Ferulas & Thuribles

A worthwhile Stonyhurst memoir

Memory may fail us, not least as we enter our twilight years, but as luminaries such as Marcel Proust and T.S Eliot recognised, we carry within us our past, and parts of it can resurface unconsciously, and take shape if mind and body allow us that extra mile in which to reflect and discern.

As Eliot wrote in Little Gidding, this use of memory is for liberation-‘not least of love but expanding of love beyond desire , and so liberation from the future as well as the past.’

As my late father Tom Burns , a fan of both literary icons, who personally knew and befriended Eliot, wrote: ‘there is no excuse for an autobiography unless it contributes some mite of human experience to the whole, sheds light on an unfamiliar scene, shares something of value with its readers, or-at the very least-entertains them for a while . ‘

A Jesuit-educated school contemporary of mine (a declared interest) John Mulholland has recently published an account of his early life. His own journey, through a somewhat tortured memory lane of ancestry and no less troubled upbringing in boarding schools, focuses on his teenage and adolescent years-between 1966 and 1971-at Stonyhurst College.

His book, with the title referring to instruments of capital punishment and religious ritual , that formed part of our shared school experience , suggests an exclusively dark story. Not so.

There are shafts of light ,in no small part thanks the influence of inspirational Jesuits who shared their vision of a very human and Ignatian God in all things- compassionate, uplifting and humorous. The ‘surviving Stonyhurst in the 1960’s’ of the subtitle suggests a rite of passage.

The book begins with the author unravelling the skeletons that lay hidden in the ancestry cupboard, with a cast of characters from miners and WW1 soldiers to IRA volunteers and victims, from murderers to suicides, bankrupts to successful entrepreneurs.

Mullholland’s traces his blood family , part Tyneside,part Irish, as a roller-coaster of highs and lows , of a rags-to- riches story, which allowed his parents to send him to a leading fee-paying Catholic school-today , co-educational and run by lay staff unlike when we were there.

Mulholland’s own personality is forged in a less than ordinary Roman Catholic schooling, initially at the gentle hands of nuns imbued with caring Ignatian spirituality but later marked by the trauma of being physically abused aged thirteen by his drunken lay headmaster, at a prep boarding school .

Instead of going on to the nearer Benedictine school of Ampleforth , the author is sent in 1966 , thirteen going on to fourteen , to Stonyurst College in Lancashire the oldest Jesuit school in Europe (it was founded at St Omer in the Spanish Netherlands in 1593) dating back to the Elizabethan persecution of English Catholic lay and priests, , with its own history of tough discipline, and no less strict adherence to the rituals of the ‘true faith’, prior to the abolition of corporal punishment in the 1980’s and the compassionate Franciscan papacy of today.

It is Stonyhurst that proves formative for the young Mulholland, and he revisits episodes and personalities that unconsciously shaped his character in a way that at the time he failed to fully grasp.

Thus, it is only with the passage of time, that the school motto Cuant Je Puis ‘as much as I can’ -in every activity of human development, takes on a fuller meaning .

A latter day Just William , the eponymous school hero of Richmal Crompton’s 1920’s series, Mulholland is unapologetic and matter of fact in owning up to the times he was either complicit or directly involved in making mischief in an attempt to get his one-up on Jesuits he disliked as brutal or hypocritical and break rules which he regarded as unjust.

Mulholland believes that paradoxically the darker side of school life taught him a certain resilience to survive the more authoritarian rules and regulations . He enthusiastically helped subvert the system, with defiant school rags , several of which would have breached health and safety rules of today -non-existent at any institutional level at the time- but which run the risk of summary beatings by Jesuits and prefects or, worse, expulsion.

On balance however the story that develops is one of discovery as well as emancipation including finding romantic love with a teenage French girl who he takes to the Isle of Wight rock festival in the summer of 1970.

Along with the less endearing, and in some cases psychologically disordered Jesuits, who traumatised their charges, were those Jesuits guided by a deeper humanity and more sincere spiritual conviction, which would have been inspired by the legendary leadership of Father Pedro Arrupe, Superior General of the Society of Jesus from 1965-1983.

Products of the emerging current in Catholic theology and social teaching post Vatican 11, it was some of these Jesuits – Fr Tony Richmond and Fr Vic Lowe are among those Mulholland identifies in his limited gallery of inspirational spiritual stars- who helped him find meaning and emotional growth in the school.

Mulholland, as he went through school, managed-despite continuing with the occasional subversion of the system-to benefit from its evolution. He himself became a prefect.

Mulholland and I respected each other while at Stonyhurst , shared in some subversive plots but without becoming life-long friends, in part because we came from very different cultures and family upbringings, and our study interests and career paths were different too.

Mulholland’s subject preferences were sciences, mine were the humanities. His book rightly mentions the late Peter Hardwick , a lay teacher that proved inspirational in forming my love of writing and literature, and also pays tribute to his wife, who taught us both French, and together with her husband was a hugely generously spirited soul.

But it was precisely because the good Jesuits, whichever stream or subject they had some responsibility for, encouraged each individual pupil to find, develop and use their unique talents that boys like Mulholland and myself thrived, each in our own ways.

Stonyhurst gave him a sense of scepticism about those in authority and that leadership is more about example and influence than position. I second that. It also inspired us to follow paths in our lives that prioritised a sense of service to others, and in our search a loving God, the pursuit of the common good.

It was the hobby of climbing that Mulholland took part in with enthusiasm at Stonyhurst. It helped offset the darker moments as with the deaths of two of our contemporaries, killed in separate car crashes while at school. It filled him with anger for a God whose love he could not understand , while at the time put him in touch with a sense of his own mortality.

Among the Jesuits who died unexpectedly in the last months before Mulholland and I left school for separate universities, was Fr Lowe who was killed in a canoeing accident .

I remember Fr Lowe, who launched a Film Society for the sixth formers , courageously showing us, in the hope we would discern it as a cautionary tale , Lindsay Anderson’s If…. , the daring anarchic vision of British society, set in a boarding school in late-sixties England.

Mulholland remembers Fr Lowe as an adventurer and explorer, as when he took a group of boys on an expedition to the Austrian Alps in 1970.

As recorded by Mulholland in his memoir, Fr Lowe wrote this in a subsequent report in the school magazine prior to his death: ‘What had we learned? A good deal of confidence naturally….A realisation of the white icefields which somehow put man into perspective . A respect for the elemental forces of nature. An understanding of ourselves, of living and working together, of patience and tolerance and generosity. And a determination in many to return some day to the loneliness and purity of high places, where the silence shouts and the peace pervades us all.’

The quote stands as a worthy testimony for true faith in action in our present day, respect for nature and care for the planet, our interconnected humanity , our common home, as the Jesuit Pope Francis never ceases to proclaim.

Our year of 1971 (the year we departed) at Stonyhurst was variously described by Jesuits and lay staff who experienced it as the ‘most memorable’, ‘the most challenging’, ‘the most brilliant’. It produced some individuals who went on to excel at university and in their chosen profession.

Mulholland himself, after studying at Sheffield, went on to a career as a consultant in the energy sector , with an increasing and urgent emphasis on sustainability.

His beautifully written book shows a further talent to tell a good story in a way that matters to other people.

John generously dedicates his memoir as belonging to ‘all of us thrown together for a shared season in an isolated place’. We were all shaped and changed in different ways, but I thank him for throwing up memories , some of which I had chosen to put behind me, and others that he has brought back to me in ways that make better sense of my life, deserving of my thanks to the good Jesuits, that John Mulholland was among my school contemporaries.

But regardless of whether you went to Stonyhurst or when, I recommend this book. It is a moving narrative of human experience, expressed with honesty, courage, and dare I say it-Ignatian discernment. A worthwhile use of memory. ENDS

Ferulas and Thuribles by John Mulholland Available only direct from the author