Alec Guinness on visiting a Trappist monastery

He dreaded the meals and the other guests

A classic star of stage and screen, and in both dramatic and comic roles, Alec Guinness entered the Catholic Church in 1956, at the age of 42. He wrote three volumes of autobiography: Blessings in Disguise, from which this is taken, My Name Escapes Me, and A Positively Final Appearance.

Being “troubled at how easily everything fell into place” during instruction, he decided “to see Catholicism at its grimmest and least sympathetic,” and went on retreat at a Cistercian monastery.

I was given a large bedroom furnished with Victorian junk, dominated by a huge crucifix. The adjacent lavatory had an unpleasant smell. I was taxi-less, lost and felt unable to escape. “This is it,” I thought, “Mother Church testing the catechumens.”

Worse was to come; firstly in the shape of baked beans and flabby bacon on wet toast (I had been looking forward to having the same simple, wholesome, vegetarian fare as the monks) and, secondly, the jollity of some of my fellow guests, although one of these, a very serious young man, exuded extreme gloom.

The monks were allowed to talk to him and he spent time with one in particular, who had been an Anglian minister.

He gave me a run-down on many of his fellow monks and their past professions . . . and asked me what I thought the most difficult part of being a monk might be. “Other monks,” I replied promptly. He gave me a long quizzical look, of the kind Edith Sitwell was so expert at giving, and said, with some solemnity, “Yes!” I felt I had gone to the top of the class.

Nothing was required of me other than the courtesy of attending morning Mass and evening Compline. After my first Compline (a beautiful short service), shuffling off to bed along a dark corridor, the Abbot sloshed me in the face with holy water from a bowl he was holding. I didn’t know whether to acknowledge the wetting with, “Thanks a lot,” or ignore it. I settled for pious indifference but from then on I slightly winced every time I saw the holy man, never sure what ecclesiastical tricks he might have in store.

My first morning I was awakened at about 4.30 by a chatty Irish Lay Brother bringing me a cup of strong sweet tea and a chocolate biscuit. He eyed the biscuit enviously, but no doubt offered it up to God.

Arriving at the large, draughty, austere, white chapel I was amazed at the sights and sounds that greeted me. The great doors to the East were wide open and the sun, a fiery red ball, was rising over the distant farmland; at each of the dozen or so side-altars a monk, finely vested but wearing heavy farmer’s boots to which cow dung still adhered, was saying his private Mass.

Voices were low, almost whispers, but each Mass was at a different stage of development, so that the Sanctus would tinkle from one altar to be followed half a minute later by other tinkles from far away. For perhaps five minutes little bells sounded from all over and the sun grew whiter as it steadily rose. There was an awe-inspiring sense of God expanding, as if to fill every corner of the church and the whole world.

After being transfixed by the unexpected beauty of it all I wasn’t sure what to do; it seemed best just to remain there until the last monk had gathered up his props and left. Later in the day Fr Hodge told me that some of the monks had commented (with what signs? I wondered) on my devotion at having remained for all the Masses. Clearly I was marked out as quite exceptionally pious.

I wish I had blurted out that the truth was I had merely dreaded a greasy breakfast and my fellow laymen; all I managed was the statement that I wasn’t yet a Catholic.

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