The Passion of Edith Cavell: The Way of the Cross Fourteen Paintings by Brian Whelan for Norwich Cathedral

Edith Cavell’s Remarkable Life

Edith Cavell was born in Swardeston near Norwich on 4 December 1865. The eldest child of the vicar of St Mary’s Church, she was schooled at home by her father along with her two younger sisters and brother until she was 16. The opportunities for young women of her background were very few, but Edith was determined through Christian service to make a difference. She wrote, ‘Someday, somehow, I am going to do something useful. I don’t know what it will be, I only know that it will be something for people.’ Edith trained to be a nurse at the Royal London Hospital in London’s East End from 1896-1898, and her great opportunity came when in 1907 she was invited by Belgium’s leading surgeon, Antoine Depage, to become the founding director of the first professional nurse’s training school in Belgium. Each summer Edith came back to Norfolk on a holiday. In August 1914 she was with her widowed mother in her College Road, Norwich, home when news came of the threat of the German invasion of neutral Belgium. Edith immediately travelled back to Brussels to be with her nurses, and they cared for casualties regardless of national origin. Although the German occupiers of Brussels threatened death to anyone assisting allied soldiers, in early 1915 Edith became part of an underground network that enabled those caught behind enemy lines to escape from Belgium. She later admitted she had helped around 200 allied soldiers even while she was nursing German soldiers in the clinic. Eventually Edith and the underground group were all arrested and imprisoned. She found her ten weeks in solitary confinement in St Gilles prison in Brussels ‘a great mercy’, a time of healing, peace and calm after the constant anxiety and stress of her work. Edith was tried along with 34 others and found guilty of treason. On the afternoon of 11 October 1915, she learned that she and a resistance colleague would be executed by firing squad the next morning. Edith faced her death with calm courage. ‘I have no fear or shrinking. I have seen death so often it is not strange or fearful to me.’ As a Christian and as a nurse, she had committed herself to the service of others, conscious that this might cost her everything, even the sacrifice of her own life. As Christ had done from the cross, she prayed for the forgiveness of those who would kill her: ‘I expected my sentence and I believe it was just. But this I would say, standing as I do in view of God and eternity: I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.’ Edith’s words were a rejection of the patriotic hatred that drove the war, and they are words that speak to us just as powerfully and directly today. Edith’s body was returned to England in May 1919. After a state funeral in Westminster Abbey, she was brought back to Norfolk and in the presence of thousands was buried in Life’s Green, the former monastic cemetery outside Norwich Cathedral. Public donations were used in accordance with her express wishes to open rest homes for nurses, work that continues today under the Cavell Nurses Trust.

The tradition of East Anglian narrative painting has had a profound impact on the painting of Norfolk artist Brian Whelan. The commission of the Passion of Edith Cavell for Norwich Cathedral breaks new ground in applying this tradition to the life and death of a woman of the twentieth century generally regarded as a patriotic martyr but whose Christian witness is not widely recognised. Whelan’s paintings rescue Edith Cavell from the limbo of formal photography and patriotic propaganda and reveal a life lived in imitation of Christ.

I. CHARITY Edith’s father, the Revd Frederick Cavell, sent Edith and his other children out before their Sunday lunch to take bowls of food to villagers in need. Let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For which is the greater, one who sits at table, or one who serves? Is it not the one who sits at table? But I am among you as one who serves. (Luke 22.26-27)

II. FAITH ‘Edith’s father encouraged her to raise the funding for a Sunday school to be annexed to the vicarage. She wrote to the Bishop of Norwich, John Pelham, and asked for episcopal help. He agreed that if the village raised a certain amount, he would provide the rest. Edith painted greetings cards…. These were sold or sent out with a request for money for the enterprise. Sufficient funds were raised and within two years the Sunday school – a long hall attached to the back of the house – was built for the village children.’ Diana Souhami, Edith Cavell.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (Matt. 6.28-29).

III. DUTY In August 1914, Edith returns from holiday in Norfolk to Brussels because she believed her duty lay in being with her nurses in their care for the wounded and the dying in the war zone.

When the days drew near for Jesus to be received up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. … ‘No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’ (Luke 9.51, 61-62)

IV. IMITATION Edith reading the Imitation of Christ with Thomas a Kempis in nurses’ refectory, with Jesus on crucifix emerging from the writing.

Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.’ (Matt. 16.24-25)

V. BLAST When the Germans marched into Brussels on 29 August 1914, ‘Edith Cavell talked to her nurses. They were scared. Any wounded soldier, she told them, must be treated, friend or foe. Each man a father, husband, or son. As nurses they must take no part in the quarrel. Their work was for humanity… The profession of nursing, she said – and not for the first or last time – knew no frontiers.’ Souhami, Edtih Cavell

The Lord is my shepherd; Therefore can I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures And leads me beside still waters… Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For you are with me. Psalm 23

VI. FREEDOM Edith helped some 200 Allied soldiers in all to escape from occupied Belgium to neutral Holland. She used her School of Nursing as a safe house, always at risk from German observation and spies and the carelessness of the soldiers she was trying to protect.

My aim was not to help your enemy but to help those men who asked for my help to reach the frontier. Once across the frontier they were free. Edith’s words at her trial.

VII. BETRAYED Edith’s betrayal was not individual or isolated. The Germans were aware of her network for a long time and waited to gather up full evidence before arresting her and her co-workers. Nevertheless, Pauline Randall, Edith’s goddaughter and one of her nurses, was apparently indiscreet about the soldiers in the School in an encounter in a café with a German agent. The kiss of betrayal here is intimate and familiar.

While he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a great crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people... And he came up to Jesus at once and said, ‘Hail, Master!’ And he kissed him. (Matt. 26. 47, 49)

VIII. ARREST On Aug. 5th 1915 … officers of the Secret Police … presented themselves … at the Institute Berkendael, rue de la Culture, No. 149 and there proceeded to a search…. Miss Cavell and her head assistant, Miss Wilkins, were arrested … and brought to police station B. After examination by Lieut. Bergan, Miss Wilkins was released. Miss Cavell was detained.’ Official German account of Edith’s arrest.

Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders. … And they laid hands on him and seized him. (Mark 14.43, 46)

IX. TRUST When she is arrested, Edith has only a brief moment to speak to her nurses and to her dog, Jack. She is able to write to them from prison.

Little children, yet a little while I am with you. … A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. (John 13.34)

X. TRIAL Edith was tried before a German military court en masse with the other alleged conspirators. She was unable to consult with her defence lawyer. She was charged with treason, inappropriately for one who was neither a German national nor living in Germany, but the Germans wanted to make an example of her.

Pilate said to the people, ‘What shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?’ They all said, ‘Let him be crucified.’ And he said, ‘Why, what evil has he done?’ But they shouted all the more, ‘Let him be crucified.’ (Matt. 27.22-23).

XI. COMMUNION In the night before her execution, Edith received Holy Communion in her cell from the Revd Stirling Gahan, Anglican chaplain in Brussels.

I have no fear or shrinking. I have seen death so often that it is not strange or fearful to me. Life has always been hurried and of difficulty. This time of rest has been a great mercy. Everyone here has been very kind. But this I would say, standing as I do in view of God and Eternity: I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone. Words of Edith recorded by Stirling Gahan.

XII. EXECUTION Edith was executed at 7.0 a.m., 12 October 1915, at the Tir National, the firing range on the edge of Brussels.

They brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means the place of a skull)…. And they crucified him … and with him two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. And the scripture was fulfilled which says, ‘He was reckoned with the transgressors.’ (Mark 15. 22, 24, 27, 28).

XIII. PIT Edith was buried immediately at the Tir and without any funeral.

Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. And Joseph took the body, and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock; and he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb, and departed. (Mt. 27.58-60)

XIV. HOMECOMING At the end of the war, Edith’s body was exhumed and found not to have decomposed. She was returned to England for a national funeral at Westminster Abbey and burial at Norwich Cathedral.

Set me as a seal upon you heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death … Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. (Song of Solomon 8.6, 7)