Memoir of N.Frank Humphreys
reproduced from
archive.org
MISFIT
TRAVELLING STUDENT
CRAMMING FOR THE DIPLOMATIC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INDIAN POLICE
STUDENT OF VEDANTA
AIRMAN
INTELLIGENCE OFFICER
JOURNALIST
FARMER
STORE MANAGER
POST OFFICE WORKER
SCHOOLMASTER
TUTOR
SECRETARY
CARPENTER
PUBLIC SPEAKER
NICHOLAS (FRANCIS) HUMPHREYS, O.P.
DOMINICAN AND PRIEST
1927-1975
DISTRICT PRIEST COUNSELLOR
PREACHER LECTURER
WRITER PROPAGANDIST
The editors wish to thank the following for information contained
in letters, articles, etc.:
Toni Jansen O.P.
The Staff of St.Martin Centre, Stellenbosch
Alice O'Neill
Sister Colmar O.P.
Sister Dalmatia O.P.
Sister Leontia O.P.
FOREWORD
Fr.Nicholas Humphreys (or ‘Father Nick’ as we used to call
him) was indeed a phenomenon. Even a casual meeting with
him was an event. Living with him was an unforgettable event.
Even those who might have disagreed with him or his methods,
would have to admit that he was a quite extraordinary person.
There are so many stories about Fr.Nicholas, so many
memories. People of all races and all classes throughout the
length and breadth of the Church in Southern Africa can remember
something or other that he did or said or wrote or something that
others have told them about “Father Nick’. Those of us who
knew him a little better had always realised that his earlier life,
before he became a Catholic and a Dominican priest, had also
been remarkably eventful and indeed adventurous. The details
were known to very few.
Here at last in this little book we have the full story and
what a story it is! That any human life could have been packed -
with so much activity, so many illnesses, such a variety of expe-
rience and so much apostolic work is almost unbelievable.
However the real interest of this book and the real value of
Fr.Nicholas’s life-story is not to be found in the unusualness of
his activities, his experiences or his personality. The real interest
and value for the reader will be found in the spirit of this man
who, in his own way, struggled and battled to find God and to
do God's will and God’s work — this man who strove relentlessly
to be nothing less than a saint.
We are grateful to him for his example and we are grateful
to the writers and editors of this book for making his life-story
available to us.
FR.ALBERT NOLAN, O.P.,
Vicar General
TABLE OF CONTENTS
4 Foreword
7 Introduction
12 1890-1910 Childhood and Youth
17 1910-1919 Indian Police — Flying — Intelligence
22 1919-1924 South Africa
29 1924-1927 England — Leysin — Rome — England
32 1927-1931 Dominican
36 1931-1948 Stellenbosch — Springs — Potchefstroom
44 1948-1958 Springs — Boksburg
49 1958-1975 St.Peter’s Seminary — St.Nicholas Priory
“And so the long struggle upwards from a deficient Christianity
— however well meant — through being a quasi-prophet of non-Christianity,
to the Home I have been given in the Order, has brought me to the point
where I have been asked to teach and explain the personal dealings with
the soul of the One Whose ways I have been watching and struggling to learn
during the whole of my life.”
– Fr.Nicholas Humphreys [p.53]
NICHOLAS FRANCIS HUMPHREYS, O.P.
1890 - 1975 A MEMOIR
INTRODUCTION
Fr.Nicholas Humphreys wrote an autobiography in the early
1960's at the request of his Dominican religious Superior. He
called it 'A Trivial Tale’ and of it he wrote:
“I have not at all wanted to do it, but obedience is obedience,
and so, after some years I am starting it. It is true my life has
been full of events, but they have been relatively smalf ones, of
interest only to myself, in that, in reflecting on this I can wonder
at the love of God and his care even for the smallest. “Dominus
sollicitus est mei’ (Ps. 40:18), ‘the Lord is full of care for me’.
This line carried me through my Novitiate at Woodchester and I
can see that it has been true all my life. So He is for every one
of us, and so, in telling my trivial tale, I shall have the happiness
of acknowledging to Him His goodness, His solicitude, and my
own wonder and gratitude over His unfailing and detailed care.
I shall be continuously singing of His goodness, whether I mention
His name or not’.
The manuscript which Fr.Nicholas typed is a narrative of his
life from his earliest recollections as a child until the period in
the late fifties and early sixties when he was Spiritual Director at
St. Peter’s Seminary, Pevensey, Natal. it is this document which
is the basis of this memoir and quotations will be from it unless
otherwise stated. As far as possible, Fr.Nicholas will be allowed
to speak for himself.
He ends his story on the same note with which he began:
“I can only marvel at His kindness and the perfection of His
Providence. It is all His Gift. Who could doubt His Love and
Care. I end with the words that carried me through many an
early difficulty: ‘Dominus sollicitus est mei’. I cannot begin
to thank Him.”
The tale which Fr.Nicholas tells is indeed “full of events”,
Many of these events were concerned with his health. He had
more than twenty five serious operations during his lifetime. His
illnesses included septicaemia, typhoid, a cyst, pneumonia, heart
strain, bronchitis, pleurisy and tuberculosis. He had a broken
nose twice, two arm breakages, his appendix out, varicocele, a
spine injury and a spinal abscess, three operations for glandular
T.B., face bones broken ina plane crash, two operations for haemor-
rhoids, a kidney removed, jaundice, skin disease, cardiac asthma,
hernia, TB lump, gall bladder, two operations on his nose. He
spent about seven years in hospital at different times. He ended
by breaking an arm at 57, ribs at 79, both legs at 80, and a hip
and thigh at 82.
He had a most varied career in spite of ail this, beginning by
cramming for the Chinese Interpreter’s examination, changing to
the Indian Police, later he joined the Royal Flying Corps. He
Studied journalism and Russian while ill, joined the Intelligence
Service, was engaged to be married, farmed in the Sundays River
valley, worked as a store keeper and farm manager, in the Post
Office at East London as a sorter, was secretary to a Swiss
doctor, tutor to the son of a rich American. He tried to become
a Carthusian, a Jesuit and a Salesian but eventually became a
Dominican. He ran a joinery business, and belonged to the Catho-
lic Evidence Guild. After becoming a Dominican he was ordained
at Stellenbosch and spent a large part of the rest of his life build-
ing up the Mission at Potchefstroom. After this he was chaplain
to a convent, Spiritual Director to African students, and in the
last part of his life, dedicated himself to the St.Martin Centre.
He wielded his pen throughout his life writing on his Mission
experiences and on social and educational matters.
Until he was nearly thirty, Francis, as he was baptized, would
have scarcely called himself a Christian, although his parents were
Anglicans. He was much influenced from childhood by Spiri-
tualism and Occultism to which his mother introduced him, and
also later, by Vedanta philosophy. While he appreciated the higher
flights of the latter and gained much from it, he regretted the
negative elements which affected his life and the influence of
Occultism in particular. Looking back he saw the hand of God's
Providence in bringing him into the Catholic Church and then into
the Dominican Order and he was always filled with wonder and
thankfulness.
At the same time, in his reaction to the negative attitude to
life which had governed him for long, he was led to stress the
importance of thinking about things positively and positive action
in work, He must co-operate with Providence: time must be
redeemed by hard work, and other, more negative people, must
have their ‘wills fortified’ and pressed into service. Many of his
brethren would find themselves holding the other end of a plank
while he worked on it! Many will remember his saying: ‘Marry
your circumstances’.
He combined a simple faith and wonder with an_ unfailing
drive to work, to adapt to the situation and to exploit it for good.
This also appeared in his attitude to people. He saw always
the good behind the bad and had a great appreciation of character.
While he was sad when people let him down, he readily excused
them or made light of the situation. He had his own personal
methods but tried to adapt to others when necessary. After
standing in for one of his brethren at a Mission he remarks at
the end of the period:
“I handed over... and he, poor fellow, had then the task
of going through my accounts, item by item, and re-editing
them by his system, for in many places I had not fully grasped
his mind, and in the matter of accounts, no matter how exact
the rules, every accountant, like everyone else in a trade —
including apparently sometimes Canonists — prefers his own
interpretation.”
Although the Autobiography shows him as very serious
minded, he had nevertheless a good sense of humour and many
were the jokes he enjoyed with his brethren. His criticism was
governed by charity and humour although he could strongly con-
demn what he saw as wrong or unjust.
He had an unfailing love of the black peoples of South Africa
and he spent most of his time in their service from his time in
Potchefstroom until he set up the St.Martin Centre in his old
age. He was fluent in SetSwana and Sesotho end learned some
Zulu when he was over sixty. He saw the course of events which
was developing in South Africa very clearly. During a conversa-
tion in Cape Town in which an Afrikaner was saying, as he records,
“In the European manner, ‘that we should do this and that
for the African’, adding that, "in his opinion the English were
the trouble and did not know their language and so forth’,
Nicholas intervened:
“You know, talk like that makes me feel that you Afrikaner
people are ten years out of date.”
Asked what he meant, he replied:
“that they did not know the mind of the African today. I
said I had been twenty years with them and spoke Sesotho,
SetSwana and Zulu, that the African people had reached a
point when they were not going to be anyone's fools much
longer. They did not yet know just what they were going
to do about it, but the change of mind had come about and
it would not change back. Ten years before they still took
it as in the nature of things that they should serve the white
man, but that phase was over and would not return,”
This was in 1955 and, after noting that many people did not
think the African was getting a fair deal but feared to say so, he
wrote:
“Meanwhile the African goes on quietly, reserved, poker-
faced, hiding his feelings, and the European does not suspect
the, as yet unformulated, urge that is going on inside,”
Although one may detect traces of the imperialism and pater-
nalism of the British Raj in India in this, one can sense that Nicholas
had the humanity and freedom of the African at heart.
Nicholas started in Journalism during the first World War
when the ‘Daily Mail’ asked him to write some articles on his expe-
riences in the Royal Flying Corps. in his priestly life, writing was
part of his apostolate. He published many stories from the ‘Mis-
sion Field’ and on education and social problems in the ‘Southern
Cross’ newspaper and eventually published a collection under the
title ‘‘Missionary in South Africa”. As he said “people illustrate
events” and his stories about people illustrate their personalities.
He paid constant tribute to those with whom and for whom
he worked. His Autobiography is, indeed, his story, but contains
many stories about the people who touched his life in various
ways. Stories illustrate humanity, providence, strength, weak-
ness, among other things. His trivial tale shows his humanity,
but Nicholas, as he said, used his own story to illustrate God's
Providence. Harvey Cox notes that the story element in religion
tells use the whence, the whither and the how of life. (Seduct-
ion of the Spirit, Preface). Under the form of ‘witness’ or ,testi-
mony’ it is much used by evangelists and is kin to the parable.
It shows us how God works within the history of people. Nicholas
in his practical way tells us stories that we may know about God.
His Autobiography tells us his story that we may know that God
is full of care for each one of us.
The Autobiography is divided into two parts, the first con-
cerned with the period up to the time Francis became a Dominican
and took the name Nicholas, the second records his life as a
Dominican until the early nineteen sixties. Other sources have
been used for the period after that.
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
1890 - 1910
Francis Henry Humphreys was born on the 17th May 1890.
His father, of Irish, French and English extraction, was a doctor
practising in London. After changing from general practice to care
of the mentally sick, he soon lost his patients and had a hard
struggle. His mother was of Irish, Scottish and French descent.
He had one brother and one sister, four and three years older
than himself respectively. The illnesses which punctuated his
whole life began early. At seven he had blood poisoning and
diphtheria at eight.
The three children were brought up at first by a governess,
a High Anglican like his parents. Francis, it appears, had learnt
to read and write and do simple sums by the age of four, and
on his fourth birthday his governess told him he would begin
learning Latin. At the age of ten he went to the Kings Choir
School at Cambridge, since he had become unmanageable by
his governess. He stayed there for about eighteen months, after
which he was sent home. Although he thought the reasons for
this untrue, and unjust, he admitted that he was an odd and
unsatisfactory child, which he attributed to the fact that his mother
practised Fortune Telling, Table Turning, Second Sight and later,
Spiritualism.
Later in life he was grateful for the influence of his governess,
but at eight years old, he and his sister visited his mother’s latest
Fortune Teller unknown to the governess. In the crystal bail,
the Fortune Teller said she saw a bridge. Francis said he saw
half a bridge and she agreed. That was all, but later Francis,
who considered he had some sort of hyper-sensitiveness, saw
himself stepping onto a bridge which led nowhere. In his book
he remarks of such matters:
“Fortune Telling etc., have a strong tendency to develop a
subtle form of pride, lying and vain glory, injuring the develop-
ment of the intellect and developing undue dependence upon
imagination.”
He saw the effects later on as the work of Satan and the
interest produced in him interior lying, vanity and opportunism.
This affected him for twenty years. So his story is largely about
the “messengers of goodness’ who brought him to something
different which he had begun to experience in the ideals of his
Anglican governess.
Later in life he wrote of his mother:
“Well, poor dear, she had a hard time trying to make ends
meet and in this continual and exhausting struggle she showed
marvellous courage. I remember once she was so worn out
that she only stopped throwing herself out of a window when
she was half way through it. Perhaps the devil of occultism
was behind that action and only her real goodness saved her.
She was always planning and working for those around her
and within seven weeks of being 91 she was going on foot
up and down the mile to town twice every day at full speed
doing things mainly for other people. I remember her first
thought on receiving a present was always ‘Now who can I
give this to?’ I am thankful to have had such a Mother and
her mistakes count for nothing beside her goodness. Yes,
Almighty God looked after her.”
She was killed by a car in the blackout of 1945. it is interest-
ing that Francis himself in later life used to label presents in case
he should give them away to the donor!
After Cambridge, Francis was sent to a school in Essex where
he did not stay very long. Of his experience he says:
“As a boy I was never afraid to fight with my fists, but short
of that I was completely incompetent: anyone could bully me
and order me to do ridiculous things and everyone did. This
too I blame on the kind of negative attitude of mind that the
‘occult’ sciences had bred in me. Its training was the reverse
of a positive view of life, of the use of one’s brains in reasan-
able self-assertion.”'
At this time he had a private tutor named Arthur Wilson who
was a cripple. Francis had a happy time with him for “his poise,
patience, courage and simplicity of heart” left an indelible impres-
sion which was valuable later when Francis had to lie up for long
periods. About this time he had a piece of bone removed from
the tip of his nose which had been broken in a fight.
In 1905, at fifteen, Francis was sent to Cranleigh to school.
During his first summer holiday he taught English for two months
to the children of the Lombardon family in Aix-en-Provence in
France, having already learned a good deal of French from his
governess and from his mother who spoke it fluently. Francis
was really happy in France for the first time in his life. The
family took him to Mass although he did not understand what
it was all about at the time. He made friends with a priest Pére
Fillatre who taught him French and Latin. He was given the
‘imitation of Christ’ to translate from Latin.
“What an opening out that was from the cramping cold,
solitary life I had lived, even at school, where I never managed
to keep friends for long — that occultist twist came to make
me an undesirable companion.”
For the time being the ‘kink’ in him was dissolved in the
atmosphere of Provence and the solid Catholic culture of the
family:
“I could just be happy and natural without delusions of secret
greatness, while I told silly little lies to support the illusion.”
it seemed to him that:
“contact with Catholic culture was bringing a positive use
of intelligence to light, and countering the negative attitude
induced by the evil of occultism.”
One may think that Francis looking back exaggerates his
weaknesses but certainly his reaction against occultism must have
had a great deal to do wtih the forming of his character with its
strongly positive and active attitude to life.
Pére Fillatre was also a great help to him and he visited him
again later on: :
“a personality who was sure.of himself and humble, sensitive
to atmosphere, magnanimous and generous, something that
only the foundations of a Catholic culture can produce, When
I want to think of courage in affliction, I recall Mrr. Arthur,
but when I want to think of a fully formed personality, there
stands Pére Fillatre.”
Francis left his public school sometime in 1905 and was put
in for the Chinese Interpretership, an entry into the Diplomatic
Corps. For this purpose he went to Lobberich in Germany in
1906 where he stayed with a headmaster and his family, Catholics
who scarcely practised. He was happy there, loved the singing
and music and fitted in with the German boys better than he had
done with the English. He revelled in the Gymnasium and foot-
ball. He took a correspondence course, at the same time, for
the Student Interpreters with Kings College, London. He was
much impressed by the way German boys studied. Here again he
found "the friendliness of ancient, well-established Catholic cul-
ture’. At that time he found the Germans were obsessed with the
idea that England planned to attack Germany.
While in Germany, he took a trip down the Rhine and visited
Cologne, Coblenz and Wiesbaden where his father had been at
school, This was “a marvellous trip and my whole life was
renewed”. He spent the summer holiday with the Lombardons
and returned to Germany by the French Riviera, Genoa, Milan,
the Italian Lakes, Switzerland and over the Furka Pass to Gletsch
and back to Lobberich. After another trip up and down the Rhine
he returned to England at the end of the year.
In England he studied at Kings College London to enter the
Student Interpreters in China. During this period his home life
lacked order; worry and poverty and the influence of occultism
played havoc with him. He broke his right leg twice that year.
Since there had been a change of age for those entering the Stu-
dent Interpreters, his coaches advised him to try for the Indian
Police.
“I had reached a point where the general situation was
becoming unbearable and I tried vaguely to find some plan
which would make for a change and a life where study would
be better served.”
As a result he was sent in January 1907 to a crammer in
Folkestone but after a month fell ill, had two operations and eight
months illness. In the autumn he was back at Folkestone where
a student called Whistler taught him how to study and he had
no further difficulty about an ordered life — so long as he was
not at home.
During this year he visited Lourdes with the Lombardon
family where he joined in the Hail Mary, saw many cures and
took part in the torchlight procession.
“Perhaps it opened the way to the Conversion which came
twelve years later, and maybe it earned the great grace of
friendship with Hugh Whistler.”
INDIAN POLICE — FLYING — INTELLIGENCE
1910-1919
Francis passed the Police examination low on the list. Soon
afterwards he went down with pleurisy and other internal troubles.
His examination result was due to ill-health all that year. His
papers included French, German, English, History. After nearly
dying, he sailed for India on 31st December 1910. He does not
record anything of the period between 1908 and 1910. During
the voyage he developed pleurisy again and on arrival in India
went into the Bombay Hospital where he nearly died. He also
caught malaria there.
He was then posted to Velore but spent two months in the
hill country recuperating. The horse he rode had the habit Of
taking a short step from time to time and this started the’ back
trouble which lasted throughout his life. At this time he got a
motor cycle.
One important contact came to him through learning Telegu,
one of the local languages. This was acquaintance with Narasi-
miva, the Telegu Munshi. In Folkstone Francis had shaken off
Spiritualism for Theosophy which had a Hindu basis. Narasimiva
was an educated Hindu Brahmin but knew also the Vedanta ideals
which Francis was seeking to realise. Narasimiva was interested
in the mysticism behind Vedanta philosophy and something far
beyond Yoga. Another Indian he met was Ganaphathi Sastriar,
a travelling lecturer in the higher flights of Hindu philosophy.
After passing his first examination in Telegu, Francis was
sent to the Anantapur District and, after some training, was sent
to Kalyandrug to gain experience as Acting Inspector, where he
had six police stations and about one hundred men under him.
“Frustration, boredom, overwork, blistering heat, malaria,
uncertain subordinates and Telegu, morning, noon and night,
and crime of which one could make neither head nor tail,
and a good deal of it was a matter of a goat stolen by some-
one who was starving; this was one’s daily life lived in lone-
liness.”
In due course he was promoted to the sub-division of a
District, a black spot on the crime map of India, where he had
nine murders, a threat of riot and the discovery of a large gang
of bandits, in one week. This more difficult side of life in India
was offset by the traditional sports and social life under the
British Raj, for example, shooting and polo.
About this time his cough grew worse and tuberculosis was
diagnosed. After two and a half years Francis returned to England.
Back in England he developed a large swelling in his back,
but his cough improved. He stayed with his parents at a guest
house-nursing home, Bayliss House near Slough. He was soon
in hospital in London for an operation for an abscess in the sacrum.
Back at Bayliss House he was told to lie flat for six weeks, but
a Doctor who was organising a party in the Highlands said he
would be better walking about. So Francis went to Scotland
for three months where he attended the Northern Meeting Ball
at Inverness and visited the Orkneys and Shetlands.
On his return to London with his back much worse, he began
a liaison with a certain woman thirty years older than himself.
This was broken off later for two years and then resumed for a
while.
During this period Francis wrote a good deal, practising
journalism but nothing was published. He studied ‘Popular
Science’ also, making notes for a National Health Scheme. He
began to learn Russian and practised it with refugees at the
beginning of the Great War, becoming fluent in speaking and
writing it.
The wound in his back healed and he got up for a time,
but after six weeks the pain and swelling returned. He had had
twelve doctors and the verdict was he would be a cripple for life.
Fortunately at this time he found an osteopath, Johnston May,
and, after manipulation, got much better.
After six months, during which he was treated by the osteo-
path, he was passed for flying and commissioned towards the
end of 1915. He was able to lead a “moderately normal life’
although for the rest of his life he would ask people to pull the
‘kink’ out of his back for him by pulling at his head over the end
of a bed, or even by standing on his back.
In January 1916 he began flying instruction at Northolt after
two weeks drilling at the Curragh in Dublin. His brother was
already a pilot and through him he got into the Flying Corps.
Before he could start his training he went down with TB
for six months, but in mid-1916 he was learning to fly primitive
‘Short Horns’ and ‘Long Horns’ at 60 mph. Later he flew Avro
machines and ‘Elephant’ Martinsydes. In the winter of 1917
he was sent to France and joined 27 Squadron at Doulens, The
fumes of the Martinsydes’ exhausts soon gave him bronchitis
and he was sent back to England.
After convalescence, he was invited to a party at Buckingham
Palace where he was presented to King George V who mistook
him for a Canadian and to Queen Mary who asked him if he liked
flying. As a result of this party he met a Mr Bowhay who began
to talk to him about mental processes. Francis found that his
remarks struck home after a while:
“You mean that I have never thought for myself in my life,
but lived by rules and other peoples’ words?” ‘Yes’, Mr
Bowhay replied.
This was a revelation to Francis and he saw that his negative
mind was being brought under the treatment it needed.
About this time Francis wrote an article about a bus journey
which he took to the ‘Daily Mail’ offices where he asked for the
‘Chief’ and was shown into Northcliffe’s office. Although this
article was not published, he was asked to write some articles
on his flying experiences which were published. During an enquiry
about his right to publish these accounts of flying, it was dis-
covered that he knew Russian and other languages. He was
posted to the GHQ at the Horse Guards to learn Intelligence
work. He worked at this for nine months, questioning prisoners
from Germany; preparing a circular showing the different types
of aeroplanes for the use of the Air Defence, and charting the
route of enemy planes for the gunners.
About this time the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval
Air Service were amalgamated into the Royal Air Force and made
into a separate arm with its own HQ and Intelligence. Francis
was sent to the new Command but then sent back to the War
Office to copy out their Card Index. Of his preparation of the
circular and what he learnt through it, he writes:
“I had to tour round so many Offices to get the information
I needed. It needed incessant patience and tact to get what
I wanted, and it was marvellous training in interviewing offi-
cials and in getting people to give up necessary material that
they did not want to yield! I learned too to carry a book round
with me to read while waiting for someone else to finish his
interview. it helped one to keep cool!”
Both his art of persuasion and his carrying round of a book
survived into later life as many of his brethren had reason to
know.
After this he went down with severe influenza and when he
recovered was sent to Salisbury Plain to do ‘light duty’ on a
training Aerodrome. After doing the job of recording hits for the
gunners, he got back into flying and organised a new flight
specialising in gunnery training. Once more he went down with
influenza.
While he was posted as Flying Instructor, a pupil took off
under him as he was coming in to land and he crashed his plane.
His top jaw was broken into four pieces, the antra were pushed
into his eyes, his nose was crushed. This was the end of his
flying. Ten months in hospital “made him respectable again’
and the sister remarked:
“Well, thank goodness, you are a bit better looking now than
you were before the accident.’
This crash wrought a further change in his negative attitude
and he studied Jevon's ‘Logic’ with Mr Bowhay. He realised he
had never put his mind to flying. He asked Mr Bowhay: ‘What
is the difference between Vedanta and Chrstianity?’” Mr Bowhay
replied:
“Broadly speaking it is this: Vedanta claims that everything
is from yourself, Christianity teaches that everything is from
outside you.” ‘This reply”, Francis remarks, ‘worked a
revolution in me. 1 became a Christian again.”
This accident happened in October 1918 and Francis lay sick
in hospital in London during a hard cold winter. After ten months
the splint and ‘antennae’ on his jaw were removed and he entered
a Convalescent Hospital at Bournemouth. He had been rushing
around London trying to raise gratuities and managed to raise
£1 000 including his savings. So there was a question now of
what he should do ‘in the great peace”.
A fellow patient said he was going to grow oranges in South
Africa and Francis read about the Zebedelia Orange Estates and
was very much interested. However, he was put off this project
and sought to buy land in the Sundays River Valley. As he needed
more capital, he found a partner in a man called Richards who
had farmed in New Zealand. Francis left for South Africa in
July 1919 when he was 29 years old. Before he left he met a
young girl, a Catholic, and there was an unspoken engagement
between them. Her father disapproved and Francis said he would
take up the matter again in two years time when his situation
would be different. After demobilisation from the Air Force he
sailed for South Africa on the ‘Umzumbi’ which took 28 days to
Cape Town. From there he took a train to Port Elizabeth.
SOUTH AFRICA
Francis and the Richards’ family began farming on a bare
piece of land in the Addo district. They had so far paid one fifth
of the price asked for it. They lived in a marquee, sleeping on
straw. The area was a river bed which had been cleared of prickly
pear, a place where elephants had roamed and the hunter Major
Pretorius had hunted them. There was a more or less continuous
South-East wind and only a trickle of brackish water available.
There was in fact a drought which lasted for three years and
building was impossible without water. Someone remarked that
‘they had bought in Faith, come out in Hope and seemed likely
to end by living on Charity’.
Water was brought by train to Addo and then on by ox
wagon. The group of four got 100 gallons every two weeks.
They set about building a house for the Richards family and the
land had to be laid out for irrigation. At this time Francis described
himself as a ‘moderately good carpenter’ and Richards could lay
bricks although these were in short supply. When their tent
blew away in a gale they lived for a while in a garage, which they
had built, until the house was finished, Meanwhile a contractor
laid out the land in ‘beds’ and another put up a fence and they
waited for the rain. Water did come down in the river but
six months hard work and 2000 lbs weight of beans brought
in only £15. The hot wind destroyed 1500 tomato plants and
bariey was badly planted and wasted.
In view of their needs Francis took a job as a storekeeper
and after two months another job as a carpenter and manager but
after another two months he returned to Engiand.
The reason for this return was to settle the matter of the
girl he had met before he left England. Francis had received a
cable from her mother saying that the engagement was now per-
mitted and that the girl would be brought to South Africa in
September 1920.
With his previous liaison and the thought that the country
would be too harsh for the girl, Francis was in considerable per-
plexity. The girl's parents had promised money and help for fur-
niture so that they could be married about a month after her arrival,
so Francis went to England to sort things out. Although the
engagement was not entirely sorted out, the other liaison was
finally broken off altogether. Francis was introduced in England
to a Jesuit, the uncle of the girl, and in a two hour conversation
he cleared up certain general problems about Christianity. Francis
read “Faith of our Fathers" and “The Threshold of Christianity”
and, as he started reading the latter on the journey from London
to Bournemouth, “the revelation came” as he puts it:
“I suddenly found myself saying: ‘I have no right to decide
these things for myself! No RIGHT!’ By Grace I had suddenly seen
the Church. I went over the moment again and again seeing it more
and more clearly.”
He returned to South Africa by the East Coast calling on the
Lombardon family from Marseilles and telling them he was going
to become a Catholic, On the boat he found a White Father,
Bishop Sweens, aboard and the latter gave him religious instruction
in French for three weeks.
In the Red Sea Francis had heat apoplexy and nearly died.
A Catholic man gave him a Rosary and as he did not know how
to say it, Francis invented his own way which took an hour and
a half:
“I was so enthralled with the Faith and with the beauty of
Our Lady, that I would have happily made it longer if I had
not been too sleepy.”
From Beira he returned to Port Elizabeth by train taking five
days and nights. ‘He was too hard up to buy food and begged
bully beef from the steward.
On his return he found that Richards was working as a depart-
mental manager and had paid off their debts. The day after his
return he had a cable from his Fiancée’s mother offering him a
job in italy, The parents would settle them there after their mar-
riage. Francis accepted this offer and, as he already knew a
fair amount of Italian, he decided to go to Cape Town and try
to get in with an Italian family.
After getting lodgings in Cape Town with an Italian family,
Francis called at the Catholic Cathedral Presbytery and was sent
to Fr.Hartin at Somerset Road Church for instructions. Three
weeks later his fiancée arrived with her parents and they drove
up to the Church and Fr.Hartin baptized Francis conditionally and
received him into the Church.
“I remember well my one thought: I have come home at last", he wrote.
In Port Elizabeth the girl's father set out to break up the
contract binding Francis and the girl and her mother urged him
to get a job. So he became a letter sorter at the Post Office. A
certificate of satisfactory service is extant. When he came home
from work a week after he started, he found the whole family
had cleared out. The girl later made an unhappy marriage and
was separated from her husband, Francis found them impossible
people, but he noted:
“I was the product of my background of occultism and Vedanta, and
of the opportunity they had given for the development of grave
personal faults.”
Francis’ behaviour in suddenly going to England, accepting a
job in Italy, shows a certain impulsiveness and perhaps some
confusion. He seemed, as later with his vocation to religious life,
to keep several options open. Perhaps he was undecided because he
could not yet clearly see his way. It is interesting that soon after
his conversion he began studying the 'Summa Theologica' of St.Thomas.
He may have had the idea of being a priest while still having hope
for his engagement, which was half cancelled.
Francis had to cancel the marriage arranged in Port Elizabeth
but, coming from the Church, he met a Mr Bradshaw, an accountant,
whom Fr.McSherry had told to look him up. Francis had received his
first communion with his fiancée in Port Elizabeth and had attended
some Mission services. Now Mr Bradshaw began to show him what he had
still to learn. The first thing to which he introduced Francis was
the English translation of the Summa of St.Thomas and Francis found
a new world opening out to him. He also lent him the Confessions of
St.Augustine and the life of St.Ignatius of Loyola. Francis fastened
on the idea of making a retreat and wrote to the Jesuits at Dunbrody
about it. On their advice he got a copy of the ‘Exercises’ and, while
still working at the Post Office, he worked solidly at the ‘Exercises’
five hours a day for a month in his spare time.
Francis worked by “going slowly step by step and repeating and
co-ordinating and beginning for the first time to see Christianity as
a whole, and marvelling at the joy of it.”
To a passing priest he remarked: ‘Father, this is wonderful,
it all rings true!’ ‘Naturally’, he replied, “for Catholicism is
founded on the nature of the human heart as it really is.”
“That was the whole point’, Francis commented, ‘that was why occultism
and Vedanta had led me astray. Now I was working to get my soul
straight. Indeed I began to see that word ‘straight’ in a fuller sense
than I had ever known, and the great virtue it takes to be what I called
‘ordinary’. I think I meant ‘normal’ in contrast with the ‘pride and
oddity’ that goes with occultism.”
Reading St Augustine's Confessions he wrote:
“I wept my heart out over the revelation of my own folly and the wonder
of God's goodness.’ He poured himself into a large exercise book taking
Ignatius point by point as he gave him “‘the key to human life and
conduct and the testing ground of my past’. I found myself even writing
in the style of St Augustine.”
Francis searched back into the past:
“for the key to find where my life had started to go wrong, and always I
came back to that fatal visit to the Fortune Teller... when something of
‘second sight’ appeared in me.”
Mr Bowhay had told him such powers were unhealthy and Francis found:
“I had been living on what reached me through that unhealthy measure more
than on the guidance of objective observation and reasoned consideration.
Unwittingly I stultified reason for the benefit of whatever malign guidance
might reach me from elsewhere and now was paying for it in the collapse of
my affairs, in the trouble brought on ... whom I loved dearly and whom I
had handled most carefully that no harm should come to her through me. Now
through St.Augustine and St Ignatius the whole scene was becoming for the
first time visible.”
Although he had thought the girl’s parents had handled the matter badly,
they had excuse and now he had the chance through Mr.Bradshaw and the
little Grey Books of Pelman to get things straight.
Since he had not started in the Post Office Service as a boy, he was warned
that his employment was only for three months. Someone suggested he become
a schoolmaster, which he had always looked upon as the world’s worst job.
However he applied and was accepted as a teacher at Weston in Natal. Here,
the Headmaster, Mr.Bates “grasped my trouble and helped me to develop my
vocation and obtain with it an established position. He was like a father’
A colleague also who had tried to be a student for the Church was able
to help him to a sure footing in the Faith. It was he who made Francis
think about studies for the priesthood, that priesthood he had seen
exemplified in Pére Fillatre, Bishop Sweens and priests in Port Elizabeth.
The foundation for this thought had been laid in Port Elizabeth as he
knelt in St Augustine’s Cathedral. He realised suddenly that his
fiancée was gone for good. It was a staggering blow and he cried out
in something like despair:
“All right, Lord, take her, but be good to me for she is all I've got.”
“Then something happened. I heard clearly a direction: ‘You must choose
Me’. [I replied, ‘I cannot, I have not got it ‘in me to make such a
choice. You must make me choose’. Again came the direction: ‘Choose!’
I replied again in the same way and the direction came a third time.
A third time I replied in the same way and then felt a terrible blank,
some Presence had departed from me. I cried out in despair: ‘All right,
all right, I choose, I choose!’ A little consolation returned but it
seemed far away.” :
Next day he asked if the Jesuits would accept him, but it was obviously
too early for that and so he returned once again to recovering his
fiancée. He was still very confused and divided.
At Weston, Francis learned to teach by watching other teachers. This
school was a Government school for the children of farmers and half a
day was spent in school and half a day on the farm or in the carpenter's
or blacksmith’s shop or elsewhere. Francis took the Teaching Certificate
Course second grade. He had to do four years work in nine months, so he
read and mastered a chapter a day of the set works until within three
weeks of the examination. He passed sixteenth out of eighty
candidates and received a Temporary Certificte. He had to do
another two years to get a iull Certificate.
He spent Christmas at Greytown making a retreat with Fr. van der Lanen
who was also chaplain to the Oakford Dominican Convent. Years later,
Mother Ignatius told him that she had prayed for him by name every
night since his visit, that he might become a priest.
At the school Francis was put in charge of the Cadet Corps and went on
training courses to Robert’s Heights (now Voor-trekkerhoogte). Here he
met Dr W.P.de Villiers in the winter of 1922 and they became fast friends.
After he returned from a second course at Voortrekkerhoogte, he found
he had been transferred to a nearby school en route for a Secondary
School post. But he was already ill with TB, an illness which would
last for three years.
About this time he heard that his fiancée was soon to be
married. This stunned him and he burnt her letters. He later
told his priest that he was free and would like to try and join the
Jesuits. The priest said “Why go so far? You are too old to
take their long course. Why not go and see the Dominicans just
up the line at Newcastle?’ So Francis met Fr.John Dominic
Rousselle who recommended him to the Provincial in England,
Fr.Bede Jarrett, who wrote to Francis. Francis was amazed at
how much could be said in a few sentences. Fr.Bede told him to
wait a year and collect money for his keep as a Novice, Francis
settled down gratefully to the idea of the Religious life ahead.
IV
ENGLAND — LEYSIN — ROME — ENGLAND
1924 - 1926
Because of his sickness Francis was taken to Grey’s Hospital - and
lay there until mid-December getting no better or worse. Then
he saw an advertisement for excursions to England for 19 days for
£35 and the doctor let him go. On the boat he lent a woman a
history book by a Catholic and she asked for more such books.
She later became a Catholic and Francis describes her as “his
first convert”.
On his return to England the Pension’s Office sent him to Leysin
in Switzerland to have Heliotherapy under the famous Dr.Rollier.
He attended the Quisisana Clinic where it was discovered that he
had a tuberculous kidney. This was removed at Montreux. As he
improved he acted as assistant Secretary to Dr.Rollier in French,
German and English and also tutored the sons of three American
millionaires. He attended Mass daily, climbed mountains, skied and
also instructed a Russian lady who became a Catholic. His mother
visited him at Leysin but she was unapproachable as regards the Faith.
Before leaving England he had been received into the Third
Order of St Dominic at St Dominic’s Haverstock Hill by.Fr Wulstan
McCuskern, taking the name ‘Francis’. Of this he wrote:
“I can never say how much that meant to me in the next three years,
nor how much support it gave me. It was a most wonderful grace.”
Discharged from Leysin in 1925, he decided to visit Rome
for the Holy Year. Despairing of ever being healthy enough to
become a Dominican in England, he had kept in touch with the
Salesians in Cape Town where he had called on his way to England
Now he decided to visit them in Turin. After a week in
Turin he went by train to Rome feeling ill, and went straight into
a nursing home near St.Peter’s with pneumonia. Here he heard
that St.Thérése of Lisieux was to be canonised on his birthday,
the 17th of May. He was not allowed out of bed until the 15th,
but felt quite well on the 16th. He managed to get a ticket for
St.Peter’s and shared a stool with an Italian lady. After this he
spent four days sight-seeing in Rome. On a later occasion, after
the canonisation of St.Martin de Porres, sitting in the Sistine Chapel
and looking at the ceiling, he remarked that he had seen it before
but had not appreciated it at the time. On his way to Switzerland
he fell ill and “bolted for England." He had typhoid and was sent
to Winchester Hospital and then to an officers’ Convalescent Home
in Brighton.
While at Leysin he very nearly became engaged to a Portuguese girl
but knew that he had promised his life to our Lord. It was here too
that a Dr.Dillon, son of the Irish politician, introduced him to the
works of St John of the Cross and St.Teresa of Avila which he studied
with great joy:
“It is not to be suggested that I was able to understand half of what
I read, but those books contain an attitude towards Almighty God which
was just what was able to destroy the last of the false Mysticism in
which I had been brought up. Here was the real thing, the love of God
and the workings of God, and an asceticism which turned to Him for
love's sake and not a self-centred culture.”
Settled in Brighton, Francis began to make notice boards, ping-pong
tables and cupboards, for the local parish. This ied to him making a
pamphlet rack for Catholic Truth Society pam- phiets and business
became so good he began to develop a small factory. About September
1925 he was introduced to the Catholic Evidence Guild and made his
debut on a street corner in London. He spoke many times at Hyde Park
Corner, the Bull Ring in Birmingham and on the beach at Colwyn Bay.
He eventually became Master of the Guild in Brighton.
In January 1926, the Brighton Guild was without speakers.
Francis who intended to go back to Africa to join the Salesians,
wrote to Don Tozzi in Cape Town and explained the position.
He was told to remain in Brighton. But the carpentry work was
growing and he did not see how he could enter religious life.
Meeting Fr.Peron O.M.I. from South Africa, he was advised to
make a retreat at the Carthusian Monastery near Brighton, Park-
minster. This he did, and asked to join the Carthusians but was
told he must be a Catholic for ten years. He tried again a few
months later, but in vain. A friend advised him to see Fr.Vincent
McNabb, the Dominican. Fr.Vincent heard of the acceptance of
him by the Dominican Order, the TB, the Salesians, the Carthu-
sians and the workshop at Brighton. He asked: “What about
your Dominican vocation. You were never refused were you?”
Francis said it seemed to have fallen through, but was told that
he shouid settle that matter first. He then saw Fr.Bede Jarrett,
the Provincial, and asked to be allowed to go to the Novitiate at
Woodchester.
As a result of this, he handed over his rack-making business —— the
rack in Cape Town Cathedral in the sixties was made by him — and it
was arranged that he should enter on January 2nd 1927, the birthday
of St.Thérése, Of his arrival he wrote:
“I was at home at last, and through the kindness of the
Order have been at home ever since.”
He had already been professed in the Third Order of St
Dominic and had taken a private vow of chastity.
DOMINICAN
1927 - 1931
Fr.Nicholas, writing of the things that helped him most when
he became a Dominican; saw the obedience in which he was
brought up at home, which he had to practise in the Cadet Corps,
tne Police and Flying Corps and in the home of the German headmaster,
as invaluable training for religious life. "One was trained to
follow the mind of a Superior and was satisfied to do so.” As
he was thirty-six when he entered the Dominican Novitiate, he found
it a great help in acclimatising himself to the new way of life.
Spiritually, he found that his reading of the Carmelite classics and
Fr.de Besse’s book ‘The Science of Prayer’, which he studied deeply,
a great help. A remark of Dom.Paschal of Charterhouse remained with him:
“Pray for the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and study them. They
work, as it were, like instincts.”
This remark he followed up all his life and
“it has been the main theme of all the Retreats I have given
and the key point of all my spiritual life.’
So Francis joined the Dominican Novitiate at Woodchester
in Gloucester on the feast of St.Thérése 1927 taking the name
‘Nicholas’ as his religious name. Of the Novitiate he notes:
“the confined space, the length of time behind locked doors, the
new-and-sparse diet, the drying up of topics of conversation, and
the amount of consideration for others with the personal sacrifices
in small things that the life required, was a strain on everyone
— and a very useful training.”
He found himself speaking to himself:
“Weil, this may be God's will, but it never would have been mine.”
Very soon he was put onto carpentry, doing all kinds of jobs,
but it was difficult to get an assistant to ‘hold the other end’
since silence had to be preserved.
His back troubled him and treatment was difficult to get. He
tried to train novices to get out the ‘kink’ but was unsuccessful
and had to put up with a great deal of pain. Life was rather a
battle with pain, diet, confined space and close companionship
with much younger people.
Then his father needed his pension and Nicholas had to appeal
to people to pay for his keep, clothes etc. Like all novices he
found the rubrics for saying Office in Choir a great difficulty.
Lifting a chest of drawers one day, he put the sacro-illiac
joint out and had to spend a week at the Priory in London while
Johnstone May put it right again. Back in Woodchester his back
went wrong again. Faced with the decision between leaving or
not, he decided to carry on and got one of the Novices to pull his
back into place again.
The rest of the Novitiate year passed peacefully and he made
his first Profession on the 29th January 1928 and went to Hawkes-
yard in Staffordshire to begin his studies. January the 29th was
the feast of St.Francis de Sales and his name was Francis and
his link with the Salesians in Cape Town had kept him steadily
inclined towards the religious life while he was in Switzerland.
Hawkesyard, after Woodchester "was like coming out of a
long dark tunnel into the light". Here he found companionship
and was soon back at his carpentry. He was “immensely happy in the
life at Hawkesyard and was learning many things besides my studies.
I was realising concretely that the spiritual life is built up also
by the attendance to duties that obedience brings. This is something
that is little realised in the world, and not always in religious houses.”
He found an osteopath in Birmingham who put his back
right again, had two operations and, after the second, spent three
months on his back. However he managed to pass his examinations.
After panelling the Common Room at Hawkesyard and working
in the chapel sanctuary, he began to cough blood. TB had
recurred and the Pension Authorities sent him to Cranham at the
end of July 1930. This was the end of his formal studies. All
the rest were done privately.
At Hawkesyard his chief friends were Francis Moncrieff, Benet
O'Driscoll and David Donaghue. He was influenced by Fr.Rupert
Hoper-Dixon who taught Logic and by Fr.Hugh Pope. He heard
Fr.Bede Jarrett talk about his intentions in opening the new Priory,
Blackfriars, Oxford, which took place at that time. Fr.Bede said
he had no special intention but a lady had donated three houses,
so he concluded that the Holy Spirit seemed to want this. Such
confidence and courage had a great effect upon Nicholas and it
was with him during his years at Potchefstroom.
Fr.Gervase Matthew, who also had an influence upon him,
started a club for learning Hebrew which Nicholas joined. At
this time he had to break off a friendship with a woman and her
daughter who had helped him materially since he joined the Order.
He accepted this under obedience and in connection with it he
records several possibly mystical graces he received. In Switzer-
land at prayer he heard our Lord within seeming to say: “Do you
not realise that I am a friend and much more. He had later some
rather similar experiences when he got absorbed in prayer. At
Hawkesyard he felt he experienced a very close sense of the pre-
sence of God. ‘
At Cranham Sanatorium Nicholas was coughing blood and
Fr Dunstan Sargent, a Dominican, anointed him:
“It had a tremendous and felt effect on me, even stronger
than that which I experienced at my baptism in Cape Town.
I was overjoyed and felt that now I belonged completely to
Almighty God... This was a matter of experience, as it were,
a rejoicing in fulfilment. It is a joy that has remained with
me....”
At Cranham Nicholas wrote a number of controversial letters
and did a tremendous amount of study, working through a book
of Philosophy and the Summa contra Gentiles of St.Thomas, Garri-
gou-LeGrange’s ‘Dieu’ and a summary of his ‘De Revelatione’.
He read steadily at his Bible too. In spite of his ill-health he had
abundant energy for study. He found there was a good deal of
anti-Catholicism in his environment, but felt the people concerned
good at heart. In the Sanatorium he was examined for his Solemn
Profession and was taken by car to Woodchester for the ceremony
on January 29th 1931.
VI
STELLENBOSCH — SPRINGS — POTCREFSTROOM
1931 - 1948
In August or September 1931 Nicholas left Cranham and
stayed in Brighton where he spoke for the Catholic Evidence Guild
once again. He was also allowed to visit Lourdes with one of
his brethren. He had suggested to Fr.Bede that he might be
useful as a Russian speaker but Fr.Bede had plans for him to
return to Africa. So he sailed for Cape Town on October 6th 1931.
Nicholas was a deacon when he arrived in South Africa again.
He went to the recently acquired property at Stellenbosch where
Fr.Wilfrid Ardagh had been for a year. As the buildings were in
poor shape Nicholas had plenty of scope for carpentry. Mean-
while he studied Theology. However he soon collapsed from
overwork and was in the Military Hospital at Wynberg for about
three months. In hospital he helped instruct an Afrikaans lady
who became a Catholic and also improved his Afrikaans in the
process. He also studied the Summa of St.Thomas in English.
On his return to Stellenbosch he was advised to go and live
in the Highveld and he stayed for six months with the Marist
Brothers at Observatory, Johannesburg. Here he learned to drive
and helped level a football field, besides studying. Having passed
his exarnination for Holy Orders and being assigned to work at
Potchefstroom, he was ordained there by Archbishop Gijiswyk
O.P., the Apostolic Delegate, on October 15th 1932, the feast of
St.Albert. Fr.Peron O.M.!. assisted him. He preached his first
sermon in the Redemptorist Church in Pretoria where there was —
the custom of ‘ringing’ the priest out of the pulpit, so that his
sermon was left in some confusion. While on holiday at Hout
Boy he was able to do some apostolic work among the Coloured
people there, as there was no church at the time.
In February 1933 Nicholas was sent to Springs to take care
of the Payneville Parish there. Before this, however, he gave a
retreat to the Christian Brothers in Fretoria recovering from a bout
of bronchitis to do so. He found now that the stock of notes
he had taken over the years was a good standby in place of the
formal studies which he had missed.
His study of Vedanta philosophy also helped with its concentration
on an ultimate goal.
Nicholas began his mission work at Springs with some disadvantage.
As he wrote:
“I had never attended a lecture in Moral Theology; I had heard
one lecture in Dogmatic Theology ... The only Canon Law
was what I had learnt in an armchair at Stellenbosch .. .
I had never heard of Pastoral Theology. I knew no word of
any African language. I had no money and no transport...”
Gradually, wtih the help of many people including some of
the congregation, the Church was furnished and a schoo! opened.
In April, after three months, he was sent to Potchefstroom Mis-
sion, since Fr.David Donaghue had broken down.
The experience of Mission at Springs had taught Nicholas the
need for Pastoral Theology and he worked through a number of
books on the subject, reading a fixed number of pages a day.
Looking back he saw ‘organising’ as a keynote of his life:
“I know I have never been a gambler. I could put any amount
of work, preparation and sacrifice into something that I
reckoned within my power to achieve, but had no patience
for uncertainties. Perhaps that is why I never cared for
fishing... Certainly I know I have done a number of things
in my life ordinarily called dangerous, but aways beforehand
I had it all worked out.”
He took over the Potchefstroom Mission from Fr.Donaghue.
St.Louis Bertrand Parish was at that time a small schoo! chapel
with a 100 African children taught by two sisters. The sisters
were planning to enlarge it and build a Convent and Priest’s house.
There was an out-station at Muiskraal, 32 miles away, another at
Machavie with a school, 12 miles away, 10 miles of which
was footpaths. Previous missioners had travelled by bicycle,
but Nicholas could not do this and had to have a car.
Nicholas stayed in the presbytery in town and went down
daily to the Mission. The two sisters drove the two miles daily
for twelve years in a ‘Spider’ cart drawn by a white horse. Of
the sisters he remarked:
“what would Mission life be without the sisters. I don’t
really know, not having tried it, but shudder to think.”
The Mission was a two-roomed building with 100 children
of whom nine were Catholics. There were 169 Catholics and
catechumens in the Township and District. The two, and later,
three, sisters at that time were invaluable and Nicholas learned
about Mission work from Sister Anacleta who pointed out to him
the jobs he should be doing. So he began to visit the parish and
discover the things which needed to be done.
Money, as ever, was a problem. For a long time his pension
was paid to his father to whom Nicholas had willed it at his Pro-
fession, but later he was able to use it for his Mission work.
After a time he began teaching in the school and this continued
almost uninterruptedly until 1948. He also partitioned off a
portion of the building as a sanctuary with the Blessed Sacrament
and two small rooms as a sacristy, and a livingroom. So he moved
down to St Louis Bertrands and lived in the roorn until the con-
vent and presbytery were built in 1934. After a time owing to
difficulties of personalities Nicholas took over the school, while
Sister Lioba, who was “old, deaf and nervous but had the heart
of a lion and the fortitude of a saint took charge as Superior.
Nicholas worked towards getting the school recognised by
the Government and a change from the heroic makeshift period
to a more normal one had to be made. School fees and the
increasing number of children provided some funds and new class-
rooms were built on the verandah. There was some opposition
from other church schools and the Education Department decided
to register the school in order to control it. A church worker
from Germany built two more classrooms at this time.
Meanwhile the parish was developing in the surrounding district:
“God was very good to us. I had only to keep running. He
opened up opportunities in every direction.”
For a while Nicholas taught Stds III-VI with 35 children
together, but gradually as new teachers came along he was able
to teach Std VI alone. Then a farm school was started at Vaalkop
with a room for a Church. A catechist-schoolmaster, Alpheus,
took charge and evangelised the countryside. Looking back,
Nicholas wondered where the money came from all those years.
The work spread. There were more Mass centres and farm
schools. The Ventersdorp and Lichtenburg districts were covered
as far as the Botswana border. There were 23 outstations and
about 13 schools and, although other Missions took over some
of these, there were still 19 outstations and 11 schools.
After six years a sister took over the Principal’s position
in the Township school and Nicholas continued teaching there.
During this time he had ilnesses and operations, but also found
time to give Retreats in different parts of the country. He recorded
his Mission experiences in some 300 Mission stories published
in the ‘Southern Cross’ newspaper. In those days a Sunday
started at 5 a.m. and, apart from coffee, ended at 6 p.m. with
the first real meal of the day followed by Benediction at 7 p.m.
Yet Nicholas taught in school on Mondays for many years. When
he left Potchefstroom in 1948 there were 1200 children in the
school of which nearly 50% were Catholics. In all this work
the sisters were his unfailing helpers.
One of the sisters who worked with Nicholas at Potchefstroom
for fifteen years writes:
“He was a very kind-hearted, zealous and hardworking priest.
He was most grateful for the smallest thing you did for him,
which he always rewarded with a grateful ‘God bless you’.
He was very humble and charitable. Everybody respected
and loved him. Catholics and non-Catholics spoke very
highly of him and were his friends. He helped and encouraged
wherever he could. His motto was: ‘It is better to do what
many would call the unnecessary thing, everything is neces-
sary’. Another saying of his was: ‘work for others, you'll
get another time to rest, or you'll see that those things
find their own strength.’ Often he would say: ‘Marry your
circumstances, make the best of it wherever you are or what-
ever you do.’ He never could agree with the saying ‘I am
resigned to God's will’. ‘No’, he said, ‘give with pleasure
and joy to God what he asks from you.”
This sister describes Nicholas at work — his three Masses on
a Sunday with confessions before and interviews or baptism and
marriages afterwards. She remarked on his patience and the
time he found to give to people. He paid great attention to help-
ing the needy and was especially kind to the sick and suffering. Yet
he was the handyman of the Mission. His motto was: ‘never
neglect any small or trivial fault.’ He duplicated hymnbooks,
wrote newspaper articles and learned languages in his spare time.
Another friend of Nicholas who first met hirn at Potchefstroom
writes:
“Father Nick found the necessity of constantly visiting people
in their homes, however poor, and to enter intimately into
their human life and human difficulties ... His outstanding
virtue was kindness and consideration for others by which
everybody was attracted ... He once said ‘I see Christ in
every man, and Mary in every woman. In every sick man
there is Jesus in the person who is suffering, and in every
poor man it is Jesus who is languishing.’ He lived for Jesus,
he spoke with Jesus, his love was God and his neighbour.”
Bioscope (cinema) shows became a feature of the parish
life especially to entertain the people over the weekend. The
films were carefully chosen and the effort was seen as an apostolate
although it seemed financially not worth while. Dances were
also held and eventually a school hall was built in which films
could be shown. Then some cottages for teachers were built
from a legacy from Nicholas’ father. Next a Secondary Domestic
Science school was opened by the sisters wtih splendid results.
The boys’ Secondary School fees were found partly by setting
the boys making coffins during the holidays. It is reported that a
visiting Provincial slept in a bedroom full of coffins! This school
produced a number of vocations to the sisterhood and priesthood.
Nicholas had a great interest in Scouting, having studied
Baden-Powell’s first book ‘Scouting for N.C.O.’s and Men”,
published at the time of the Boer War and from this book "Scout-
ing for Boys” grew. At Machaviestad he was able to provide for
a Scout Masters’ Course in which some white Rover Scouts
learned to appreciate their black brethren. In 1954 he was awarded
the Medal of Merit by the African Boys Scout Association of
South Africa. Nicholas reflected on how little the European knew
at that time of the African except in the master-servant relation-
ship, a relationship by which they judged everything. How little
did they realise the conditions in the Townships. He noted that
what had happened in England had to happen in South Africa:
“It is only since the beginning of this century that the labour-
ing people of England have been able to assert their rights, as
human beings, to a full human life. That assertion has not yet
been made good in South Africa by the equivalent class, but
it ts certainly going to be in the future, and in the end this
will benefit all."
One of his Dominican brothers who knew him well at this period writes:
“Like any very positive and original character, maybe a saint
but not a ‘plaster saint’, Nick could be a source of endless
joy with his restless energy and his ‘gadgets’. I took over
Potchefstroom once for him. When I got into the confes-
sional stands for books and typewriter dropped from the
door and walls. 1 saw the system by which he ran the bio-
scope, controlled the audience, took the cash and said his
breviary all at the same time. I heard that he not only made
coffins for the district in his carpentry school, but assisted at
the other extreme of human existence by bringing pregnant
women to the hospital from all over the large area. Since
he drove at sixty mph over the dirt roads, we used to wonder
what would happen if a bump precipated a birth and con-
cluded that Nick would be quite equal to the occasion.
He was an interesting mixture of calm and drive. He spoke
slowly and thoughtfully, but was always in some sort of
restrained hurry. His work had to be done, and he was
inclined to inspan anyone handy to help. ‘Do. . . like a
good fellow . . .° could become ominous. He was literally
supercharged. To teach Standard VI, not permitting the
students to fail, running a whole district with 19 outstations
and 11 schools at the same time, running a carpentry schooi
and a bioscope, writing continually for the Southern Cross
and translating books into Tswana and Afrikaans as well as
frequently giving retreats, was more like a three-man job
than a one man job. Add frequent illness and having to
hitch his back into place continually and the incident when
he chased a runaway wife 300 miles in a car to bring her
back to her husband, and it all becomes a phenomenon.
He was not logical —- and perhaps one should say ‘thank
God’ — in all his adaptations to life. He wore miner’s jeans
which he could get for six shillings at the beginning of the
war at the mine stores, and homemade coats made by the
sisters, but he drove a mighty Pontiac which he had obtained
cheaply and which some people thought unsuited to the
‘poor missionary’. It certainly paid off to have a heavy car
when he would be driving along and suddenly turn off into
the veld saying: ‘There is someone I have got to see up in
that village’. He thought nothing of ‘popping’ the hundred
miles up to Johannesburg and in a phone discussion with a
sister which had not reached full agreement — that is, probably,
not what Nick wanted — I heard him offer to ‘pop’ the two
hundred miles from Boksburg to Newcastle to discuss it. I think
the sister must have given in, since he did not need to go.
To me he was the perfect British colonial civil servant or com-
missioner turned priest. I expect he enjoyed getting out
his service revolver when he drove the sisters on dangerous
roads at night. But there was no doubt about the ‘turned
priest’. I used to wonder if some of the energy came from
Yoga about which he used to talk with more tolerance than
about theosophy. But as 1 read the foregoing pages, I feel
sure again that it came chiefly from the right source — from
an intense Christian spiritual life and love. Fr.Nick was the
product of a great imperial civil and military tradition, and in
early life tested by the moral confusion and illness existing
in its core. He used the best in it, and triumphed over the
“iHness”, to reach a life totally dedicated to God and man
("always think of the other fellow first"), in a way that never
rested but seemed to be consciously minute by minute.”
In 1948 Nicholas fell off a ladder in the Church and broke his
wrist, being laid up for three months. At this time the Dutch
Dominican Vicariate was to take over that part of the Transvaal
and Nicholas left Potchefstroom for good in August 1948.
VII
SPRINGS — BOKSBURG
1948 - 1958
In August 1948 Nicholas was assigned a temporary post in
Springs. With his left arm still in plaster, he took over the Payne-
ville Mission while Fr.Oliver Clark was on leave. There were
some 19 Compounds for mine labourers, 9 hospitals, large and
small, and 1000 parishioners in the Township with three out-
stations. Nicholas had to learn the method of keeping the accounts
in detail, visit the Compounds to announce forthcoming Mass
and in general get to know the people. He found the sad side
of the work in the fact that one only made contact with the
miners perhaps once or twice during their nine or ten months
contract —- 4000 of the parishoners were temporary ones whom
one saw in sickness or accident or only to bury them. Considering
the circumstance of their life, he found it remarkable how they
kept in touch with the Church.
As usual Nicholas found things to do about the Mission,
widening the altar, making altar rails. He got a promise of more
salaries from the Education Department if more classrooms were
built. He got them built by a European firm since the Bishop did
not think priests expendable on supervising African labour. The
Parish Priest, when he returned, would have preferred supervising
everything himself to save expenses. In the event some help
was given by the Bishop to cover costs, but a considerable debt
remained,
At the end of this task, Nicholas was able to take a six
months holiday. First he went to stay at Cala in Tembuland
where he gave a retreat. In the hospital there, he re-arranged
the system of bells and water tanks.
Of the retreat some sisters remarked: ‘That was a strange
sort of retreat: nothing about Hell or mortal sin!’ Nicholas re-
flected:
"I had, indeed, worked through one of the Gospels, trying to
bring out the Christian life as lived by our Lord, and that
is a quieter method than sermons on selected subjects includ-
ing Heil and mortal sin. Maybe the dears missed a certain
thrill obtained from those two sermons. I wouldn‘t know.”
He also gave four other retreats. At this time he travelled
to Potchefstroom for the ordination of Fr.Samuel Motswenyane,
and then returned to Springs. From there he visited the Kruger
National Park and went on to Pietermaritzburg for another retreat
and then back to Cala with retreats at Fort Beaufort and King
Williams Town. At Cala he had an operation for a cyst on his
foot and another for a hernia. Then another retreat at Rivonia
near Johannesburg and back to Springs. He had travelled 9000
miles, given six ten-day retreats and two weekend ones and
had had two operations.
While ali this seems to enlarge on the quantity of his labours,
it does, nevertheless, indicate an indomitable spirit in a man with
many ilinesses and difficulties to contend with throughout his life.
At the beginning of 1950 Nicholas took over the Stirtonville
Parish in Boksburg from Fr.Synnott. He began teaching Standard
VI which had not existed until then, but after two months went
down with bronchitis. At this time his brother Will came on a
visit. Nicholas was four months in bed and after his brother left,
was again in hospital for a month with TB. When this was better
he had a hernia again and his nineteenth operation.
When Fr.Synnott returned, Nicholas moved into the Dominican
Convent at Boksburg as chaplain where he stayed for seven
years and, as he said, received great kindness. He became their
handyman and made 110 windows, which did not open, to open,
built cubicles, put up handrails, burglar-proofing and many other
things, His room at the Convent was full of gadgets of all kinds.
About this time his Superior said he ought to write a book
for young priests doing Mission work. So Nicholas began the
book which “wrote itself” in eight days. This book ‘Missionary
in South Africa’ incorporating many of his articles in the ‘Southern
Cross’ under pen name ‘Sacerdos’ was published two years
later in 1953.
He served the Central Prison at Boksburg and found that
the prisoners were “on remand for petty offences and packed
tight into the place”.
“They were men who had lost contact with their own back-
ground and had made little or no contact with the Western
scene except on a master and servant basis. They had simply
nothing of Christian culture properly so-called. Clearly their
principle was that anything you could ‘get away with’ was
alright. Yet they were not evil or evil intentioned. They
listened with rapt attention to what I preached to them...
They were certainly not people who had ever learned any-
thing about Christianity. It was a great happiness to go to
people who needed so much and a great sadness to see they
needed so much.”
At the end of February 1955 Nicholas spent some time as
chaplain to Catholic students at the University of Cape Town,
staying at Kolbe House, Rondebosch. There were thirteen stu-
dents in residence and discipline was poor. Nicholas found it
difficult to adjust to the students and their surface cynicism. Out
of two months he spent six weeks extending the chapel. About
July 1956, Nicholas heard that his brother, who had Parkinson‘s
disease, was very ill and he went to England for a month where
he got his brother into hospital with some Sisters in Cardiff. He
saw several old friends and visited his sister whom he had not
seen for forty years. On October 6th he returned to Boksburg.
After giving a retreat for his brethren, he heard confidentially
that the Dominicans were taking over the Major Seminary at
Pevensey, Natal, and he was to go there as spiritual adviser. On
November 15th 1957 the sisters put on a big concert for the anni-
versary of his ordination to the priesthood.
Nicholas had long been interested in the Dominican laybrother
of Lima, Peru, Blessed Martin de Porres who was a half-caste.
In 1954 he had been put in charge of promoting the Cause for the
Canonisation of Bld.Martin in Southern Africa. About 1946
he had translated a short life of Bld.Martin, ‘Lad of Lima’ into
SetSwana and later in 1952 a translation into Afrikaans was published,
In 1957 he offered Archbishop Hurley of Durban a plaster statue
of Bld.Martin but was asked for something larger and better and
a carved statue was made by Mr.Bienewitz of Johannesburg based
upon sketches by Mrs.Braunger of Springs. This statue had the
title “The Apostle of Friendship’ and Nicholas described it:
“It shows Blessed Martin as the selfless man, wholly occupied with
the person who is just asking him for a favour. If you look quietly
at the face, you see suddenly a wonderful quiet smile round the mouth,
so infectious that you have to laugh yourself.”
The Annual Novena in honour of Bld.Martin in 1957 brought
him a flood of letters. This work had been going on for the last
two years with the help of schoolgirls. When he took over the
work, Nicholas had £17. He made three Novenas to Bld.Martin
and asked him to give things ‘a bit of a push’ and sure enough
something did happen. Fr.Norbert Georges O.P. who had been
head of the promotion outside Rome for twenty years sent him
£1000. A general Novena was published and sent to every
address in the Catholic Directory. Petitions to place before the
statue of Bld.Martin at Boksburg Convent came in and also dona-
tions and requests for pamphlets, medals and the like. Eventuaily
pamphlets were printed in English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Sesotho, Xhosa,
SetSwana, Bemba and Cishona. A Chronicle was published containing
testimonies to ‘favours received’ and news. By the early sixties 600
people had written to the Centre as it came to be called, and 900
copies of the Chronicle had gone out as well as 3500 copies of the
Novena. In 1958 Nicholas spent a month preaching about Bld Martin in
Rhodesia. At this time he found a reference to a Doctorate Dissertation
‘The Social Implications in the work of Bld Martin de Porres’ by
Sr.L.M.Preher O.P. of Kentucky, USA and based his talks upon this and
later brought out a series of pamphlets on it.
On December 21st 1957 Nicholas flew to Durban en route for
the St.Peter’s Seminary at Pevensey in Natal. Of the period of
his life now ending he wrote:
‘It has been full of much happinss and some sadness during
the last two years, but it was all to the good, and Almighty
God knows what he is doing and what he wills or allows.
I am only most grateful for it all. In fact it had been seven
years that contrasted very strongly with the previous fifteen
years. Then I had worked, travelling continuously over a
very wide area, and the people for whom I worked were the
poorest and most disregarded in the country. But at Boksurg
I was Chaplain in a very large Convent Boarding School to which
were sent the children of the wealthy ... But I like to recall the
one common factor was the kindness of everyone with whom one had to
deal, with scarcely an exception in either camp. My only regret is
that neither camp really knows the character and experiences the
real kindness of the other because they are divided by misconceptions.”
While at Boksburg Nicholas continued his studies. He studied
for a Degree and also worked on a book on Education, writing
it in 30 days. Afterwards he worked on the manuscript for seven
years giving it to various people for criticism. Although it was
never published, it was commended for its educational methods.
At one time he thought of becoming a ‘worker priest’ in Johannes-
burg but this was not permitted. He supported himself partly
by sub-contracting for a carpentry firm and produced piles of
carpentry work on the Convent stoep. Surprisingly in view of his
‘activism’ and ‘work mystique’ he once said he would have liked
to have been a student of Scripture. In his persistence and ‘for-
tifying of people’s wills’ he may have been using mthods learned
in the Civil Service and Air Force both in dealing wtih bureaucracy
and in getting subordinates to move.
VII
ST.PETER’S SEMINARY — ST NICHOLAS PRIORY
1958 - 1975
On January 16th 1958 Nicholas arrived at St.Peter’s Seminary,
Pevensey, Natal, to take over his duties as Spiritual Adviser to the
African students preparing for the secular priesthood. He taught
Pedagogy, Homiletics, Ascetical and Mystical Theology and Cate-
chetics. Of his studies at this period he wrote:
“I am very grateful to find that what I find .:. is a confirmation
and filling out of what I have tried to follow and teach for the
last twenty-five years, and that even Vedanta had given me a certain
preparation for it, though the ultimate aim of Vedanta is something
utterly different. It taught me that man must use his freedom to
subjct himself to an ultimate law. Maybe my upbringing in a
Christian home, and the life in France with the Lombardon family
and the visit to Lourdes had developed a certain Christian formation
of mind, however weak and confused, that prevented me from being
completely absorbed into Vedanta, wherein a man subjects himself
to a law which is wholly subjective and not objective as in
Christianity. I cannot say. Suffice it is to say that Amighty God
is good and I am finding that every effort I made after Him has born
fruit that I have been able to gather in the light of the Church,
and His protection has been truly paternal and truly continual.”
Nicholas’ preaching tour of Rhodesia in 1958 left him with
flu, bronchitis and asthma. He moved into the Sanatorium at
Pietermaritzburg for some weeks and convalesced at Villa
Assumpta. He got back to the Seminary on October 14th.
At the Seminary, he was well liked by the students and found
plenty of scope for carpentry and as general handyman. He was
a familiar figure wearing an apron over shirt and shorts. From
the latter suspenders ran from the waist to the top of his socks.
He had a desk, the lid of which, when lifted, disclosed a typewriter
Arising up ready for use. In the Pietermaritzburg Sanatorium,
he had a moveable part of a desk top which could swivel
round to him when he had to lie in bed. The work must go on! When
he once offered to take off a presbytery door to plane it down,
the priest wondered if all Dominican priests carried large planes
in their suitcases! He would certainly have a measuring tape and
a stole always at the ready in his pocket!
in 1961 the St.Peter’s Seminary moved to Hammanskraal in
the Transvaal and Nicholas was assigned to St.Nicholas Priory,
Stellenbosch, the place where his Dominican life in South Africa
had begun, but much changed with a large Priory with students
and novices and a much developed Parish, A pantechnicon had
to be hired to move all his tools, Bld.Martin Literature and per-
sonal belongings to Stellenbosch.
At Stellenbosch Nicholas set about developing the Blessed
Martin Centre from a couple of rooms in the Kromrivier House.
Fr.Georges continued to help him financially. The Centre was
staffed by Nicholas and two young men, Dawie and Eugene. The
gradual mechanisation of the work there may indicate the growth
of the Centre: 1964 a duplicator was acquired, in 1966 a stencil
cutter, in 1967 a new cutter and a photostat machine and in 1969
an electric guillotine. Nicholas carried on a large correspondence
in several languages with people from ail over Africa who were
devoted to Bld.Martin and who sent in their petitions and testi-
monies. He was thus able to develop an apostolate of prayer,
counsel and sometimes of material help. The Centre was able to
provide some bursaries for needy students. A variety of prayer
cards for study, sickness and various needs were produced in many
languages, also a Novena booklet in five languages. Various
pamphlets were produced, some by Nicholas on St.Martin as pioneer
social worker.
Nicholas had a statue of Bld.Martin set up in the Priory Church
and it became something of a shrine at which petitions were placed.
Nicholas was a community man very much in his own style,
not surprising in view of the history of his studies and life in the
Order where he had not had much chance to live in a community.
At Pevensey and Stellenbosch he lived in a Dominican community
for the first time since Hawkesyard days. His apostolate had
largely been his own, done in his own unique way and the Dominican
Order honoured him for it with the title of Preacher General.
He was in fact very good company in the community with a fund
of stories at recreation and always ready to help if he could. He
suffered from the deterioration of community life in the late sixties
and he tried to counteract it by multiplying novenas and prayers
and the setting up of a St.Martin shrine. While he usually cele-
brated daily Mass privately or for the one or two laybrothers, he
was aiso glad to concelebrate with his brethren. In a way his
apostolate did centre round himself, but he himself was centred
in the service of God and his saints.
The St.Martin Centre was carried on after his death by Brother
Martin Roden O.P. and later by Sister Paschal O.P. In 1974 Paddy
Bouma made a mosaic of St.Martin for the shrine now in the
entrance to the church at Stellenbosch. The St.Martin Bulletin
still goes out all over Africa. From June to November 1976 the
St.Martin Centre received 4652 letters and 4905 petitions and
they sent out 4659 letters. Various translators help with the
different languages and the whole is adequately supported by
donations.
In 1962 Nicholas had the joy of going to Rome for the Canoni-
sation of St Martin de Porres by Pope John on May 6th. He
brought with him a large number of petitions from Africa and Asia,
eventually left at the St Martin Exposition at the ‘Minerva. He
was given a privileged seat with the Promotors of the Cause
with the boy who had been healed at St Martin’s intercession
next to him.
In 1967 Nicholas had three months in hospital in Stellenbosch
with TB. His desk and some equipment was set up in the ward
and a stream of messengers went between the Hospital and the
Priory. Business as usual! He also gathered a few Catholics
together on Sundays and said Mass for them.
In addition to his stories about the Missions, Nicholas wrote
a large number of articles for the ‘Southern Cross’ newspaper
concerned with education and social problems. There were some
55 articles between 1950 and 1955. Some titles will indicate his
interests: ‘The South African Rakes Progress’ (in three parts)
on how the African people had been spoilt by the treatment given
them; “The Church and African Education’ in nine parts; ‘The
Fiselin Report and the Mission Schools’ two articles; ‘The Impact
of Christianity on Natural Politics’; ‘Racial Justice and Charity’;
‘The Soul is made for Christianity’ in six articles. In 1956 he
reviewed the Tomlinson Report and the book ‘Naught for your
Comfort’. In the later 50's and early 60's he was, as has been
seen, writing about St.Martin especially as a social worker. In
1959 he was writing about his beloved carpentry in ‘Carpentry
for the Home’ by Saw & Hammer. He regretted the lack of car-
pentry in schools resulting in the boys being unable to be useful
about the home. Tending the home develops pride in it. Car-
pentry “is a builder of home life and home happiness and personal
initiative. Our Lord was a carpenter and surely He must have
many very intimate graces for those who care to look after the
home and spend their strength and interest on it as he did!’
(South- ern Cross 2.9.1959.) In 1969 he wrote about ‘A dying
Generation’ — the neglect of the welfare of African children.
In 1972 Nicholas was knocked down by a motor car in Durban and broke
both hips. He was in Mariannnill Hospital and recuperated later at
Escombe. He returned to Stellenbosch but later fell while on holiday
at Escombe and broke one hip. He was taken to the Princess Alice
Hospital for a hip operation and was then in the St.Vincent Palotti
Hospital in Cape Town. When he returned to Stellenbosch he had to
remain in his room but business went on as usual as far as possible.
The last two years of Nicholas’s life were spent in Nazareth
House, Cape Town, where he mended rosaries, His memory had
been going for some time and he often failed to recognise visitors.
He died there on the 20th September 1975 in the presence of his
brothers and sisters and was buried at Stellenbosch. Writing in
the late fifties he had ended his Autobiography with these words:
“And so the long struggle upwards from a deficient Christianity —
however well meant — through being a quasi-prophet of non-Christianity,
to the Home I have been given in the Order, has brought me to the point
where I have been asked to teach and explain the personal dealings with
the soul of the One Whose ways I have been watching and struggling to
learn during the whole of my life.”
His obituary card quotes Daniel 12:3:
“The learned will shine as brightly as the vault of heaven, and those
who have instructed many in virtue, as bright as stars for all eternity.”
citations
