Transformers by Melanie McDonagh Review – Roads to Rome | books

IIn the five decades between 1910 and 1960, more than half a million people in England and Wales became Catholic. Among them were a host of literary stars: Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark, and Graham Greene. But there were a great number of poets, artists and intellectuals less known to us today, whose “going to Rome” aroused envy and dismay.

In this thoughtful and lively book, Melanie McDonagh, columnist for The Tablet, brings us 16 historical cases of Britons who went ‘popping’ during the most terrifying decades of the 20th century. At a time when political extremism and world war seemed to have chased away reason and morality, it was natural to yearn for something grounded. Writing in 1925, Green confided to his fiancée, “One desperately wants to hold something firm, hard, certain, however uncomfortable, in the general flow.”

Contrary to apocalyptic Protestant fantasies, Catholic priests were not seeking the scalps of celebrities in order to “lure” them into their incense- and whisky-filled clutches. Time and again, converts to McDonagh’s church reported being surprised by the way their approaches to the Brompton Oratory or the Farm Street Church in Chelsea were met with equanimity and a somewhat insulting lack of interest. The job of the guiding priest was to tell you what it was, provide you with Benny’s catechism and send you on your way. According to Maurice Baring, a man of letters who converted in 1909, clergy served as ticket offices for train stations: they gave the traveler information and told him where to go. Whether the traveler took the train was none of their business.

But the take-it-or-take-it approach was ultimately attractive, especially for those who had “fallen out” of the Anglican Church. Worship in the Church of England required an infinite number of mysteries. Not sure where you stand on the Real Presence, the Immaculate Conception, or even the Resurrection? Anglicans were happy to discuss the complexities endlessly. R. H. Benson, son of the former Archbishop of Canterbury, spoke for many when he explained how frustrating he found this field when it was set against Catholic certainty: “There is a freedom which is a slavery more intolerable than the heaviest chains.”

The aesthetic pleasures of Roman Catholicism also turned out to be largely illusory. Unless they attended one of London’s smart churches, converts had to get used to worshiping in ugly modern buildings alongside largely working-class congregations. Charles Scott Moncrieff, Proust’s translator, described how on Easter Sunday 1915 he went “to an ugly, dreary Communist Party chapel” on the edge of an industrial estate that had an inaudible priest and no music. However, Moncrieff, who was still an Anglican at this point, realized in a heartbeat that he must be Catholic. If you want nice buildings, glorious hymns, beautiful local Mass, and the kind of clergy you can invite to your club, you’re better off sticking with the official church.

Then there was the inevitable blame. When Miss Spark, Jean Brodie, caustically declared that “only Roman Catholics are people who do not want to think for themselves,” she was expressing a general prejudice. Accusations of immorality are also common (it did not help that Wilde, Pussy Douglas, Aubrey Beardsley and many other deviants were converted in the 1890s). To become a Catholic means to arouse suspicion that you are crazy, secretly gay, or spying for a foreign power.

Despite these punishments, few converts appear to have regretted their decision, although it’s hard to know for sure, McDonagh points out. Becoming a Catholic is a recorded event. Deciding not to be one is simply a matter of not going to church. There is also a notable lack of women in this book, despite chapters on Gwen John, Spark, and Oxford philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe. Perhaps, although McDonagh does not say so, this is because women who converted to Islam did not pose a significant threat to the established order. The structure of her book, which includes a series of separate historical cases, means that these broader considerations fall between the cracks. However, what Transformers lacks in analysis, it makes up for in lively autobiographical storytelling.