THE
P RTAL
May 2018
Page 22
Evelyn Underhill’s
Prayer Book
A review by Antonia Lynn
E velyn Underhill
(1875-1941) must rank as one of the key
figures in any consideration of English spirituality. She appeared as
one of the writers featured in the Ordinariate’s Called to be Holy Novena
in 2015, and was quoted by Cardinal Nichols in his Ascension homily at
Warwick Street that year.
Although she grew up in a secular household, her
interest in mysticism led her from agnosticism (she
believed herself to be an atheist) to a deep Christian
faith. She felt that her true home was the Catholic
Church, but her fiancé, later her husband, was fiercely
opposed to Catholicism and she remained an Anglican
all her life. Underhill believed passionately that each
of us has an innate longing for intimacy with God, but
that this is seldom satisfied by the institutional Church.
She devoted her life to helping other people explore this
longing, through her books and above all her retreats.
to the Book of
Common Prayer. There
are short biddings and longer collects: Wrigley-Carr
provides some fascinating notes detailing Underhill’s
corrections and alternative readings: the notebooks
were very much a tool of her trade, and a work in
constant progress.
Those who know the chapel at Pleshey will
look forward to imagining hearing these lovingly
composed and collected words guiding retreatants
into prayer in that beautiful setting. However, given
the extraordinary story of the notebooks’ discovery
and the excitement of being able to read the contents
after so many years, I was disappointed to read that
the editor has “modernised the language to make it
more accessible to readers in the t wenty-first century”.
Surely this is counter-productive in a work intended to
offer a glimpse of Underhill’s spiritual life, or of what
it might have been like to attend one of her retreats?
Most of Underhill’s spiritual writings were based on
the retreat addresses she gave each year, especially at
Pleshey Retreat House in Essex. In many ways she was
a pioneer of the modern retreat movement, both as
a lay woman conducting retreats, and in the way she
insisted on including times each day for “interviews”
with all her retreatants, paving the way for the
individually-guided retreat. (Like Ignatius Loyola she
also allowed retreatants time each day for a siesta).
So, predictably we have You and Yours instead of Thee
Over the years she collected and distilled the spiritual
resources she used in a pair of precious notebooks, but and Thine, even in the Lord’s Prayer (which, curiously,
retains “them that trespass”). Perhaps inevitably we
these were believed to be lost after her death.
also end up with some grammatical clumsiness like
However, in 2016 Robyn Wrigley-Carr was visiting “O God! who enlightens every person…” “Beseech”
Pleshey in the course of her doctoral research, when she becomes “ask”; “vouchsafe” becomes “grant”, and so
found in a suitcase an ornate leather-covered notebook on. I do wonder if anyone who would be really upset or
full of writing which was sometimes hard to decipher, confused by the original wording would be interested
embellished in places with red ink calligraphy and Old in exploring Underhill’s private prayer books anyway?
English script. This was Underhill’s second notebook,
written between 1929 and 1938. A few months later
Nevertheless, this is a book worth having if you are
her earlier notebook (1924-1928) reappeared. Now the at all interested in our English spiritual patrimony. It
contents of both have been published for the first time in an is a book to be used, rather than read at one sitting,
attractive small paperback, its patterned cover reminiscent particularly by anyone involved in leading retreats or
of the flowery fabric covering her first notebook.
days of recollection. It may even inspire some to keep
their own prayer notebooks to add to our growing
The result is an anthology of prayers, some Underhill’s heritage.
own composition and the rest representing over forty
Evelyn Underhill’s Prayer Book
different authors from the third to the nineteenth
edited by Robyn Wrigley-Carr
century, and liturgical sources from the Mozarabic Rite
London: SPCK, 2018