ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR the ABBÉ and the BARON Henri Huvelin's

ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR

THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON

Henri Huvelin’s Spiritual Nurture of Friedrich von Hügel

‘I learnt all that I know from Huvelin. I learnt it from him. What a great saint he was! And what he taught me!’ (Friedrich von Hügel)1

SUMMARY – ‘Spiritual direction’ is an area currently receiving much attention in both sacred and secular circles. Publications abound concerning tech- niques, theoretical approaches and essential personal qualities for directors. However, few in-depth studies of exemplary spiritual direction have been written. This paper provides a case study of Abbé Henri Huvelin’s spiritual direction of Baron Friedrich von Hügel, from 1884 until 1910. Huvelin has been described as ‘one of the greatest spiritual directors of the nineteenth century’ and he was sought out by many intellectuals of his day.2 In this paper, the Abbé’s influence on von Hügel is explored through examining Huvelin’s letters, sermons and ‘Sayings’. Here we explore who Huvelin was and how he influenced von Hügel, before raising some critical questions concerning Huvelin’s role as a spiritual director and his spiritual nurture.

1. VON HÜGEL’S DEBT TO HUVELIN

Huvelin is repeatedly described by Friedrich von Hügel (1852-1925) as the person who had the greatest impact on his life. Von Hügel writes ‘I owe more to this Frenchman than to any man I have ever known in the flesh’.3 A significant

1 Gwendolen Greene (Ed.), Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s letters to a niece, London: Dent, 1929, xv. (Hereafter LN). 2 Maurice Nédoncelle, Baron Friedrich von Hügel: A study of his life and thought, London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1937, 4. 3 Friedrich von Hügel, Essays and addresses on the philosophy of religion. First series, London: Dent, 1921 286 (hereafter EA I). He also describes Huvelin as someone ‘whom I owe incalculably much’, see Essays and addresses on the philosophy of religion. Second series (ed. Edmund Gardner), London: Dent, 1926, 96 (hereafter EA II). 136 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR

conversion came for von Hügel through Huvelin: ‘the final depth attained so far was mediated (…) by a physically suffering, spiritually aboundingly helpful, mystical saint’.4 Or again, in a letter to Maude Petre: ‘he, naturally, stands out, undimmed, as the deepest and most salutary influence exercised upon me by any man known to me in the flesh’.5 The only place we find von Hügel wanting to disconnect himself from Huvelin, is when he fears that being too closely connected to him, might negatively impact Huvelin’s chances of being beatified.6 Despite this, given von Hügel’s comments about his debt to Huvelin, it is hardly surprising that Hügelian experts, such as Bedoyère and Barmann, draw attention to Huvelin’s importance.7

2. THE ABBÉ HUVELIN

Abbé Henri Huvelin was born at Laon in Picardy, France, on October 7, 1838. He studied at the École Normale and also in Rome. On his return to Paris in 1867, he was ordained a priest and sent to teach at the junior seminary at Saint-Nicolas du Chardonnenet. One of his duties there was to discern and select which students had a true vocation for the priesthood. Following this teaching post, he was appointed as a curate at the church of Saint-Eugène in the Rue Sainte Cecile, where he remained for seventeen years. In 1875, Huvelin became curate at the church of Saint-Augustin in Paris, remaining there for thirty-five years until his death on July 10th 1910.

4 Letter to Miss Fogelklou, 11th January, 1911, in: Douglas Steere, Spiritual counsel and letters of Baron Friedrich von Hügel, New York: Harper & Row, 1964, 3-4. 5 Von Hügel continues, ‘And any limits or defects in my outlook or performance I ever feel not to come from him, to be indeed still, thank God, in process of being sweetened and softened by that splendid light and warmth from beyond the veil whither that strong suffering saint has now gone’. Von Hügel to M.D. Petre, 15-16 December 1910, see James J. Kelly (Ed.), The letters of Baron Friedrich von Hügel and Maude D. Petre: The modernist movement in Eng- land, Leuven: Peeters, 2003, 121. 6 Von Hügel writes to Algar Thorold about not wanting to be ‘too definitely connected with him [Huvelin] in print. Not that I am most gratefully proud of all that I owe him; but that I want not to thwart his cultus: I want him eventually to be beatified, yet this might be adjourned, if the timid (95% of our practising Catholics) get scared by his breadth’ (4th December, 1921, quoted in Michael de la Bedoyère, The life of Baron von Hügel, New York: Scribner, 1951, 339). 7 Bedoyère sees Huvelin as the most significant living influence on the Baron’s ‘deepened and enlarged spiritual formation’ and that Huvelin’s ‘breadth of outlook, coupled with intensity of spiritual life in personal suffering, so deeply influenced the baron’s whole course of life’ (Bedoyère, The life of Baron von Hügel, 50, 251. Barmann goes as far as arguing that it was Huvelin, more than any other, who ‘confirmed the Baron in the pursuit of this mystical dimension of his Chris- tian life’ and helped him develop it. Lawrence Barmann, ‘The modernist as mystic’, in: Darryl Jodock (Ed.), Catholicism contending with modernity: Roman Catholic modernism and anti-modernism in historical context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 213-247: 225. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 137

Figure 1: Abbé Henri Huvelin8 Huvelin’s spiritual direction was celebrated in his day and was sought out by many, including Henri Brémond and Maurice Blondel. These Modernists, feeling alien- ated from the Roman Catholic church, were received and nurtured by Huvelin. The Abbé also gave spiritual direction to other prominent figures including Emile Littré and Charles de Foucauld. Huvelin’s skill in converting Foucauld was alone enough to establish Huvelin as a unique spiritual director and give him a ‘cult status’.9 Huvelin’s custom was to receive visitors from two to five every afternoon.10 However, Steuart claims that Huvelin saw people for sometimes twelve or four- teen hours out of each day and that his correspondence grew out of control: ‘his scanty leisure hours at home had to be surrendered to a ceaseless stream of visitors (…) who came to consult him’.11 These people queued for long stretches of time outside his door in the Rue de Laborde to receive his spiritual counsel. Gibert-Lafon helps us picture the scene: [O]ne would wait first of all in a narrow room, surrounded by books, and often full of visitors. At last one found one’s way into the room where the Abbé Huvelin

8 Photo of a photo in St. Augustin’s Church, Paris, taken by the author. 9 Bedoyère, The life of Baron von Hügel, 42. 10 Adeline, Duchess of Bedford, ‘The Abbé Huvelin: A sketch’, in: The English Church Review, Jan 1911, 34. 11 R. Steuart, ‘The Abbé Huvelin’, in: Idem, Diversity in holiness, London: Sheed & Ward, 1938, 150-157: 151-152. 138 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR

was seated in his invalid chair, his back to the window, before a great desk laden with books and papers.12 Adeline, Duchess of Bedford, describes how Huvelin often lay on his couch in his darkened room, overcome with physical suffering from gout, but never refusing a visitor.13 Von Hügel writes that despite Huvelin ‘…always suffering and ill, he sat in a chair radiating joy and support to all of us’.14 Adeline echoes this: ‘once in contact with souls, the fire of his spirit leaped up, and burnt deep into the conscience of his hearer’.15 As von Hügel records in his diary: ‘[I] found him very gouty, but as movingly spiritual and great as ever’.16

Figure 2: Huvelin’s apartment at the Rue de Laborde, Paris17

12 E. Gibert-Lafon, ‘Characteristics of Abbé Huvelin’, in: Henri Huvelin, Addresses to women (transl. Margaret Smith-Masters, ed. Abbé E. Gibert-Lafon), London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1936, 1-9: 9. (Hereafter ATW). 13 Adeline, Duchess of Bedford, ‘The Abbé Huvelin’, 34. 14 LN, xxiv. 15 Adeline, ‘The Abbé Huvelin’, 34. 16 Von Hügel’s diary, 12/4/1907April 12, 1907 (hereafter D). Von Hügel’s 43 diaries are located in St Andrews University Library Archive (hereafter SAUL), ms36362. 17 Photo by the author. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 139

Von Hügel first met Huvelin on the 16th of June, 1884. He was von Hügel’s spiritual director for twenty six years until Huvelin’s death. Von Hügel’s visits to Huvelin were most frequent between 1884 and 1893,18 and he had regular written correspondence with Huvelin from 1884 until 1904.19 Even beyond his death, Huvelin had a massive influence on von Hügel. As Bedoyère argues, Huvelin’s ‘breadth of outlook, coupled with intensity of spiritual life in personal suffering, had so deeply influenced the baron’s whole course of life (…) his influence remained permanently absorbed’.20 Huvelin chose to ‘write in souls’, leaving no published works behind him.21 The only evidence of what he preached was collected by his ‘disciples’ who wrote down his sermons from 1868-1909.22 Von Hügel possessed some of these publications.23 The main evidence of the spiritual direction von Hügel received are sixteen letters that Huvelin wrote to him between 1884 and 1904, plus Huvelin’s ‘Sayings’ to von Hügel during two week-long visits in

18 Von Hügel’s diaries reveal the frequency of visits to Huvelin: 26th Oct 1984, 19th May 1895, 23rd Apr 1896 (plus two more visits that week), 2nd Nov 1896 (plus two more visits that week), 6th May 1897 (plus another visit that week), 22nd November 1899, 30th May 1900, 1 June 1900. ‘For personal reasons’ von Hügel had not been to France since 1900 so there is a gap until his visit to Huvelin on 12th April, 1907 (Bedoyère, The life of Baron von Hügel, 190). 19 Huvelin’s sixteen letters to von Hügel (dated between 1884 and 1904 inclusive) are written in French and are located in SAUL. 20 Bedoyère, The life of Baron von Hügel, 251. Similarly, Whelan describes von Hügel’s meeting of Huvelin as a ‘watershed experience’, Joseph Whelan, The spirituality of Friedrich von Hügel, London: Collins, 1971, 18. 21 Joseph Leonard, ‘Preface’, in: Henri Huvelin, Some spiritual guides of the seventeenth century, (transl. & introd. Joseph Leonard), London: Burns & Oates, 1927, lxxiii-lxxvii: lxxiii (hereafter SSG). 22 These lessons were predominantly on the history of the church and were meant for the young people at Saint-Augustin’s. In 1875 he began his course with St Gregory the Great and went up until the 17th century. In 1880 he went back to the early days of the church. Then in 1878-1879, Huvelin gave lessons on seventeenth century spiritual masters that were written down and translated later in English as Some Spiritual Guides of the Seventeenth Century (1927). Huvelin’s sermons on ‘The Gospel’ and ‘The Eucharist and the Passion’ were translated and published in Henri Huvelin, The love of our Lord (transl. Algar Thorold), London: Burns & Oates, 1930. 23 In Eternal Life von Hügel writes, ‘three volumes have been issued containing the careful reports, taken down by certain of his hearers, or familiar addresses which are full (at least for those who knew and loved the saintly speaker) of sudden gleams of the deepest spiritual insight and love’. Friedrich von Hügel, Eternal life: A study of its implications and applications, Edinburgh: Clark, 1912, 374 (Hereafter EL). Von Hügel had a copy of Quelques Directeurs d’Âmes au XVIIe Siècle that he treasured. In addition, he possessed a copy of Bossuet, Fénelon, et le Quiétisme and L’Amour de Notre-Seigneur. Both of these books are in the von Hügel col- lection in SAUL. The former is a two volume work with the Baron’s pencil notes throughout though the latter book has no pencil markings. 140 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR

1886 and 1893.24 The ‘Sayings’, in particular, were deeply treasured by von Hügel and reveal how he recorded the ‘pearls’ that Huvelin uttered to him. While visiting Huvelin in May, 1895, von Hügel wrote to his wife, Mary, of his need to ‘carefully treasure up and work into my life all that he [Huvelin] has given me in the past, and attend to any crumbs, he may give me now’.25 In 1919, von Hügel described the ‘Sayings’ to Kemp Smith: …those talks of M. Huvelin to myself, for my spiritual life (…) What splendour and steadiness of spiritual insight was there! (…) such glorious penetration and power!26 Von Hügel frequently consulted the ‘Sayings’ and often sent a copy of them to favoured friends and directees. The 1886 ‘Sayings’ were sent to Dr Sonnen- schein with von Hügel’s description of them as ‘…winged words and fiery darts (…) said to me, by one whose spiritual greatness and piercing vision were already palpable facts for my experience’.27 Talking to Gwen Greene about these ‘Sayings’, von Hügel wrote [T]hey sprang straight from a life penetrated by God and the deepest love of Him (…) they are all, please God, at work within me; and how happy, if they can get to work in the Niece-child also!28 Many of the themes that recur in von Hügel’s writings can be traced back directly to these ‘Sayings’ of Huvelin.

24 Huvelin’s letters to von Hügel are written in French and are to be found in the von Hügel archive, SAUL. Huvelin’s ‘Sayings’ were initially published by Bernard Holland (Ed.), Selected letters of Baron Friedrich von Hügel 1896-1924, London: Dent, 1926 (hereafter SL). After this James Kelly found the original of Huvelin’s ‘Sayings’ and published more of the 1886 Sayings (not numbered) and also the 1893 Sayings (also not numbered). These ‘Sayings’ are published in the following articles, all by James J. Kelly: ‘Abbé Huvelin’s spiritual counsels to von Hügel’, in: Spirituality (Jan-Feb 1997), 34-36 (hereafter Spir I); ‘Abbé Huvelin’s spiritual counsels to von Hügel’, in: Spirituality (Nov-Dec 1997), 353-358 (hereafter: Spir II); ‘Counselling von Hügel: A selection of some advice given to von Hügel by the Abbé Huvelin in 1886 and 1893’, in: The Tablet 223 (1974), 693- 695 (hereafter: Tablet); ‘The Abbé Huvelin’s counsel to Baron Friedrich von Hügel’, in: Bijdragen: Tijdschrift voor Filosofie en Theologie 39 (1978), 50-69 (hereafter: Bijdra- gen). 25 Von Hügel letter to Molly, 19th May, 1895, quoted in Bedoyère, The life of Baron von Hügel, 85. 26 Letter from von Hügel to Kemp Smith, 13th-18th Nov, 1919, in Lawrence Barmann (Ed.), The letters of Baron Friedrich von Hügel and Professor Norman Kemp Smith, New York: Ford- ham University Press, 1981, 49. 27 SL, 57. 28 LN, 75. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 141

Figure 3: Baron Friedrich von Hügel29

Despite von Hügel’s dependence upon Huvelin’s ‘Sayings’, letters and posthu- mous writings, von Hügel makes it clear that it was not so much what he said, as who Huvelin was – his embodied sanctity – that impacted him for life. He writes, ‘There sanctity stood before me in the flesh’.30 Huvelin himself believed this was the most powerful approach: ‘Teach more by your example than by your words’31 and ‘We do good much less by what we say or do than by what we are’.32

29 Courtesy of the University of St Andrews Library, Special Collections, ms37194/54. 30 Von Hügel continues in this quote: ‘this as the genuine deepest effect and reason of the Catholic Church; I could now utilise the sufferings of these hurricane years towards growing a little less unlike this mediator of Church and Christ and God’. Friedrich von Hügel, ‘Louis Duchesne’, in: The Times Literary Supplement, 25th May, 1922, 342. Louis-Lefebvre reiterates this arguing that ‘the influence exercised by the priest’s personality, whose spiritual radiance, supernatural charity, joyfulness of soul and daily heroism, had such an effect on the Baron’. Marie Thérèse Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, Apostle of Paris, 1838-1910, Dublin: Clonmore & Reynolds, 1967, 156. 31 Huvelin continues on saying ‘be simple in manner, it is by humility and simplicity that hearts are touched’. ATW, 103. 32 Abbé Huvelin, quoted by Joseph Leonard, ‘Introduction’, SSG, i-lxxii: xliv. 142 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR

3. HUVELIN’S CHARACTER

Von Hügel’s descriptions of Huvelin help paint a portrait of this man: ‘a spiritually aboundingly healthful, mystical saint’;33 ‘a man of vehement, seething passions, and of rare forces of mind, whose will of iron, by long heroic submission to grace, had attained to a splendid tonic tenderness’;34 ‘a man of exqui- sitely piercing, humorous mind’, a ‘deep and heroic personality’ whose ‘self- oblivious love (…) brought light and purity and heart to countless troubled, sorrowing, or sinful souls’35 with a soul that was ‘rich and deep, cultivated and above all heroic’.36 Such descriptions of Huvelin’s character are reiterated by others.37 One directee goes as far as saying: ‘his influence, which was silent and hidden, but deep and lasting, can only be compared with that of the saints’.38 It was the Abbé’s holiness and deep, inner life that helped to bring about ‘the grandly tonic influence’ that the Baron describes.39 In his preface to the second edition of The Mystical Element of Religion, von Hügel writes that Huvelin ‘is for me still, the greatest manifestation of the spirit of sheer holiness which I have been privileged to watch and to be moved by at close quarters, throughout these seventy years of life’.40 One holy quality that ‘moved’ von Hügel was Huvelin’s ‘radiating joy’.41 Von Hügel writes that by contrast, Newman never ‘radiated’ such ‘spiritual joy and expansion’.42 He attributes this to Newman’s ‘deeply predestinarian, Puri- tan, training’, whereas Huvelin ‘had nourished his soul, from boyhood upwards,

33 Ms letter to Miss Fogelklou, 11th Jan 1911, quoted in Bedoyère, The life of Baron von Hügel, 42-43. 34 EA I, 286. 35 EL, 374-375. 36 EA II, 96. This description is echoed in his letter to Juliet Mansel where von Hügel describes his ‘ever great, rich, heroic Abbé Huvelin’ 9/5/1911, ms 37194/25D, SAUL. 37 For example, Nédoncelle writes: ‘His character was full of contrast, harmonised by grace; while deep passions, disciplined by holiness, had become the obedient instruments of his radiant activity’ (Nédoncelle, Baron Friedrich von Hügel, 5); Louis-Lefebvre writes of Huvelin, ‘In him a most enlightened faith, penetrating insight, reverence for the souls of others and a holy reckless- ness were combined. He was always an apostle, and, whether in the pulpit or the confessional, he brought with him the Message of Christ (…) His life itself expressed it’ (Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 15). One directee, Marie-Madeleine, on her death bed, describes Huvelin as ‘Light… Kindness… Love… Charity…’. (Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 174). 38 From l’Annuaire des Anciens Élèves du Petit Séminaire Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, 1910 (Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 232). 39 The Times Literary Supplement, 25th May, 1922. 40 Preface to The mystical element of religion as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends, London: Dent/New York: Dutton, 1923 (2nd ed.), vii. (Hereafter ME). 41 LN, xxiv. 42 Ibidem. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 143 on the Catholic spirituality as it flowered in St. Francis’.43 The nature of this joy is more fully understood when described by Huvelin: Very few souls understand spiritual joy (…) what is joy? It is a radiancy of soul produced by humility, self-forgetfulness, whole-hearted submission to all that God ordains (…) it is the soul which is prepared to accept anything in its interior life which possesses spiritual joy.44 Huvelin’s acceptance of suffering was the primary source of his joy. This is a dominant theme in von Hügel’s letters of spiritual direction. Alongside joy, the driving force behind Huvelin’s spiritual direction was love, since Huvelin believed that ‘Sanctity is the perfection of charity’.45 His chief desire was ‘to see all things united by charity’.46 Huvelin said ‘Many things can be overlooked in a priest, but he will never be excused if he lacks charity; the worst reproach he could have against him would be that he did not see God in his neighbour’.47 Love of God and acceptance of others became a habit of ‘sheer heroism’.48 Von Hügel writes, ‘No man was more tolerant of others’.49 Huvelin looked for the good in people, saying ‘We must not imagine that our enemies only say and do harmful things’.50 Describing some people who seem to be ‘in a Noah’s Ark’ who, ‘put their noses to the window and see only a deluge of evil’, Huvelin declares: ‘A priest judges differently: he sees the souls at closer range;’51 for ‘if we really desire to help souls, we shall always manage to see enough’.52 Huvelin was not only ‘tolerant’ of others,53 he tells his directees, ‘Let us make God loved by showing that we do not love ourselves’.54 This selfless posture is described by the Baron when he describes Huvelin as ‘completely forgetful of himself’.55 Huvelin’s dying words say it all: ‘Nunquam amabo satis’.56

43 Von Hügel EA II, 242. Von Hügel similarly described Huvelin to Juliet Mansel as ‘spiritually joyous’ (letter to Juliet, 9th May 1911, ms 37194/25D, SAUL). 44 ATW, 19. 45 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 143. 46 Ibid., 27. 47 Ibid., 141. 48 Steuart, ‘The Abbé Huvelin’, 152. 49 LN, xxiv. 50 Quoted in Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 140. 51 SSG, 45-46. 52 Words spoken in the crypt of Saint-Augustin, 9 or 16 December, 1877, quoted in Louis- Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 41. 53 LN, xxiv. 54 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 143. 55 Ibid. 112. 56 ‘I shall never love enough’. Ibid., 215. 144 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR

Huvelin’s letters reveal the depth of love he had for von Hügel.57 He writes: ‘Believe in my deep friendship’;58 ‘You have inspired in me a true confidence of affection’.59 Huvelin’s genuine concern for von Hügel is also repeatedly revealed: ‘Your soul has always been in my thoughts since God brought it to me and showed it to me’;60 ‘I think much of you, my very dear friend, and I pray for you from the bottom of my heart’;61 ‘Yes, I am praying with my whole heart for you’;62 ‘I’m thinking very much of you of whom I have not ceased to think and whom I have often prayed for’.63 Huvelin’s love was coupled with generosity. Even as a young man, he wrote ‘I feel the need, however, to do a little more for others, without which one grows impatient with oneself’.64 He even warns von Hügel, ‘It is not what you give but what you hold back that will cause you suffering’.65 As an older man, Huvelin insisted: ‘Giving? Once you have taken that bait, you can no longer do without the happiness of depriving yourself’.66 In fact, Huvelin describes the soul that has gone astray as one ‘which chooses for itself an impoverished, mean-spirited little life’.67 Similarly he says, ‘I am always uneasy about those souls who have plenty of religious practice about them but are lacking in generosity’.68 This point is further reiterated when Huvelin says ‘Pray for the priest whose hands offer the Sacrifice but who does not know how to offer himself’.69

57 Adeline, Duchess of Bedford writes describing the Baron ‘the Abbé often recalled him with deep interest and affection’ (‘The Abbé Huvelin’, 35). 58 Ms 2702, 23rd October, 1904, SAUL. 59 Ms 2690a, 25th June, 1884, SAUL. 60 Ms 2695 19th October, 1892, SAUL. 61 Ms 2702, 23rd October, 1904, SAUL. 62 Ms 2692, 29th January 1889, SAUL. 63 Ms 2692, 11th August, 1887, SAUL. Similar warmth and concern are revealed towards von Hügel’s daughter, Gertrud. Huvelin writes ‘I’m thinking with all my heart for her (…) I am somewhat worried like you. I will do everything I can’ (ms 2698, 6 July, 1897, SAUL); ‘I’m thinking hard of your dear daughter, Gertrud. I desire her happiness’ (ms 2702, 23rd October, 1904, SAUL); ‘Remind me to the memory of Gertrud. I’m not forgetting her’ (ms 2699, 18th August 1897, SAUL); ‘I pray with my whole heart for her and also for you’ (ms 2696, 10th October 1895, SAUL); ‘Don’t forget to remember me to your dear Gertrud’ (ms 3701, 2 January 1900, SAUL). 64 Letter to Père Freyd, Archbishop of Santa-Chiara, Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 49. 65 Saying XII, 1886, SL, 59. 66 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 33. 67 Ibid., 117. In keeping with this, Huvelin says ‘There is no one more wretched than a person who lives only for himself, who does not give himself, devote himself to some person or to some cause, who is wrapped up in himself’. Huvelin, ATW, 25-26. 68 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 141. 69 Ibid., 140. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 145

It is highly likely that von Hügel’s emphasis on visiting the poor came from Huvelin.70 In his Addresses to Women, Huvelin writes of the effect of such visits of charity. Seeing people bear and suffer poverty helps cure us from grumbling and brings forth thanksgiving for what God has given us. Huvelin writes ‘In your visits to the poor, take with you a deep feeling of reverence for their souls (…) a deep sense of unworthiness, of humility’.71 Humility was a quality that radiated from Huvelin.72 He takes no credit for any help he gives von Hügel: ‘God has given me unbeknown to me the gift of doing you a little good’.73 As well as modelling humility, Huvelin speaks of its necessity: Thinking humbly of ourselves is a most essential state of mind in the Christian life (…) Our habitual state ought to be the realisation of our poverty, of the need we have of God, a state of humility and of trustfulness (…) To obtain a humble opinion of ourselves we must know ourselves.74 This self-knowledge comes from being close to God. As Huvelin argues, ‘humility begins by being near to God and to his love’.75 Huvelin emphasises the effect on the soul of such intimacy with God: ‘First of all, humility, the realisation of what God is, the greatness, the infinite majesty of God; and the knowledge of what we are, of our littleness, and nothingness…’.76 We see our ‘littleness’ as we come to know the self in the light of who God is, so Huvelin writes: Creatureliness can be perceived only in contrast with the great. You will only become really humble by continuous effort. Never lower your ideal, but let it ever increase (…) St Peter sees himself as a sinner only when confronted by the over- powering greatness of Our Lord.77 Huvelin’s deep sense of ‘creatureliness’ was the basis of his humble posture before God and others.78

70 Von Hügel recommends to both Gwen Greene and Evelyn Underhill that visiting the poor will help them spiritually. 71 Huvelin, ATW, 20, 22. 72 One directee claims that ‘Always and above everything else, he called for humility’. Louis- Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 110. 73 Ms 2700, 30th August, 1897, SAUL. Similarly Huvelin writes ‘I’d be delighted if I can help you and if God gives me the wherewithal to do you good and enlighten you’ ms 2690b, 21st May, 1886, SAUL. 74 ATW, 15. 75 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 236. 76 ATW, 88. 77 Saying XIII, 1886, SL, 59. 78 The term ‘creatureliness’ is reiterated by von Hügel in many of his letters to directees. 146 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR

A focus upon Christ was central in the development of Huvelin’s humility. This devotion to the Sacred Heart was a source from which Huvelin’s life drew its strength.79 One directee sums up the focus on Christ in Huvelin’s spiritual direction: What did he advise? Just to identify oneself with Jesus; to love what He loves; to abhor what He abhors. To find joy and glory only in the things which please Him; to suffer pain from that which is hurtful to Him; to wish with Him and in Him. This is how I would venture to sum up that which this wonderful father gave to souls.80 Not surprisingly, the example of Christ on the cross is viewed by Huvelin as a potent weapon against temptations: ‘How can you have any pride, when you need only to raise your eyes and you see Jesus, our Saviour, on the Cross (…) If we only looked more often at the Crucifix we would not commit so many sins.81 But Huvelin reminds us that ‘after humility [is] charity, the duty of loving our neighbour, of loving souls, of giving, of self-sacrifice’.82 Huvelin reiterates this triple process of looking to God, self and others in the words of a letter he wrote to Jacques Demogeot, a professor at the Sorbonne: Everything can be expressed, dear friend, in three glances, one at ourselves, so that we may become aware of our wretchedness, one towards God, to beg for his mercies, and a third towards our neighbours, to forgive, to desire the welfare of souls and to bless!83 Indeed, for Huvelin, ‘The love of God can never exist apart from the love of our neighbour, on the contrary, it is included in it’.84 Huvelin was able to love God through his God-given gift of spiritual discernment which had such reso- nance for so many.

4. HUVELIN’S SPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT

Many directees have attested to Huvelin’s gift of intuitive, supernatural insight.85 Von Hügel describes this insight to Mrs Lillie: ‘He would have

79 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 214. 80 Madame Raynaud in Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 111. 81 From notes in Louise’s diary on Huvelin’s talk on the Presence of God, quoted in Louis- Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 57. 82 ATW, 88. Huvelin reiterates this when he says ‘It is when we know ourselves and our unworthiness that we lament and pray’ (Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 209). 83 Letter from Huvelin to Jacques Demogeot, 12 Feb 1890, quoted in Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 167. 84 ATW, 88. 85 For example, Colonel Darcy writes of the spiritual direction given to his mother through letters and describes ‘his [Huvelin’s] almost supernatural knowledge of what would happen to her’, quoted in Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 109. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 147 understood you far better than you have ever known yourself, within five minutes’.86 The immediacy of Huvelin’s advice is also highlighted by one directee: ‘I have known M. Huvelin able to give an immediate opinion which by its intuition showed the insight that he had into souls (…) a gift which I am prepared to call supernatural’.87 Similarly, von Hügel writes ‘I never doubt for one moment that Huvelin was supernatural (…) he affected souls and minds and bodies’.88 Many other directees have described this discernment: ‘He could place his finger just where the trouble lay (…) He seemed to understand everything’;89 ‘he seemed to see right into me’;90 He had a ‘wonderful insight into the dispositions of others’;91 a ‘gift of reading consciences, a privilege that is sometimes attached to sanctity’;92 a ‘capacity for discerning the motives that lay behind actions’;93 ‘an ability to read ‘into the depths of hearts’;94 ‘a gift (…) of fully understanding someone, who had up to then been quite unknown to him (…) and of seeing whether there was any hope of modifying his inmost tendencies’.95 Huvelin displays his ability to truly read the soul in a letter written to silence suspicions surrounding Emile Littré’s death-bed conversion: ‘he [Littré] was in a state of perfect sincerity, urged on to a delicacy, a state of love, of which I could not conceive unless it was caused by the divine action (…) evident

86 Letter from von Hügel to Mrs Lillie October 13, 1920, in F.R. Lillie, Some letters of Baron von Hügel, Chicago: privaltely printed, 40. (Hereafter SLB). This is reiterated by a directee who states ‘Even if one only sees him for a few moments one always carries away some word of his which will keep one going for a month or more’. Quoted in ‘Preface by Abbé E Gibert- Lafon’, ATW, viii. 87 Directee quoted in Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 235. An example of Huvelin’s discernment and insight is displayed in his letter to Sophie Littré: ‘In your case there is a painful separation between your heart and your head. Your heart is in the right place, it is very much alive and it does just what it should be doing, one has to admire it. Your mind, on the other hand, comes to a halt, it distrusts every good impulse, and leaves it lying in the dust. This is by no means due to ignorance, but to a habit of mind which looks on all sides at once, turning over every question and stirring up every difficulty, thus wearing itself out to no purpose’. Letter from Huvelin to Sophie Littré, 9 Jan, 1901, quoted in Louis- Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 177. 88 Notes written by von Hügel in preparation for a discussion with Algar Thorold and handed to him in early 1921, quoted in Bedoyère, The life of Baron von Hügel, 334-335. 89 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 107. 90 Mère Marie-Térèse des Anges, in ibid., 193. 91 Henri Joly, quoted in ibid. 100. 92 Le Figaro, 12 July 1910, cited in ibid., 113. 93 Henri Joly, Désiré Ligneau and Louis Joubert, quoted in ibid., 30. 94 Joly goes on to write: ‘There are many people prepared to support this statement on oath’, (Abbé Huvelin, 118). 95 Joly quoted in ibid., 235. 148 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR marks of grace at work’.96 The basis for Huvelin’s insights into souls is described by a directee: he ‘had his eyes on something well beyond his immediate sur- roundings, he seemed to see through them’.97 But it was not only Huvelin’s focus on the Eternal that helped create his depth of insight. Huvelin’s personal self-knowledge was the basis of his insight into others. He argues: The habit of being constantly faced with himself, of observing himself, of mor- tifying his passions and having to grapple with them, teaches a priest about the world, or at least what the world is like at heart. If we know about certain distresses which afflict the soul, certain ways of thinking, certain sorrows and certain kinds of meanness, then we know the world. We have a sort of world localised in ourselves which enables us to see things as they are and how they originated, and if we come across them again in the world outside or in the confessional, then we say: ‘Oh! I know this, I have already put it to the test, I can even tell what its causes are, and deduce from them what the results are likely to be!’98 This technique is further explained by Huvelin: ‘In order to guide consciences we need no more than a small number of principles to which everything can be traced back and which can be made quite clear’.99 The generalising effect of Huvelin’s ‘small number of principles’ is described by Leonard: ‘His recom- mendations were simple, clear and sensible, and he did not vary them. He accommodated them to the persons with whom he had to deal’.100 Despite using his own experiences and self knowledge as his point of depar- ture, Huvelin emphasises that God uniquely moulds lives rather than making clones. Huvelin states ‘We should respect the type that God is endeavouring to form’.101 He even goes further describing his mistakes directing souls when he relied too much on his own insights and did not attend to what God was doing in the soul: [I]n the direction of souls; one must seek to know God’s purpose and beware of one’s own judgement. How many times I have been misled! How many times I have thought that a soul ought to be guided in such and such a way, and how

96 Huvelin, Le Correspondant, 15 September, 1920. Huvelin’s letter is undated. Huvelin’s humility is revealed at the close of the letter: ‘What I saw remains with me as one of the most strengthening memories that support me and make me wish to be better’ (quoted in Louis- Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 96). 97 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 104. 98 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 105. 99 Ibidem. 100 Leonard, ‘Introduction’, SSG, xlviii-xlix. 101 Huvelin, quoted by Adeline of Bedford, in: ‘Introduction’, SSG, xiii. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 149

often have I seen that this was not the purpose of God for it (…) God is the only true director of souls.102 Although Huvelin believed God to be the true spiritual director, at times his confidence in his own perception meant that he got in the way.

5. THE DELIVERY OF HUVELIN’S DIRECTION

Huvelin’s advice was firm and has been described as like ‘sharp blades’.103 It was ‘never of a soft and easy kind, and always had a profound effect on the soul of the penitent’.104 For example, at their first meeting, Huvelin simply told Charles de Foucauld: ‘Make your confession’. From the time of his confession, Foucauld was a changed man.105 Huvelin’s letters to von Hügel similarly reveal explicit direction: ‘No question about it accept the situation of director’;106 ‘Don’t talk religion with her any more (…) I advise absolutely’.107 However, Huvelin did not always simply tell people what to do. At times he encouraged the collaboration of his directees, leading them to find a conclusion as if they had discovered it entirely by themselves. Just as Christ encouraged the Pharisees to find themselves in his parables, Huvelin would sometimes ‘tell it slant’ and have ‘a subtle, finely shaded sense of psychology, which made it possible for many to recognise themselves in some moral portrait or even in some austere judgement’.108 Such an approach meant that ‘He was never severe or exacting in his advice’.109 Huvelin’s humour and gentleness enabled him to console and encourage whilst also imparting truth. One directee states there was ‘an affectionate note in his challenges’.110 Other directees speak of Huvelin’s ‘unobtrusive mysticism

102 ATW, 80-81. Huvelin repeats this when he says: ‘…in the direction of souls. I have thought that a soul should be guided in one direction, and God has led it in another (…) I have worked in order to mould a vessel in one way and to give it a certain shape; and it was a vessel of quite another shape when it left my hands! (…) We must distrust ourselves, be conscious of our own need, our incapacity for helping souls; it is a sacred work; our hands should tremble as we approach it (…) He wills to accomplish it through our hands, unworthy as they are; let us acknowledge our own littleness’ (ATW, 47). 103 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 64. 104 Ibid., 101. 105 Huvelin was similarly direct when he later commanded Foucauld not to found an order. See pages li to lxxii in SSG for specific quotes of Huvelin’s advice to Foucauld. 106 Ms 2693, 1st April, 1888, SAUL. 107 Ms 2700, 30th August, 1897, SAUL. 108 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 65. 109 Quoted in ibid., 107. 110 Ibid., 65. 150 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR and his asceticism well concealed behind a good humour’.111 Madame Desforges, a woman Huvelin directed for thirty-two years, argues that even though he was ill, Huvelin ‘never lost his sense of humour’ and was ‘sometimes rather ironical’.112 No doubt this humour helped to soften Huvelin’s direct comments. One directee notes that Huvelin’s ability to discern motives ‘might well produce a sense of uneasiness, were it not that his smile used to melt rapidly into a look of gentleness and understanding’.113 This empathy is reiterated by another directee: He had above all the gift of consolation (…) his glance which could see right down to the depths of the conscience, came from the eyes of the heart, illumina- tos cordis oculos: the words which restored to life also came from the heart and went straight to the heart (…) His compassion was of the highest kind…114 Von Hügel echoes this when he writes of Huvelin’s ‘tenderness in austerity, and that austerity in tenderness’ which he describes as ‘the very genius of Christianity’.115 Huvelin’s tender encouragement of von Hügel is revealed on many occasions. The Abbé writes: ‘I have faith in you, in your courage, in your candour, in that good and pacifying action which you exercise and will con- tinue to exercise’.116 In an earlier letter, he similarly reassures von Hügel: ‘I don’t see that you need worry yourself in any way about either your philo- sophical or critical studies (…) everything in what you tell me can be harmonised’.117 In addition to Huvelin’s encouragement and compassionate, tender delivery of truth, the Baron highlights Huvelin’s ‘patience’ and ‘wonderful gentleness’.118 We see Huvelin’s patience with the Holy Spirit’s redeeming work in each directee’s soul. As Joly writes, rather than having ‘a peremptory, sharp, hurried or even overbearing manner’, Huvelin was ‘aware how slow the work can sometimes be which grace carries out’ in souls.119 He didn’t push or bully people into ‘fast-tracked’ spiritual growth. However he does take initiative, arguing, ‘It is for the priest to set the pace’.120 Huvelin takes de Sales’ spiritual direction as his model arguing ‘his style of direction was towards moderation.

111 Henri Joly, Ozanam and his successors, quoted in Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 32. 112 Ibid., 107. 113 Henri Joly, Desire Ligneau and Louis Joubert quoted in Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 30. 114 Ibid., 236. 115 LN, 73. 116 Ms 2702, 23rd October, 1904, SAUL. 117 Ms 2694, 6th September, 1891, SAUL. 118 LN, xxiv. 119 Joly, op cit cited in Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 112. 120 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 104. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 151

He was devoted to little by little’.121 Similarly, Huvelin tells us that another one of his models, Saint Vincent, advocated ‘little by little’ and ‘forced the impatient to keep pace with him, and he kept pace with the providence of God’.122 Huvelin knew that spiritual transformation was a slow process thus he advised his directees to ‘Bear with yourself patiently’.123 Huvelin’s patience was a model for von Hügel in keeping his ‘vehement soul soundly balanced’.124

6. HUVELIN’S DEALING WITH SPIRITUAL INTENSITY

Providing spiritual guidance to von Hügel is described by Leonard as a ‘problem of great delicacy and difficulty’.125 However, Huvelin shows von Hügel ‘how his God-given personality and temperament were a blessing’.126 He affirms von Hügel’s ‘very great independence of spirit’ and ‘the individuality which God has given him’ which must not be ‘deformed’ or ‘warped’.127 Such comments reveal the broad expansiveness of Huvelin which drew von Hügel, making him a suitable spiritual director. As Bedoyère argues, it was ‘the virile, expansive, free quality of his sanctity – the authentic marks, as the Baron even believed, of the impress of God on the soul’ that most influenced von Hügel.128 The Baron writes to Mrs Lillie that if she had met Huvelin, ‘the bracing, the expansion he would have transmitted would have remained with you as long as you lived’.129 However, Huvelin’s desire to enable von Hügel to practice his own ‘free’ expansiveness also came with a warning: Never attempt to make others see things as you do. You will never bring this about, God makes use of everything. I have heard sermons which could have done me a lot of harm, but I could see the good effect they had on a large number of those who were listening to them.130 Similarly Huvelin writes, ‘…never forget: the majority – also has its rights: the right to your silence, to your consideration, to your respect’.131 He similarly states in a letter to von Hügel: ‘say what you think, but don’t try to convert

121 SSG, 11. 122 SSG, 111, 112. 123 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 39. 124 Ibid., 143. 125 Leonard, ‘Introduction’, SSG, xxv. 126 Barmann, ‘The modernist as mystic’, 228. 127 Saying XXV, 1886, SL, 61. 128 Bedoyère, The life of Baron von Hügel, 44. 129 October 13, 1920, SLB, 40. 130 Saying XIX, 1886, SL, 60. 131 Saying XXV, SL, 61. 152 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR people to what you think’.132 The Baron’s contemporary, Maisie Ward, believed this advice revealed ‘a depth of understanding’.133 Rather than imposing his way on others, Huvelin helps von Hügel deal with his naturally impetuous and intense personality. In Huvelin’s letters and ‘Sayings’ we gain profound insight into von Hügel’s unique and complicated character. The Abbé says, ‘There are saints, great saints, of your temperament. St Francis of Assisi (…) a saint full of life, movement, light and warmth’.134 Recognising this similarity in ‘vigour, insight, and intensity’, Huvelin introduced the Baron to ‘such large-souled Christians’.135 As well as affirming von Hügel’s unique, mystical temperament, he warns him: ‘You will only rarely find souls who understand you (…) solitary, very individual souls who have suffered much’.136 Having said this, Huvelin then encourages von Hügel to seek out and encourage others like himself: ‘You will do great good through opening yourself to souls who have an affinity to you; you will let them see that they are not completely alone in the world’.137 Dealing with von Hügel’s intensity is a major aspect of Huvelin’s spiritual direction. Huvelin easily detects von Hügel’s fretful, restless mind, his tendency to worry and his agitated soul. Francis de Sales’ spiritual direction of Madame de Chantal had provided Huvelin with a model for dealing with intensity. Huvelin describes Madame de Chantal as ‘intense – that is the right word – intense (…) he [de Sales] had to get her to work against herself’.138 Huvelin similarly tries to steady von Hügel and help him be less intense in all of his activities. He writes, Yes, your state of agitation and rush, so tiring, and which it is so necessary for you to calm down, is closely bound to your physical state, the strain on your nerves, contradictions met with at every step, the liveliness of your mind which bruises itself on so many obstacles. Rest, silence, the effect of your deafness in making you take things more quietly so that they may be allowed to pass by, will do some good.139

132 Ms 2694, 6th September, 1891, SAUL. 133 Maisie Ward, The Wilfrid Wards and the transition: Insurrection versus resurrection, London: Sheed & Ward, 1937, 497. 134 Saying XX, 1886, SL, 60. 135 Barmann, ‘The modernist as mystic’, 229. 136 Saying I, 1886, SL, 58. 137 Saying XVII, 1886, SL, 60. This may have contributed to von Hügel deciding to give spiritual direction to his daughter, Gertrud, and his niece, Gwen, two people with whom he felt a special affinity. 138 Huvelin, SSG, 37-38. 139 Ms 2694, 6th September, 1891, SAUL. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 153

Further, Huvelin helps von Hügel to accept his health limitations and relax. Where Huvelin was often motivating people, suggesting a regime of mortifications, he recognises von Hügel needs calming. So Huvelin suggests von Hügel take an extended time of rest at a Benedictine retreat. Yes! Yes! (…) a relaxing retreat, in which through the very effect of resting and being peaceful, the mind will find its way towards confidence and blossoming towards goodness. I am entirely of the opinion of your daughter. Fatigue, wearing down counts for a lot in the lack of possession of yourself and in the medio- cre way in which you get out of certain situations. You are not in control of them! You’re not up to the thing that’s upsetting you (…) emotion takes over and leads you where you would not have wished to go! So do go on your retreat or rather find these joys of pious relaxation, to give back the tired mind its true orientations (…) There is no question about it. The extended silence and rest are at first heavy to carry and then you ask how you can leave them.140 Von Hügel’s intensity was also the result of his deafness and a nervous condition that was difficult to control. Huvelin tells von Hügel that his soul needs to …put up with itself, not to turn aside in any way to not be troubled by any of the infirmities which envelope it and to put up with the humiliations which precede from it, from its whole being. The person who takes himself humbly, takes himself gently because he’s not surprised by his wretchedness. He picks himself up (…) He is therefore attentive to himself and others in the very distress which at each instant bears witness to his nothingness (…) Take well the little humilia- tion which comes to you from your increasing deafness well.141 Patience and endurance with regards to his health issues is similarly outlined in relation to the conflicts in von Hügel’s marriage. Huvelin provides specific advice about how von Hügel should keep his emotions in control. He writes, When you are at the end of your tether don’t try to reason with your dear wife, nor to raise her spirits, nor to calm her – an effective word, followed by a silence during which she will recover herself and return of her own accord, this is what seems to me indicated.142 A year later Huvelin similarly writes: Be tranquil Sir. Not for one moment do envisage thinking ill of the dear soul who lives near you. Very loving, very devoted (…) Take the means to be gentle (…) regaining possession of yourself in the presence of God. It will be one of the Christian effects of these blessed days.143

140 Ms 2699, 18th August, 1897, SAUL. 141 Ms 2695, 19th October, 1892, SAUL. 142 Ms 2694, 6th September, 1891, SAUL. 143 Ms 2695, 19th October, 1892, SAUL. 154 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR

‘Regaining possession’ of himself in God’s presence helped von Hügel with his ‘temptations of worrying, succumbing to his physical weaknesses, [and] taking upon himself too heavy a share of responsibility for others’.144 Huvelin helped the Baron to replace his intense, feverish and forceful prayer life with a peaceful openness where the mystical element could flourish. Huve- lin tells him: Religion can easily become too detailed and too intense for you. Meditation and divine things in general escape you in so far as you (forcefully) search for them. They will come to you when you are not looking for them. It is like water which escapes from under your feet.145 Similarly, Huvelin tried to help von Hügel live in the present. ‘Do not look further’ was a hint Huvelin gave von Hügel when fretting about consequenc- es.146 One way that Huvelin fostered von Hügel’s intense soul was through his advice concerning prayer.

7. HUVELIN’S INSTRUCTION REGARDING PRAYER

Huvelin often discussed prayer in his spiritual counsel. Huvelin says ‘the union of the soul with the Lord. That is my sole affair; nothing else counts with me: to unite the soul with our Lord who wishes to live in it’.147 In von Hügel’s case, the Abbé wanted to encourage a life of union with God through prayer in a way that would counterbalance his spiritual intensity. He thus ushered von Hügel into the contemplative life as a way to rest and relax his soul. Huvelin’s own spiritual direction arose from a soul nurtured by the ‘wonderful fertility of silence’148 and he modelled a balance between a contemplative and active life. Having discerned that von Hügel’s ‘free’ temperament would require a unique life of prayer, Huvelin tells von Hügel that prayer for him will be ‘a state rather than a series of definite deliberate acts’.149 Within this ‘state’, Huvelin encourages von Hügel towards the Prayer of Quiet. Huvelin says: The prayer that I love arises from the deep places. De profundis clamavi (…) This enters into all the sentiments of the human heart when they are most strongly

144 Bedoyère, The life of Baron von Hügel, 44. 145 Saying XV, 1886, in: Kelly, Tablet, 694. 146 Bedoyère, The life of Baron von Hügel, 44. 147 Huvelin, SSG, lxxv. 148 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 63. Huvelin describes contemplative prayer as ‘The soul feels and loves, it does not reason, it says nothing. But though it does not express itself, it acts (…) It rejects evil thoughts but responds to the divine influence: these are actions’ (Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 123). 149 Saying II, 1886, SL, 58. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 155

experienced, and brings God into all that has the fullest life in the soul. Let us avoid that watered-down prayer, which is only allowed to occupy a small place in our lives. This is no more than pious frivolity, empty words that do not even express what the heart has to say.150 In his Essays and Addresses, von Hügel outlines how his prayer life changed under Huvelin: After practising a daily three-point meditation for some twenty-five years, the new Helper sent me by God advised me that my prayer should now be mainly informal – more of the prayer of quiet type; but that there should always remain short vocal prayers morning and night, Mass and Holy Communion twice a week, with Confession once a week or once a fortnight; and (perhaps most characteristic point of all) one decade of the rosary every day – this especially to help prevent my interior life from losing touch with the devotion of the people. After over thirty years of this mixed regime, I am profoundly convinced of the penetrating sagacity of this advice.151 Those who knew von Hügel observed his practice of this ‘mixed regime’ and described him as ‘a contemplative by nature and intensely prayerful by practice’.152 Many years later, on his deathbed, von Hügel was found with the rosary in his hands, clear evidence that Huvelin achieved his aim of reinstating an authentic simplicity into von Hügel’s faith and ‘a childlike spirit towards the Church’.153 Alongside an emphasis on childlikeness, von Hügel imbibed Huvelin’s insistence on prayerful adoration.154 Von Hügel’s own insistence on adoration is repeatedly mentioned in his letters, particularly when he states ‘Religion is adoration’ and that religion without adoration is ‘like a triangle with one side left out’.155 A gentleness in repentance was also encouraged by Huvelin who asks von Hügel to gaze upon God to protect him from spiritual pride. He tells von Hügel, ‘contrition’ only comes from ‘a certain self-hate (…) of a calm and peaceful kind, the kind that comes during prayer as a contrast to the sight of

150 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 71. 151 EA II, 234. The ‘three-point meditation’ he had been practising was given to him by the Jesuits. 152 Ward, The Wilfrid Wards, 490. 153 Ms 2702, 23rd October, 1904, SAUL. We see von Hügel recommending this advice to an acquaintance who had a ‘contempt for the human herd, superiority’. The Baron writes that to ‘say even only a decade of the Rosary every day – would be the cure, the completion of the man’ (Letter to Bernard Holland, March 22, 1919, SL, 269). 154 Andrew Louth mentions Foucauld’s spirituality of adoration indicating that Huvelin’s insistence on adoration was similarly adopted by Foucauld. Andrew Louth, ‘Charles de Foucauld and the Abbé Huvelin’, in: Idem, The wilderness of God, London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1991, 6-25: 12. 155 Quoted in Douglas Steere, Together in solitude, New York: Crossroad, 1982, 46. 156 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR

God. It should not be detailed but very general’.156 Von Hügel similarly encourages his directees not to be too ‘specific’ in their contrition and not allow their examen of conscience to become a focus upon the self.157 Huvelin helps to develop in von Hügel a ‘living grasp of the mystical element of Christian life within the institutional church’.158 For Huvelin, the mystical element was always linked with the institutional; the individual needed to be enveloped in the the Sacraments and a Christian community. Huvelin directs the Baron ‘…into profound Christian growth, not in spite of the Church structure, but precisely through it’.159 As Barmann argues, this developed in tandem with his understanding and use of critical historical method and the two dimensions interacted and profoundly influenced each other.160 Linking prayer and critical scholarship is a significant aspect of Huvelin’s direction. He tells von Hügel: ‘There is no safe rule in critical work: prayer, avoid obstinacy – that is all’.161 Huvelin states, It is only a profound, true and living interior life that can be a sufficient safeguard against the spirit of purely negative criticism. Always keep the critics somewhat at bay and return to your own deeper life, into the life of the spirit and of devotion. M. le Hir, the Sulpician Hebrew scholar, had a very intense spiritual life, without which these studies are very dangerous.162 We see von Hügel taking on board Huvelin’s advice when writing to his niece about his book, Eternal Life: ‘I wrote the whole thing praying’.163 The Baron asserts that Huvelin’s advice concerning the cultivation of sanctity and of pur- suing critical studies in the light of a prayerful openness to God kept his faith when other Modernists, such as Alfred Loisy, lost theirs.164 But it is not only prayer that helps our theology and scholarship. Huvelin writes that theology can also help our prayer. He thus writes to Foucauld: ‘I am not astonished that theology contributes at present to your recollection, to your prayer’.165

156 Saying XV, 1886, SL, 60, italics added. 157 This is particularly the case with Evelyn Underhill. See von Hügel’s letter dated 12/7/23 in Margaret Cropper, The life of Evelyn Underhill, Woodstock: Skylight Paths, 2003,115-116. 158 Barmann, ‘The modernist as mystic’, 224. 159 Ibid., 226. 160 Ibid., 224. 161 Saying IV, 1886, SL, 58. Louis-Lefebvre translates this saying as: ‘There is no safe rule in critical studies: prayer and docility, that is all’ (Abbé Huvelin, 152). 162 Saying from October 19, 1893, quoted in James Kelly, Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s philosophy of religion, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1983, 68. 163 LN, 72. 164 Friedrich von Hügel, ‘Louis Duchesne’, in: The Times Literary Supplement, no 1040 (22nd December 1921), 860. 165 Letter to Foucauld (18:ii.98): Correspondance, 56 (quoted in Roger Quesnel, Charles de Fou- cauld: Les étapes d’une recherche, Tours-Paris: Mame, 1966, 74). THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 157

8. HUVELIN’S ATTITUDE TOWARDS THEOLOGY AND THE SCHOLASTICS

Theological study was important to Huvelin. In a letter to Charles de Foucauld, Huvelin is adamant: ‘Study theology (…) provides a solid foundation for all great thoughts and controls them’.166 Similarly, the Abbé tells Foucauld that theology helps to ‘develop a broad, positive outlook, and this learning would give your mind and heart a steady judgement in mystical matters, without any illusions!’167 Despite valuing theology, Huvelin is repeatedly critical of the ‘scholastics’ in his advice to von Hügel.168 Pascendi saw the scholastic framework as the only means of understanding the Christian faith. Suspicion accompanied any attempt to modify this tight system. But Huvelin recognised that ‘scholastic attempts to objectivise, externalise and intellectualise the faith emptied it of everything that is awesome, beautiful and mysterious’.169 He went as far as saying that the scholastics are unable to describe truth because they reduce everything to mere cerebral categories. He thus warns von Hügel to avoid the scholastics: ‘I have the realities; they the formulae. They do not understand that life, all life, escapes analysis. It is a dead body they are dissecting – a lifeless thing. Pass them by with a gentle, a very gentle smile’.170 Trying to describe the truth exhaustively, claims Huvelin, does not capture its essence but simply reduces it. He makes this point in three Sayings using the image of water, forest and the moon: In the course of their argumentation the scholastics sacrifice the living truth. They allow the water to seep out on all sides; they lose more than they retain, more even than they salvage.171 The scholastics clarify things by impoverishing them. One can construct road- ways in all directions throughout a virgin forest. This affords us a clearer view of the forest; but how many beautiful trees have to be sacrificed!172

166 Letter from Huvelin to Foucauld, quoted in Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 153. 167 15 June 1896, letter from Huvelin to Foucauld, quoted in Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 124- 125. A child, Louise, in the Abbé’s catechism class writes in her diary ‘M. Huvelin has given us an abominably difficult analysis on the Divinity and Humanity of Our Lord’ (ibid., 56). 168 Bedoyère describes the ‘scholastics’ Huvelin criticises as ‘the debased ecclesiastical philosophy which (…) too often passed in the schools for depth and wisdom, especially perhaps when the scholastic teachers of the nineteenth century sought to destroy by facile syllogisms the mounting philosophic, scientific, and social attack on the Church. It is in this context that some of Huve- lin’s advice to the baron must now be read’ (Bedoyère, The life of Baron von Hügel, 44-45). 169 Peter Williams, ‘Abbé Huvelin: Mediator of a tradition’, in: Bijdragen 42 (1981), 246-267: 252. 170 Saying VI, 1886, SL, 58. 171 Saying from 1886, in: Kelly, Bijdragen, 67. 172 Saying from 1886, in: ibidem. 158 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR

The scholastics, even St Thomas the greatest of them, do not explain everything. The living truth escapes all definitions. They believe they can put the moon in a bottle: that could be done, but only if it were cheese.173 Huvelin’s humour here reinforces the fact that God cannot be systematised but requires engagement of the heart alongside the mind. The impoverishment of the scholastics is further emphasised when Huvelin says: ‘Do theologians sometimes err? Of course they do, and often. Science and experience have made a good deal of ground since theology stood still’.174 For Huvelin, theology needs to develop in relation to experience of God. In turn, Huvelin’s approach is critiqued by Loisy: Huvelin’s religion, like that of all the great mystics, was profoundly realist: it is this transcendent realism which makes them place the Divine above every for- mula, and thus prompts them to look with a charitable commiseration on the subtleties, the arguments, the angers of scholastic theologians.175 Loisy has no need for what he sees as Huvelin’s condescending pity. But Huvelin is adamant about the narrowing effect of scholarship and the academy: ‘Yes, I understand: “model seminarians”, shrunken and shrivelled natures’.176 This ‘shrunken’ nature results from abstract formulations about God rather than ‘a concrete, dynamic and open view of reality’.177 Huvelin argues, ‘There is no greater or more dangerous enemy for Christianity than anything which constricts or narrows it’.178 In contrast to such approaches, Huvelin affirms von Hügel’s more prayerful approach saying that being mystical does not mean you lack orthodoxy: ‘No, you are not a Liberal. Like the great mystics, St John of the Cross and St Francis, you are free. They loved to make souls feel at ease; there you have a spirit of true liberty as opposed to Liberalism which is an error’.179 Instead of being a scholastic, Huvelin encourages von Hügel to be ‘a great theologian, but a mystical theologian who referred everything to the soul’.180 Like Huvelin, the experiential element predominated in von Hügel’s personality.

173 Saying XXII, 1886, SL, 61. 174 Saying IX, 1886, SL, 59. 175 Alfred Loisy, Mémoires pour server à l’histoire religieuse de notre temps (3 vols.), Paris: Nourry, 1930, Vol I: 286. 176 Saying on 29th May, 1886, in: Kelly, Spir II, 356. 177 Kelly, Tablet, 693. 178 Saying XXVI, 1886, SL, 61. 179 Saying, 1893, in: Kelly, Spir I, 34-35. Huvelin reiterates this point when he writes ‘No, you are not a Liberal Catholic. You are far more dogmatic than they; you are very dogmatic. Moreover, they involved themselves especially with politics; politics means little or nothing to you’ (Saying XXIX, 1886, SL, 62). 180 This quote of Huvelin’s comes from his description of Fr. de Condren in SSG, 90-91. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 159

As Leonard argues, ‘The apparently hard, dry, clear-cut mind and spirit of the theologian is, almost of necessity, antipathetic to the mystically minded’.181 Yet alongside von Hügel’s growing mystical element, was his interest in critical Biblical scholarship. As Barmann argues, ‘the thrust of Huvelin’s counsel cen- tred on the basic problem of von Hügel’s life at the time of this consultation: how to combine a constantly growing and vibrantly open spiritual life with an ever developing critical intellect’.182 Huvelin’s solution to this problem of combining the mystical and critical spirit was to usher von Hügel into the concept of the scholar-saint as his model for life. He rooted von Hügel in this tradition for he knew it could hold together sanctity and scholarship in his own life. Huvelin himself was steeped in this rich tradition and he was ‘a living embodiment of those scholar-saints’.183

9. THE FRENCH, SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SCHOLAR-SAINT

It is hardly surprising that Huvelin guided von Hügel into the Catholic tradition of the late seventeenth century, French masters of spirituality. ‘Being a historian, with a thirst for everything spiritual and also attracted by the idea of guiding souls, he could not fail to know of the part played in seventeenth century religion’.184 As von Hügel writes, ‘Huvelin had nourished his soul, from boyhood upwards, on the Catholic spirituality as it flowered in St. Francis’.185 In addition, two of the four published sets of Huvelin’s lectures revolve around seventeenth century scholar-saints: Quelques Directeurs d’Âmes au XVIIe Siècle and Bossuet, Fénelon et le Quiétism.186 Anchoring von Hügel in this same tradition cannot be underestimated for it enabled him to steer his way through the two extremes of Liberal Catholicism and ultramontanism and to keep his spiritual centre during the Modernist years.187 Understanding this spiritual tradition that provided inspiration for von Hügel, is essential for appreciating who von Hügel was.

181 Leonard, ‘Introduction’, SSG, xxvii-xxviii. 182 Barmann, ‘The modernist as mystic’, 226. 183 Williams, ‘Abbé Huvelin: Mediator of a tradition’, 260. 184 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 46. 185 EA II, 242. 186 Another influence on Huvelin was St Francis of Assisi. Huvelin had a statue of St Francis in his room. One of the very few published writings of Huvelin is an introduction to a book about Francis of Assisi: Légende des Trois Compagnons, La vie de S. François d’Assise raconteé par les freres. 187 Kelly, Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s philosophy of religion, 49, 51. Kelly states that this tradition enabled von Hügel to renew the narrow ultramontanism of his day. 160 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR

Following his first visits to Huvelin in 1886, von Hügel begins assimilating seventeenth century scholar-saints. Grou is read by von Hügel for his ‘spiritual reading’ in 1886.188 Similarly, von Hügel writes at the beginning of his diary for 1887, that he intends to read the complete works of Fénelon that year. He reads Fénelon’s Lettres Spirituelles in January 1887 and reads more works by Fénelon in 1888.189 Von Hügel describes these seventeenth century spiritual masters as …souls, who live an heroic spiritual life (…) attain to a rare volume and vividness of religious insight, conviction, and reality. They can, at their best, train other souls (…) to a depth and tenderness of full and joyous union with God (…) In such souls, then, we catch the clearest glimpses of what, for man even here below, can be and is Eternal Life.190 The significance of von Hügel’s reading of these ‘heroic spiritual lives’ is revealed when he chooses to write articles about both scholar-saints in The Tablet. In preparation for these articles he began translating Grou’s Manuel des Âmes Intérieures in November 1889 and submitted his article that December. He spent much of the early part of 1890 proofreading an English translation of Fénelon’s Spiritual Letters and published his Fénelon article in The Tablet in 1894.191 Von Hügel repeatedly speaks of these seventeenth century writers as his mentors whom he subsequently introduced to directees. He writes, Personally, I have been immensely helped by the St. Francis de Sales-Fénelon- Grou type and hence have worked to help put these helps within the reach of others also. A never ceasing practicalness and far reaching action, a constant attention to purification of motive and the execution of the duty of the moment in the exact proportion to its homeliness and unobtrusive importance, and utterly unworldly yet utterly sober because all pervading child-like faith, joined to a manly recognition of the ever shifting necessities of the external situation, a piety bearing all about it the marks of those spacious times which could develop within the Church a Bossuet and a Richard Simon, a De Rance and a Mabillon – this I have found in them and this has helped me, I think largely, against both that unchristian exaltation of the intellect and its deprecation or practical neglect

188 Von Hügel’s diary reveals that he left London for Paris on 25 May 1886 and by 7th of August he had finished Grou’s Manuel des Âmes Intérieures and had begun École de Jésus-Christ. In November, 1891 von Hügel reads Grou’s Maximes Spirituelles. 189 Specific dates and works read are outlined by Kelly, Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s philosophy of religion, 52-53. Von Hügel reads more Fénelon in January of 1892 (see ibid., 57). 190 EL, 377-378. 191 This translation of Fénelon’s letters was made by Mrs Charles Greene. Von Hügel checks it for errors, contributes to the translation and attempts to find a publisher for it. He later makes revisions to the second volume of Fénelon’s letters in September 1892. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 161

within its proper sphere which seem to me too much an all pervading danger of the times to be thoroughly met otherwise than by a recurrence to fuller, more balanced and peaceful, more ethical and traditional types of Christian life than we seem of ourselves to have the time and strength and patience either to develop or to discover, or even, alas, to understand.192 Von Hügel groups Grou, de Sales and Fénelon together into one school.193 These seventeenth century writers provide models of how to combine intellectual endeavours with personal sanctity and devotion. The Baron explicitly tells people that he ‘belongs’ to the position represented by both St Francis de Sales and Fénelon.194 He goes as far as telling his niece of his desire to care for her ‘in a Fénelon-like self-oblivion’.195 One of the things that would have attracted von Hügel to Fénelon is, in Thomas Merton’s words, the ‘organic wholeness’ of Fénelon’s spirituality which combined rationality and the affections into the fully human life.196 As Kelly writes, ‘Fénelon’s spirituality (…) was a simple, homely yet utterly unworldly, childlike spirituality which recognised the advantages of hard intellectual work and scholarship for the maintenance of the spiritual life itself’.197 Huvelin recognises this rich combination in Fénelon and encourages von Hügel to read him with his whole being: ‘One cannot experience the spiritual letters of Féne- lon unless they reach into the heart of the reader, to a similar centre from which they emerged and where real change occurs. Otherwise they only penetrate to the surface – only to the intellect’.198 Von Hügel followed Huvelin’s advice and came to deeply appreciate Féne- lon’s …combination of a rarely light (not frivolous) – a light and elastic open temperament with an earnest will and gently concentrated determination. People as determined and as ardent as he, usually are or become, heavy, rigoristic. And again, people as light and elastic as he, usually are, or become, frivolous and cor- rupt. By that combination – the earnestness without rigorism – he always strikes

192 Friedrich Von Hügel, ‘Fénelon’s “Spiritual Letters”’, in: The Tablet 83, no 2821 (2 June 1894), 858 (hereafter FSL). 193 Friedrich von Hügel, ‘The spiritual writings of Father Grou, S.J’, in: The Tablet 74 (21 and 28 December 1889) no.2589-2590, 990-991; 1029-1031: 991 (hereafter SWFG). 194 Letter to Maisie Ward, in The Wilfrid Wards, 301. 195 LN, 123. 196 Thomas Merton, ‘Reflections on the character and genius of Fénelon’, in: John McEwen (ed. & transl.), Fénelon: Letters of love and counsel, London: Marville Press, 1964, 11-30: 28. 197 Kelly, Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s philosophy of religion, 61. 198 Saying from 1893, italics added. Alongside Fénelon, Huvelin recommends Père Grou to von Hügel saying ‘Père Grou is the least Jesuit among Jesuits; he is truly remarkable’ (Saying in 1893, in: Kelly, Tablet, 695). 162 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR

me as belonging, in his measure, to that minority of Christian teachers who have reached closest to that same combination in Our Lord Himself…199 It is this combination that leads von Hügel to state, ‘Fénelon (…) always braces me’.200 In his Essays and Addresses, von Hügel emphatically asserts: ‘How much poorer would be my devotional life without (…) Fénelon!’201 In addition, Fénelon is especially helpful in ‘addressing souls too vehement and too intense, taken like this I have found him tremendously helpful’,202 writes von Hügel. He reiterates this to his niece when he states: I have a very vehement, violent, over-impressionable nature, which (…) gets ridicu- lously over-aroused, jarred, confused. Hence I have a big job (…) to drop, drop, drop all this feverishness (…) to think, will and pray, with only ‘la fine pointe de l’esprit’, as St François de Sales and Fénelon never weary in recommending.203 It’s hardly surprising that von Hügel writes, ‘He [Fénelon] is one of the, say, half-dozen of the non-Scriptural writers who has helped me most directly and most copiously in my own interior life – a life requiring immensely that daily, hourly, death to self’.204 Von Hügel also values Fénelon’s ‘rich treasury of Cath- olic piety, wisdom, and experience of life’205 and wanted to make this available to his own directees. Not surprisingly, he is constantly recommending they read Fénelon. He tells both Mrs Guest and Gwen Greene to read Fénelon’s spiritual letters each day describing the letters as ‘utterly alive’;206 ‘Oh, what a lot I owe to them; they are often, often gently ringing through my soul (…) bathe in, you saturate yourself with, those letters!’207 In his Essays and Addresses, von Hügel applauds Fénelon’s method of beginning each day quietly running through the day’s activities and reducing the number: ‘In this way he would succeed in placing each action within a circum- ambient air of leisure – of leisure for the spirit of prayer and peace’.208 This

199 LN, 109. Von Hügel continues in this quote describing ‘St Francis is another, and of course, a much greater instance of that delightful paradox’ (LN, 109). 200 LN, 115. 201 EA II, 271. 202 LN, 111. 203 LN, 101-102. Von Hügel repeats this to his niece in another letter where he writes: ‘the attention wanted is a leisurely expansive one – a dropping gently of all distractions, of obses- sions, etc. “La fine pointe de l’esprit”, that is the instrument of progress, the recipient of Graces’ (104). 204 LN, 110. 205 FSL, 858. 206 Von Hügel to Mrs Guest, ms 37194/1, 29th October, 1897, SAUL; LN, 131. 207 LN, 108. Von Hügel also encourages Gwen to read M. Tronson, Fénelon’s spiritual director (LN, 111). 208 EA II, 227. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 163 method is recommended to several directees and von Hügel repeatedly advo- cates a ‘leisurely’ approach to one’s spirituality. For example, he tells Gwen to develop ‘a genial, gentle, leisurely expansion’,209 be ‘leisurely expansive’210 and lead ‘a very full and yet a leisurely life’.211 Von Hügel also applauds Fénelon for being ‘amazingly penetrative of the particular soul before him’,212 and for being ‘admirably awake’ to the necessity to limit the time directees engage in the Prayer of Quiet to safeguard against psychosis.213 However, von Hügel critiques Fénelon’s treatment of Madame Guyon in helping her become more Quietist.214 Against the criticism that Grou was Quietist, von Hügel writes, Now Quietism is no doubt a very real error and danger, but just as real, and probably more common, is a misformed timidity which sees quietism everywhere (…) Père Grou’s doctrine with regard to quiet, to pure love, to the final sacri- fices, is well within bounds.215 Grou’s doctrine particularly attracted von Hügel for he ‘recovered from the seventeenth century a tradition which had been lost since the condemnation of Quietism and Fénelon’.216 In 1889, von Hügel highlights the necessity of looking back to the past to the writings of Grou: ‘In a transition period such as our own, and an age of hurry, of noise, of restlessness and self-consciousness, and in which even the most direct and earnest find it specially difficult to rise to something more positive and more persuasive’.217 In Grou, something ‘positive’ is provided through his embodiment of the ‘scholar-saint ideal’.218 Von Hügel describes Grou’s ‘special insight into the advantages of hard intellectual work for the maintenance of the spiritual life’ and ‘the practical combination of great intellectual openness and activity with a childlike spirit of faith, simplicity and love’.219 Grou’s mind is described by von Hügel as ‘large and well-balanced’ because of the way he combined work and sanctity.220 He quotes Grou: ‘The surest means of preserving the spirit of

209 LN, 46. 210 LN, 104. 211 LN, 108. 212 LN, 110-111. 213 EA II, 228. 214 LN, 110-111. Von Hügel discusses the condemnation of Fénelon and the Quietist movement in his Mystical Element of Religion II, London: Dent, 1908, 160-169. 215 SWFG, 1030-1031. 216 Kelly, Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s philosophy of religion, 61. 217 SWFG, 900. 218 Kelly, Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s philosophy of religion, 54. 219 SWFG, 991. 220 Ibidem. 164 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR prayer, is to alternate prayer with work and work with prayer’.221 This becomes a model for von Hügel’s own life: ‘Grou has helped me greatly to acquire a spirituality that allows, and indeed requires, much freedom of research and of thoughts, considerable friction and tension yet all within a profound, radical devotedness’.222 The depth of the scholar-saint ideal as embodied in Grou is vividly painted by von Hügel in his article: Sober, silent, solid, simple; a solitary, laborious, claimless scholar, gentleman and saint; passing, with ever-growing serenity, through every-thickening storms and sufferings, exterior and interior; driven back and pressed down upon the very foundations and mainsprings of faith and love.223 This scholar-saint model is further outlined in The Mystical Element of Religion where von Hügel describes …Grou, who right through the long mystical period of his life, alternated his prayer of Quiet with extensive and vigorous critical work on the Graeco-Latin classics, and whose practice only wants further expansion and application (…) in order to bear much fruit (…) for spirituality itself.224 No doubt this image is a model of who, with Huvelin’s help, von Hügel hoped he might become. It is not surprising then that von Hügel writes with great enthusiasm that ‘it is refreshing and bracing in a rare degree to make intimate acquaintance with a spirituality such as that of Père Grou’.225 Grou is also ‘refreshing’, because he speaks of ‘spiritual childhood as the culminating point of holiness’.226 Having a spiritual director is essential in maintaining such childlikeness. Von Hügel quotes Grou: It is necessary to have a director, because the greatest mistake of all is to wish to guide ourselves, and the greatest delusion we can fall into is to think we are in a fit state to guide ourselves. Even the most clever man, and he who is in the best dispositions, is blind as to his interior conduct…227 The influence of Grou on von Hügel is shown through the frequent mentions of Grou in his works. In The Reality of God, von Hügel describes Grou as a

221 Ibidem. 222 Von Hügel quoted in J.P. Whelan, ‘The parent as spiritual director: A newly published letter of Friedrich von Hügel’, in: The Month 2 (Aug-Sept 1970) nos 2-3, 52-57; 84-87: 56. 223 SWFG, 900. 224 ME II, 138. 225 SWFG, 990. 226 SWFG, 1029. 227 SWFG, 991. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 165

‘deep expert in the operations of the human mind and soul’.228 He quotes Grou who said ‘Self-love is the source of all the illusions of the spiritual life’.229 Huvelin introduces von Hügel to Grou and Fénelon to provide him with some spiritual direction from holy saints, now departed. He also introduces him to de Sales arguing, ‘The letters of St Francis de Sales seem to me very useful for you’.230 Huvelin writes this in the context of discussing the spiritual direction von Hügel is giving to a woman. These letters are his model for how to spiritually nurture others.

We have direct access to Huvelin’s mind concerning de Sales’ spiritual direction through two chapters in Spiritual Guides of the Seventeenth Century. In these lectures, we see Huvelin describing de Sales’ ‘peace’,231 ‘meekness’,232 ‘kindness’233 and his ‘most prominent characteristic (…) he was most affectionate; he had the tenderness which is the mark of holy souls’.234 Huvelin describes de Sales’ ‘tranquillity of soul’, a gift from anchoring himself in God’s loving- kindness, as ‘the very spirit of his spiritual direction’.235 Von Hügel writes of Francis de Sales, ‘How many souls he has trained to sanctity!’236 We can see direct correlations between this description of de Sales’ spiritual direction and Huvelin’s actual practice of spiritually directing von Hügel. For example, Huvelin writes of de Sales’ patient, slow spiritual direction inclined ‘towards moderation’.237 Von Hügel affirms de Sales’ slow approach that he also experienced in Huvelin and he writes, ‘a spirituality of the little-by- little is not an enfeebled spirituality’.238 Similarly, Huvelin describes how de Sales wanted his directees to be patient with themselves and quotes de Sales: ‘Faults should be hated, but hated tranquilly’.239 Huvelin echoes these words when he tells von Hügel to adopt a ‘self-hate (…) of a calm and peaceful kind’.240 Other important thrusts of de Sales’ spiritual direction are abandonment to God and an earthy, practical nature. Huvelin says, ‘Francis de Sales wishes to

228 Friedrich von Hügel, The reality of God and religion and agnosticism (ed. Edmund Gardner), London: Dent, 1931, 189. (Hereafter RG). 229 ME II, 307. 230 Ms 2695, 19th October, 1892, SAUL. 231 SSG, 2. 232 SSG, 7. 233 SSG, 9. 234 SSG, 36. 235 SSG, 30-31. Von Hügel quotes this in EL, 375. 236 LN, 130. He subsequently introduces Gwen to de Sales’ writings. 237 SSG, 11. 238 EL, 375. 239 SSG, 15-16. 240 Saying XV in 1886 (italics added). 166 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR teach us how to make use of these threads of everyday life by being obedient to the hand of the divine Weaver (…) That was his system of direction – an active abandonment of the will’.241 This abandonment to God is crucial in accepting suffering and is similarly discussed in Huvelin’s spiritual direction of von Hügel.242 Huvelin introduces von Hügel to de Sales and the seventeenth century tradition of the scholar-saint so that his theology can become more inte- grated, incorporating both the intellectual and mystical dimension.

10. ENGAGING THE HEART IN KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

Like the seventeenth century spiritual masters, engaging the heart is what is necessary for a true, mystical knowledge of God. Huvelin encourages von Hügel in this richer approach and orientation: Note well. God has given you the grace of seizing you at the very core of your being. This is too profound to be analysed. You cannot give reasons for your faith. It is a movement which springs up from your very centre with an immense force and (reaches) a prodigious distance, refusing all definite forms and all restrictions…243 Huvelin recognises that rational justifications of such an experience are impossible. Having discerned that von Hügel’s mind, like his own, belonged to the ‘mystical’ type, Huvelin encourages von Hügel to articulate his rich, experiential encounters with God. Central to such an encounter is linking charity with truth, says Huvelin, for it is ‘through charity we draw near to our Lord’.244 In a letter to von Hügel, Huvelin describes ‘the love of truth and the love of charity, two things indis- solubly united, and which the Holy Spirit does not separate, but teaches the one with the other’.245 Alongside charity, Huvelin sees purity as essential for truth: You need a very great liberty of spirit along with a very great purity of heart. You may be very orthodox in the eyes of man, but very evil in the sight of God. One will never succeed in limiting or restraining your spirit. Be very conscientious:

241 SSG, 35. 242 For example, Huvelin writes to von Hügel, ‘I didn’t read it as a letter of complaint, even a stifled and disavowed one against God’s providence, and I feel, through your suffering, how much you wish for the things it does for you, and how you value suffering which does His work in you!’ Ms 2694, 6th July, 1899, SAUL. 243 Saying in 1886, in: Kelly, Tablet, 694. 244 Huvelin describes charity as ‘love of God and love of neighbour’, ATW, 23. 245 Ms 2702, 23rd October, 1904, SAUL. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 167

orthodoxy will follow conscience. As for yourself (and for you especially) never offend charity: with you charity and faith are the same thing; they will sink and rise together.246 So Huvelin prioritises conscience and the pursuit of truth over orthodoxy, a prin- ciple operative throughout the Baron’s adult life.247 As Lefebvre writes, ‘To be faithful and true’, this counsel was the only one that he gave to everybody.248 In contrast to the purely intellectual objectivity of von Hügel’s day, Huvelin argues that being attached to God, which develops both purity and charity, is the essential safeguard from all error.249 Huvelin reassures von Hügel that God will protect him in his academic pursuits if he stays close to Him: You will never lose or weaken your faith if you search always and only for the truth and ever your truth. You can be sure that if you attach yourself to an idea only in so far as (apart from passion or personality) it seems true to you, God will always give you an intellectual light on your error if indeed you are in error.250 Von Hügel came to absorb this influence, refusing to see the finding of truth as a mere intellectual pursuit, but as a process that engaged a ‘deeply moral and religious life’.251 The Baron tells his niece of the need for spiritual ‘dispositions’ to enable us to discern truth: We have to be truthful, conscientious: why? Because these are the dispositions for putting us into fuller touch with realities of all sorts, especially with the reality of God. Dispositions are the means to acquiring reality – towards knowing, loving, willing realities greater than ourselves…252 Von Hügel takes on the necessity for developing these ‘dispositions’ but he also articulates the need to balance any mystical knowledge gained with the intellectual element of religion. He writes to Mrs Lillie of the need for both ‘the scientist’ and ‘religious instincts’ arguing, It was sitting by the side of Abbé Huvelin that I, more vividly than ever before, realised the difference between these two levels, realised their respective necessity,

246 Saying X, 1886. Despite Huvelin’s warning about the need for ‘charity’ to keep von Hügel anchored, Huvelin is reassuring about von Hügel’s faith: ‘It is only the pure essence of Christi- anity that holds and keeps you in the Church and that is a very good sign’ (Saying XII, 1886). 247 Lawrence Barmann, Baron Friedrich von Hügel and the modernist crisis in England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972, 244. 248 Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 178. 249 He says to von Hügel: ‘Detachment should never be practised for its own sake. I practice detachment only for the sake of attachment’ (Saying VIII, 1886, in: SL, 59). 250 Saying XXVII, 1886 (SL, 61). 251 Williams, ‘Abbé Huvelin mediator of a tradition’, 254. 252 LN, 14. 168 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR

their respective liberty (…) For myself I must have both movements: the palace of the soul must have somehow two lifts – a lift which is always going up from below, and a lift which is always going down from above.253 Despite valuing the intellectual element, von Hügel never lost his conviction that we need this ‘lift (…) going down from above’, this truth directly revealed by God. Such truth could never be captured in clear systems. As Lester-Garland explains, [I]t seemed to him [von Hügel] that as soon as the clarity is attained and the system constructed, the book is, as it were, closed, and the system divorced by the abstractive operation of the intellect from effective contact with the richness of living, concrete Reality. There is always more in life than can be contained in any system, and the one thing needful is to keep in touch with life. Hence his writings are dynamic and suggestive, not static and theoretical.254 The mystery of God means that it is impossible to have tight systems to describe Him. Huvelin reminded von Hügel of Bossuet’s words on this matter: ‘We know nothing completely’. The Abbé continues: In heaven we shall know much more than here, but even there we shall not com- prehend everything. What St Peter says about faith is quite remarkable: he calls it a little night light. It gives enough light to be useful and guides one, but it does not illumine everything. It is not meant to make everything transparent or to provide grand and luminous summaries of the universe. It is a star to guide us through the surrounding darkness.255 Like Bossuet, Huvelin recognises that for von Hügel the ‘little night light’ would be the centre von Hügel clung to. Using this image seven years earlier, Huvelin writes: ‘Truth is, for you a luminous point which gradually fades into dimness’.256 ‘True faith’, according to Huvelin, ‘does not dispel the darkness’ but rather, ushers us into the darkness. It is a beacon of light surrounded by darkness. As a result of Huvelin’s advice, von Hügel’s method was to start from the clear light of truth, then follows its rays as they became more and more dim. Huvelin advises von Hügel to keep returning to this core of illuminated, experiential truth while exploring the outer areas, the semi-illuminated outer margin. Von Hügel describes the comfort of returning to ‘the home of peace and light’ when doubts come, to ‘gain fresh conviction and courage to again face the twilight

253 SLB, 50, 51. 254 L.V. Lester-Garland, The religious philosophy of Baron F. von Hügel, London: Dent, 1934, 11. 255 Saying in 1893, italics added, in: Kelly, Tablet, 695. 256 Saying III, 1886. Bedoyère translates this saying as: ‘which loses itself, little by little, in the darkness’ (Bedoyère, The life of Baron von Hügel, 45). THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 169 and the dark’.257 This advice operated deeply throughout von Hügel’s life and reveals how Huvelin gave von Hügel space to ‘let the soul run free but never to let it lose touch with the indefectible centre’.258 Von Hügel describes himself when writing to his niece: ‘Some people (…) worship in wide geometrical lines. Others worship a light that fringes off into darkness’.259 This influence of Huvelin is clearly presented when von Hügel writes in his introduction to The Reality of God: The deeper we get into reality, the more numerous will be the questions we cannot answer. For myself I cannot conceive truth, or rather reality, as a geometrical figure of luminous lines, within which is sheer truth, and outside of which is sheer error; but I have to conceive such a reality as light, in its centre blindingly luminous, having rings around it of lesser and lesser light, growing dimmer and dimmer until we are left in utter darkness (…) For reality is more than any and all our imaginings of it (…) it overwhelms us whilst it supports us; and it will have produced one of its chief functions and effects if it keeps us thoroughly humbled in its presence – from the presence of the daisy to the presence of God.260 It was Huvelin who led von Hügel to this ‘dim experience of reality, an experience which is open to indefinite apprehension but never to complete penetration’.261 It is hardly surprising then that Huvelin dismisses apologetics for he believes we can never really prove God. Suspicion of apologetics is a recurring theme in Huvelin’s ‘Sayings’. He tells von Hügel: ‘Yes, I understand: what others call proof is for you only an indication, an outline, a sample’;262 ‘Effective apologetics for you is the most patient, candid, and the least possible a priori analysis of that which is. The exposition of the totality is the only solid refutation, even the only possible one, for you’;263 ‘You take apologetics as it is found in life, just as it presents itself to the candid spirit alone in face of reality. Ordinary

257 Von Hügel letter to Wilfrid Ward, undated probably before 1905, in: Ward, The Wilfrid Wards and the transition, 301. 258 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 157. Louis-Lefebvre believes that it was Huvelin who kept von Hügel’s orthodoxy (Abbé Huvelin, 154). 259 LN, xxx. Von Hügel absorbs Huvelin’s words recalling them later in a letter to Wilfrid Ward where he describes how his ‘mystical’ mind ‘see[s] all truth as a centre of intense light losing itself gradually in utter darkness; this centre would gradually extend, but the borders would ever remain fringes, they could never become clear-cut lines (…) Such a mind need not have a touch of Liberalism about it, for it would be specially capable of learning the constant necessity of purification of the heart and will, for the sake of its work’ (Ward, The Wilfrid Wards, 301). 260 RG, 33. 261 Williams, ‘Abbé Huvelin mediator of a tradition’, 253. 262 Saying XXII, 1886, SL. 263 Saying in 1886, in: Kelly, Tablet, 694. 170 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR apologetics is worthless (…) counterfeit (…) has no reality’.264 Von Hügel quotes Huvelin in Eternal Life when he states that rather than provide apologetics, ‘The true means to attract a soul, is not to accentuate Christian doctrine, but to present it in its full force, because then we present it in its beauty’.265 Huvelin goes even further in his Addresses to Women arguing that ‘If we would convert a soul (…) the best way is not to preach to it, but to show that we love it’.266 When Gertrud is struggling with her doubts, Huvelin tells von Hügel to stop having intellectual discussions but simply show her ‘the good that people do which suggests to her reasons for believing in divine action’.267 Proof of God’s existence is revealed in the transformation of real lives. Von Hügel absorbed Huvelin’s ‘Sayings’ about apologetics. After being pub- licly acclaimed as ‘a great apologist’ in 1921, von Hügel responds: A dog who is quietly conscious of being but a dog, and of having long striven just to be a dog, and nothing more or other, may be allowed, perhaps, to feel some perplexity amidst his gratitude upon finding himself first prize among cats (…) I would feel myself fatally hampered and oppressed by such a role as that of apologist (…) More and more to live the spiritual life, increasingly to penetrate into the living Realities it reveals, and to express my discoveries, indefinitely deepened, extended, tested, and standing by those of others, as faithfully and fearlessly as I can: this alone I can strive to do.268 Freely ‘living the spiritual life’ in his unique way also involved an ecumenical thrust which Huvelin encouraged. He actively encourages von Hügel to discern the points of commonality between Catholics and Protestants. Huvelin says, ‘Like you, I too only look for and see in others that which unites us. Souls only live because they share to some degree in the truth: let us love that truth in them and help it to develop – it will ultimately suffocate the error’.269 Huvelin also warned von Hügel against proselytising saying, ‘Go your way, let others go theirs’.270 Huvelin encourages von Hügel to cultivate a spirit of generous listening to others and trying to sympathetically grasp their position. The Baron absorbed Huvelin’s counsel, developing an ecumenical approach to the Church despite repeatedly affirming his allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church.271 We see von Hügel trying to discern the truth of Alfred Lyall’s position through writing

264 Saying VII, 1886 (SL, 58). 265 EL, 376. Huvelin’s words here have echoes of Monsieur Olier who Huvelin quotes as saying ‘beauty is one of the proofs of truth’, in SSG, 376. 266 ATW, 42. 267 Ms 2698, 6 July 1899. 268 The Times Literary Supplement, 22nd December 1921, review of von Hügel’s EAI. 269 Saying XXVIII, 1886. 270 Saying XIX, 1886. 271 He tells his niece emphatically, ‘I am a son of the great Roman Church’ (LN, xlii). THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 171

Religion and Agnosticism. Von Hügel’s founding and involvement in the Lon- don Society for the Study of Religion plus his many links with non-Catholics marks him out as a forerunner to Vatican II in his ecumenical spirit. His ecu- menism is also revealed when he writes to Gwen, [H]ow easy it is to disturb souls from out of what contains much truth and which they can and do assimilate to their spiritual profit, and to push and strain them up to something to which they are not really called (…) As to myself, I find myself inclined to be very zealous to help souls to make the most of what they already have; and, if they come to think of moving, to test them to the uttermost.272 Von Hügel’s ecumenical spirit, which can in part be traced back to Huvelin, contributed to his suffering as he was judged and misunderstood by fellow Catholics. Given the amount of suffering in von Hügel’s life, it is hardly surprising that the value of suffering and how to endure it, is frequently discussed by Huvelin.

11. HUVELIN ON SUFFERING

Huvelin identifies a chief cause of von Hügel’s suffering in his ‘Sayings’. He writes: ‘You will suffer continually from isolation: it is your vocation (…) It is especially on the spiritual side that you will suffer this isolation, because here the majority will oppose and reject you’.273 Aware of the inevitability of this suffering, Huvelin encourages von Hügel: ‘I feel, through your suffering, how much you wish for the things it does for you, and how you value suffering which does His work in you!’274 Thus it is hardly surprising that one of von Hügel’s most cherished ‘Sayings’ of Huvelin was, [Ho]liness and suffering are the same thing. You will never help others except in and through suffering. Our Lord gained the world not by beautiful discourses but by his suffering, by shedding his blood on the cross.275 From first hand experience, Huvelin repeatedly discusses the transformational nature of suffering: God loves our souls so intensely that He desires to raise them higher, to make them more beautiful, and nothing makes a soul more beautiful, nothing promotes its growth so surely as sacrifice, suffering, forgetfulness of self for God’s sake.276

272 LN, 165. 273 Saying in 1893, in: Kelly, Tablet, 695. 274 Ms 2694, SAUL. Bedoyère claims that this letter is dated 6th July, 1899, but the original manu- script clearly states the date as 6th September, 1891 (Bedoyère, The life of Baron von Hügel, 107). 275 Saying XXXII, 1886. 276 ATW, 26. 172 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR

Huvelin argues that the soul is made more beautiful as ‘the Lord strips you of everything, it is in order to give you different clothing’.277 He continues, ‘the soul often seems to possess so much expanse as to become a vase full of pure suffering. God even seems to enlarge the soul and the intelligence in order to find therein more room for suffering’.278 The fruitfulness that can result from suffering is reiterated when Huvelin speaks of ‘souls who can understand, quite individual souls, who have suffered a great deal’.279 People who have not experienced this transformation are described by Huvelin as ‘very good souls who still lack something (…) one day, suffering will come and complete the work which has been begun in them’.280 In fact, Huvelin goes as far as saying, ‘Nothing is finer than to see a soul stead- fastly facing suffering, knowing how to suffer and to forget self’.281 Suffering is also meant to help us understand and love others. Huvelin argues, To suffer with Christ is to be more extended in charity, it is to feel more the sufferings of others and to press them to the heart. The more one suffers, the more one understands that souls are, more than anything else, beings that suffer and that need to be consoled and relieved, rather than punished and corrected. Suf- fering makes us greater than we would ever wish to be ourselves.282 Extensive experience of personal suffering underlies Huvelin’s words. ‘Suffering made the man’ exclaimed a youth he directed.283 This centrality of suffering in Huvelin’s formation is outlined by von Hügel in a lecture to Anglican ministers at Beaconsfield in 1921. When asked how to train seminary students to become like Huvelin, von Hügel replied that only a fragment of what Huvelin became was from his seminary training. Instead it was ‘…only great graces, many natural gifts, much suffering, and devoted heroism – all this or much of all this combined – would ever produce an Abbé Huvelin’.284

277 Huvelin in Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 184. This idea is echoed by Adeline, Duchess of Bedford when she writes of Huvelin: ‘Pain he regarded as the condition of spiritual fecundity, a travail of the soul must (whether for nations or individuals) precede the new birth of grace and power’, Adeline, Duchess of Bedford, ‘The Abbé Huvelin’, 34. 278 Saying in 1886, in: Kelly, Tablet, 695. 279 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 142. 280 Ibid., 143. 281 ATW, 49. 282 Quoted from Portier, translated by Andrew Louth, The wilderness of God, 18-19. 283 Theodore Botrel, quoted in Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 76. 284 LN, 159 (italics added). Von Hügel had another public occasion to speak about Huvelin. In February 1911 he dined at Liddon House and spoke informally to a group of about 30 on the Abbé Huvelin. Later that year on the 4th of July he copied out some of the Abbé’s Sayings for an address he delivered the next day to a group of Anglicans at King’s College (Kelly, Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s philosophy of religion, 103). THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 173

One of the major transformational effects of suffering is death to self. Huvelin says, ‘Each thorn must produce a flower of charity, of self-forgetfulness’;285 Suf- fering, when it is freely offered, liberates us from being ‘shut up in ourselves’.286 Similarly Huvelin tells women, ‘How many souls have been drawn out of themselves by suffering! (…) through the furnace of suffering it was purged from selfishness’.287 Von Hügel echoes Huvelin in his letters to Gwen through his recurring emphasis on the necessity to get self out of the way: ‘I want you to learn to die to yourself daily; the daily death is a spiritual habit’;288 ‘deliberate self- renunciation is everywhere dear and darling’;289 avoid ‘utter self-absorption’290 and ‘look[ing] out for No.1’.291 In addition, von Hügel describes his own life as ‘requiring immensely that daily, hourly, death to self’.292 The reason for death to self is to make space for Jesus. Huvelin says ‘put Jesus in place of self. We are made to be drawn out of ourselves. The mark of a Christian life is self-forgetfulness (…) The first effect of piety is to root out our self-love, to fill us with Jesus’.293 Von Hügel echoes Huvelin when he writes that the purpose in dying ‘day and night to self’ is so we can ‘gain vivid experience’ of Christ.294 Thus we see von Hügel writing, ‘Get rid of all self-occupa- tion (…) move out of yourself, let in God’.295 The main way to endure suffering is by finding the companionship of Christ through prayer. Huvelin is firm telling directees to cope and endure.296 However, he also provides practical advice to help directees to suffer well.297 He tells them to press

285 Mère Marie-Térèse des Anges quoted in Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 193. 286 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 185. 287 ATW, 109. 288 LN, xxiii. 289 LN, 158. 290 LN, 187. 291 LN, 142. 292 LN, 110. 293 ATW, 118, 122. This is in contrast to the woman who ‘By thinking constantly of herself (…) her heart hardens, she becomes indifferent to the sufferings of others’, ATW, 131. 294 LN, 135. 295 LN, xxiii. 296 Huvelin argues, ‘There are souls who have to be told: “You must put up with this”’ (Crypt of Saint-Augustin, April 1879, quoted in Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 111); ‘Sustain, Learn to endure (…) Men do not know how to bear trouble and suffering (…) each one of these little troubles helps us on our way to where God wishes us to be, and enables us to become masters of our own souls’ (ibid., 74). Further he argues: ‘Discouragement paralyses the spiritual life. We must not allow ourselves to be held up by disappointments, and must try to give out light and warmth in spite of them. We must face up to difficulties and triumph over sadness, it is thus that we shall purify our souls of littleness and egoism’ (ibid., 77). 297 For example, Huvelin tells one widow: ‘Have your revenge for no longer being happy by being as good as you can’ (Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 111). He tells another young, 174 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR into Christ and discover ‘the strange joy that He wishes us to have in the midst of our troubles’.298 Huvelin tells one directee, ‘He plants His Cross in our hearts with the hand of a true artist who knows where to find the sensitive spot. The Cross is luminous only when seen at a distance’.299 To another directee he writes: Do not be surprised when you receive this distress from the divine hand (…) God can give us some wonderful jolts. You are in darkness, you feel forsaken and weary of life, this is Calvary, but have courage, for you are with Jesus.300 In a letter to von Hügel, Huvelin writes, ‘turn your sufferings into a prayer which becomes livelier for you when you are in a state of distress’.301 In his Addresses to Women, Huvelin says, ‘you have the closest communion with our Lord through suffering (…) keep near to God by the secret longing of our soul; that is in itself a great prayer however little may be said in words’.302 Similarly he states that ‘when we are suffering, we must look towards our Saviour (…) if we look upon Jesus (…) and what He has suffered, sadness changes into benev- olence, into love towards our brethren’.303 The way to endure suffering is pressing into Christ in the midst of the pain. Huvelin states: Why does He suffer? Why is He on the cross? It is for you, to be with you, so that you cannot complain of suffering (…) Yes, the great cry that rose from the cross to penetrate Heaven, like the cry of suffering of the whole of humanity, that cry was uttered so that you could mix yours with it, so that your suffering, purified in its source, purified in the suffering of that One, might become as triumphant and powerful as Him. That is the ‘why’ of the cross. Now dare to complain (…) Christ, in making the heart greater and more capable of great things, has at the same time made it more capable of feeling suffering (…) He has made the heart capable of suffering. He has transformed suffering.304

suffering woman to write a letter very day to her departed husband. She wrote four volumes of correspondence (ibid., 185). Huvelin reminds mothers, concerning the formation of the souls entrusted to them, that ‘a mother has three powerful weapons to hand, purity, prayer and suffering’ (ibid., 78). In a letter to a troubled, Sophie Littré, Huvelin writes ‘Admire what is beautiful; pray, when you have some indefinable urge to do so; read something solid, a page from the Psalms or the Epistles, between two prayers (…) Try hard to forget yourself, my dear child, that is the essential thing’(Letter to Sophie Littré. Wednesday 9th Jan, 1901, quoted in Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 177). 298 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 185. 299 To Marguerite, quoted in Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 187. 300 Huvelin letter to Mère Marie-Térèse des Anges, quoted in Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 194. 301 Ms 2694, 6th September, 1891. 302 ATW, 112. 303 ATW, 30. 304 Portier, quoted in Louth, The wilderness of God, 18-19. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 175

However, despite Huvelin’s words about being made ‘capable’ to suffer and being ‘transformed’, his personal journals provide another picture.

12. HUVELIN’S DEPRESSION

In a Christ-like way, Huvelin takes on and bears the sufferings of his directees but he declines into depression as a result. He tells von Hügel: ‘Allow others to make you suffer’.305 Huvelin believes that ‘above all, the director of souls had to be the living image of submission to the Divine will, having that charity which always suffers in union with the sufferings of others, but is at the same time filled with Christian joy, always united with Christ’.306 Leonard describes Huvelin: ‘Although cheerful in nature, he was often seen to shed tears; he suffered from all the sorrows that were brought to him, from all the sins he listened to and absolved from, from all that he divined within the heart’.307 Adeline, Duchess of Bedford, describes this further when she writes of Huve- lin: ‘He often spoke of the mystery of co-operation, of interchange in the region of grace; faithful prayer (he would say) offered by one, drew forth deeds of love from another’.308 Further Huvelin argues, Can we make reparation without suffering? Look at our Divine Master. Were His preaching and His words the price He paid for souls? No. To win souls, He paid with His Blood (…) Suffering is necessary if we would attract a soul and give it back to God.309 Joly tells us that after hearing certain confessions, Huvelin would come out with a look of anguish.310 A fresh attack of physical sufferings happened when souls he was guiding were threatened by spiritual dangers.311 As directees were ‘strengthened, and with their serenity restored (…) better able to face life, bearing their crosses instead of dragging them along’,312 Huvelin became more and more broken and worn through taking on others’ sufferings. We do not hear about Huvelin’s depression from von Hügel. He simply focuses upon how Huvelin’s suffering enabled him to radiate joy. For example,

305 Saying XI, 1886. 306 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 157. 307 Leonard, ‘Introduction’, SSG, xlix. 308 Adeline, Duchess of Bedford, ‘The Abbé Huvelin’. 309 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 209. 310 Joly in Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 113. 311 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 75. 312 Ibid., 113. 176 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR he writes to Juliet Mansel ‘my ever great, rich, heroic Abbé Huvelin (…) what a suffering in life for 40 years and more, and what a spiritually joyous, what a faithful life’.313 By contrast, Huvelin himself speaks of ‘despondency – my bête noir, and my familiar spirit, with which I am continually at war’.314 Several secondary sources point to Huvelin’s intensity and deep depression. Abbé Gibert-Lafon writes that ‘the further he advanced in years and in holiness, the more heavily did the griefs of others and his own sufferings weigh upon him’.315 This view is shared with Gerard Hughes who describes Huvelin’s ‘melancholic disposition, afflicted with suicidal tendencies’.316 However, the most compelling evidence of this is revealed in Huvelin’s personal papers.317 Portier quotes from Huvelin’s personal papers which clearly reveal his weariness, despair, depression and suicidal thoughts. Huvelin’s sense of inadequacy is recorded in his 1885 journal: ‘I don’t know how to pray’; ‘I’m crying. I’m good for nothing except when I’m asked a precise question’.318 His physical suffering is described in 1881: ‘My soul, my head, my heart are so painful that I try not to touch them’.319 Huvelin is clearly ‘burnt out’: ‘I have nothing else to give, only remnants’.320 By 1884, Huvelin is journalling: ‘I need all my faith to not + myself. God can’t ask of me what is no longer cope-able (…) I screamed three times “Make me die!”’321 Later that year, when visiting a dying woman, he journals ‘This morning I had an extreme envy to be in her place’.322 On Christmas day, 1888, Huvelin writes ‘I can’t live any more. I passed the night in the bedroom of my father praying to God to take me before the end of 1889’.323 In his journals, Huvelin writes repeatedly about his madness and his need to leave. By 1889 he exclaims, ‘Everything around me is shouting that I need to go away’.324 Portier writes, ‘He was haunted by this desire to go away (…) in

313 May 12, 1911, ms 37194/25d, SAUL. 314 ATW, 37. One small indication of Huvelin’s intensity is revealed when he writes to von Hügel of his distress at having allowed him to walk in the rain: ‘I didn’t have the presence of mind to hold you back (…) That thought pursued and tormented me the whole day long’ Ms 1696, 10th October, 1895, SAUL. 315 ‘Characteristics of Abbé Huvelin’, in ATW, 5. 316 Gerard W. Hughes, God in all things, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2004, 15. 317 The evidence of Huvelin’s inner state in his personal papers reminds us of the necessity to be immersed in von Hügel’s diaries to gain a fuller understanding of his person and spirituality. 318 Jn 19/4/85, Lucienne Portier, Un précurseur: L’abbé Huvelin, Paris: Cerf, 1979, 42. 319 A G 17/8/81, in Portier, Un précurseur, 42. 320 21/3/81, in ibid., 42. 321 The + is most probably ‘kill’, Jn 21/11/84; 23/11/86, in ibid., 44. 322 16/11/84, in ibid., 44. 323 Jn 15/2/83; 6/2/83, in ibid., 44. 324 15/1/89, in ibid., 42. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 177 the madness, in the death, and suicide’.325 We see Huvelin’s desperation: ‘I am dazed, I am afraid I’m going mad and I can’t even pass on what God gives me for the souls, or help the ones who need me’;326 ‘My head is bad, I feel the madness filling me’.327 He describes his condition ‘there is nothing supernatural, there is an excessive tiredness and because everyone carries in his madness his habitual preoccupations, sadness without measure and thoughts of suicide’.328 By the middle of 1880, Huvelin describes the sensation in his head using the metaphor of his staircase collapsing and one side of his bedroom fall- ing on the street Richer.329 Perhaps the most curious aspect of Huvelin’s notebooks is a page written between 1869 and 1871. Portier describes a page (9.5 ≈ 2.5 cm) that has Huvelin’s name written 13 times in calligraphies of diverse heights and widths. In the midst of the signature he writes ‘Huvelin I was’ and ‘I was Huvelin’. All of this writing is covered by straight, thin lines, horizontals, verticals, and diagonals.330 Portier writes that these lines seem to imprison his repeated name and that the page is an image of a dramatic interior fight, a tormented soul in search of his identity. Similarly, Louth believes these doodles are evidence of ‘a genuine sense of inner desolation, verging on madness and a depressive longing for annihilation (…) a desert saint struggling in a barren place’.331 However, from this desert place, we see the fruits in his spiritual direction. As Louth highlights, The barrenness of the desert conveys a strong sense of the futility of human effort (…) what can only be achieved by God (…) For Huvelin, spiritual direction has nothing to do with trying to advise people, trying to shape their lives; rather the spiritual father tries to help those who turn to him to respond to God, to let God work within them.332 Huvelin’s spiritual direction, rising from the barrenness of the desert, highlights the fact that ‘growth is difficult and delicate, ultimately only possible with the irrigation of divine grace, but even then still a delicate matter’.333 Louth also suggests that just as the desert is a place of solitude, freedom from support and standing apart from the crowd is necessary to growth, thus Huvelin advised von

325 25/1/78, in ibid., 42. 326 25/1/78, in ibid., 42. 327 1/1/79, in ibid., 43. 328 15/3/79, in ibid., 43. 329 30/6/1880, in ibid., 45. 330 See examples of these doodles in Portier, Un précurseur, 164, 269. 331 Louth, The wilderness of God, 19-20. 332 Ibid., 20 333 Ibidem. 178 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR

Hügel:334 ‘No Catholic reunions, no societies: if the building can go up without scaffolding, so much the better’.335 No doubt this contributed to von Hügel’s original thinking and orientation. Despite Huvelin’s depression and suicidal tendencies, von Hügel reveres him wholeheartedly and quotes from and mentions Huvelin in his published works.

13. HUVELIN IN VON HÜGEL’S WORKS AND LETTERS

Kelly is mistaken when he argues that ‘a lack of concrete data has left the effect of Huvelin on von Hügel’s development still a desideratum’.336 To the contrary, von Hügel’s frequent mentions of Huvelin in his published works and his writings to directees provide considerable clues concerning Huvelin’s influence. In the second edition of The Mystical Element of Religion, von Hügel recalls Huvelin as …the man whose name nowhere appears in this work, but who was for me then, and who is for me still, the greatest manifestation of the spirit of sheer holiness which I have been privileged to watch and to be moved by at close quarters, throughout these seventy years of life.337 In his book, Eternal Life, the Baron quotes extensively from Huvelin’s Quelques Directeurs d’ Âmes du 17th Siécle.338 Huvelin’s understanding of the role of spiritual guide became von Hügel’s: God who might have created us directly, employs, for this work, our parents, to whom He joins us by the tenderest ties. He could also save us directly, but He saves us, in fact, by means of certain souls, which have received the spiritual life before ourselves, and which communicate it to us, because they love us.339 In his Essays and Addresses, von Hügel describes Huvelin’s ‘unlimited compassion’ shown to Carmelite Père Hyacinthe Loyson who had ‘abandoned the cowl and married’ but when Loyson’s wife died, ‘the Abbé (…) flew at once to the bereaved, old man and poured out all his treasures of consolation and of communicative strength’; von Hügel describes the ‘very costliness’ of this sympathy.340

334 Ibid., 21. 335 SL, Saying XVIII, 60. 336 Kelly, Bijdragen, 60. 337 ME I, vii. 338 See pages 375-377 of EL. 339 EL, 376 (quoted from SSG). 340 EA I, 287. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 179

Further, von Hügel recommends Huvelin as essential reading in his letters to directees. He tells Mrs Lillie to read Huvelin stating that it is ‘full of the interior life (…) Addresses by my saint, written down by others. Surely the life invisible throbs in these pages’.341 In 1919, von Hügel sends Kemp Smith his copy of Huvelin’s Quelques Directeurs d’Âmes du 17th Siécle. He tells him ‘I should love you to browse prayerfully through these pages – the ripe fruit of endlessly heroic life and love’.342 Kemp Smith writes to von Hügel that he is ‘browsing in it, at leisure; but already I can see how much I am to get from it. It it very beautiful, full of true wisdom and insight. You have placed me under a great debt’.343 Von Hügel replies, mentioning a suffering friend of Kemp Smith’s: I love to think of him as learning with me from that M. Huvelin, who suffered, who willed, who loved, who was and who learnt, so much to the very end (…) I shall love someday to show you a selection from Abbé Huvelin’s private advice to myself – the help which gave me the light and strength to weather – oh, such storms within me and without me.344 Von Hügel gives him his Huvelin copy and Kemp Smith writes, ‘No gift from you could have given me greater pleasure than this copy of Abbé Huvelin’s little book (…) that I might reread and study at leisure (…) The inscription too makes it one of my treasured possessions’.345 In a later letter to Kemp Smith, von Hügel replies to his question about whether the Church is able to assimilate ‘the best in the modern world’: Single Roman Catholics (…) have, to my deepest mind and conscience, already achieved this assimilation: I am, of course, specially thinking of Huvelin. They have achieved an interpenetration (…) more substantial and spiritually sane and solid.346 Von Hügel also has his niece, Gwen Greene, read Huvelin. He writes in 1919, ‘I am so glad you loved the Huvelin’.347 In the same letter, he sends Gwen a

341 SLB, 41. He also asks Mrs Lillie to buy him two copies, given his usual practice of giving directees books. 342 11th June, 1919, Barmann, The letters of Baron Friedrich von Hügel and Professor Norman Kemp Smith, 35. 343 June 25, 1919, SAUL. 344 1st July, 1919, SAUL. 345 June 29th, 1924, in Barmann, The letters of Baron Friedrich von Hügel and Professor Norman Kemp Smith. Later that year Kemp Smith writes to von Hügel ‘I have been rereading L’Abbé Huvelin with increasing admiration’. He then lists which pages ‘impressed’ him most and he states that the last two sections are ‘especially magnificent’ Sept 28, 1924. Kemp Smith mentions pages 97-11, 106, 111, 146, 198, 211, 229-30. 346 Dec 31, 1921-Jan 3, 1922, SAUL. 347 LN, 73. 180 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR copy of Eternal Life writing ‘you will find friends, already known, in these pages – St Augustine, Huvelin, etc’.348 At times we see von Hügel taking Huvelin’s advice literally and then giving it, almost word for word, to one of his directees. An obvious example is Huve- lin’s saying to von Hügel that he should not read Catholic publications as they would ‘land him in every sort of temptation’.349 In a similar vein, Huvelin advises ‘No Catholic meetings of confraternities; if the edifice bears fruit without scaffoldings so much the better’.350 We see von Hügel pass on this advice to Gwen: I warn you against Church societies, Church newspapers (…) the little Churchi- nesses (…) the equivalent of just this, has been perhaps my longest, subtlest difficulty and temptation (…) It was only when I was forty that this trouble and uncertainty ceased – again owing to light from and through a saintly leader (…) never opening a Church paper or magazine (…) if you are made at all like myself – what safety, what expansion, will be yours!351 Similarly, we see Huvelin’s attitude towards miracles being directly passed down by von Hügel to his directees. In 1886, Huvelin says to von Hügel ‘Mir- acles are very antipathetic to me’.352 Then in 1893, Huvelin states, No, miracles do not form a necessary or integral part of the interior life, or even of the highest sanctity. God may very well perform them to manifest or reward this holiness in the sight of men. Sometimes he does this, sometimes not. They are completely accidental to holiness.353 Huvelin does not want miracles to be seen as evidence of spiritual growth. This influence is absorbed by von Hügel who quotes Huvelin saying ‘I am allergic to miracles’.354 Von Hügel never denied miracles, but he writes ‘the spiritual life of prayer, of Love, and of Devotedness is even in its fullest Chris- tian developments essentially not miraculous but supernatural’.355 In notes written to Algar Thorold in early 1921, von Hügel writes: [W]hat perhaps most developed the bent you find in me on this point was my close touch with the saint, with the Abbé Huvelin (…) I never doubt for one

348 LN, 72. 349 Saying V, 1886. As Williams argues, the ‘strident polemical tones’ of the religious press were Huvelin’s reason for avoiding it at all costs (Williams, ‘Abbé Huvelin mediator of a tradition’, 258). 350 Saying XVIII, 1886 (SL, 60). 351 LN, 62-63. 352 Saying XXXI, 1886. 353 Saying in 1893, in: Kelly, Tablet, 695. 354 Von Hügel quoted by Steere, Spiritual counsel and letters of Baron Friedrich von Hügel, 158. 355 EA I, 279. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 181

moment that Huvelin was supernatural (…) He acted visibly – he affected souls and minds and bodies: he doubtless affected more in this way than I even knew (…) I always feel, for the most sound and most necessary conviction that full spirituality affects also the visible world.356 It is clear that Huvelin deeply impacted von Hügel, by his person and his teaching. Von Hügel enthusiastically introduced his directees to Huvelin so that their souls could also be formed by the wisdom of Huvelin’s wise counsel. However, much of this counsel was specific to his own soul and life situation and one questions the wisdom of simply sending ‘Sayings’ that were tailor- made for von Hügel, to others for their personal guidance. We are all unique and words of advice that have helped one may actually hinder another. Having examined Huvelin’s spiritual direction to von Hügel, we now close with a critique of Huvelin.

14. AN EVALUATION OF HUVELIN’S SPIRITUAL DIRECTION

Given the accolades that von Hügel and others gave to Huvelin, it is worth asking whether there were any weaknesses in Huvelin’s spiritual guidance. Von Hügel is surprisingly silent on this point providing only one criticism of Huve- lin. In this section, negative aspects of Huvelin’s spiritual direction are discussed before examining the extent to which von Hügel directly adopted Huve- lin’s thinking and practice on a particular point or whether he alternatively tempered Huvelin’s thinking with his own approach. Given the shortage of evidence of Huvelin’s spiritual direction, it is difficult to say much emphatically here. However, given the significant influence of Huvelin on von Hügel, this task of evaluation and critique is essential.

(i) Huvelin’s Latent Christian Activism and Lack of Boundaries Eye witness accounts of Huvelin’s spiritual direction already discussed, point to Huvelin’s work ethic. Huvelin was certainly overworked and had little, if any, time for recreation. It appears that Huvelin’s identity as spiritual director was tied up with his understanding of his ecclesial role. He describes this priestly role: ‘A confessor is like a doctor: the latter assists nature; in the same way, a priest is not there in order to provide ideas but to assist Grace’.357 As he ‘assisted grace’, Huvelin gave his all to his directees. He states, ‘A priest is one who is

356 Notes for talk with Algar Thorold, early 1921, quoted in Bedoyère, The life of Baron von Hügel, 334-335. 357 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 107. 182 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR perpetually at the service of others. His life is not his own; it is at the beck and call of souls’;358 ‘A priest belongs to everyone’.359 At Huvelin’s funeral oration, the parish priest of Saint-Augustin, M. Jouin, describes Huvelin’s ‘extensive ministry’ adding ‘he was so conscientious in its exercise that he became its victim’.360 The motivation underlying Huvelin’s excessive ‘conscientiousness’ appears to be his belief that as priest he was mediator for Christ. Huvelin states that ‘Just as Our Lord was (…) bearing all their sins and miseries, so must a priest bear the souls of all men with him as he goes up to the altar’.361 Concerning these words, Joly writes, ‘All the sins which were confessed to him he took on his own shoulders and expiated himself. The mystery of reconciliation with Christ became more possible to understand. Another Christ was completing and enriching the Passion of Christ’.362 Huvelin’s work ethic in playing this role of being Christ to the people is celebrated by some Catholic commentators. Steuart writes, [N]o consideration of personal convenience, no excuse of suffering or weariness, counted with him against the urge of that Christly love ‘to spend and be spent’ for the souls that sought him. One feels that the perfection of sacrifice could go no further.363 By contrast, I would argue that Huvelin’s inflated ecclesial identity led to an unhealthy religious workaholism and a corresponding blindness concerning his own emotional ill-health. The question arises why Huvelin did not have a spiritual director himself who was able to discern his utterly exhausted, depressed state, step in and make him rest. Surely priests need to be critiqued and challenged the most given their influential role. Secondly, raising priests to a role where they supposedly ‘assist Grace’ and ‘expiate sins’ like Christ, places them in a role that is too elevated for mere human sinners. This synergistic tendency in Huvelin means that he places himself in too important a position. The negative impact of the Christian activism arising from trying to ‘be Christ’ for his directees is revealed through Huvelin’s diaries, as already described. It is difficult to know how to interpret some of the entries in Huvelin’s diaries. Taken prima facie, the diaries reveal Huvelin’s disturbed, interior world. However, given the fact that von Hügel was a good judge of character and speaks repeatedly of Huvelin’s joy, it is difficult to reconcile this with Huvelin’s

358 ATW. 359 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 141. 360 Ibid., 233-234. 361 Ibid., 141. 362 Henri Joly, in ibid., 113. 363 Steuart, ‘The Abbé Huvelin’, 153. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 183 suicidal comments. One possible interpretation is that Huvelin uses excessive language like that of other saints who are overly conscious of their weaknesses and sin. For example, Saint Teresa of Avila, refers to herself as a ‘worm’ and repeatedly speaks of her desire to die and be with God.364 This is possibly part of the answer, but given Huvelin’s insistent desire to leave his post, it is also probable that Huvelin is simply ‘burnt out’ and depressed from overwork and carrying too heavy a load. A major contributor to Huvelin’s Christian activism is his lack of boundaries in not being able to refuse directees. Huvelin was glorified for this generosity but as his journals reveal, Huvelin’s inability to say no to people meant that he was in a sense, literally ‘eaten alive’ by directees. Though he declares God is the true spiritual director (see section 4), Huvelin’s actions signal his belief that as creaturely agent, he is indispensable.

Von Hügel’s Balance of Work and Rest Like Huvelin, von Hügel gave himself to people and was busy. As Steere argues, ‘Von Hügel was himself expendable in the business of guiding souls. There seemed little or no sense of self-preservation left in him and he gave himself without reserve to those whom he believed God had sent to him for help’.365 We see this clearly evident in a letter that von Hügel writes to Evelyn Underhill: Do not I pray you, if ever you feel at all clearly that I could help you in any way – even if by only silently listening to such troubles and complications as God may send you – do not, because I am busy, shrink from coming to me, or letting me come to you.366 The major difference in von Hügel’s generosity, compared with Huvelin, revolves around von Hügel’s freedom as a lay spiritual director. Von Hügel did not have an elevated view of himself as standing in the role of Christ and thus had a greater freedom to trust God to work in people’s lives. Von Hügel’s roles as father, husband, scholar and friend meant less people to nurture than a priest, plus a variety of relationships that fed him personally. These close relationships also helped von Hügel to be more balanced. Most significantly, von Hügel recognised the importance of balancing work with rest and Sabbath keeping was his weekly rhythm. He writes to Maude Petre: ‘[I] would only break down in health and be unfit for this and for everything else, if I did not stick to my (I find necessary) rule of keeping the Sunday

364 See Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle, 6.1. 365 Steere, Spiritual counsel and letters of Baron Friedrich von Hügel, 12. 366 29th October, 1921, ms 5552, SAUL. 184 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR strictly for rest and freedom’.367 Alongside Sabbath rest, von Hügel experienced the value of enforced rest and recognised that God can achieve a great deal when we are inactive. He writes to Maude Petre, ‘these days of enforced do- nothing (…) [are] fruitful’.368 Experience of this conviction also translated to his spiritual direction through an awareness that God works in directees’ lives, regardless of him. Von Hügel was thus freed from anxiety over his directees and was able to leave them when necessary, committing them to God in prayer. For example, von Hügel prays three times a day for his directee, Evelyn Underhill, but only sees her every 6 months.369 With this freedom in mind, von Hügel is able to concentrate on doing less. He writes to Gwen: ‘I am only aiming at your doing materially less (…) I am myself, with God’s help, finding grand opportunities of growth in dropping, dropping, dropping, and in organising my day (when God so wills it) in a careful succession of quasi-nothings’.370 Gwen describes von Hügel’s approach: ‘Moderation and steadfastness, a small and very faithful practice; that, it seems to me, was the very kernel of his teaching (…) do not give yourself too much to do’.371 Rather than modelling himself on Huvelin, von Hügel listened to Fénelon’s advice of reducing the number of events in a day so that they are done with an ‘air of leisure’. Part of the inspiration for this lies in Catherine of Genoa’s maxim to do ‘one thing at a time (…) [and] doing this one thing always with a certain environment of peace, of non-hurry around it’. Von Hügel writes, ‘I find this double practice of golden worth’.372 It was Huvelin who encouraged von Hügel to this moderation (section 6 above), yet he did not seem to take his own advice. If Huvelin had adopted von Hügel’s practices of rest and relaxation, his emotional exhaustion and entangle- ment in himself would have been less. For while Huvelin preaches be forgetful of self, in his private moments, Huvelin appears to be overwhelmed in self- absorption in his desire to escape both his duties and life.

(ii) Huvelin’s Lack of Play and Humour Huvelin is described by several directees as having an ironic humour when spiritually directing people (section 5 above). However, his diaries provide another picture. Joy and humour are completely absent from his journals. This is probably the result of his ill health and lack of relaxation.

367 24 Oct 1910, in: Kelly, The letters of Baron Friedrich von Hügel and Maude D. Petre, 109. 368 28 April 1910, 103; 15 Oct 1912, 137, in: Ibidem. 369 Cropper, The life of Evelyn Underhill, 83. 370 Gwen Greene, ‘Some recollections of Baron von Hügel’, in: The Spectator (August 3, 1929), 148. 371 Ibidem. 372 LN, 108. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 185

By contrast, von Hügel’s roles as a husband and a father gave him greater freedom to engage in play and recreation. Gwen writes that ‘[i]f he lived, in some ways, in those deserts he spoke of, yet he remained nearest of all to his fellows; needing them, delighting in them; loving most his wife and his home, his children and his little dog’.373 Von Hügel writes that his experience as a parent has enriched him: ‘Ever since I have had (…) children, I have felt myself a creature enriched with the noble duty of giving on the largest scale – with the obligation to possess a reserve of light and life and love’.374 Alongside trips to the cinema and Gilbert and Sullivan shows with Mary, his diaries reveal walks with his daughters and outings to the zoo, galleries and museums. We also read constantly of his afternoon teas with close friends such as Adeline Chapman. Von Hügel took daily walks in Kensington Gardens with his dog, Puck, and he writes to Maude Petre of the importance of ‘open air and physical exercise’.375 He also repeatedly speaks of the need for holidays and a change of scene.376 Von Hügel knew the importance of recreation and rest and believed that each soul needs ‘balance’377 to live life in a ‘leisurely’ way.378 This approach is in direct contrast to Huvelin’s ‘whipping’ quality: ‘God asks of us more than we shall ever give Him. Never lower your ideal, keep raising it always’.379 No doubt von Hügel’s attempts to live all of life with this element of ‘leisure’ helped to maintain his sense of humour. Gwen Greene describes von Hügel as ‘bursting into those peals and shouts of laughter that seem more characteristic of him than anything. I have never known anyone who laughed so much, or so delightedly’.380 Other contemporaries similarly describe von Hügel’s humour.381

373 Gwen Greene, Two witnesses: A personal recollection of Hubert Parry and Friedrich von Hügel, London: Dutton, 1930 (hereafter, TW), 101-102. 374 EA I, 106. 375 5-7 September, 1905, in: Kelly, The letters of Baron Friedrich von Hügel and Maude D. Petre, 37. 376 23 Sept 1909, 77 and 13 March 1911, in: Kelly, The letters of Baron Friedrich von Hügel and Maude D. Petre, 125. 377 Ibid., 113. 378 An influence from Fénelon already discussed in section 10 above. 379 Steuart, ‘The Abbé Huvelin’, 156. 380 TW, 174. Similarly, Gwen highlights her Uncle’s ‘jokes and stories, his most curious adjec- tives and slang words (…) He used to laugh tremendously over his own jokes’, LN, x-xi. 381 For example, Albert Cock recalls his ‘entirely characteristic utterance’ at a LSSR meeting. “I have been discussing Croce”, said the Baron in his whimsical way, “with my little dog in Kensington Gardens. We have gone over his philosophy and I am bound to say that there is far more sense in my little dog than there is in Croce’s philosophy”’. Albert Cock, A critical examination of von Hügel’s philosophy of religion, London: Rees, 1953, 5. 186 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR

Alongside his humour, the development of non-religious interests was also extremely important to von Hügel. This was an emphasis he received from Grou as an antidote to intensity and being too self-absorbed in spiritual practices.382 Non-religious interests are essential, argues von Hügel as ‘without these not directly religious interests and activities, you – however slowly and unper- ceivedly – lose the material for Grace to work in and on’.383 Engagement in non-religious interests, argues von Hügel, helps directees ‘grow more and more spiritual and holy’.384 He also asserts, ‘man attains in religion (…) in proportion as he seeks not too directly, not feverishly and strainingly, but in a (…) patient, sunny manner’.385 Having a ‘sunny manner’ and growing spiritually through simply engaging in leisurely activities contrasts with Huvelin’s obsession with suffering as the primary way to grow spiritually.

(iii) Huvelin’s Inauthenticity Despite his exhaustion and depression, Huvelin desires to come across as the ‘holy’ priest who is not struggling. This meant that he could not be completely real to those he spiritually nurtured. As Leonard argues, ‘what made life more difficult, [was] the reputation of being a saint’.386 Huvelin’s journals provide evidence of ‘play acting’ where he tries to hide his tormented interior. He writes, ‘I must suffer without showing it or at least very little, and play a character with a double game, which is always painful’.387 Huvelin’s explicit description of having to ‘play a character’ suggests that the negative comments in his diary are not simply a form of self deprecating, saintly humility, but rather, Huvelin had two personae. This two-faced, ‘double game’ is signalled to some directees. Huvelin tells the Duchess of Bedford, ‘I am not what you think I am, I don’t see myself on top of anything, of any temptation, of any suffering’.388 Huvelin writes to a friend, ‘I am scarcely what you think I am; I cry out when hurt’.389 Similarly Huvelin attempts to correct for von Hügel the ‘impression my outward appear- ance has made upon you’ by disclosing that in reality, ‘I am totally empty and dry within myself’.390 In 1892, Huvelin confides to von Hügel: ‘I have great

382 EA I, 229. 383 Ibid., 62. 384 LN, 121. 385 EA II, 60. 386 Leonard, ‘Introduction’, SSG, xlv. 387 Jn 13/11/85; 7/7/78, in Portier, Un précurseur, 213. 388 Portier, Un précurseur, 213. 389 Leonard, ‘Introduction’, SSG, xiv. 390 Saying in 1886, in: Kelly, Spir II, 357. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 187 need as I am ill in my soul and body. I have great trouble putting up with myself and my whole effort tends to that end’.391 Von Hügel was aware to some extent of Huvelin’s depression and struggles. However, to most directees, Huvelin appears to have been locked up in a pressure to outwardly perform as the holy priest. Von Hügel’s description of Huvelin as radiating joy, points to this good and generous face that encased Huvelin’s tormented interior.

Von Hügel’s Authenticity In contrast to Huvelin’s facade, Gwen writes of the Baron: ‘It never occurred to him to hide from us what he meant or felt; his soul spoke in all that he said’.392 Von Hügel repeatedly tells Gwen: ‘I try to live this, I try to work this into my life’. Gwen adds, ‘These words of his were made actual in one’s sight, for in his life how moved one was to see this effect of his living faith!’393 Further Gwen writes, ‘My uncle never hesitated to relate his own experience: he never left out himself, but spoke with a warm and natural sincerity of his own experience and life’.394 Von Hügel’s lay status gave him a greater freedom to be authentically real with his directees and not feel pressure to perform a prescribed priestly role. Von Hügel’s lay status also presented opportunities for critique by friends and family, a freedom that Huvelin’s priestly role did not present to the same extent. As well as being challenged by his wife and children, his friend Maude Petre spoke honestly about his faults. In response to this criticism, von Hügel writes to Petre: ‘Thank you, very gratefully for your true kindness in telling me so clearly the two sets of things and acts of mine which disappoint and try you. I promise to think it all well over’.395 Similar critique would have helped Huvelin. Indeed, if von Hügel could have challenged Huvelin to live in a more ‘leisurely’ way, one wonders how it would have softened his relentless obsession with suffering.

(iv) Huvelin’s Glorification of Suffering Suffering is a constantly recurring theme in Huvelin’s spiritual direction. After interviewing many directees and viewing Huvelin’s correspondence, Louis- Lefebvre is left to conclude: ‘The theme of suffering seems to recur with him

391 Ms 2695, 19th October, 1892, SAUL. 392 TW, 113. 393 TW, 114. 394 TW, 139. 395 6th December 1909, Kelly The letters of Baron Friedrich von Hügel and Maude D. Petre, 88. We see similar critique by Tyrrell over von Hügel’s handling of Gertrud, 6th December, 1897, in: Maude Petre, Von Hügel and Tyrrell: The story of a friendship, London: Dent, 1937, 15-16. 188 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR frequently, to have been an element in the spiritual life especially esteemed by the Abbé and one which he often employed’.396 It appears that Huvelin idealises suffering and at times, even celebrates it, exclaiming: ‘I wish for my sufferings and I love them’.397 Similarly, he argues that ‘There is nothing sweeter than the suffering which we voluntarily take upon ourselves’.398 We see this in relation to von Hügel when Huvelin writes: ‘I feel your suffering’.399 Huvelin writes to Marguerite, ‘Give me, give me all that, all the pain!’ Our Lord seems to say this on the cross. Suffering, when it is offered, unites and does not separate, so that we are no longer shut up in ourselves’.400 However, in contrast to Huvelin’s idealising of suffering, Christ actually says ‘take this cup of suffering away from me’ (Lk 22:24). Jesus did not seem to think our lives were meant to be a living purgatory. Huvelin’s priestly role is part of the motivation behind his personal desire for suffering. Huvelin writes, ‘Sometimes the director is called on to suffer; he must undergo – not in the form of a temptation – but in his own experience, that from which he must protect others’.401 But Huvelin’s desire for suffering goes beyond this to believing that he is expiating for the sins of others. Mère Marie-Agnès writes, ‘One had the impression that he himself undertook the penance of his converts’.402 Steuart writes that Huvelin had ‘that desire to offer oneself to suffer as a victim standing between God and sinners (…) to save and heal and atone for the evil-doing of the world’.403 As such, Huvelin describes himself when he says, ‘The sadness of a saint is something that he has taken upon his own shoulders from the common burden of all’.404 We see Huvelin’s understanding of suffering displayed when he writes to the Baron: ‘I find her [Gertrud] quite restored to herself. Perhaps this is the price of your suffering’.405 Here we see Huvelin’s idea of Gertud’s health as brought about by her father’s suffering; vicarious suffering as an ‘economic currency’. Huvelin argues that God is the cause of suffering and it is his means of trans- forming us. Examples of this doctrine are shown when he writes concerning

396 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 184. 397 Ibid., 237. 398 ATW, 42. 399 Ms 2692, 11th August, 1887, SAUL. 400 20 September 1900, Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 185. 401 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 113. 402 Mère Marie-Agnès de l’Incarnation, quoted in Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 207. 403 Steuart, ‘The Abbé Huvelin’, 154-155. 404 Ibid., 156. 405 Ms 2704, 1900, n.d., SAUL. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 189

Marguerite’s suffering: ‘the cause is divine: the Lord wishes to find you at His feet’.406 Two years later he writes to Marguerite: ‘He plants His cross in our hearts with the hand of a true artist who knows where to find the sensitive spot’.407 Believing that suffering is God’s initiative, he tells Soeur Marie-Térèse to cooperate with God: You are in darkness, like there was on Calvary. You only need to offer yourself as a willing victim, without any but or any if (…) now is the moment to be a true victim, whatever the cost. Do God’s work, for you are his instrument; allow the Lord to use you as he chooses.408 For Huvelin, suffering is the main way to participate in Christ and the mystery of the Incarnation. Steuart describes Huvelin’s conviction ‘that no good is done but by suffering, for we do good only in the measure that we follow after Christ and there is no other way of that than by carrying the cross’.409 Not surprisingly, Huvelin says, ‘The Holy Spirit works a transformation in a soul which suffers’.410 Huvelin also writes, everything must be made anew, and this is the operation of the Holy Spirit, it is His work. It is the Paraclete, this finger of God, which comes to write within us; the human soul is the book in which He will write great and beautiful things if we will let Him do so.411 However, the conditional ‘if’ in Huvelin’s words shows too high a view of human cooperation with the work of God. Huvelin tends to give too much to the directee as helping effect this work of transformation. The priest is elevated to a Christ-like role in expiation, and we see an overemphasis on the human need to participate in God’s transformation of us. Huvelin has too high a view of human cooperation believing that we work to achieve God’s ends.

Von Hügel’s Absorption of Some of Huvelin’s Doctrine of Suffering Similarities between Huvelin’s and von Hügel’s position with regards to suffering are clearly apparent. Like Huvelin, von Hügel takes on the sufferings of directees. He writes to one woman: ‘how keenly I have suffered and I still suffer with your

406 29 September 1899, Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 183. 407 15 May, 1901, Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 187. 408 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 193. 409 Steuart, ‘The Abbé Huvelin’, 160. 410 ATW, 169. The Spirit as transformational agent is repeated when Huvelin says: ‘And what is it which the Holy Spirit specially gives to our souls? He gives us above all penitence, sorrow for our faults, humility. He inspires us with a sorrow which is full of calm and full of beauty (…) because it is full of trust in the love of God’, ATW, 99,100. 411 ATW, 27 (italics added). 190 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR suffering’.412 He describes to Gwen how he has offered his long, trying wakings to God ‘that He might ever strengthen, sweeten, steady her in her true, simple, humble love and dependence upon Him’.413 The cost to himself is reiterated when he speaks of giving her ‘interior things [which] cost one a good deal to give (…) to try and help on the life of another soul means, Dear, a specially large double death to self on the part of the life-bringing soul’.414 Von Hügel acknowledges that suffering can lead to spiritual maturity: ‘Were not “costingness” and “tension” the two great elements of growth? Was not pain his greatest teacher?’415 Similarly, ‘Suffering is the greatest teacher (…) suffering is the crown of life. Suf- fering and expansion, what a rich combination!’416 Von Hügel’s solution for how to ‘suffer well’ essentially mirrors Huvelin’s: pressing into Christ in the midst of pain.417 Von Hügel writes: But Christ came and He did not really explain it; He did far more, He met it, willed it, transformed it, and He taught us how to do all this, or rather He himself does it within us, if we do not hinder His all-healing hands (…) In suffering we are very near to God.418 The Baron advises Juliet Mansel, concerning suffering to ‘try promptly to accept it, and gently to utilise it towards loving God and man more fully and strongly than before – of course in and by prayer, by a soul’s look to God’.419 Von Hügel also echoes Huvelin’s emphasis of finding Christ in our suffering when writing to his friend and colleague, Wilfred Ward who is dying of cancer: Try more and more at the moment itself (…) to cry out to God, to Christ our Lord (…) ‘Oh! Oh! This is real (…) Oh, may this pang deepen me, may it help to make me real, real – really humble, really loving, really ready to live or die with my soul in Thy hands’ (…) The all-important point is, to make them at the time and with the pain well mixed up into the prayer.420

412 EA I, 116. 413 LN, 25. 414 LN, 27. Similarly von Hügel describes how this ‘death to self’ by ‘the life-giving soul’ comes before the communication as the director assesses what should be said, then during the communication as it ‘must peacefully anticipate the acceptance at most of that essence’. After the communication, the director has to discern whether the soul is helped or hindered by the communication and ‘the light-bearing soul’ then needs to help the soul ‘to clothe the newly won essence in clothing from the wardrobe of this other soul’ (LN, 27). 415 LN, xxxviii. 416 LN, xv-xvi. 417 LN, 156. 418 LN, 228. 419 Juliet Mansel, ‘A letter from Baron von Hügel’, in: The Dublin Review 222 (July, 1951) no.452, 1-11: 11. 420 Von Hügel, Letter to Wilfrid Ward, March 27, 1916, SL, 231. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 191

Thus we see von Hügel absorbing some of Huvelin’s advice about the purpose of suffering and how to endure it, and passing on this wisdom to his own directees. At one level, he echoes much of what Huvelin says. However, von Hügel has a more healthy stance and tempers Huvelin’s approach to suffering.

Von Hügel’s More Balanced Approach to Suffering Rather than glorifying suffering like Huvelin, von Hügel states that ‘suffering is most real and in itself everywhere an evil’.421 Von Hügel goes even further stating that instead of facilitating spiritual growth, suffering can actually destroy people: ‘suffering alone does not, cannot soften or widen any soul; it can thus, of itself and alone, only harden, narrow and embitter it’.422 We see this princi- ple partly operating in Huvelin’s suffering and his desire to end his life. Von Hügel recognises suffering as just one means of transformation and has a richer, multi-faceted understanding of participation in Christ and spiritual growth. Rather than seeking suffering, von Hügel encourages his directees to fix their eyes on Christ. Evelyn Underhill describes von Hügel’s influence on her: Somehow by his prayers or something, he compelled me to experience Christ. He never said anything more about it – but I know humanly speaking he did it. It took about four months – it was like watching the sun rise very slowly – and then suddenly one knew what it was.423 For von Hügel, a Christocentric spirituality is essential in all our living, not only when suffering. It is love, not suffering, that is key. Rather than being purged of sin through self-induced suffering, gazing upon Christ, in love, makes us holy. In her reflections on von Hügel, Gwen writes: ‘To sanctify is the biggest thing out’. These words of his ring in my mind. They express what he was, what he meant, what he wished most to do. His whole life lies in them. He tried to find truth, to teach us God, to sanctify our lives. He loved, and he wanted to teach us to love.424 Von Hügel writes explicitly of the primacy of love in sanctification: [H]oliness consists primarily, not in the absence of faults, but in the presence of spiritual force, in Love creative, Love triumphant, – the soul becoming flame

421 EA I, 295. 422 EA I, 110. 423 Charles Williams (Ed.), The letters of Evelyn Underhill, London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1944, 26. This growth is further revealed when Underhill writes in her ‘Green Notebook’, ‘begin to realise what the sacramental life is, and implies – that it just is, as St. Paul felt, Christ in you (…) the strange intimate sense of union which comes’ (June 20, 1923). See Dana Greene, Fragments from an inner life: The notebooks of Evelyn Underhill, Harrisburg: Morehouse, 1993, 48. 424 LN, ix. 192 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR

rather than snow, and dwelling upon what to do, give and be, rather than upon what to shun.425 Where Huvelin writes that ‘Sanctity and suffering, they are one and the same thing’,426 von Hügel acknowledges suffering as just one avenue that contributes to our growth in sanctity. Love is what is primary. This more positive and rela- tional view of transformation does not disregard the essential role of suffering, but provides balance, pointing to intimacy with Christ in all of our living. As Steere argues, the Baron knew that ‘a soul must adore if it is to grow’.427 For von Hügel, the Church is ‘the basis of all real sanctity’.428 Involvement in corporate worship and the Eucharist is primarily what forms us spiritually. ‘Holy Communion (…) should be the very centre of a Christian’s devotional life’,429 argues von Hügel, as it directly affects one’s spiritual growth: ‘the Church through the Eucharist has trained countless souls to sanctity’.430 Though Huvelin also recognises the importance of the Eucharist, writing ‘His love is incarnate in the most living of all realities, the Holy Eucharist’,431 Huvelin still focuses upon meditation on the passion.432 Once more suffering is Huvelin’s focus, eclipsing the joy of resurrection. Thus we see that von Hügel shares Huvelin’s emphasis on suffering, but he sees it as just one means that God uses to change us. For von Hügel, love and relation- ality are what are primary in our transformation. Unlike Huvelin, von Hügel does not tend to idealise mortification and our participation in the sufferings of Christ.

(v) Huvelin’s Mortification and Negative Attitude to the Body A Catholic understanding of mortification of the flesh underlies Huvelin’s obsession with suffering. Only one criticism of Huvelin can be found throughout von Hügel’s entire corpus and it concerns Huvelin’s ascetic practices: I think of Huvelin (…) What tremendous mortifications he went in for! All saints are excessive to start. He was a man of tremendous passion, tremendous

425 ME II, 238. 426 Saying XXXII, in SL, 62. 427 Steere, Spiritual counsel and letters of Baron Friedrich von Hügel, 6. 428 LN, xxxvii. This ‘need of some Church appurtenance’ (Church faith and practice) is further echoed to his niece (LN, xxxviii). He writes to Gwen about her involvement in Communions, Recollection and the Prayer of Quiet in her church: ‘It is in that precise environment, by means of those aids that you, Blessing, can and will become deep and darling, humble and holy’ (LN, 95). 429 LN, 187. 430 EA II, 125. 431 Henri Huvelin, The love of Our Lord, London: Burns & Oates, 1930, 136. 432 See ‘Sermons on the Eucharist and the Passion’, in: Huvelin, The love of Our Lord, 135-259. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 193

intensity (…) and excessive – yes, no doubt – excessive mortifications. No doubt he ruined his health.433 This critique is echoed by Steuart who describes Huvelin’s mortification: Huvelin lived a life of very great austerity and [that] from his early youth he had made constant use of bodily penances (…) He had, and said so, no sympathy whatever with the familiar argument that the day of self-inflicted penances is over (…) He was an extremist.434 Another directee, Marie-Louise describes how in Huvelin’s final years, he would often spend the night on the floor with his arms in the form of a cross.435 Huvelin states, ‘However great our sins may be it is our incurable mediocrity that shows us most when we regard ourselves’.436 One wonders to what extent Huvelin viewed this asceticism as purgatorial in a literal sense, or perhaps even as vaguely salvific in a Pelagian sense.

Von Hügel’s More Tempered Approach to Mortification Von Hügel takes on some of Huvelin’s advice about asceticism but tones it down considerably. It appears that people other than Huvelin affected him in this area. The Baron mentions de Sales as ‘that high ascetical authority’437 and also applauds Fénelon for his writings about asceticism.438 In addition, his first spiritual director, Father Hocking, had a huge impact on him in this area. We see von Hügel’s most extensive discussion of asceticism when he quotes Hocking who argued: You think I do all this for pleasure? For show? Give up marriage, live in discom- fort and cold, eat fish all the year round, that I do it to please myself? I don’t. I hate it, but I do it for God. I do it to keep alive in this world the spirit that the world forgets – the spirit of renunciation, sacrifice, the supernatural life.439 Hocking shows us the positive nature of mortification. Sex and food are good and not foregone for pleasure, but because there is value in renunciation. Von Hügel is deeply impacted by Hocking’s mortification and comes to see its worth. He writes, We will not, of course, rule out, for ourselves or for others, the practice, or at least the spirit, also of bodily austerities. The spirit, and even some mild amount

433 LN, xxiv. 434 Steuart, ‘The Abbé Huvelin’, 154-156. 435 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 202. 436 Steuart, ‘The Abbé Huvelin’, 162. 437 ME II, 245. 438 EA II, 241. 439 LN, xxiv. 194 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR

of the actual practice, of such austerities is, indeed, an integral constituent of all virile religion: the man who laughs at the plank bed and the discipline is a shal- low fool.440 What is key here is von Hügel’s recognition that asceticism may help some people, but for many, ‘the spirit’ of austerities is sufficient. He describes a woman who showed no ‘attrait to such mortifications’ and argues, ‘Souls exist which are as truly called to such mortifications, as her soul was not called to them’.441 What’s key in any mortification, argues von Hügel, is loving motives: ‘Yet it is Love, God, that first should be in our hearts; and if that Love then impels us to such deeds, we will attempt to do them, to feed and to express our love of that Love, and not otherwise’.442 Despite von Hügel’s recognition of the possible value of mortification, we find no clear evidence of him engaging in asceticism or encouraging it in his directees. The only small example is his practice of giving up book-buying and fruit for Lent.443 He writes to Gwen ‘the practice of some little voluntary renunciation (…) such little self-checks (…) self-imposed – where they spring from love, really feed love. They are good things and still useful to your spiritual growth’.444 Once more, von Hügel emphasises love as primary in any small practice of asceticism. Though he does not practice it, von Hügel celebrates the discipline of celibacy.445 Having inherited a Catholic dualism between soul and body, with its negative attitude towards the body and sexuality, we see a progression in von Hügel’s understanding and comfortableness with sexuality as he grows up and experiences married life. At eighteen, von Hügel had issues with sexuality that he discussed with Father Hocking. Von Hügel writes: I (…) found myself in gravely bad habits and inclinations (…) I saw young fellows all around me fretting to be free, to be their own sole, full masters (…) I had, somehow, to become free from self, from my poor, shabby, bad, all-spoil- ing self! There lay freedom, there lay happiness! (…) we all of us have ‘selves’ (the enemies of our true, good selves) to fight, and that only so fighting are we adult, fruitful and happy.446

440 EA II, 240. 441 EA II, 241. 442 Ibidem. 443 LN, 121, 181. 444 LN, 76. 445 Von Hügel applauds both Hocking and Huvelin for their celibacy and describes Huvelin as being ‘profoundly convinced of the irreplaceable fruitfulness of celibacy’ (EA I, 287). 446 Letter to a Girl, April 11, 1922, SL, 352. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 195

He writes that it was Hocking who ‘saved’ him from a life of depravity, ena- bling him to ‘escape the unspeakable vulgarity of a hunting after pleasure, or any consistent attempt to keep the cross out of my life’.447 But even after a year of marriage, von Hügel’s latent beliefs that the body and sexuality are bad, affected his sexual relations with his bride. His troubled conscience leads him to talk with Father Bulbeck. He writes to Mary: ‘I asked him about my scruples as to goings on after our marriage. He said that touches, kisses, etc., of a kind that would be wrong towards anyone else, would if from affection, be good and commendable when applied to the wife’.448 Eventually, von Hügel is able to shed some of the negative attitudes he had towards sexuality, and comes to have a balanced view, quite uncommon in Catholic circles of his day. In writing to Margaret Clutton, he encourages her son to see how ‘normal and healthy, how pure and God-loved, is the social sex- life of marriage, and how rich it is in a joy which englobes and spiritualises the strongest sensible pleasures’.449 Thus we see a progression as von Hügel comes to understand sexuality and the body as good. By 1921, von Hügel is able to emphasise the important interconnection between the body and soul. Five of the seven facts in his essay on ‘The facts and truths concerning the soul’ relate to the body and affirm its goodness.450 Von Hügel had an incarnational spirituality and was not caught up in a Platonic split between soul and body. However, it was Father Raymond Hocking, rather than Huvelin, who helped von Hügel to develop this healthy posture.

(vi) Obedience in Huvelin’s Spiritual Direction Huvelin’s style of spiritual direction belongs to a certain era of Catholic spiritual direction. Rather than listening with the directee to the Spirit’s leading, the priest as human mediator stands in the place of God and is to be obeyed. How- ever, Huvelin’s position is more nuanced than a rigid expectation of obedience. Huvelin tells von Hügel not to put ‘the confessor much too much in the front line’.451 Huvelin is humble enough to recognise he can sometimes make mistakes as spiritual director (see Section 4 above). Also, Huvelin is self-aware and

447 Letter to Tyrrell, 26th December, 1900, in Bedoyère, The life of Baron von Hügel, 19. 448 Letter quoted in Bedoyère, The life of Baron von Hügel, 4. 449 Ms 30994, 11 June 1912, SAUL. 450 In summary they are: ‘the ceaseless interdependence of soul and body’ (228); ‘the Incarna- tional side of religion (…) must always be assigned some definite place and power within our spiritual lives’ (232-233); cultivating ‘the right attitude towards the Sec-instinct’ (235) and ‘a noble asceticism’ (239), all in EA II. 451 Von Hügel’s document ‘The conversion of M. Littré’ with Huvelin’s comments in the margin, 2, In Ms 2690, 25th June, 1884, SAUL. 196 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR states that at times we might not be the one to help a directee. Describing a female directee of the Baron’s, Huvelin writes to von Hügel, Leave to herself this female soul for whom God tells you so clearly that you cannot do any more. It has often happened to me to see people who were very sin- cerely attached to me could only henceforth suffer uselessly without there being any fault of theirs, nor perhaps of mine.452 People coming to Huvelin for direction were accepted as ‘from the hand of God’453 and Huvelin states it is God who does the directing. He tells von Hügel, Do to him or her the good which it will be given to you. Do it but go slowly, I beg you and with her never anticipate the action of God to make her for instance more susceptible and more impressionable. Do not attempt to proceed! You need much faithfulness and disinterestedness to administer what does not belong to us – which is the property of God.454 However, despite Huvelin’s utterances about spiritual direction being God’s work, he does not always display a posture of merely participating in God’s work. He often gives very direct guidance simply telling people what to do and expecting obedience (see section 5).455 Foucauld writes in his diary about his relationship with Huvelin: ‘…such direction! (…) his spiritual direction becoming more and more intimate and frequent, enveloping my whole life, and making it a life of obedience, and obedience to such a master!’456 Further, Foucauld states that ‘As long as I have my director’s per- mission I should believe that I was disobeying God by doing anything whatsoever’.457 However, given the depressive, suicidal state that Huvelin was in at times, one wonders if he was always in a state fit to be obeyed. As no spiritual director is immune to depression, more contemporary approaches to spiritual direction that emphasise the idea of two wounded pilgrims together listening to God provide a healthier model. Such relationships are less likely to engender spiritual control or abuse when a spiritual director is in an unstable state.

452 Ms 2695, 19th October, 1892, SAUL. 453 Ibidem. 454 Ibidem. Original emphasis. 455 Joly, a contemporary of Huvelin, writes that ‘He was protector, support and guide, rather than “in authority”’ (Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 112). However, this is not what is always revealed through his letters. 456 Foucauld, quoted in Leonard, ‘Introduction’, SSG, lviii. 457 Ibid., SSG, liii. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 197

Von Hügel’s Greater Freedom as a Lay Spiritual Director Von Hügel’s lay status as spiritual director affects his style of direction. Being free of an ecclesial identity, he is able to say to Gwen, ‘Leave out what does not help you. Take only (…) what helps’.458 Overall, von Hügel is more tentative than Huvelin and less confident in his spiritual intuitions. He writes ‘It is certainly impossible to know the depths of any soul’.459 Free from a need to ‘play’ a priestly role, von Hügel simply presents to directees some practices that have helped him, suggesting they take what seems to resonate with them personally and leave the rest. However, like Huvelin, von Hügel is hierarchical. Gwen tells us, ‘I sat beside him [von Hügel], always on the little low chair (…) I always felt like a child with my Uncle’.460 In all his relationships of spiritual direction, we see no evidence of reciprocation. Though we don’t have von Hügel’s letters to Huvelin, there does not seem to have been reciprocation in their relationship either. The director-directee hierarchy had been sufficiently strong and established that von Hügel does not appear to have been in a position to give Huvelin back some of his own advice.

(vii) Gender Concerns in Huvelin’s Direction Huvelin gave spiritual direction to innumerable people. It is highly unlikely that he could understand all those different directees and generalise advice from a few principles gained through his own male experience and perspective (see section 5 above). This is particularly the case when it comes to women. How- ever, alongside knowing himself as a source of insight into others, Huvelin says it is important to ‘study others’,461 and gain discernment ‘by reading the Holy Scriptures, where human nature is portrayed by He Himself who made it’.462 The ‘obstacles to entire comprehension’ according to Leonard come from sex, race and religion.463 We could add to this list lay people versus clergy or those in religious orders. For Huvelin as a priest, giving direction to enclosed Carmelite nuns would be an an easier task than providing counsel to lay women.464 Indeed, Huvelin gave weekly spiritual direction to nuns at the Carmelite monastery at Fontainebleu.465 However, one wonders how a single, unmarried

458 LN, x. 459 LN, 97. 460 LN, xi. 461 ATW, 15. 462 Ibidem. 463 Leonard, ‘Introduction’, SSG, xl. 464 As outlined in ATW. 465 Leonard, ‘Introduction’, SSG, xi. 198 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR man was able to be insightful about the specific needs and temptations experienced by mothers. Huvelin guesses at this possible critique and writes to the mothers he is addressing: But you will tell me: ‘The priesthood has no experience of this and you are not really qualified to speak of it; it is something quite unknown to you’. No, my friends, you are mistaken; if I have done any good in my life as a priest (…) it is to my daughters that I owe it.466 Huvelin doesn’t think the unique role of mother is an issue and he has lots to say to mothers. Huvelin’s point can be appreciated to an extent, but it is clear that he does not know from first hand experience the unique challenges of motherhood, which are quite different to the difficulties of life as a priest or to those of enclosed female Carmelites! In addition, feminist critics argue that because of the uniqueness of women’s experiences and the fact that a woman’s body is constitutive of who she is, a female spiritual director would better understand women.467 Far from being irrelevant, even von Hügel tells his niece that some women would do best with a female spiritual director, as would indeed, some men. Huvelin himself was aware of this issue. When asked to spiritually direct Madame Delzant, Huvelin entrusted her to the care of a nun as he ‘judged that only a maternal influence (…) would have any effect on the unruly poet’.468 It must be stated, however, that most of von Hügel’s directees were women and Gwen speaks of feeling more understood by von Hügel than by other women.469 However it must be stated that Huvelin gave some countercultural advice to Madame Daniélou who was told by a university rector to stop giving women an university education. When she asked Huvelin what to do, he replied: ‘your work is of God and it will endure’.470 Given the social climate of the late nineteenth century, Huvelin’s words are radical and reveal a progressive view of women’s education. It is clear that Huvelin is extremely alert to differences between souls and much of his insight comes from having observed and interacted with many

466 ATW, 67. 467 Kathleen Fischer, Women at the well: Feminist perspectives on spiritual direction, Paulist Press, 1989. 468 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 102. 469 Yet perhaps at some level, understanding another bypasses gender. Gwen writes that as a young child, von Hügel discerned that she would ‘never fit into this world’ (LN, xliv). Unlike her relationship with her mother, Gwen felt understood and known by von Hügel. They had an affinity where they could ‘share in kind’ (LN, xliv). 470 From the accounts of Mademoiselle Catillon and Mademoiselle Pétré, Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 108-109. THE ABBÉ AND THE BARON 199 people over a number of years.471 When directing the Carmelites, Huvelin breaks them up into groups according to type and gives several retreats.472 When writing to Gwen about confession, von Hügel quotes Huvelin who had said ‘Cela varie entre âme et âme’.473 Huvelin was aware of individual variations and altered his direction accordingly. Von Hügel’s emphasis on the uniqueness of our individual ‘attrait’ most probably came from Huvelin who uses this term in his early correspondence with Foucauld.474

(viii) Von Hügel’s ‘Blind’ Adoration of Huvelin A final question worth raising is why von Hügel elevates Huvelin to ‘guru’ status and reveres him so intensely with such little critique. As Leonard writes, ‘the veneration he felt for the Abbé seems to have grown deeper as the years went by’.475 Even von Hügel’s one criticism of Huvelin’s excessive mortification that affected his health is given a positive ‘spin’. Ruining health is what saints do! Von Hügel speaks of how the mortifications brought forth ‘wonderful gentleness and moderation (…) patience! All that was the result of his self-discipline’.476 Von Hügel’s adoration of Huvelin is a blind spot in his own life and spiritual direction. The Baron’s non-critical obedience means that he took Huvelin’s ‘Say- ings’, as Bedoyère argues, ‘too literally’.477 For example, von Hügel’s mystical temperament meant that he overstrained the application of Huvelin’s ‘Sayings’ concerning the scholastics.478 Von Hügel’s appropriation of some of Huvelin’s ‘Sayings’ indicate weaknesses that affect his subsequent spiritual direction.

15. CONCLUSION

In conclusion, it is clear that Huvelin had a profound impact on von Hügel’s life and work. However, when von Hügel says ‘I learnt all that I know from Huvelin’, at one level his words are hyperbole.479 Despite this, to some degree,

471 In one sense, every person, regardless of gender, class and race is an individual and this individuality is stronger than the roles that differentiate us. The individuality of the lay mothers is larger than the similarities of the lay mothers. 472 Louis-Lefebvre, Abbé Huvelin, 208. 473 ‘That varies between heart and heart’, LN, 142. 474 Jean-Francois Six (Ed.), Père de Foucauld – Abbé Huvelin: Correspondence inédite, Paris: Des- clée, 1957. 475 Leonard, ‘Introduction’, SSG, xix. 476 LN, xxiv. 477 Bedoyère, The life of Baron von Hügel, 45. 478 Leonard, Introduction, SSG, xxviii. 479 LN, xv. 200 ROBYN WRIGLEY-CARR we need to take von Hügel’s words at face value. If something is important to von Hügel, it probably came from Huvelin and then von Hügel directly adopts Huvelin’s position or adapts it to suit himself. We see von Hügel take on some of Huvelin’s ideas concerning suffering and mortification but then temper them considerably with his more balanced approach. Further, suffering is viewed as just one way to participate in Christ. More significant in our transformation is love of Christ (whether suffering or not) and our involvement in Church worship and the Eucharist. In other areas, von Hügel’s practice highlights Huvelin’s weaknesses: his balance of work and rest, playfulness, humour and greater authenticity. Underlying many of these differences is the pressure of Huvelin’s priestly role and von Hügel’s greater freedom as a lay spiritual director and family man. These close relationships were only available for von Hügel, profoundly helping him to temper the more extreme aspects of Huvelin’s spirituality. Also, Huvelin’s naturally ‘melancholic’ temperament affects his teaching and practice and contrasts with von Hügel’s more ‘sunny’ nature.480 Despite von Hügel’s tempering of many of Huvelin’s extremes and his negative por- trayal from his diaries, we can’t discount Huvelin’s huge legacy of influence. Very good people came out of Huvelin’s spiritual direction and there were lots of them. We conclude that Huvelin was authentically good but that he was operating in a nineteenth century Catholic culture and was a product of his culture. Though Huvelin had a substantial and positive impact on the Baron’s life, he is not the only major influence we are told about by von Hügel. Other major influences on the Baron’s spirituality include the French ‘scholar-saints’ already discussed, Catherine of Genoa, plus the impact of decades of feeding daily on Augustine’s Confessions, The Imitation of Christ, the Psalms and the New Testament.481 However, despite this, many of the images of Huvelin’s ‘Sayings’ and letters are woven into von Hügel’s own writing. In closing, the influence of Huvelin is even evident at the close of von Hügel’s earthly life. Huvelin’s motto ‘What have I in heaven but thee, and besides Thee what do I desire on earth?’ (Ps 72:25)482 was the verse von Hügel chose for the inscription on his headstone.483

480 EA II, 242. 481 Von Hügel tells his niece ‘I cannot exaggerate the gain that I think you will derive from feeding for years upon the Confessions. They, more than any other book excepting the Gospels and the Psalms, have taught me – and I believe they will teach you, will penetrate and will colour every tissue of your mind and heart’, LN, 48. He also declares he has ‘tried to live the Confes- sions at their deepest these last fifty years’, LN, 45. Von Hügel also speaks of the value of the Imitation of Christ on several occasions (LN, 75, 137). 482 Steuart, ‘The Abbé Huvelin’, 152-153. 483 Kelly, Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s philosophy of religion, 116.