in the matter of the Mansions; there is nothing that is not found in a far better shape in some of her other books; and one is continually wearied out by her utter inability to handle the imagery which she will not let alone. At the same time, the persevering reader will come continually on characteristic things that are never to be forgotten as he climbs with Teresa from strength to strength on her way to her Father’s House.
To my mind Teresa is at her very best, not in her Mansions which she made so much of, but in her Letters which she made nothing of. I think I prefer her Letters to all her other books. A great service was done to this fine field of literature when Teresa’s letters were collected and published. What Augustine’s editor has so well said about Augustine’s letters I would borrow and would apply to Teresa’s letters. All her other works receive fresh light from her letters. The subjects of her more elaborate writings are all handled in her letters in a far easier, a far more natural, and a far more attractive manner. It is in her letters that we first see the size and the strength and the sweep of her mind, and discover the deserved deference that is paid to her on all hands. Burdened churchmen, inquiring students in
the spiritual life, perplexed confessors, angry and remonstrating monks, husbands and wives, matrons and maidens, all find their way to Mother Teresa. Great bundles of letters are delivered at the door of her cell every day, and she works at her answers to those letters till a bird begins to flutter in the top of her head, after which her physician will not suffer her to write more than twelve letters at a downsitting. And what letters they are, all sealed with the name of Jesus—she will seal now with no other seal. What letters of a strong and sound mind go out under that seal! What a business head! What shrewdness, sagacity, insight, frankness, boldness, archness, raillery, downright fun! And all as full of splendid sense as an egg is full of meat. If Andrew Bonar had only read Spanish, and had edited Teresa’s Letters as he has edited Rutherford’s, we would have had that treasure in all our houses. As it is, Father Coleridge long ago fell on the happy idea of compiling a Life of Teresa out of her extant letters, and he has at last carried out his idea, if not in all its original fulness, yet in a very admirable and praiseworthy way. But I would like to know how many of the boasted literary and religious people of Edinburgh have bought and read
Father Coleridge’s delightful book. A hundred? Ten? Five? I doubt it. Or how many have so much as borrowed from the circulating library Mrs. Cunninghame Graham’s first-rate book? Of Teresa’s Letters, that greatest living authority on Teresa says—‘That long series of epistolary correspondence, so enchanting in the original. It is in her letters that Teresa is at her best. They reveal all her shrewdness about business and money matters; her talent for administration; her intense interest in life, and in all that is passing around her. Her letters show Teresa as the Castilian gentlewoman who not only treats on terms of perfect equality with people of the highest rank in the kingdom, but is in the greatest request by them. Her letters, of which probably only a tithe remains, show us how marvellously the horizon of her life had expanded, and how rapidly her fame had grown. Perhaps no more finished specimen of epistolary correspondence has ever been penned than those letters, written in the press of multifarious occupations, and often late at night when the rest of the convent was sleeping.’
Her confessor, who commanded Teresa to throw her Commentary on the Song of Solomon into the fire, was a sensible man and a true
friend to her reputation, and the nun who snatched a few leaves out of the fire did Teresa’s fame no service. Judging of the whole by the part preserved to us, there must have been many things scattered up and down the destroyed book well worthy of her best pen. The ‘instance of self-esteem’ which Teresa so delightfully narrates is well worth all the burnt fingers its preservation had cost the devoted sister: and up and down the charred leaves there are passages on conduct and character, on obedience and humility and prayer, that Teresa alone could have written. All the same, as a whole, her Commentary on the Song is better in the fire.
Her Seven Meditations on the Lord’s Prayer ran no danger of the censor’s fire. I have had occasion to read all the best expositions of the Lord’s Prayer in our language, and I am bound to say that for originality and striking suggestiveness Teresa’s Seven Meditations stands alone. After I had written that extravagant sentence I went back and read her little book over again, so sure was I that I must have overpraised it, and that I would not be believed in what I have said concerning it. But after another reading of the Meditations I am emboldened to let the strong praise stand
in all its original strength. I have passages marked in abundance to prove to demonstration the estimate I have formed of this beautiful book, but I must forego myself the pleasure and the pride of quoting them.
Sixteen Augustinian Exclamations after having Communicated: sixty-nine Advices to Her Daughters, and a small collection of love-enflamed Hymns, complete what remains to us of Teresa’s writings.
Teresa died of hard work and worry and shameful neglect, almost to sheer starvation. But she had meat to eat that all Anne Bartholomew’s remaining mites could not buy for her dying mother. And, strong in the strength of that spiritual meat, Teresa rose off her deathbed to finish her work. She inspected with all her wonted quickness of eye and love of order the whole of the House into which she had been carried to die. She saw everything put into its proper place, and every one answering to their proper order, after which she attended the divine offices for the day, and then went back to her bed and summoned her daughters around her. ‘My children,’ she said, ‘you must pardon me much; you must pardon me most of all the bad example I have given you. Do not imitate me. Do not live as I have