Shorter Notices The Letters of Evelyn Underhill. Edited with an
Introduction be Charles Williams. (Longmans. nos. 6d.) UNLIKE Evelyn Underhill's study of "Mysticism " and her edition of the mediaeval Cloud of Unknowing, which can be enjoyed by non-Christians, this collection of letters is not for the irreligious. Her range of interests, e.g., cats, yachting and foreign travel, was wide for a contemplative, but considered apart from this special context, her letters are quite unremarkable. More rewarding in some ways is Charles Williams' excellent introduction which traces her journey to the contemplative life from an ordinary well-to-do upbringing. " I wasn't brought up to religion really, except just in the formal way, of course, and for eight or nine years I really believed myself to be an atheist." She was converted to the Roman Catholic Church after a visit to a Franciscan Convent in 1907, but could not enter it, largely because of Pius X's encyclical against modernism which appeared to her to demand a surrender of her intellectual honour. Acceptance of Anglicanism came to her partly from the influence of her friend, and later spiritual director Von Hugel, himself a devoted Catholic. His warnings also persuaded her that " the mystic sense flies straight to God, and thinks it finds all its delight in Him alone. But a careful examination always dis- covers many sensible, institutional and historical contributions to this supposed ineffable experience." Unfortunately, their corre- spondence no longer exists, but there are plenty of letters which show her playing the role of Von Hugel to others. To outsiders spiritual direction by letter appears to demand the maximum of tact and impersonality if it is not to seem repulsive. Evelyn Under- hill obviously avoided interfering, won many people's trust as I spiritual guide, and persuades the reader that she herself enjoyed very genuine and varied religious experience.
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