Literary Converts
by Joseph Pearce
Ignatius Press,
2000 452 pp.
1/800-651-1531
www.ignatius.com

Joseph Pearce is becoming one of the foremost biographers in the English speaking world. Author of biographies on J.R.R. Tolkien, G.K. Chesterton, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, his superb style is gathering a wide audience. More importantly, his emphasis on twentieth century figures is giving him a network of working knowledge that allows him to relate his subjects to each other. This is best evidenced by his recent work, Literary Converts, an excellent book that recounts the Catholic conversion stories of dozens of writers in the last century, from Oscar Wilde’s deathbed conversion in 1900 to Malcolm Muggeridge and John Seymour, who converted in the 1980s and lived into the 1990s.

Some writers receive a lot of attention, like Robert Hugh Benson, son of the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury; others receive a little, like Walter Hooper, C.S. Lewis’ close friend and “greatest literary champion” who left the Church of England for Rome in 1988 after the Anglicans ordained women (and whose conversion prompted speculation that Lewis, too, would have crossed the Tiber in the wake of the priestesses). A few converts are discussed throughout the entire book, like G.K. Chesterton, whose pervasive presence in the book is appropriate because, without Chesterton, it’s possible that a book like Literary Converts wouldn’t have been possible. Pearce tells us in the Preface: “Chesterton’s ‘coming out’ as a Christian had a profound effect . . . It heralded a Christian literary revival which, throughout the twentieth century, represented an evocative artistic and intellectual response to the prevailing agnosticism of the age.”

The book’s narrative recounts what I call the Catholic “cross-pollination” that took place during the first third of the century, and, to a lesser extent, throughout the rest of the century. During these years, writers and intellectuals were converting to the faith and bringing other writers and intellectuals with them through their writings, public debates, and personal correspondence.

Chesterton’s writings, for instance, brought Ronald Knox closer to the Church and contributed to his conversion in 1917. Ronald Knox, in turn, played a huge role in Chesterton’s much-belated conversion in 1922. Similar mutualities are found throughout the book, and, though the book is about converts, it doesn’t neglect the steady force of a handful of cradle Catholics, like Hilaire Belloc, constantly beckoning from the other shore. The narrative, in short, is both entertaining and edifying. It’s entertaining to see the intellectual force that went into the conversions; edifying to see so many great men kneel humbly before Rome.

Especially entertaining are stories of a few converts who were particularly antagonistic to the Church in their younger years, such as Arnold Lunn, a prolific writer and downhill ski enthusiast who is largely credited with getting downhill ski racing introduced into the Olympics.

In the 1920s and 1930s, droves of people were converting to Catholicism (during the 1930s, there were about 12,000 converts a year in England alone). Many of these English converts were writers and intellectuals, such as Chesterton (1922), Frederick Copleston (1925), Alfred Noyes (1927), Graham Greene (1926), Evelyn Waugh (1930), and Brocard Sewell (1930)—and they had been preceded by a stream of other literary and intellectual converts, Benson (1903), Maurice Baring (1909), Christopher Dawson (1914), and Ronald Knox (1917).

This “Catholic Intellectual Revolt,” as publisher Frank Sheed dubbed it, was too much for Arnold Lunn, a devout skeptic, who wrote a scathing attack on Ronald Knox’s book A Spiritual Aeneid, and subsequently, in 1924, published his book, Roman Converts, a critical study of Newman, Manning, Chesterton, Knox and Tyrrell. But in preparation for writing the book, he studied Catholicism for three years, and unwittingly pulled himself into the cross-pollination process. As he put it years later after his conversion: “I could not analyse the suasions that induced brilliant men to accept the claims of Rome unless I began by a detailed study of Catholic theology and apologetics. Knox’s book provoked me into examining the case for the Church and was thus destined to be the first important influence in directing my steps to the Eternal City.”

Through his studies, Lunn discovered that he didn’t dislike Catholicism as much as he disliked his erroneous perception of Catholicism. “I discovered, of course, that most of the beliefs with which Catholics are credited were not, in fact, held by Catholics.” He then goes on to question this phenomenon: “Why is it that so few people pause, as I paused, after asking themselves how Catholics can hold such and such a belief? Why is it that so few people are interested to discover whether in point of fact Catholics do hold the belief in question?” (This problem still exists today.)

Lunn’s studies and intellectual plowing also brought him to study Scholastic philosophy, which in turn contributed to his growing distrust of modernity’s skepticism, subjectivism, and bogus philosophies like Marxism and Freudianism. In 1930, he published The Flight from Reason, which delighted Catholics like Hilaire Belloc who, when asked whether Lunn would ever convert, replied robustly, “Oh, he’ll come in all right.”

After he saw the banality of modernism, Lunn’s conversion came quickly, largely through the influence of Ronald Knox, the man whose conversion to Catholicism exasperated Lunn and prompted him to write his attacking Roman Converts. Appropriately, Father Knox received Lunn into the Church in 1933.

Although the conversion stories of household names—like Muggeridge and Waugh—are the primary attraction of the book, I found the stories of lesser-known converts even more interesting—especially the story of Hugh Ross Williamson.

This impressive man was born into the Nonconformist religion (a branch of Christianity that refuses to adhere to any policies or doctrines of an established church), but spurned a career as a Nonconformist minister in order to pursue careers as an editor, historian, politician and broadcaster. He eventually became an Anglo-Catholic clergyman and, twelve years later, converted to Roman Catholicism under the influence of Chesterton’s writings, but also under the influence of Benson, Knox, David Jones, Waugh, and Siegfried Sassoon (all Catholic converts whose stories are told in this book).

Williamson wrote prolifically and read broadly. He was apparently one of the first men to assert that Shakespeare was Catholic (a theory that has been gaining increasing credibility lately). He was also a participant on the British Broadcasting Company’s “The Brains Trust,” program, but was fired when he converted to Catholicism. In the late 1950s and 1960s, he became one of the foremost apologists for the Catholic faith, writing his autobiography that traced his path to Rome, historical novels that contradicted the anti-Catholic bias of many Reformation-era historians, works on St. Bernadette and Lourdes, and a play on St. Teresa of Avila. Like Evelyn Waugh and other great converts, he spent the last years of his life in dismay and grief at the reforms wrought by Vatican II.

Literary Converts also owns up to the occasional “non-edifying” conversion story, like Douglas Hyde’s, who left the Communist Party to convert, but then left the Church over disagreement with Pope John Paul II’s treatment of Marxist liberation theology in Latin America. There’s also puzzling Graham Greene, the fiction writer who converted in 1926, engaged in a string of extra-marital affairs, left his wife, and, in the autumn of his life of grave sin, started to criticize the Church’s teachings publicly. But, during these later years, he also occasionally defended the Church, and, in his last will and testament in 1991, named his wife that he had left over forty years earlier, instead of his long-time mistress.

The book also gives the reader a good feeling for the last century’s intellectual and literary circles, especially during its first fifty years. Most significantly, the book makes clear that Catholicism was still largely spurned in English society. Williamson, for instance, was fired from The Brains Trust when he converted. The term “pope” was a verb, used disparagingly of converts (as in “he poped” last year). Many people wouldn’t convert out of a sense of “Englishness.” Pearce points out, for instance, that T.S. Eliot—a naturalized British subject who was born in Missouri—should have followed his intellectual and artistic inclinations all the way to Rome, but opines (along with many others) that he didn’t because it cut too much against English conventionalities. In a similar vein, Evelyn Waugh’s friend, John Betjeman, told his wife in 1947 that he would never leave the Church of England for Rome because “ROMAN Catholicism is a foreign religion which has no right to be set up in this country, let alone try to make converts from” the “true catholic church of the country.”

If I have a criticism of this outstanding book, it’s in the early chapters’ organization, which I found a little confusing. Pearce’s account is presented biographically, but also chronologically. Most chapters highlight a particular writer, but also draw in other writers and events that were instrumental to that writer’s spiritual and literary development. Given the extensive “cross pollination” process, the result is that, though a particular writer may be the focus of one chapter, the writer is brought into subsequent chapters as well. I’m not sure how this could have been avoided without reverting to a strict biographical approach (each chapter specifically addressing one writer), but the effect is nonetheless a little confusing and gives the appearance of redundancy at times.

Also, the book is perhaps better titled English Literary Converts. Converts in America during the same time period—Clare Booth Luce, Thomas Merton, Russell Kirk, Dorothy Day—get scant attention by comparison to the space devoted to men like Douglas Hyde and Arnold Lunn (Kirk’s conversion isn’t mentioned at all). This English slant might be due to the “cross pollination” emphasis of the book; the distance of the Atlantic Ocean would have made symbiotic intellectual efforts more difficult. Moreover, the book is large and enjoyable enough without more space devoted to American converts, but I would like to see someone accept the task. Especially if they tackle it with Mr. Pearce’s thoroughness and engaging style.

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