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Cornelia Connelly and Her Interpreters
For all this, and in spite of being addressed to a more general
readership, the book seems to have been written without any questioning of
the assumptions of convent culture. Whilst one might expect a pregnant
author in her twenties to be drawn to the personal, and tragic, aspects of
Cornelia’s life—the breakup of her marriage and her loss of contact with
her children—Wadham, like her predecessors, ultimately wrote a life of the
founder of the Society rather than the woman. Though the circumstances
of her own life have some painful parallels with Cornelia’s (she too has lost
children), in 1998 she seemed to make no connections between Cornelia
and herself. Cornelia belonged to the nuns; Cornelia the wife and mother
was submerged.
Marie Thérése Bisgood: Cornelia Connelly: A Study in Fidelity, 1963
Letters in the Oxford archives reveal that Bisgood was responsible for the
1950 revision of Gompertz’ Life, and that it was this project that
subsequently led her to write an entirely new biography. In 1946, the
celebration of the centenary of the Society’s foundation had revived interest
in Cornelia’s story, and it seemed opportune to revise the biography rather
than just reprint it. Gompertz felt unequal to the task. Genevieve France,
the superior general, wrote to Mary Paul O’Connor, the English provincial
(5 December 1948):
1 quite understand M M Catherine’s attitude. Her heart was not in it from
the first; as M M Thérése suggests, she is probably too old. And one does
lose energy for attack as one gets older! It would be waste of time to ask her
under the circumstances, because she would not do it well. 1 think MM
Thérése would do it well. As to the extent of the revision necessary you and
she together will have to judge.
On 7 January 1949 France wrote to Bisgood, informing her that “speed is
of the essence.” And she certainly seems to have worked at speed. The dust
jacket of the new edition claimed that the book “has been completely
revised and rewritten,’ and yet Bisgood evidently completed the task of
updating in a couple of months. On 9 March 1949 Mary Callista
McLaughlin wrote to her: