In our last post, we mentioned a collection of some five hundred random bits of paper – which included newspaper clippings, discarded drawings, and doodlings – that Margaret left after her death. They are now in the possession of the Margaret Rope Archive. In that collection were a few satirical drawings – which were the subject of our last post.

In this post though, we are moving on, to take a look at the three humorous pen-and-ink drawings in the collection. The first two sketches in the collection, which we discussed last time, show a waspish attitude, but – by complete contrast – these three fun sketches show a gentle, benevolent sense of humour about life in the convent. (She was a nun in an ‘enclosed’ order of Carmelites from 1923 to her death in 1953).

Just having fun

The first of these sketches is such a loving picture, it should be on the walls of all convents everywhere: the ‘Dancing Nun’ drawing (see right) simply expresses the joy of a young nun out in the outdoors. She may be dancing on ice; it’s not clear. The heavy boots are a lovely, and funny, touch: they may symbolise the harshness of the enclosed nun’s life, but the young woman does not allow them to pull her down.

On the next drawing, Marga has pencilled on a title: Our Father Thomas (Aquinas) Pays A Visit (see below). It’s clear that Sister Margaret thinks that her sister nuns really don’t need to give the visiting monk the bowed-heads respect that they are doing, and the parenthesis – “Aquinas” – is in fact a bit of a sly dig. (Thomas Aquinas was the great medieval monk-theologian, whose works Margaret had extensively studied).
This Father Thomas may think he’s a top theologian, Marga seems to say, but he really is no Aquinas… and what’s more, he scares the cat!

Having said that, this is a jaunty little drawing, which reminds one of work of popular cartoonists of the time.
Incidentally, this Father Thomas must have been a real person – who was he, one wonders? He carries a Stars Stripes flag, so he must have been American.

Humour in Adversity

But ‘Off To The Workhouse’, as Marga titled the third one, is the one to make the viewer laugh out loud. It is on three sheets, which have been pasted together.
It has a very funny, knockabout humour!

The scene refers to the fact that, in 1948, probably for financial reasons, the convent community had to leave its then home in Rushmere (in Suffolk), and decamp a few miles to a new home in Quidenham*. So, Margaret’s title is a kind of sardonic humour…

In the sketch, the convoy may be ramshackle, inexpert and even, in one sense, to be pitied, but the nuns, who are the subject of the humour, must have been able to take the joke.
One sister is tossed upside down in her wheelchair (by a pothole presumably!); a little girl (the daughter of the community’s handyman) drives her toy car; two nuns in a trailer carry a kettle, jugs, plates (this poor community’s worldly goods); and even the nun’s henhouse is featured – nearly all drawn along by some unlikely oxen!
Most of the people in this procession would also have been recognisable to those who saw the drawing.

If the drawing was to keep spirits up, surely it must have succeeded!
Unlike her other drawings, which were probably just for her private amusement, this one seems to have been passed around. (See letter extract, below).

Humour matters

It’s interesting to think that while Sister Margaret never reached the dizzy heights of Abbess, for a while she was the convent’s Mistress Of The Novices – dealing with the nervous newcomers as they tested out their vocations in the convent. Now we know more about Sister Margaret’s sense of humour, she surely, from that point of view, was an ideal person to care over them.

*The history of the moves of this community – in 1938 from Woodbridge (in Suffolk), its home of nearly two decades, to Rushmere, then from Rushmere in 1948 to Quidenham (where it is now) – is outlined in a new history of the community

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