Maria and the Bellasis Family

 

Maria and the Bellasis Family- 1880-1899

 

This is a continuation of the book about Maria Bowring, but since I have little actual documentary evidence about her life during these 19 years, I feel the need to put in into the category of Historical Fiction.  However the details regarding the Bellasis family and the Society  of the Holy Child Jesus are based on articles and books written by Mary Bellasis and others. 

 

Chapter 1 

 

 

1881

 

Having written a diary all my life, I find it hard not to put my thoughts and actions down in some form.  

 

I have been spending some time visiting with my brother  Lewin and his family. He has such lovely children, and so many of them. I don’t know how his wife Kattie manages so well.  While I was there, Kattie’s eldest sister came to visit. She is a Catholic nun, Mother Francis, but her real name is Mary Bellasis.  She has two other sisters who are also nuns from the same convent, the Holy Child Jesus convent near Hastings.  It also has a school attached, where the Bellasis girls went to school.

 

Two of Sister Francis’  brothers are priests, the eldest and the youngest. They both work in Birmingham where their father, Sarjeant Edward Bellasis along with John Henry Newman, created the Birmingham Oratory.  It is first of all a secondary school for Catholic young men, who want an education to compete with a public school education. Catholics are not welcome at Public schools or Universities.

 

Mother Francis  tells me that the Oratory was based on Stonyhurst, as her father Serjeant Bellaisis was so impressed with the education available there. That is where my brother Charles went to prepare to become a priest.  It is over 20 years since his death in Rome, but I still find myself wondering what he would think of things I am thinking of doing. 

 

Anyway, the conversation came around to the fact that I am not really very happy living with my step-mother Deborah, although she is only a few years older than me, so hardly to be considered  in a parental capacity. She is very wrapped up in her work with Unitarianism,  which of course, Papa  was too, which is why they had so much in common.  But I cannot appreciate her point of view any longer,  and find it very awkward to tiptoe around her rather than offend her by offering my take on things religious. 

 

So Mother Francis  suggested that I might consider coming as a layperson to live with her in her Religious House, Nottingham Place, in London.  She is the head mistress, and the others are either teachers, or training to be teachers and I would come as an annuitant, so I would pay my way, but if I wished to be involved in the teaching responsibilities, she would welcome that too. I told her I had taught for a while in Exeter and in Hong Kong  and I also mentioned my experiences living with the  Sisters of Mercy. 

 

“Oh, I have heard about them. They do such good things, and their leader is almost considered a saint,” she said. 

 

“Do you mean Lydia Seddon?”

 

“Yes,  I hear she has opened similar houses all over the world - and even sent some of her nuns with Florence Nightingale to help during the war.” 

“I’ve heard that name before, somewhere - but it was ages ago, it's probably not the same person. My Florence Nightingale I met ages ago at my uncle's parish church in Norton, Derbyshire.“

 

“Oh, I think her parents are from that part of the world.  She became a nurse, and then started schools for training nurses, and more or less changed the attitude of the medical profession to the idea of having women be a part of the medical service.” 

 

“I must read up on her, and perhaps contact her, and see if she remembers meeting me,” I said. “But I want to hear more about how you think Lydia Seddon is so wonderful.  When I was in her convent, people in the streets threw potatoes at us.”

 

“Why was that?”

 

“She had had a certain amount of bad publicity, partly to do with me.  I spent six months there to see if I wanted to commit to the life of the nuns, but I was very homesick, and very upset about not getting letters from my parents and friends. So I ran away, and the newspapers featured  the story.”

 

“Did you want to quit?”

 

“I wanted to be involved in a life of service to the poor and her convent certainly involved me in that. But she sort of brain washed us into believing that we could not leave the convent. Another nun who was there at the same time I was, tried in vain to leave, and  in the end her mother came and physically removed her.  And then her story was bandied all over in the papers. She was very harsh about the life she was forced to lead. I’m not saying she was lying, but she  put the worst possible slant on everything we did.  And the nuns  did seem to want to shut her up.”

 

“What happened?”

 

“Mother Lydia  took the newspaper that was making the biggest problem to court, and won. And the Bishop came and did a very thorough examination of all of the things she and the others did, and said he was satisfied.  The public outcry was because it was listed as an Anglican institution, but we had all sorts of Anglo-Catholic activities going on.”

 

“Like what?”

 

“We had weekday Mass, and communion frequently. We wore crucifixes on our habits, we genuflected, and had confession.   This was all at the time when the Oxford movement was making such an impression on the church.”  

 

“Oh, I know a lot about that. My parents converted to Catholicism largely because of the friendship my father had with John Henry Newman, who as you know, converted to the Catholic church and has just become  a Cardinal.   Were you happy with the Catholic type activities?”

 

“Yes, I liked the fact that things weren’t so bare and quiet.  We grew up as Unitarians, and I was baptised in the religion twice, once as a baby, and once when I was 16 on the day I met Florence Nightingale.”

 

“But even though you say you wanted a religious-type life, you didn’t go back to it later.”

 

“My brother became a Catholic, and then a priest, which was so very hard on Papa although he  had campaigned for the removal of the ban on the Catholic  and all non Anglican religions limiting their freedom to worship as they liked. But for some reason, he felt no affinity whatsoever for the Catholic ways.  My sister Emily became a Catholic  too, and when we were in Hong Kong, I did too. Then my sister   became a nun, choosing to stay in Hong Kong  and join the convent rather than come back to Britain with us when we left in 1859. She died there ten years later. ”

 

“How did your father cope with her becoming a nun?

 

“Very badly, but she was happy. But then she died and  it dawned on all of us, that if we had never gone to Hong Kong, we would have had her near us all those years - Catholic and nun or not.”

 

“And, or course, you know that my brother Lewin became a Catholic when he started seeing Kattie, and actually none of us are now Unitarians. Papa  hated that.”

 

“Why don’t you come and spend a week or two at our Religious House in London, and see what we do.  There are about 50 of us all together, and our rules are much less stringent than those you mentioned before. Our families can visit us, and we can visit them.  One of my sisters, Clare, who never married, bought a house across the road from our priest brothers, and we can go on holiday to visit her, and see them at the same time.  With so many of us, we can’t all be together at the same time, but my sisters who are nuns are at the same convent, and I have been with them up until a few years ago.

 

So we left it at that, but I felt  I had made a friend, and decided I would take her up on her offer to see what I thought about her convent in the  middle of London.