I didn't know where the bodies were. I found out they were in the museum's storage and I applied to have them back.

"As a Catholic we honour the dead and we wouldn't want to leave them, particularly those faithful 16th and 17th Century Catholics who faced persecution."

The finding of those bodies at Eynsham Abbey is another demonstration of what Eamon Duffy indicated in his article in The Telegraph I posted yesterday: for too long, England has ignored its past. In burying those recusant faithful, Father Flatman is reminding England of a time when a Catholic was forced to conform to the national church at birth, at her marriage, and at death.

2)--This interview from Hilary Mantel in The Telegraph:

Mantel was raised a Roman Catholic and educated at convent school.

However, the 59-year-old writer said child abuse scandals involving Roman Catholic priests demonstrated the “cruelty” and “hypocrisy” of the church.

Asked if she would call for a priest on her deathbed, Mantel replied: “No. I might very well call for a Church of England vicar, but I would not call for a Catholic priest.

“I’m one of nature’s Protestants. I should never have been brought up as a Catholic. I think that nowadays the Catholic Church is not an institution for respectable people.”

Which reminds me of the Oscar Wilde comment, "The Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone. For respectable people, the Anglican Church will do." (Remember that Oscar Wilde became a Catholic on his deathbed.) Francis Phillips responded here in The Catholic Herald. Mantel may think she was being remarkably current and astute ("nowadays") in her comment, but she is ignoring the past five hundred years in England, too--not to mention the Gospel stories of Jesus dining with tax collectors and publicans--they weren't respectable either. For a literate and learned person, she made a most illiterate and ignorant statement.

3)--This story from Maryland:

The Rev. Edward Meeks and his flock attended to a "million and one details" last week in the run-up to a momentous day for their church. People to talk to. Flowers to arrange. Food to cook. And, of course, the new sign. On Sunday, Christ the King Church — Anglican — became Christ the King Catholic Church. The Towson congregation of about 140 is one of the first groups in the United States to join a new "ordinariate" established for those who want to be Catholic but hold on to Anglican traditions. The largest Anglican church in the country to do so, it follows in the footsteps of Mount Calvary Church in Baltimore and St. Luke's Parish in Bladensburg.

Liberal stances by Anglican leaders, particularly Episcopalians, have driven some clergy and members to the Roman Catholic Church. But Meeks, who studied to become a Catholic priest as a young man, speaks not of rejection but of reunification — becoming one with the "authentic apostolic authority" of the church that dates back 2,000 years.

"We're just overjoyed by this," said the Rev. Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, who heads the U.S. ordinariate, the equivalent of a diocese but national in scope. As parishioners of all ages scurried past to take their seats for the Mass, he added, "It's such a healthy community — you can see it's full of children."

The parishioners who became Catholics Sunday morning were joining the church for the first time or returning after years apart. A handful of parishioners haven't decided whether to make that leap, though they're remaining in the congregation.

Others left. The 140-member church had about 200 parishioners when it started down the road to Catholicism almost two years ago, losing both those who didn't want to be Catholic and those who opted for a more traditionally Catholic experience.

That loss has been painful, parishioners say. But they add that the transformation from Protestant to Catholic has not been acrimonious — in contrast to the roiling discontent that produced the Church of England more than 450 years ago and that spawned Anglican churches around the world. Some parishioners who went elsewhere return for social events.

"We've still got a good relationship with virtually all who have left," Meeks said.


and 4)--This story, also from The Telegraph from a few months back, about the community left behind by the Anglican Ordinariate:

Members of the congregation at St Michael and All Angels parish church in Croydon, south London, don’t ask for much. A decent sermon, perhaps a few rousing hymns; clean pews; a tidy garden at the back; someone to help with Sunday school. But this month, they need something rather more important: a new vicar, to replace the one who converted to Catholicism and took 69 of his flock with him to a church up the road.

A “Parish priest: vacant” sign now stands outside the towering red-brick church behind West Croydon train station. Seven weeks ago, it housed 100 parishioners and a vicar who had served there for 16 years. Today, St Michael’s has less than half its original congregation, after the Rev Donald Minchew quit his post and was received into the Catholic faith at St Mary’s, 500 yards away.

This extraordinary leap of faith was prompted by the Rev Minchew’s decision to join the Ordinariate, a structure within the Roman Catholic Church that allows Anglicans to enter into full communion while retaining some of their C of E heritage. The practice started last January, when three former Anglican bishops were ordained as Catholic priests, following a decree from Pope Benedict XVI to heal division between the faiths. Since then, dissatisfaction with aspects of Anglican doctrine – including the Church’s attitude towards homosexuality and its willingness to consider female bishops – has led hundreds to take up the offer of conversion.

The Rev Minchew’s reasons for leaving St Michael’s were rooted in his doubts about the Anglican faith. “In the Church of England, you don’t know what the Church believes from one synod to the next,” he said. “I think there is great comfort in the Catholic church: you know what you believe and what the Church teaches.”

But what of those he left behind? St Michael’s is one of many Anglican parishes for which the Ordinariate has meant empty pews, an interregnum and a gaping hole in church life for the congregation.