After Father Baker, Dame Gertrude. In the last number of the Ampleforth Journal [**] it was shown that the collection of prayers known as the Ideots Devotions, which had come somehow to be attributed to Dame Gertrude, was in reality the work of her spiritual director, Father Baker, and a characteristic product of his pen. But it was admitted, at the same time, that Dame Gertrude had contributed to the collection, not only by her influence on her director, but also as the compiler of two of the sixteen parts which composed the complete work. Dame Gertrude thus takes her place, along with St Augustine, Blosius and many others, as one of the sources whence the devotions were drawn. And this contribution of hers to these devotions would seem to haye been her first literary work, or at least the first part of her work which obtained circulation ; for these devotions circulated among her sisters in the convent in her own lifetime. After her death (1633) there was found in her cell a further collection of spiritual writings. These were handed to Father Baker, and in 1635, while composing his Life of her, he put these papers in order and gave to the volume so arranged the title of Confessiones Amantis, or the Confessions of a Loving Soul. That is Dame Gertrude's other literary production, and, when we have mentioned these two productions, we have completed her brief bibliography. But we may be allowed to say a few words about each of these items separately, and so make clearer still the relation of her work to Father Baker's. And first about the Confessiones Amantis.
These Confessions, as has been seen already, were printed at Paris in the year 1658 under the title of The Spiritual Exercises of the Most Vertuous and Religious D. Gertrude More, etc., etc. We cannot now tell how far the editor (Father Francis Gascoigne) followed Father Baker's arrangement, for the original MS. has not survived. There are, indeed, seven- teenth century MSS. which contain portions of the book (Downside MS. 33 ; Colwich MSS. 22 and 23 ; Ampleforth MS. 127), but they give only selections and extracts, and they may very well be derived from the printed book. That book would doubtless discourage any further transcription of the original, and would also encourage the disappearance of MS. copies. So that, in describing this part of Dame Gertrude's work, we must treat the Paris book as the original.[1]
That book has been reprinted recently (1910) in the second volume of Dom Benedict Weld-Blundel's Life and Writings of Dame Gertrude More. The reprint, apart from a re-arrangement of the items and some modernisation, is a faithful one. It will therefore be best to refer to it, and not to the rare first edition, in what we have to say about the work. The contents of the volume are as follows :
Such are the contents, and such is the character of this chief portion of Dame Gertrude's work. As her undoubted achievement, and as revealing in an intimate fashion the history of her soul, it is of the first importance. If we may sometimes be disposed to think, as we read it, that she was a very positive and somewhat self-willed character, yet the effect of the whole is different, and we cannot resist the attractiveness of these deeply spiritual Confessions.
And now let us turn to her other work, that is, to her contribution to Father Baker's Ideots Devotions. Father Baker says in his Life of her : " The second or third part, or both of them, of the bookes called the Ideots Devotions, that are in this howse, do consist of her said doengs, the author having onlie reduced them into some order and into certein exercises " (Stanbrook MS. 5. p. 187). His language is lawyer-like in its cautiousness; but, it being his custom to state the most indubitable facts with the same circumspection, we may conclude that the two parts mentioned are Dame Gertrude's genuine work. In the previous article we were not able to cite any MSS. for this part of the Ideots Devotions, and ventured the opinion that it was lost. But further research among the MSS. has revealed two which profess to give the Second Part of the Ideots Devotions, one at Ampleforth (MS. 127), the other in the Gillow Library (shelfmark 28 j). With a brief description of these MSS. our task will be finished.
In these two MSS., therefore, we have at least some part of Dame Gertrude's contribution to the Ideots Devotions. As regards the character of her contribution, it shows again her debt to St Augustine. We meet, for instance, the familiar " Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tarn antiqua, et tarn nova, sero te amavi! "
And that completes, so far as we are able to tell it, the story of the Ideots Devotions [2] In the course of this essay, we have been concerned to distinguish between the work of Father Baker and that of Dame Gertrude, and to assign the various items fairly, suum utrique. If it has been necessary chiefly to vindicate Father Baker's rights, it will be proper to conclude by reclaiming for Dame Gertrude a small piece which has gone the other way, and passed from her to Father Baker.
In a Downside manuscript of Father Baker's version of Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection (Baker MS. 18), the scribe (Dame Barbara Constable) inserts after the title and before the text the following item, which does not belong to that book:
It is natural to suppose that this little piece, copied thus into one of Father Baker's books, is from his own pen ; but he himself testifies to the contrary. In his life of Dame Gertrude (Ampleforth MS. 125, p. 393) he tells us that she wrote, as a preservative against multiplicity and dejection, "a short kind of letanie in homelie verse as followeth:
So it is Dame Gertrude's litany ; and doubtless this second, and better, text of it is the genuine one.