3.4: Worship: burgeoning religious fervour

Religion was taken quite seriously at Ludgrove, predominantly in a Church of England, Protestant vein. There was a school chapel, with a different vicar, or lay-preacher, coming over to deliver us his sermon every Sunday morning. And Mr Barber did his own bit of preaching as well. He was concerned that we should all grow up as God-fearing citizens, and his attitude to life was indeed something that I was endeavouring to absorb.

There was only one voice from amongst our teachers which conveyed any different message, and that came from Cabbage Reed. He delighted in poking fun at some of the grosser absurdity in my developing Christian faith - like asking me if I thought my wings would have feathers, when I was an angel up in Heaven. "And what if I crept up behind you and tweaked one of them out?" I knew that he liked me, and I knew that he never really intended that his question should be taken seriously. But it left me aware how there was a vein of disrespect in his own attitude towards what the rest of the masters at least pretended to revere.

Sometimes our faith was nurtured by particular dormitory monitors, who insisted that we kneel praying for the prescribed number of minutes. They were apt to give their own private sermons upon the rules of how to keep in with God, and some of their fervour inevitably washed off upon those under their control.

With such people to inspire me, I embarked upon a relatively brief period of religious fervour myself, believing that the world's salvation depended upon humans treating that subject a lot more seriously than they did at present. I remember taking a metal ring which had become detached from one of the chapel hassocks, and carrying it round with me as an amulet for my religious well-being. I even wrote a hymn or two, sending them back to Daphne for her own conversion. One of them began as follows.


 

 

 

 


The necessity for prayer was indeed the fundamental message that I wanted to put across to everybody. Indeed I developed the idea almost to the point of obsession, which I inflicted upon the ears of my fellow supplicants to God at evening prayers, booming out the words of The Lord's Prayer and The Creed, as if my salvation depended upon the sound of my communication reaching Heaven a few seconds in advance from that of the assembled throng. I only desisted from this piety in fact, after Peter Munster (whom I so much admired) came over to me after evening prayers one day, and said: "What do you think you are? A bloody fog-horn?"

I wasn't quite stopped in my tracks however. After Henry had been wounded at El Alemein, I insisted upon Nanny taking all of us children to the local church, just down the lane from Sturford, on several Sundays in succession. Nanny took it all with a bit of a giggle, without the faith that any good would come from our devotions. (One of her frequently quoted dictums was that God helps those who help themselves.) She couldn't get over the surprise on the Rev Mr Edmund's face when we all trooped in for the first time, in that he had seen nothing of us since the departure of Miss Vigers.

My phase of religious intensity didn't endure for very long. Daddy was soon back home with us, relatively safe and sound. (The wound incidentally had been a very small piece of shrapnel, which had lodged - until its removal by surgery - in his chest.) And if he didn't think that he required God's assistance to survive the war, then he was in a better position than myself to judge such matters. The tenor of his atheistic views, now reintroduced, was to mock those who took religion seriously and, in that I very much wanted his approval and admiration, I subdued my fervour. Or perhaps I should say that I bottled it up more secretly within myself.

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