The Land of Spices

"Kate O’Brien was a novelist who enjoyed a moderate fame, though certainly never riches. She died in poverty in 1940. She was a lesbian. She was absolutely on the outside of life, as it were. The title comes from a poem by George Herbert, who is one of the very greatest of all poets. The novel is simply based around the girlhood of Anna, a farmer’s daughter constrained to go to her mother’s old convent school. Her father is a ne’er-do-well. The parents have pretensions to gentility, but her father drinks too much and the marriage is a disaster. Anna’s situation is mirrored obliquely by that of the new headmistress at the convent school, Mother Marie-Helene, who has come from Belgium and who finds Irish society absolutely impermeable. She is very lonely, she wants to leave, but she finds herself drawn by Anna’s plight. She withdraws a letter of resignation. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter At the end, Anna, who is now about seventeen or eighteen, is leaving, and about to go on to do great things, is aware at some level of how much she owes the headmistress. But she’s quite tongue-tied. Young people were not brought up to speak frankly with their elders. Mother Marie-Helene is about to become the Mother General of the whole order, although nobody knows it. Anna sees her and says: ‘I’ve never tried to thank you, Reverend Mother, for all the things you’ve done for me – but then, I never could.’ And the nun replies ‘Anna, there are no thanks to be said. Since you came to us you have been my very dear child, and you always will be that, to the end of my life.’ I found that not at all sentimental. I found that supremely and magnificently instructive because it contains all the love which I think is appropriate; the dignity and detachment of the teacher’s position are not compromised, but it’s an enormous statement of love and commitment. For me, that really mattered. I believe in the objective reality of right and wrong, I believe you should care about other people. I also believe that you can best transmit this information by example, rather than instruction. Westminster is a very Church of England foundation, but I found the temper utterly secular. I suspect that the vast majority of Westminster pupils, and the vast majority of parents, and the considerable majority of staff, are metropolitan sceptics. They are just not going to do scrupulous religion. They may be interested in it; they may be sympathetic to it; a Dean of Westminster in my time was keen on saying that the pupils were ‘very spiritual.’ I don’t really buy that, but I certainly think they’re reflective."