'LUCY MENZIES, scholar and mystic, born 1882, died 1954, who in her later years worshipped and meditated here.' These words are inscribed on the memorial tablet in the church of All Saints', St Andrews. For the past fifteen years or so she has been commemorated in the Calendar of the Scottish Episcopal Church; and November 2004 marks the fiftieth anniversary of her death.
Who was Lucy Menzies? What were her claims to saintliness? And how did her commemoration in the Calendar come about? To take the third question first: some years ago, it was thought desirable to include in the Episcopal Church's Calendar some new names, people of more local significance, who had made a particular contribution and one more recent than those hallowed by time. Perhaps one from each Scottish diocese? The Liturgy Committee and the Faith and Order Board were set to consider this. I understand that it was probably Martin Reith (late of the Company of the Servants of God) who suggested Lucy Menzies' name. His suggestion was duly put to our local chapter and was discussed. I was, I believe, the only person present at that meeting who had known Lucy. I felt she was indeed a strong candidate and in due course her name was included in the Calendar.
As to her claims, I would like to quote from Robert Atwell's book, Celebrating the Saints, where he writes:
The Communion of Saints is the company of those who have willed that their own life-stories be shaped and transformed by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ ... Over the centuries the Church has come to recognise particular individuals within this company ... those who by custom are specifically called saints and in and through whom God's purpose of love, mercy, peace and justice have been specifically revealed.
Such a one I believe was Lucy Menzies. Some words that she herself wrote in her book The Saints of Italy would strike an immediate chord of recognition in all who, like me, were lucky enough to know her:
God's greatest gift to man is the gift of the power, tendency and opportunity to learn goodness. The saints accepted this gift. They trained their spiritual natures, they perpetually renewed their lives by contact with the source of all being. Few of them have not some gift of healing or restoration to pass on to us.
That is what Lucy did. To draw these thoughts together here are words from a sermon preached some years ago by one who also knew her well, the Reverend Marie Louise Moffet:
Not all the Saints were on the grand scale. But Lucy Menzies was one of those who reflected God, who showed some facets of that unimaginable reality, someone whose life was so obviously dedicated to Him that the rest of us who knew her could be encouraged on our pilgrimage and touched by His love through her.
And now to the first question: who was Lucy Menzies?
She was the grand-daughter, on both sides, of distinguished Presbyterian ministers. Her father, Allan Menzies, was born in 1845, and after serving in several parishes was appointed in 1889 Professor of Biblical Criticism at St Andrews University, where for a time he was slightly suspect on account of his Broad Church views. He was, however, to prove immensely popular and won the deep respect of students and colleagues alike, both for his breadth of learning and his warm and generous nature. Lucy's childhood was spent in a loving and happy home, blessed by the harmony and companionship of her parents' marriage as well as by their scholarly and independent outlook. She and her elder sister May were educated by their father at home until in the Spring of 1897 they were sent with two St Andrews friends, one of whom was my mother, to a finishing school in Heidelberg. The school seems to have been a liberal-minded and forward-looking establishment. More was taught there than deportment and ladylike manners. A photograph shows a group of Lucy's friends wearing the extraordinary hats that were in fashion at the turn of the century, and another shows them setting off on a cycling trip. After leaving the school, Lucy travelled elsewhere in Europe.
Both her parents died within a few months of one another in 1916 and of the years immediately following this, I know very little. I was born in October 1924, so I must have been christened, with Lucy as my godmother, early in 1925. I do not remember a time in the 1920s when Lucy was not living in St Leonard's Cottage, a delightful bungalow, with a beautiful garden, which she had built in St Leonard's Road next to University Hall.
Her first book was published in 1918 by Dent. It was called General Foch at the Marne, and is a translation from the French of Charles le Goffie. Languages were a part of the Menzies ambience. Felicitously translated, the book reads smoothly and vigorously, and already Lucy's Introduction with its retrospective passages on St Joan of Arc shows the intuitive understanding that was to mark her out all through her life, and was to lead the way to mysticism. This was followed in the same year by a fine memoir of the life of her father, as a preface to his work, A Study of Calvin.
In 1922, published by Allen and Unwin, came The First Friend, an Anthology of the Friendship of Man and Dog, compiled from the literature of all ages from 1400 BC to 1921 AD. There are eighty extracts in the book, and considering how few works of reference were available in the early nineteen-twenties - no www. for a start - this does suggest a compiler of very wide reading and learning, especially as many of the extracts are translations from foreign tongues, ancient and modern No signs of incipient mysticism here, but there is a passage in the introduction that is worth quoting:
There is one last comforting reflection which comes to everyone fortunate enough to possess a dog. Your dog believes in you more than you believe in yourself. Whatever the world may think of you, to one faithful friend you are the wisest and most splendid of beings. Should the public fail to see the good things in your book, should your friends be sought after and promoted while you are forgotten, still to your dog you are as wise as Socrates, and mighty as Napoleon. If encouragement and belief in one's powers are a help in moments of despondency - and who will say that they are not - no fortunate owner of a dog need ever be without them.
In 1923 came A Book of Saints for the Young, first series and second series. Children loved her, because she loved them with a rare and selfless love. Both books were brought out by the Medici Society, and each contains about a page and a half about the life of a particular saint - fourteen saints in each volume. Each saint has an illustration - a colour reproduction of an Old Master. The stories are told gently, simply, vividly, above all, unpatronisingly. They are, of course, of their time. But as I sat in the University Library and copied out parts of the introductions to each volume, I found myself, hardened elderly cynic that I am, much moved by what I read. Here is an extract:
Religion was not a tiresome business to the Saints. It was a happy way of life. One of the wisest of them said, 'Love cannot be idle'. And as you come to know them better you will notice that they were never idle. They were often trying to help others, and if they could not do that they were at least cheerful and patient, and suffered whatever came to them gladly. And when we meet a saint - for we do meet one sometimes still - courage and cheerfulness are among the marks by which we know him. It was St Francis of Assisi who said, 'It is not fitting when one is in God's service to have a gloomy face. Always show a face shining with holy joy.'
Lucy herself did just that, even at the end of her life when she suffered a great deal of pain as well as growing blindness.
In 1924 came The Saints of Italy, published also by the Medici Society, from which I have already quoted. It is a pocket dictionary of the innumerable Italian saints, intended for the traveller in Italy in order to enrich his understanding of the country. Four years earlier Lucy had published St Columba of Iona, giving an account of his life and times and his influence on the history of Scotland. It was published by J. M. Dent, and reviewed anonymously in the Westminster Gazette; only a little later did Lucy discover that the reviewer was Evelyn Underhill. She revised the book in 1949 for the Iona Community and this was reprinted in 1954. A facsimile edition of the original was printed in 1992. In the 1949 edition Lucy wrote:
It is characteristic of the saints that they tend to be transformed by what they seek. In spite of Columba's tempestuous nature it is eventually the man of prayer who wins through. A background of prayer and continual tendency towards God shine through his life.
The review of this book was to be an important link between Lucy and Evelyn Underhill. Soon after, apparently by chance, Lucy was lent a book by this writer of whom it has been said that 'she did more than anyone else to make available to English-speaking Christians the spiritual treasure of the whole Church'. Lucy said of her: 'Her writings opened a new world. No one else ever made me conscious of God as she did.' A correspondence started between the two women, certainly as early as 1923. Of their first meeting Lucy wrote, 'Intimate talk was easy, and I came away on wings, knowing I had found a true and understanding friend'. They corresponded frequently for many years, until Evelyn Underhill's death in 1941. This link was to be a vital factor in Lucy's spiritual growth, and Evelyn was to become a kind of spiritual director to Lucy for twenty years. It was not long before Lucy was helping her with retreats.
In 1924 Lucy was confirmed in the Church of England, and according to Margaret Cropper (in her biography of Evelyn Underhill), this was to bring her great peace of spirit. The circumstances I do not know, unfortunately, but as she told her friends, she always felt she was both Episcopalian and Presbyterian - an instance of personal ecumenism remarkable at that time.
In 1927, Mrs Harvey, the then warden of the retreat house at Pleshey in Essex, needed to retire on grounds of health. She and Evelyn Underhill were both very anxious that Lucy should take on the wardenship, though Evelyn was doubtful if Lucy's health would stand up to it. Evelyn wrote to her: 'The need of securing someone who does it for pure love and is a person of prayer overrides everything else.' Lucy took on the job at the end of 1928, and a decade of partnership followed between the two women as warden and conductor of retreats. This was a very important period in Lucy's life. In the meantime she had continued to publish books characterized by scholarship and religious insight. In 1925 there was her life of St Margaret, the Saxon princess, born in Hungary, who became Queen of Scotland when she married Malcolm Canmore, and who purified and revived the religious life of Scotland. Someone had said to Lucy, 'There were no medieval mystics in Scotland. The Scots were always more interested in reality.' Lucy replied: 'But it is surely because Reality is the sole quest and joy of mystics that we find Margaret's life transfigured by it.'
It was Evelyn Underhill who suggested the title of Lucy's next book, Mirrors of the Holy, published in 1928. Bishop Barkway wrote of this:
The title of her best-known book is an admirable clue to her own character. She was truly a mirror of the Holy. She reflected that with which her thoughts were constantly occupied, and like a mirror hid herself behind its reflection. The self-renunciation after which others strive is often distorted and unattractive; her self-abandonment was so complete that it drew no attention to itself.
The book is a study of the lives of ten women saints, between 1098 and 1914, each one clearly understood and perceptively described within the particular geographical and historical context of her life. Lucy shows how the cultivation and discipline of prayer and adoration transform the practices of everyday life, in a way that could only have been written out of personal experience. The book is rich in short passages of spiritual depth; for example this from Elizabeth Leseur:
People do not understand that one can be very detached from all human things and live a keen spiritual life and yet find pleasure in the interests and occupations of the world: it is only when one has understood eternity that one can fully understand that delight.
And from Lucy herself: 'The temper of the saints had also a little sparkle in it; "a delicate humour", it has been said, "was their crowning glory".' Which reminds me of an occasion when she took me to a concert performance of 'Carmen' in the Younger Hall. (She was an excellent godmother and I still have and love some of her presents). After the interval the girl singing Carmen announced to the audience: 'I hope you'll excuse any imperfections in my voice, but I'm singing with a very sore throat.' Lucy said to me afterwards, 'I noticed expressions of pain on her face, but I put that down to the flute playing so horribly out of tune'.
I said earlier that Lucy's wardenship of Pleshey was to be a vitally important part of her life. I quote now from Martin Reith's long article on Lucy which he intended to publish but was prevented from doing by his early death. This is part of what he wrote: 'Not long ago an experienced retreat conductor said that of all the retreat houses he knew it was at Pleshey that he found the most spiritual, prayerful atmosphere'. Then Martin Reith goes on:
It is a fine spring morning in the 1930s, and some men and women from every walk of life have managed to get a week-end off, and are going to spend it very profitably. In ones and twos they are arriving. The front door is opened, and with the most welcoming of smiles and old-world courtesy the warden ushers them in. Miss Menzies has been up, as usual, since 6 a.m. She will have an hour's rest or less, after lunch, and will eventually go to bed at midnight. It is her usual routine and late into the night retreatants will find themselves drawn to go and speak to her about their problems, their anxieties, or their doubts. When people came to Miss Menzies they discovered that she 'spoke to the heart, and was a presence'.
What was it about her that made her the kind of person to whom our Lord could bring people? Lucy Menzies always had time for everyone. One retreatant commented,
She was so interested, genuinely, in you, that she got you to talk about yourself. Uncritical, quick to see your point of view, utterly humble, very rarely speaking about herself - probably hardly ever thinking about herself - such a person's lack of self-assertion puts others at their ease. All she had to give was at anyone's disposal, and those who sought her advice discovered that she had the most level-headed understanding of life. Her certainty had been achieved through suffering patiently borne. Her beatific calm and gentleness were never a mask for weakness or for self-deception, only for her rock-like spiritual strength. Nothing and nobody ever got past her when she felt the truth was concerned. In her soft, husky voice, with never a hint of self-importance and usually with a delightful humour; charity and truth mingled as she spoke.
Of her time at Pleshey, Bishop Barkway wrote: 'There she left a lasting heritage in the spiritual atmosphere and way of life which she established, and, more obviously in the lovely chapel which might almost be called her creation. She spent herself unsparingly on her retreat work.
There was nothing conspicuous in her appearance to the eyes of strangers. What they saw was a slight, self-effacing person with wistful eyes looking out through tinted glasses, a forehead with a tiny wrinkle as she strained to hear, the loveliest of smiles. When she spoke there was a hint of a lilt in her soft, husky voice, signifying that here was another fellow mortal who would understand and sympathise ... When you found her, you discovered something very rare - a heart at leisure with itself, which is the essence of the rarest of all virtues, that of humility not thinking badly of yourself, but not thinking of yourself at all. Everything was immediately referred to God ... She seemed to be completely in rapport with you, and without explanation to see your point of view and be completely at your service. The quiet humour which glinted in her eye and suddenly flooded out in an unexpected phrase of disconcerting penetration, the old-fashioned courtesy which made her so acceptable a warden at Pleshey and delightful hostess to children and grown-ups in her home were the shining colours on the veil of self-effacement.
Her writing continued. In 1931 she translated Fran¨ois Malavel's book on mysticism from the French, put into English for the first time, with an introduction by Evelyn Underhill.
In 1938, to her tremendous regret, Lucy had to retire from being warden at Pleshey, largely because of her failing sight, but on other grounds of health also. So she came back to St Andrews, to the delight of her many friends. Her failing sight did not prevent her from further writing, as I shall relate. She moved from St Leonard's Cottage to a little old house in North Castle Street, which she restored. This had the double advantage of being nearer to her sister, now widowed and living on The Scores, which overlook the Castle and the sea; also of being just across the road from All Saints' Church from which she drew much strength. Dean P. H. Wilson was rector at this time, and there was a great meeting of minds, a meeting of spiritualities, between the two. If you are thinking that this was a situation with which Barbara Pym might have had tremendous fun in one of her novels - an elderly spinster and a High Church priest - no, it wasn't in the least like that. A meeting of minds and of spiritualities. I discussed this with Dean Wilson's daughter, who told me that her father referred people to Lucy for spiritual guidance, and now, looking back, I can see this was so, without of course knowing who these people were. Later, an article in the St Andrews Citizen described Lucy at this time as 'sitting in her little ancient house like a very benevolent and non-predatory spider, radiating long filaments of kindness and friendship in all directions'. That's how I remember her (though I wouldn't have likened her to a spider): immensely kind, beatifically calm, totally uncomplaining, universally popular, never uncharitable, always hospitable, always selflessly interested in others, never obtrusive.
Writing of Lucy Menzies in his book about the Scottish Episcopal Church, Professor Gavin White says: 'She combined with the Underhill view of God present in everything, a sharp edge which cut through to the heart of things'. She did indeed, but the sharp edge was always applied with the utmost charity.
And a further point: she was always realistic. I remember her once saying in her slow gentle voice: 'I've been to church four times today. Far too much.' And she wrote to a friend: 'I must tell you that I have always found great difficulty with prayer; it really is a matter of blood and tears. I want to tell you that though I know prayer is everything, I find it almost impossible.' (I, at any rate, find that cheering.) And of suffering, to another friend: 'It's no use, really, tying to fathom why there is suffering. But we've got to accept it gladly. Don't try to understand. Just be in God. God gives us our circumstances and environment to make something of. It is within these circumstances that we are to achieve sanctity. The Lord's way for you is just where you are - and if I may say so, a jolly good way too.' 'God present in everything.' 'She cut through to the heart of things.' Her own physical suffering at this time was acute.
In 1939 she made the first translation into English of the Abbé de Tourville's Letters of direction on the Spiritual Life; again it had an introduction by Evelyn Underhill and I quote from what she wrote there:
There is a twofold realism. On the one hand by a vivid sense of the presence and transcendence of God, a confident self-giving to God. On the other hand by an acceptance of human nature as it really is, and its limitations and weakness, and a determination to find the raw material of its sanctification in the homely circumstances of everyday life; yet without any reduction of the splendours of its supernatural destiny.
I have quoted this passage because it describes very cogently the personality of Lucy Menzies as I knew her, as she gave me cups of coffee, as she took me as a child to the cinema, which I loved.
Evelyn Underhill had appointed Lucy as her literary executor and after her death in 1941 Lucy settled to her task, bringing out works that had not yet been published. In 1943, for instance, she provided the material for Charles Williams's edition of The Letters of Evelyn Underhill, which included the earliest letters of spiritual guidance written to Lucy herself in the years between 1923 and 1941.
In 1947 Longmans published Lucy's Father Wainwrlght, a record of the fifty-six years spent by that great priest first as curate, then as vicar, of St Peter's, Wapping, until his death in 1929. Lucy went and lived there for a time, to absorb the atmosphere of what was then an area of grinding poverty, hunger and human misery.
In the early fifties, she edited the retreat addresses of Father Edward Keble Talbot, who had been a member of the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield from 1906, and its Superior for eighteen years. It was a particularly laborious task, as it involved piecing together notes from Father Talbot in his practically illegible handwriting.
In 1953 Lucy's last completed book was published. She had undertaken to travel to the monastery of Einsiedeln in order to translate the writings of Mechtild of Magdeburg, the first mystical works to be composed not in Latin but in the vernacular German.
By then Lucy's health was very poor, as was her sight, but the task was accomplished. In the introduction she wrote:
All mystics, from whatever century or country they come, have a conviction of the supreme value of their inner experience of God. Vision and love are one act in which all blessedness is found. They find all natural lovely things moving towards the expression of the inexpressible.
For people like me who find the concept of mysticism difficult, that is a helpful statement.
In June 1954, Lucy was made an honorary Doctor of Divinity by the University of St Andrews. (Lucy was almost certainly alone in ascribing this honour chiefly to the reputation of her father.) In his presentation address Professor Baxter said:
Possessing deep historical scholarship and linguistic equipment both wide and accurate, Miss Menzies brought to the understanding of St Columba and Queen Margaret the rarer gifts of intuition and insight, and as the list of her writings lengthened, so this unusual insight deepened into an unusual spiritual charm ... For ten years she was Warden of the Retreat House of Pleshey, that centre of spiritual peace and contemplation, and if she largely made that place a haven for others, it ripened in her those gracious qualities and lovely virtues which we who know her most admire.
Another book was planned and had been begun, a life of Evelyn Underhill. But before it could be completed, Lucy had died. Written instead by Margaret Cropper, the book was published in 1958.
I would like to quote the whole of the sermon which Father Macdonald preached at Lucy's funeral, when that fervent and memorable preacher excelled even his customary standard. But here at least is an extract:
Evelyn Underhill once wrote: 'There are two ruling factors in all the varied types of Christian holiness. The first is the stream of tradition which lies in the New Testament and in which all these lives are bathed. To that tradition each adds something ... From that tradition each takes inspiration, formation and power'. Lucy Menzies, took and possessed all three - inspiration, formation and power. 'The other factor in Christian holiness', Evelyn Underhill went on, 'is the social life, the time and place within which the saint emerges, with its special incitements to heroic virtue and its special demands and needs.' Lucy Menzies found that in the life of the church, past and present - in the intense reality of God and his saints, in the inner life of quiet and retreat of the mystic, in the pain patiently borne, and not least in her fellow men, women and children.
Above the mantelpiece in the room where Lucy died there were two texts, the one in the centre was simply 'Eternity'. The other was from George Herbert:
Be useful where thou livest, so they both want and wish thy pleasing presence still. Find out men's wants and will, and meet them there. All worldly joys go to the one joy of doing kindnesses.
All who knew Lucy knew how totally her life fulfilled Herbert's words.
Her grave is in the Eastern Cemetery here in St Andrews, where she lies with her parents. On the tombstone are engraved Celtic signs and also these words from the book of Wisdom: 'But the righteous live forever, and in the Lord is their reward.'
The above is a shortened version of a talk given at All Saints' Church, St Andrews, 26 November, 2002.
Article by: John Hunter