TUB HUE At CONTENT CASK.

Evening Star, Issue 7177, 2 April 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

TUB HUE At CONTENT CASK.

EX-FATHER NIHILL NI HILO FIT.

[From Ocr London Correspondent.]

London, February 4. The case of “ Allcard v. Skinner,” which I referred to last mail as being in progress, terminated yesterday in what reasonable people will, on the whole, be disposed to consider a righteous verdict (or, rather, judgment) for the defendant. The plaintiff, you may remember I told you, is an elderly young lady, a Miss Allcard, and the defendant a Miss Skinner, the Superior of a Protestant sisterhood known as the “ Sisters of the Poor ” —not to be confounded with the “Little Sisters of the Poor.” The recent action was brought to decide whether large sums of money given to the Convent by Miss Alloard during her residence had been obtained from her by undue influence. From first to last no hint of malappropriation or dishonorable conduct of any kind marked the proceedings. The money, it was admitted by the plaintiff, had been spent either on the poor or on the convent buildings. Moreover, to prove this beyond dispute, Miss Skinner and her adviser (the Rev. Mr Nihill) produced their books and vouchers, etc,, which counsel on both sides admitted to be perfectly satisfactory. Despite this, the glimpses of Protestant convent life afforded by the trial are more curious than edifying. Miss Allcard, even then a young lady of ritualistic views, came to London about twenty years ago, and lived with her mother at Thomas’s Hotel, Berkeley square. She desired to go to confession, and the clergyman to whom she mentioned her wish referred her to the Rev. Mr Nihill. That gentleman, who seems to be a somewhat, saturnine edition of the ritualist priest in Mrs Lynn Linton’s famous novel “Under Which Lord,” received the young lady (metaphorically) with open arms. “In June, 1868” (says a summary of the case), “Mr Nihill introduced her to the ‘ Lady Superior ’ or ‘ Mother ’ of this convent, known as ‘ the Sister of the Poor,’ or ‘ the Sisters of St. Mary at the Cross.’ On the next day the promising neophyte was enrolled as an associate. Her work was to visit the poor; but her connection with the sisterhood was an external one, and she visited the sisters only occasionally. After a year and a-half of this external association she was admitted as a “postulant;” and some fifteen months later, in August, 1871, she became a member of the sisterhood. This final step involved the acceptance of certain stringent rules. In the religious service by which the novice became a sister there were exhortations to obedience and to poverty. ‘All heaven would go wrong,’ says the exhortation of ' the Chiefcst of Sinners but their Father in Christ, Henry Daniel Nihill,’ ‘if a single angel slept out of his place or chose his own way of doing the Work appointed him to do.’ The sisters were to remember that the voice of the Superior was the voice of God; they were to listen on their knees in perfect silence, and not to defend'themselves. Each sister was to remember that she had nothing of her own. ‘lt matters not so much what becomes of the things that have been yours,’ says the exhortation, ‘or to whom you give them, as that you should yourselves part entirely and for ever with the individual possession of them and be poor,’ The sister was to make in writing, of her own free will, a full disposition of all she had with her. * Let her offer this deed of gift upon the altar at the time of her clothing, and let her know that from the time of her being clothed in garments that belong not to her she hath nothing in the convent of her own.’ All this Miss Allcard duly and dutifully obeyed. She made over to the Superior, Miss Skinner, stocks, shares, and money to the amount of LB,OOO. She also made a will acting, as she declared, under Miss Skinner’s influence, leaving to her all her property. Miss Allcard remained in the sisterhood, with some disagreements and one or two intervals, till she left it in 1879 to join the Roman Catholic Church. The action was brought to recover this money, less some L 2,000, payment for her board and lodging while in the convent. Her claim to compel Miss Skinner to return the money was based on the ground that the transfer was made under undue influence, and in the absence of any separate and independent advice. Her plea was that she was under the spell of strong religious feeling ; that she was induced to believe that her spiritual welfare was involved in the step she was taking; and that such was the power of the Mother, or Superior, that she was ready and willing to do without question whatever that authority, whose voice was the voice of God, commanded her to do. The law allow gifts of this kind to be made, but it exacts proof that the action was one of complete freedom. ‘lf the fair inference was,’ said the Judge, ‘ that the plaintiff had parted with her property in favor of the sisterhood by undue influence exercised over her as a member, whether postulant, novice, or sister, the gift could not stand.’ But here was the point at which Miss Allcard's case, in the view of the Judge, broke down. She was not under the exclusive influence of the convent when she resolved to make these gifts. There were letters in which she had expressed her determination to devote herself and her future to the work of the sisterhood. One of these was dated from her mother’s residence in Thomas’s Hotel, eighteen months afterwards she became an associate. After she had left the convent she seems still to have acquiesced in the retention of the money by the sisterhood; and the Judge held that she was debarred by acquiescence from prosecuting her claim. Miss Merriman, who left the convent some years later, recovered her property, and her success seems to have suggested to Miss Allcard and her friends that she should do the same. But her claim was not made till March, 1885; and it was August, 1885, when the writ was issued. The action was, therefore, begun too late. But the defendant did not win on this ground, but, as we have said, on the distinct opinion of the Judge that Miss Allcard did not act under undue influence, but that ‘ she had been actuated by an intelligent intention, and possessed the necessary knowledge when she first joined the sisterhood, and had the advantage of competent and independent advice.’ We are not quite sure whether a jury would have taken this view of the question. It is a matter of inference rather than one of direct evidence. Miss Allcard’s enthusiasm was sustained. She felt that she had a vocation, and turned a deaf ear to independent advice, if any was given. She was in a dream, and something more than ordinary contact with the world was needed to awake her from it. She w’ent home to her mother’s house in the trance of her zeal, and probably neither asked nor would receive any counsel but that which her confessor had whispered in her ear. It is difficult to see how the law can protect such people when they have money, though it is justly jealous (and public feeling is probably more jealous than the law itself) of such influences as those under which Miss Alleard acted. There were curious glimpses in the evidence of these jealously-guarded interiors. It is not all singing and praying and doing charitable work even in the best-regulated sisterhoods. There are common domestic duties to perform, and they often jar terribly upon imaginative and sensitive girls who have gone into seclusion with high ideals of devotion and duty. Miss Allcard was angry about the work she had to do, washing and scrubbing. There were no servants ; all the work, even the most menial, was done by the sisters themselves. There was not only menial work, but punishment. Miss Skinner kept up the discipline very severely, and enforced it by penance, kneeling for an hour before the cross, keeping long silences, sitting all day long in a chair without moving ; this latter penance being on one occasion daily kept up for six weeks. On one occasion Miss Allcard herself was at the wash-tub from six in the morning till ten at night, and for three months from six till nine every day. This is the seamy side of a life which, as these enthusiastic maidens look oh it from outside, seems all poetry and beauty. The renunciation of the world, however, is by no means complete. Miss Allcard went with Mr Nihill and Miss Skinner 'to’ see the Passion Play at OberAmmergau ; and the Superior herself was in the habit 6f going trips to Scotland, to the Tyrol, and other parts, at the expense of the sisterhood, Mr Nihill accompanying her. Such relaxations are needful, especially after making sisters wash for thirteen hours a-day, or keeping one for six weeks sitting

all day long in her chair. Miss Allcard seems to have been speedily disillusioned. Two or three mouths after she was confessed as a sister she wished to leave, and again after her return from Ober-Ammergau, but she was assured she was there for life. Two or three years later she went to the gate, but could not get out; yet when she did get away eight or nine years later she went back. Altogether her story is a painful one, and the moral to be drawn from it is that young ladies should be very sure they have a vocation for poverty and drudgery before they give up their money and their lives to the work of a sisterhood,”