Caryll Houselander

Caryll Houselander (b. 1901, d. 1954), a woodcarver and ecclesiastical artist by trade, was an influential and popular Catholic writer and poet.

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Early life

She was the second of two daughters of Wilmott and Gertrude Provis Houslelander. When she was six her mother converted to Catholicism and she in turn was baptised. Shortly after her ninth birthday her parents separated and her mother opened a boarding house to support the family whilst Caryll was sent away to a convent where she reported her first mystical experience. One day she entered a room and saw a Bavarian nun sitting by herself, weeping and polishing shoes. At this time there was much anti-German sentiment due to the war. As she stared she saw the nun's head being pressed down by a crown of thorns that she was to interpret as Christ suffering in the woman.

In her teens she returned to help her mother in the running of the boarding house. Gertrude allowed a priest to stay and this became a source of scandal such that Caryll and her mother suffered ostracism. This may have been partly influential in Caryll's decision to leave the Church as a teenager, not returning until in her twenties. It may also have contributed to a sense of isolation she would feel at times, reflected in panic attacks when entering rooms and meeting strangers, so much so that she was considered neurotic.

One night in July 1918 Caryll was sent by her mother on an errand. On her way to the street vendor she looked up and saw what she later described as a huge Russian icon spread across the sky. The icon she saw was Christ crucified lifted up and looking down, brooding over the world. Shortly after she read in a newspaper article about the assassination of Russian Tsar Nicholas II. She said the face she saw in the newspaper photograph was the face she saw spread out over the sky as the crucified Christ.

A third vision occurred when she was travelling on a busy underground train when she suddenly saw Christ, living and rejoicing , suffering and dying, in each and everyone of the passengers. When she left the train the mystical experience continued for several days, during which she became convinced that the unity of life in Christ was the only solution to loneliness and the human condition.

Another experience involved one of her doctors who had died who showed up and sat next to her on a bus. They were able to talk and converse.

Later Life & Works

The three mystical experiences she claimed to have experienced, convinced her that Christ is to be found in all people, even those whom the world shunned because they did not conform to certain standards of piety. She would write that if people only looked for Christ in the "saints" they would see Him. She herself smoked and drank and had a sharp tongue. She returned to the Catholic Church in 1925 but her spiritual reading was founded almost entirely on the Gospels, rather than the Fathers of the Church or official Church documents. She met and fell in love with Sidney Reilly, famous spy and the model for Ian Flemings "James Bond", but he left her broken-hearted when he married another woman. She would never marry.

"she seemed to see everything for the first time, and the driest of doctrinal considerations shone out like a restored picture when she had finished with it. And her writing was always natural; she seemed to find no difficulty in getting the right word; no, not merely the right word, the telling word, that left you gasping."^[1]

During the war doctors began sending patients to Houselander for counselling and therapy. Even though she lacked formal education in this area she seemed to have a natural empathy for people in mental anguish and the talent for helping them to rebuild their world. A visitor found her once alone on the floor, apparently in great pain, that she attributed to her willingness to accept on herself a great trial and temptation that was overwhelming another person.

The psychiatrist Dr. Eric Strauss, later President of the British Psychological Society, said of Houslander: "she loved them back to life"..."she was a divine eccentric".

She titled her autobiography "A Rocking-Horse Catholic" to differentiate herself from those who described themselves as "cradle Catholics". She died of breast cancer in 1954 at the age of 52. Maisie Ward wrote her biography, "Caryll Houselander - that Divine Eccentric" (1962).

Select Bibliography

Sheed & Ward books:

• "This War is the Passion" (1941)
• "The Reed of God" (1944)
• "The Splendor of the Rosary" by Maisie Ward, prayers by Caryll Houselander (1945)
• "The Flowering Tree" (1945)
• "The Dry Wood" (1947)
• "The Comforting of Christ" (1954)
• "The Passion of the Infant Christ" (1949)
• "Guilt" (1952)
• "A Rocking-Horse Catholic" (1955)
• "The Stations of the Cross" (1955) illustrated with fourteen wood engravings by Caryll Houselander.
• "The Way of the Cross" (1955)
• "Inside the Ark" (1956)
• "Terrible Farmer Timson and Other Stories" (1957)
• "The Risen Christ" (1959)

Notes & References

See also

• Christian mysticism
• List of Christian mystics
• Mysticism