Supplement to Roads to Rome

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ROADS TO ROME

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ROADS TO ROME

SUPPLEMENT TO ROADS TO ROME

Foreword

The first edition of Roads to Rome was published in August 2010. This supplement is a recognition that things do not remain static where conversions to the Catholic faith are concerned. Within two months a major change had taken place when John Henry Cardinal Newman was beatified by his holiness Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to England. It is necessary to keep up to date with such developments. In addition, much literature is being published all the time about the people dealt with in the main text of the book.

When in due course a second edition of the book is published, it will contain amendments to existing entries. These will consist of references to additional writing about them, where this is available, plus extra facts of interest and appropriate quotations from their writings, or from writings about them.

This supplement, however, consists solely of new entries. These comprise people who are new converts since publication, plus a number of others, about whom it has been decided that they should have been entered in the first place. The most notable is the source of much embarrassment for the author. This is because, inadvertently, he managed to omit two canonized saints. Not only that, but one of these comes from a place only some twenty miles away from where he wrote the first edition of the book. The place is York and the saint of course is Margaret Clitherow. The proximity to the saint’s residence is no source of comfort for him, just the contrary in fact. And phrases such as “even Homer nods” are clearly not appropriate, as he is certainly no Homer. The author has in addition missed Saint Eustace White, also canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970. Slightly lesser figures omitted first time around include a number of Beati, notably Blessed William Howard, first Lord Stafford. I am grateful to my good friend Anne Barbeau Gardiner for drawing my attention to this one. It should be added that the author cannot be blamed for the new converts coming into the Church since the book was published. He is delighted to make entries for these. The most notable of them are perhaps several notable Anglican clergymen received into the Church in the wake of the institution by Pope Benedict XVI of the Anglican Ordinariate.

I am very grateful for the many supporting comments given to me by so many people in the course of writing both the book and this supplement to it.

John Beaumont

March 2016

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ROADS TO ROME

Abdullah, Achmed (born Alexander Nicholayevitch Romanoff) - writer; b. 12 May 1881, Romanoff Palace, Yalta, Russia; c. 1936; d. 12 May 1945, New York City; born Russian orthodox; his father, Grand Duke Nicholas Romanoff, was a cousin of Czar Nicholas II (1868-1918); his mother, Princess Nourmahal Durani, was the daughter of the Amir of Afghanistan; after his mother attempted to poison her husband due to his many affairs, they divorced; he was brought up by his uncle in Afghanistan who adopted him and changed his name to Achmed Abdullah Nadir Khan el-Durani el Iddrissyeh; raised as a Muslim; educated at Eton and Oxford University; upon graduation he became a British citizen; career in the British Army, rising to the rank of captain; served in many countries, often acting as a spy for the British Army; after retiring from the British Army, he joined the Turkish Army and fought with distinction in the First Balkan War (1912-1913); emigrated to the United States sometime after 1914; and became a very successful writer; noted for his pulp stories of crime, mystery and adventure set in exotic places; wrote screenplays for some successful films; torn for years between Russian Orthodoxy and Islam, but finally became a Catholic; married at least three times and was the father of two daughters; two academy award nominations; see (selective list) (stories) The Red Stain, (1915); The Blue-Eyed Manchu, (1916); Bucking the Tiger, (1917); The Trail of the Beast (1918); The Benefactor's Club (1921); Bucking the Tiger (1921); Shackled (1924); Steel and Jade (1927); Dreamers of Empire (1929) (with T. Compton Pakenham); Girl on the Make (1932) (with Faith Baldwin); Mysteries of Asia (1935); The Flower of the Gods (1936) (with Fulton Oursler); Deliver Us From Evil (1939); (autobiography) The Cat Had Nine Lives (1933); (screenplays) The Thief of Baghdad (1924); The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935).

Agnew, Emily C. – authoress; c. 1840; wrote several novels and poems; worked among the poor in Bermondsey, London as a Sister of Mercy; the depiction in her novel Geraldine of the heroine embarking on the religious life greatly influenced Emily Bowles (see below); met Newman in Rome in 1846; in 1848 established a convent of Benedictine Solitaries in Southwark, London; later moved to Nice, France where in 1868 she was still abbess of a small Benedictine community; see Geraldine: A Tale of Conscience (1837) (a pro-Catholic novel, favorably reviewed by Newman) (“Let me then first ask who granted to Englishmen the famous trial by jury and laid the foundation of our boasted Constitution? The Catholic Alfred! Who gained for them Magna Charta? The Catholic barons of England, with a Catholic archbishop at their head. Who won the glorious fields of Cressy, Poitiers, and Agincourt? The Catholic armies of our land, under our Catholic Edwards and Henry”); Rome and the Abbey (1849).

Akers, George – priest; b. 1837; c. 1868; d. 1899; family were early settlers in St. Kitts and active in the abolition of slavery; formerly involved in the movement for corporate reunion between the Church of England and the Catholic Church, when coadjutor and curate for Frederick George Lee (see below); ordained Catholic priest in 1870; Canon of Westminster; President of St. Edmund’s College, Ware 1880-1882; his uncle, Aretas Akers-Douglas became Home Secretary and first Viscount Chilston.

Amery, Colin - architectural consultant, historian and writer; until 2010 founding director of the British division of the international conservation organization, The World Monuments Fund; for 20 years he wrote a weekly column on architecture for the Financial Times; appointed in1998 by the Prime Minister to be a board member of the Architectural Heritage Fund; Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects; adviser to the National Gallery on the Sainsbury Wing; assisted the Prince of Wales with the establishment of his Institute of Architecture; served on the Duchy of Cornwall Property Committee from 1990 to 1998; trustee of Art and Christianity Enquiry (ACE) and the War Memorials Trust; President, the Lutyens Trust; was editor of the Architectural Review; see (selected list) Period Houses and Their Details (1974); The Rape of Britain (1975) (with Dan Cruickshank); Three Centuries of Architectural Craftsmanship (1977); The National Theatre: An Architectural Guide (1977); Victorian Buildings in London, 1837-87: An Illustrated Guide (1980); Lutyens: The work of the English Architect Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944) (1981); Wren's London (1988); A Celebration of Art and Architecture: National Gallery Sainsbury's Wing (1991); Glyndebourne: Building a Vision (1994) (with Rosy Runciman); The Pritzker Architecture Prize: The First Twenty Years (1999) (with J. Carter Brown); Vanishing Histories: 100 Endangered Sites from the World Monuments Watch (2001) (with John Berendt); Architecture, Industry and Innovation (2000); The Lost World of Pompeii (2002) (with Brian Curran); St. Petersburg (2006) (with Brian Curran); Creating Environments: The World of André Jordan (2008) (with Jordi Bernardo); St. George's Bloomsbury, London (2008) (with Kerry Downes).

Arendrup, Edith (née Courtauld) – artist and nun; b. 1 September 1846, Bocking, Braintree, Essex; c. 1870; d. 10 January 1934, Bocking; daughter of a junior partner in Samuel Courtauld and Co., silk and crepe manufacturers; mother and only brother died early; brought up as a Unitarian; educated at home; became an artist and had several landscapes and religious paintings exhibited at the Royal Academy; in 1872 on a visit to Egypt, met her husband, Lieutenant Søren Adolph Arendrup (1834-1875), a Danish officer, advisor to the Egyptian army; a daughter died in infancy and her husband was killed in Ethiopia in 1875; she returned to England with her son in 1876 and settled in Wimbledon; her father died suddenly in 1876; she was a great benefactress to the Catholic church in Wimbledon; her son died of typhoid in 1896; she joined a religious order, the Daughters of Mary; worked for thirty years among the poor; retired in 1925 to her old home in Bocking, which was now a convent run by Franciscan nuns as an old people’s home; buried in the grounds of the convent; see Richard Milward, Triumph Over Tragedy: The Life of Edith Arendrup (1991); DNB (“Arendrup survived these distressing events thanks to her deep religious faith…Her conversion changed her life, and, with the fervor of a convert, she determined to spread her new faith in strongly Protestant Wimbledon. In 1877 she opened a small chapel in her house in Cottenham Park. Then, as the congregation grew, she bought land off Edge Hill and had a fine new church built in 1887. She finally persuaded the Jesuits to accept its charge on the understanding that they could also open a day school in Wimbledon. As a result the number of Catholics increased so rapidly that the district was soon being talked of as ‘a hot-bed of Jesuit Popery.’ Shortly after her death, a friend wrote of her: ‘She was notable in many ways. She had great artistic talents; she was a skilled horsewoman. But most notable of all were her qualities of disposition and character. With absolute unselfishness, she devoted her life and resources to the building of the church on Edge Hill and later to rescue work in the East End. Her deep and tender sympathy for all who were suffering and afflicted expressed itself in a manner of impressive graciousness and dignity’”).

Argyll, Anne Duchess of(née Colquhoun) – b. 1809; c. 1847; d. 1878; third wife of the seventh Duke (d. 1847), whom she married in 1831; Dr. Pusey tried to persuade her to remain an Anglican, but she was greatly influenced in her conversion to the Catholic faith by Manning (see below); close friend of Fr. Faber (see below) and very generous benefactress of the London Oratory; see Madeleine Beard, Faith and Fortune (1997) (“At Brompton the Duchess gave large sums for the temporary Oratory and £4,000 alone for the Sanctuary, the precious wooden inlaid floor having belonged to the 7th Duke. She later left the Oratorians the proceeds of the sale of her home in Ardencaple, which amounted to £20,000”)..

Argyll, Margaret Campbell, Duchess of (née Ethel Margaret Whigham) – socialite; b. 1 December 1912; c. 1933; d. 25 March 1993, London; only child of Helen Mann Hannay and George Hay Whighham, a self-made Scottish millionaire; spent the first fourteen years of her life in New York City; private education; notable beauty who had several romances in her youth; in 1931 presented at court in London as a debutante, and named “Deb of the Year”; married Charles Sweeny, the handsome American amateur golfer and stockbroker in 1933 at the Brompton Oratory, London, after converting to his Catholic faith; the wedding drew a crowd of three thousand onlookers; lived a glamorous life and was one of the most photographed and publicized beauties of the 1930s; she was immortalized in P. G. Wodehouse’s anglicized version of Cole Porter’s “You're The Top” from the musical Anything Goes (1935): “You're the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire/ You're Mussolini/ You're Mrs. Sweeny/ You're Camembert…” ; accident-prone: in 1934 newspaper placards in purple, usually reserved for royalty, announced that double pneumonia and a kidney infection had laid her at death's door, but she received the Last Rites and recovered, but three years later was reported to have fallen while pregnant; in 1943 she had a near fatal fall down an elevator shaft; after this her friends noticed a dramatic increase in her sexual appetite; three children of her marriage (one still-born), but they divorced in 1947; she had several romantic relationships before becoming the third wife of Ian Douglas Campbell, eleventh Duke of Argyll, in 1951; between 1959 and 1963 she was involved in a sensational and sordid divorce case when her husband sued for divorce on the grounds of adultery and was granted a decree; the judge described her as a completely promiscuous woman (he also criticized the Duke’s morals); other legal actions about trust funds, libel and conspiracy to defraud involved her in much financial loss; continued to spend extravagantly and threw lavish parties in the 1970s; had many feuds with her family, her landlords, her bankers, and her biographers; in 1978 her debts forced her to move from her house to a hotel suite; wrote a gossip column in the Tatler 1979-1982; in 1990 she was unable to pay the hotel bills and moved to St. George’s nursing home in Pimlico; largely penniless at the time of her death; buried alongside her first husband in Brookwood Cemetery, Woking, Surrey; in 1995 an opera about her later days, Powder Her Face, composed by Thomas Ades, with a libretto by Philip Hensher, was premiered; see Forget Not: The Autobiography of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll (1975) (written under the name of Margaret Campbell).

Arlington, first Earl of – see under Bennet, Henry.

Arundell of Wardour, The Lady (Mary Anne Grenville Nugent Temple) – b. 1787; c. 1830; d. 1845; wife of the tenth Baron Arundell of Wardour; only daughter of the Duke of Buckingham and the Catholic Baroness Nugent; became acquainted with Rosmini during a tour of Italy with her husband; great supporter thereafter of the Institute of Charity, especially of Fr. William Lockhart (see below) (her father was a close friend of Lockhart’s father); started a school for infants and girls in Loughborough, which was staffed by nuns of the female branch of the Rosminian order, the Sisters of Providence, who were given hospitality by her at her home; see William Lockhart (ed), Life of Rosmini, Vol. II (1886), p.12 (“She confided to [Fr. Lockhart] that she had become a Catholic because of the example of her mother and that through a chink in the door of her oratory, which was always locked, and was an object of the greatest mystery to the children and servants, she had seen her elevated from the ground in prayer”).

Astor, Viscountess (Janet) Bronwen (née Pugh) – former model; b. 6 June 1930, London; c. 1970; third daughter of Sir John Alun Pugh, a Welsh county court judge; educated privately; one of the first female announcers on BBC television; worked as a celebrated fashion model, at which time she was the muse of Pierre Balmain (1914-1982), the couturier; in 1960 married (third wife) William Waldorf “Bill” Astor II (1907-1966), businessman and politician, son of Waldorf, 2nd Viscount Astor (1879-1952), the politician and newspaper proprietor, and Nancy, Viscountess Astor (1879-1964), the first woman to sit as a Member of Parliament in the British House of Commons; two daughters of the marriage; mistress of Cliveden at the time of the Profumo Affair in 1963; opened her home to the homeless and in 1983 trained as a psychotherapist; read much spiritual and psychological writing, e.g., P. D. Ouspensky, Carl Jung, and Teilhard de Chardin; see Peter Stanford, Bronwen Astor: Her Life and Times (2000).

Bagshaw, Christopher - priest; b. 1552, Derbyshire; c. 1582 (received in France); d. 1625, Paris; son of George Bagshaw, an innkeeper in Lichfield; was at St. John's College, Cambridge in 1566; graduated BA at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1572 (MA in 1575); probably a fellow of that college and a party to the expulsion from the college of Robert Persons (see below); still a zealous Protestant in 1575, principal of Gloucester Hall, but resigned in 1582 and went to the English College at Rheims, where he was received into the Catholic Church; in 1583 he was ordained to the priesthood; sent to the English College in Rome, but was expelled because of his quarrelsome behavior; went to Paris where he became a doctor of divinity at the Sorbonne; went on the mission in England in 1585, but arrested very shortly after his arrival (seems to have been carrying a letter to Scotland sent by two agents of Mary, Queen of Scots, in Paris); imprisoned in the Tower of London; released in early 1588 and returned home to Lichfield, but shortly afterwards committed by the government to prison and sent to Wisbech Castle, Cambridgeshire, where he stayed for most of the next thirteen years; he was a prominent figure in the controversies between Catholic priests and the reign of Elizabeth I; after his release in 1601 he went to reside abroad and settled in Paris; see Gillow, Vol. I, p.101; Catholic Encyclopedia ("There now came to a head a factional division among the laborers on the English mission. There were two original sources of difference: the existence of a Spanish faction, headed by the Jesuits, and the Jesuits' control of the English College at Rome...The partisan feelings aroused found vent in two controversies in which Bagshaw was prominent, if not first, on the side opposed to the Jesuits and their friends. The earlier dispute, arbitrated after nine months, arose from the vigorous opposition of Bagshaw and the elder clergy to the introduction of a religious rule among the thirty-three priests in Wisbech Castle. Later, when, partly for the purpose of consolidating English Catholic sentiment in favor of a Catholic successor to Elizabeth, Cardinal Cajetan placed at the head of the English Mission, as archpriest, Father George Blackwell, with instructions to consult the Jesuit provincial on matters of importance..., Bagshaw headed a party of protest, which, on being disciplined, appealed, with the secret aid of Elizabeth's government, to Rome. Their appeal was in part successful, though the appointment was confirmed").