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| This charming tiny book is shown here at its full size. | |
Vernon Lee's "Sister Benvenuta & the Christ Child"
commentary by Jim Rockhill
The Rare Books Collection of the Hesburgh Library at Notre Dame University possesses a copy of the 1911 edition of Vernon Lee's Sister Benvenuta & the Christ Child: An Eighteenth Century Legend produced by Thomas B. Mosher of Portland Maine, a slim 32vo volume containing ix pages of introductory material & 58 pages of text. Prior to this edition, the tale, for the volume contains only this one tale, appeared in the 1905 Christmas Supplement of Fortnightly Review, a 1905 edition produced by Michael Kennerley of New York & a 1906 edition produced by E. Grant Richards of London.
On page viii of his introduction to the edition at hand, Thomas B. Mosher writes, "She has indeed written many beautiful things for us, but this legend is likely to remain one of her most enduring creations," before likening it to such tales as Anatole France's "Our Lady's Tumbler," Marcel Schwob's "The Children's Crusade," Gustav Flaubert's "The Legend of St. Julian, Hospitaler," Fiona Macleod's "The Wayfarer" & Eca de Queiroz's "The Sweet Miracle." It is a pity that the tale's rarity has thus far proven Mr. Mosher's prophecy false.
Anyone offended by such things should beware that further readingof this commentary will disclose the plot to those who have not yet read the tale, though many of the basic elements of that plot are quite familiar.
The first 6 pages of text (pp. 3-8), take place in 1800 & introduce the reader to a few of the legends that have grown around Sister Benvenuta Loredan since her death some 60 years ago. The people in & around the Convent of St. Mary of the Rosebush of Cividale in Friuli are petitioning the Vatican to recognize the miracles produced by the Sister & in her name since 1740. Many of the miracles, deeds & attributes formerly associated with other saints are now increasingly attributed to her. Children now expect that it will be the good Sister Benvenuta who fills their shoes at Christmas. Songs written in praise of her end curiously with mention of the devil.
"The perusal of the diary of Sister Benvenuta Loredan, contained amongst the documents of this case, may perhaps shed some light both on her real claims to beatification & on the reason why these claims were not officially admitted." p.8.
The next 41 pages (pp. 9-49), are devoted to The Diary of Sister Benvenuta Loredan, Convent of St. Mary of the Rosebush of Cividale in Friuli. There is a curious tension, as Sister Benvenuta (c.f. Italian "ben venuto" = "welcome" or "well come"), a 19 year old novice of noble lineage, lame & apparently simple-minded, narrates her story, between objective & subjective reality. She is at the same time capable of realizing that wax images are wax & puppets no more than animated dolls, while attributing figures of identical construction, such as the Jesus stored in the sacristy cupboard, pending its brief appearance in the manger at Christmas, with life. The diary is addressed principally to the "Bambino" stored in the cupboard, whom Sister Benvenuta wishes to clothe & cuddle as if it were a real child.
She is repeatedly frustrated in her attempts to do this by the interference of the Sister Sacristan, her growing irritation at whom prompts her to ask for the Bambino's forgiveness. Lee pokes much gentle humor, through the filter of Sister Benvenuta's naive narration, at the pretensions of the Confessor who writes the puppet play, composes sonnets upon the entry of new nuns to the convent & is something of a gourmand, the spitefulness of the Sister Sacristan, & other foibles. Several of the Deadly Sins appear in one petty guise or another as events unfold within & around the convent.
A traveling troupe arrives & haggles with the convent over the amount they expect to be paid to perform an entertainment for the convent & community. Among the troupe's puppets is a grotesque marionette of Beelzebub Satanasso, Prince of Devils. Sister Benvenuta admits that she is supposed to be horrified by this figure, but having no fear of the Devil himself, she finds it laughable.
On Ash Wednesday, the troupe performs a puppet play based on the Biblical tale of Judith & Holofernes full of unholy lust, holy virtue & triumphant murder. Shortly thereafter, a free-for-all erupts between the "chair-carriers of the Patriarch's niece & the Bravoes of His Excellency the Count of Gradisca" in which one man is left for dead & the police put a cobbler to the rack "in order to obtain information & do justice."
Sister Benvenuta's devotion to the Bambino reaches a crisis shortly thereafter when, almost succeeding in convincing the Abbess that the image of the Christ Child deserves to have made for him a more seemly & comfortable garment than the skimpy band he now wears, she is thwarted by Sister Sacristan's dismissal of the plan as obviously the idea of a certain novice most in need of prayers. While that individual trades gossip about the Confessor's gluttony, Sister Benvenuta is left having to complete the garment herself in secrecy, asking forgiveness of the Bambino for her growing sinfulness in hating the Sister Sacristan.
On St. Ursula's Day, in spite of having been successful in bribing others to obtain the necessary materials & avoiding the interference of the Sister Sacristan, Sister Benvenuta realizes she does not have the skills necessary to complete the Bambino's garment.
Holy Martha, Patroness of all good housewives, why was I taught to dance minuets, &mp curtsy, & sing madrigals to the spinet, & say "Oui, Monsieur," "Votre servante, Madame," & never, never taught to sew? p. 38.
In her naivete, only one course appears open to her:
"The only price worthy of being paid to Him: the price of a soul, very foolish & simple no doubt, but full as a grape is of sweetness, or a rose of perfume, of unmixed love & devotion." p. 37-8.
Now follows the most remarkable scene in the tale, the appearance of the Devil to bargain for the soul of sister Benvenuta on the 1st Sunday of Advent.
"They must have mislaid that one after the puppet show & it remained behind, forgotten in a corner. Or else.. . . I was forgetting that there are words always heard, at whatsoever distance, and, which the Evil One answers almost before they are spoken." p. 38.
He is identical to the puppet representing him, except that he is as tall as Sister Benvenuta,
"just the same expression, rigid, goggle, agape, & very anxious to understand what it was all about & do whatever was expected." p. 39.
Characteristically, although the Christ Child appears to her, even in the form of a crude wax image, as a real child, the Devil remains a puppet, displaying the mere semblance of life, his jaw an articulated device meant to mimic speech.
"I remember noticing the time that passed between the dropping of the jaw & his speech; also saying to myself, I would have arranged his eyes to roll from side to side,' but I cannot tell whether or not he had any wires & strings about him." p. 39.
Exasperated at the novice's lack of fear & respect, the Devil "point(s) to a label over his shoulder, with written on it: Beelzebub Satanasso, Prince of Devils" before going on at length about the principles of pattern cutting mentioned in the Lady's Encyclopedia of Useful Knowledge. Satisfied that he & the novice have made themselves clear, he makes apologies for the prick necessary for her to sign a proffered parchment in her own blood. The narration throughout this episode is curiously complex, full of innocent humor at the Devil's posturings & apparent obtuseness, yet grotesque & even tragic, as if Sister Benvenuta does not realize the full implications of what she has done.
"I had never crossed myself nor ejaculated any form of exorcism, because you see, I had told him to come, & it was a piece of business." p. 42.
The diary ends feverishly on Christmas Eve with Sister Benvenuta looking back on her childhood & anticipating consummation. The reader who has not only read other miracle tales, but is also aware of the Faust legend, is aware at this point that Sister Benvenuta may just as likely be damned as blessed.
The final 9 pages (pp. 50-58) are given over to a Postscript written by Sister Benvenuta's cousin, Sister Atalanta Badoer, referred to in the diary as "the most unruly of the novices," but here quite contrite. It is she who has witnessed the final event in Sister Benvenuta's life, as it is she who has been responsible for finding & preserving the Diary over the objections of the church.
On Christmas Eve, her superiors send her to determine what is keeping Sister Benvenuta from the company of the convent. Hearing sounds she associates with the way a mother might speak to her child, she walks into a room full of light, music & "a marvelous fragrance as of damask roses & big white lilies in the sun." In a scene that recalls a painting of the Madonna & Child by Fra Filippo Lippi, she describes the Christ Child standing on her cousin's lap, a foot on each knee, "craning His little bare body seeking to throw His little arms round her neck, & to raise his little mouth to hers." After this kiss, the glory fades. Sister Benvenuta is dead & already cold, with a look of rapture on her face. "(A) beautiful garment, of threads of gold & silver interwoven" lies at her feet, the garment she was unable to complete herself & for which she had sold her soul.
In the same corner of the room from which Sister Benvenuta had seen it arise during Advent, Sister Atalanta finds the demon puppet, "(a)nd its wires were wrenched & twisted, its articulated jaw crushed to bits, & its garments singed all round it."
The legends associated with nuns or other ascetics desiring to caress or otherwise nurture the infant Jesus in emulation of the Madonna are perhaps legion, as for instance St. Ita's vision of nursing the baby Christ in 8th century Ireland. It is a commonplace tradition & its recurrent, almost cliched iconography seem to have appealed to Vernon Lee, who manages to breathe fresh life into the theme through the very act of calling attention to & accentuating its artificiality.
Sister Benvenuta cannot always make the cognitive leap necessary to realize that one belief, one thing she says, calls into question or contradicts another. She can describe hypocrisy without seeing it herself. When she does recognize the artificiality of an object, as when she remarks upon the realistic effect produced at Holofernes' decapitation when red cloth is pulled from the puppet's neck to simulate blood, it excites more comment & excitement from her than the riot that follows. It is just as natural to her that a representation of Jesus is Jesus as it is for the Devil to appear to her in a guise little different, but for size, & no less false than his puppet. If she cannot complete a garment for Jesus worthy of Him, she has no qualms about asking the Devil to do it for her; since the soul is the only price worthy of God, giving it to the Devil so as to create a gift for Christ seems perfectly natural to her. These paradoxes abound, creating a constant tension between what Sister Benvenuta describes & what the reader believes is really happening or is likely to occur as a result.
In the Introduction to "The Doll," collected in For Maurice: Five Unlikely Stories (John Lane, 1297), Vernon Lee writes,
"(T)his story is not by me at all, nor do I know whether or not it is by anybody, or, so to speak, a natural product; & that is just what makes it interesting in my eyes. . . For the story was told me (I adding only a perhaps unnecessary ending)" p. xlv.
As in that tale, Vernon Lee has here succeeded in the delicate task of creating a world in which the boundary between the artificial & the real is blurred, in which a mannequin or a wax image can be imbued with sufficient emotional resonance to remain patently false & yet unmistakably alive & true.