‘If the churches would give religion a rest and concentrate on ethics, who knows what odd results might follow.’ Photo: Detail of book cover of Personal Pleasurers by Rose Macauley
Wit to witness: Rose Macauley goes to Meeting. Kate Macdonald recalls.
‘I shall not be ill-pleased should the Spirit move no one this morning.’
In 1935 the British novelist Rose Macaulay published a second collection of essays and journalism, called Personal Pleasures. She had begun her journalistic career in the 1920s, and had made herself a name for her wit, her intellectual curiosity and her feminism. She was an Anglo-Catholic, yet had withdrawn herself from communion.Very few people knew that this was because she was in a relationship with a married man, which would not end until his death in 1942. But she continued going to church, and also attended other services of other denominations. In Personal Pleasures she wrote four essays on ‘Church-Going’, describing her experiences at an Anglican church, a Roman Catholic service, a Unitarian service, and a Quaker Meeting. Here she was probably writing about a Meeting for Worship at Jordans in Buckinghamshire, which she occasionally visited.
