Vanauken’s Farewell Gift
Those who love the writing of the late Sheldon Vanauken will be pleased to know that he has another book out, The Little Lost Marion and Other Mercies. Vanauken is best known for A Severe Mercy, his beautifully crafted autobiography.
When A Severe Mercy came out in 1977, it changed forever the way people would think about love and marriage. Part of its appeal is that it is radically countercultural. In an acquisitive world of fast careers and throw-away marriages, Van (as he was known to his friends) and the woman he loved, Jean Davies (Davy), set their love for one another above any other possession or pursuit that the world had to offer.
While other husbands and wives were pursuing twin careers, separate hobbies, and, sometimes separate lovers on the side, Van and Davy chose instead to bond themselves to one another through a thousand shared experiences. In the process they lived a life steeped in beauty—the beauty of shared poetry and music, of great literature and adventure, and of warm, starlit nights aboard a small sailboat in tropical coves.
Those who have read A Severe Mercy and its sequel, Under the Mercy, know that the adventure does not stop there. It leads them to Oxford, and Oxford friendships, and C. S. Lewis, and eventually . . . well, if you do not know the rest, then you must get the book. It is one of the best reads of the century. The book has sold around 800,000 copies and has touched perhaps a couple of million readers, a few thousand of whom wrote to Vanauken over the years.
But A Severe Mercy is not all that Vanauken wrote. He was a poet, novelist, historian, essayist, and storyteller. His last book, The Little Lost Marion and Other Mercies, is a collection of essays, stories, and poems. Readers who have read A Severe Mercy and Under the Mercy and nothing else will be surprised to find in the title essay that, when Davy was still in her teens, she left behind a child, a little girl named Marion, given up for adoption years before she met Van. Davy, who thought of that child often, never saw her again, but Van searched her out, not without difficulty, after A Severe Mercy had been published. In the process, the little girl, now a grown woman, meets her mother for the first time in the pages of one of America’s most popular love stories, and Van gains a unique insight to the issue of abortion.
Another treat for lovers of A Severe Mercy is an amplification of the life that Van and Davy lived, described in yachting stories written when these “comrade-lovers” were exploring the Florida Keys and Chesapeake Bay in the years just before going to Oxford. In “A Two-Reef Breeze in the Florida Keys” one sees the inexperienced but determined sailors come to maturity in their small boat, Gull, under the guiding wisdom of an old sailor named Cap. Cap leads them out with his own boat, Beachcomber, to where the breeze is always fresh and the sea is streaked with foam—both signs that sailors who have less heart ought not be sailing, but should be seeking safe anchorage. But the Vanaukens never were short on heart, and soon they are gracefully sailing Gull “wing and wing” in the wake of Beachcomber. These stories, and the one on the finding of Marion, include photos and some paintings by Davy that should not be missed.
There are more than thirty other essays. Some are Van’s observations on World War II. From hill a overlooking Pearl Harbor on a December morning, he witnessed the destruction of the Pacific fleet, unloaded his .45 automatic at a low-flying Japanese plane, and saw the U.S.S. Arizona through his binoculars at the moment her magazine exploded. “On the edge of that mighty blast,” he says, “there was debris, and just for an unforgettable instant I was focused on a white-clad sailor, high in the sky, arms outflung, like a sailor doll.” Other essays describe another war being waged even now against Western civilization and the institution that founded it, the Catholic Church.
These articles have been published down through the years in books, newspapers, and journals such as Crisis, New Oxford Review, and the Southern Partisan. Where these themes have appeared in more than one source, the author has pulled together the best from each for the version in Little Lost Marion, and the results are wonderful. Here Van is the fighter par excellence, stripping the false moral façade from radical egalitarianism and feminism and exposing their destructive effects. In his essay “The Iron Law of Home” he shows that when husbands and wives both vie to have careers, what they get with the extra money and prestige is the destruction of the very concept of a home and the alienation of children they never come to know. In “The Undermining of Friendship” Van exposes the greatest unexpected loss wrought by homosexuality: the loss of true male friendship, which the ancients considered “the highest of all human loves because it was deliberately chosen—and because it was not clouded by passion.”
With regard to the approach to abortion known as the “seamless garment,” Van shows with clear and bright logic that this philosophy is full of seams indeed. There is a tightly written essay on evolution which could not be more timely, considering Pope John Paul II’s recent public remarks on the compatibility of evolutionary theory with the Catholic faith, and there is much on the author’s own journey into Catholicism and his insights into the ancient and enduring truths of the Catholic Church.
C. S. Lewis was once described as “A Mind Awake,” and Van certainly earned that title as well, exposing as he did the woolly thinking that poses as intellectual inquiry or debate these days. Combined with this ability is something that not every keenly logical mind has: a sense of, and response to, the aesthetic experience. This is more fundamental to Vanauken’s writing than all the rest. It is his capacity to recognize a created world full of spiritual longing, to see it in the bare branches of a tree stretched toward the stars in a cold winter sky, or to have a foretaste of eternity in witnessing with Davy the cold fire of a phosphorescent sea at night while anchored in a Chesapeake cove. In the context of Christianity, this is the ancient, Catholic sense that creation itself is sacramental; Van possessed it long before he was ever Catholic or even Christian for that matter. It is knowing that God’s grace is bound up inextricably with the material world that surrounds us. Van said this well in many ways. One way is found in the simple and beautiful poem “Cardinal,” printed in the foreword of Little Lost Marion:
This is no chance,
This bird of flame
That grips my glance:
I see God’s name
In scarlet flight
And know that He
Along the light
Is hailing me.
This precious gem alone, to me, is worth the book.
— Jack Taylor
The Little Lost Marion and Other Mercies
By Sheldon Vanauken
Franciscan University Press
272 pages
$12.95
Better than Poor Richard’s
I doubt that cradle Catholics can appreciate fully the feelings of new converts: It’s as if you had been malnourished all your life, surviving on a few bland dishes, and suddenly you’re turned loose at an endless banquet of appetizing fare, at once wholesome and luscious. You hardly know where to begin, and your hunger is continuous. You want to learn everything at once—Church history, terminology, doctrines, lives of the saints, organizations, all things distinctively Catholic.
When I came into the Church in 1980, one of the first books I bought was the Catholic Almanac. For me it was both a menu for the feast and a sampler tray of all that was spread before me. It was there I learned the names of the liturgical vessels and vestments, the saints for each day of the year, the history of Catholicism in America, the structure of the universal Church. In it I found Catholic periodicals to subscribe to and organizations to join.
I read the Almanac cover to cover, referring to it a thousand times that first year. It was a mentor, a road map, a comforting friend, as I muddled my way into my new Catholic homeland. I still have that first copy on my bookshelf; it remains a cherished companion of my journey into the Church.
Next to me on my desk now is the 1997 edition. Not a day goes by in my work at Catholic Answers that I don’t consult the Almanac on some point: the spelling of a saint’s name, the date for Easter, the legislation of the last U.S. bishops’ meeting. I use it to answer e-mail and phone questions, to verify my own recollection of facts, and to find addresses for Catholic news media. The Catholic Almanac is still my faithful sidekick.
One of the most useful features is a month-by-month review of the previous year, which summarizes news events involving the Church and important developments within the Church. Here’s the place to look up that papal message about assisted suicide you read but can’t find again. You’ll also see the complete text of recent encyclicals and other documents.This is the place to go for addresses – every Catholic college, every religious order, every Catholic publication, every diocesan office is listed here. You will discover Catholic organizations you didn’t know existed, such as the “Nocturnal Adoration Society.”
In the 1997 edition, you’ll find the U.S. bishops’ statements on assisted suicide, same-sex marriages, and partial-birth abortion. There is background information on the “We Are Church” petition, the Vatican’s reaffirmation of the teaching on women’s ordination, and the Common Ground project. In short, it’s a handy source for anyone engaged in apologetics or who just needs the straight facts on how the Church is faring in our post-Christian culture.
It’s impossible in a brief review to give even a glimpse of the lore to be mined in the Almanac’s pages. I still could spend hours being enlightened, entertained, and inspired by it, as I was as a new Catholic. If I could own only one reference work about the Church, this would be it.
— Terrye Newkirk
Catholic Almanac
Compiled and edited by F.A. Foy, O.F.M., and R.M. Avato
Our Sunday Visitor Books
600 pages
$21.95