Unlike most communities that fled the French Revolution, or made their way to England when released from prison, the Dunkirk Community settled in London, or rather Hammersmith, then on the outskirts of the Metropolis where, at the invitation of Bishop Douglass, Vicar Apostolic of the London District, they took over the historic "Mary Ward" convent which had been reduced to three elderly Religious.
The convent's position at the heart of the Embassy district was advantageous, and resulted in an number of foreign girls, as well as children whose parents where abroad, being educated at the monastery school. Living in London was costly, and the community on arrival from France was destitute as no compensation could be obtained from the French Government for their property at Dunkirk. At first, friends assisted the community, but the nuns had to find additional ways to become self-supporting. They, therefore, made rooms available for 'Parlour Boarders". According to the Entry Book, these rooms were seldom unoccupied. There was variety, too, in the occupants. The entry that has never ceased to intrigue me is: "Mrs Baboon and her Chinese maid, Balaria". and from the Hammersmith Chronicles we learn that Mrs Baboon was only twenty two and had been a widow six years, that her Chinese maid was quite a child and that she arrived with a small boy, Antonio, aged nine, her husband's child by a former marriage! Lady Abbess kindly found a suitable school and accommodation for Antonio.
Abbess Selby seemed to have had a motherly heart for orphans! When a certain Captain James Sweeney, one of the officers on St Helena at the time of Napoleon's imprisonment, died young, he left two little orphans, James and Josephine. The latter was taken into our school, and in 1835 Father Scott consented to take the small boy into Downside College with the idea that 'he will take to the Church' but when little James was being fitted out for Downside and Lady Abbess asked him what he would like to become, he replied 'a nun here, please'. |
For a number of years a suite of rooms was occupied by Lady Bedingfield who, when her duties as Supernumery Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Adelaide, did not require her attendance at court, resided at the convent with her servants. Through her the community came to the notice of the court and was sometimes the recipient of Royal Largesse.
Relationship between the community and the Vicars Apostolic of the London District and, later, Cardinal Wiseman, were on the whole cordial. Bishop Douglass helped the nuns financially during their early years at Hammersmith, though he needed persuasion to allow the community to observe special Benedictine Feasts which the Bishop of Ypres had accorded them when at Dunkirk. Then there was the fiasco of the nuns' involvement with the Charity School.
The first mention of this Poor School is found in a note of Abbess Prujean in 1800, where she writes 'There is a charity School kept up by the survivors of the old inhabitants of this house, and when they are no more we mean to carry on the same Charity School in which they take none but Catholics". However, it was not until 1817 that nuns from the monastery undertook teaching there. They taught for three years. They were not a success! In 1820 Bishop Poynter wrote to Abbess Messanger to tell her that he felt obliged to enquire whether the Poor School was conducted in such a manner as befitted such an Establishment. The result of his enquiry appears to have been unsatisfactory, and the bishop wrote more explicitly, "I do not think it compatible with the duties and employments of the members of your community to attend to the care of the children of the Poor School in the manner in which I feel it necessary that they should be attended to. The early hour at which the school breaks up in the morning, which cannot be avoided on account of your Rule, is a considerable inconvenience to the school, it reduces their morning schooling to very little". The bishop goes on to complain at the lack of surveillance, especially on Sunday, and the care of their Sunday clothes, etc. He concluded by telling the Abbess that he has entrusted the Pastor of the Congregation, Father Bellisant, to provide for the care of both boys and girls from the ensuing week. The nuns got the sack, but they were not sorry!
More congenial was the £10 order for work commissioned by Queen Adelaide through Lady Bedingfield. Her Majesty even settled on a day to visit the convent, but she was ill and the weather bad. Other attempts to visit the community were over-ruled by Protestant objection. In the Palace, Catholicism, even "below stairs", was punished, for Mr Reitstat, the Queen's German Head Cook, was dismissed after his conversion to Catholicism, which came about through meeting sister Placida Kavanagh, the Portress, when visiting Lady Bedingfield's servants.
All this talk of Queen and court may sound like "Name Dropping". This is not my intention. My intention is to show how a community which, on arrival in England, still predominantly Stuart in sympathy, was brought into the world of reality in the smoothest possible way, being introduced to the House of Hanover by a catholic Lady in the service of Queen Adelaide, perhaps the most pleasant, if not spectacular, consort of the Hanoverian Kings. Another factor contributed to this metamorphosis, that of the new members, for though representatives of the old Catholic Families continued to form part of the community, the entrance of converts and applicants from a wider cross-section of society which had never owed allegiance to the Stuarts, ensured that by the time the nuns left Hammersmith they were ardent admirers of the reigning Sovereign, Queen Victoria!
Until 1853 when the church was built at Brook Green, the convent chapel served as the parish Church, the parishioners occupying the body of the church, the nuns the gallery. The chapel saw a number of special Liturgical celebrations, the most suitable to recall here is the Bestowal of the Pallium by Cardinal Wiseman on Archbishop Ferdinand English, about to take up pastoral duties in Port of Spain, Trinidad, for the Cardinal's train-bearer on that day was a small boy named "Gasquet"!
The community at Hammersmith was noted for its music. Dame Mary English composed at least one Mass in four Parts, a type of music much appreciated at the time, as well as a number of Voluntaries, and we know of at least one convert made through the medium of the choir. Dame Mary was also something of an historian and was consulted by Father Morris S J and Brother Foley especially on matters of genealogy. Had she lived today she would have been a member of the CRS and "Catholic Families"!
In 1846 Abbess Selby obtained permission from Bishop Griffiths for a day of Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, and at the same time the community entered into an association of Adoration with the nuns at Cannington (now at Colwich) who had begun the Adoration in 1829. This was to prove the first step in the community adopting the same Devotion at Teignmouth nearly thirty years later.
Moving from Hammersmith was first discussed seriously in 1857, though it had been considered a possible necessity for at least ten years. The reason was financial and due to the diminishing number of pupils in the school caused by the attraction of modern Teaching Orders with their new methods of education, while at the same time the cost of maintaining the fabric of the convent had over-stretched the community's resources. Prior Norbert Sweeney, (Little James) recommended two or three properties, none of which proved suitable. Eventually, Countess English (Dame Mary's sister) purchased the land at Teignmouth on which St Scholastica's Abbey was built and the community moved in 1863.
Sixty eight years, the time the nuns were at Hammersmith, is not a long span in the life of a community, but what momentous years they were! The Second Relief Act had been passed only two years before their arrival from Dunkirk, and the community saw Catholic Emancipation, the Restoration of the Hierarchy and beyond. Taking random dips into the Hammersmith Chronicles we find that Father Dominic Barberi and Father Ignatius Spencer both gave Retreats to the community, the former even remarked on the 'botch' (patch!) on the Abbess's veil, and father Matthew preached on Temperance! Polding, Ullathorne and Pompallier told their stories of mission work in Australia and New Zealand, and a very cheerful Wiseman dropped in soon after his elevation to the cardinalate to say that all the excitement in the country about him had done much good!
So I look on Hammersmith as a bridge between the exiled community at Dunkirk and the enclosed community at Teignmouth. The years in London contributed to the community's development as it was drawn into the changing tide of Catholic life in England. I hope the nuns while at Hammersmith played their small part in the development of Catholic life in London during the first half of the nineteenth century.