Nearly all the monasteries in the English Benedictine Congregation have contributed in significant ways to the foundation and development of Portsmouth over a period of many decades.
Dom Leonard Sargent, a member of the Anglican Order of the Holy Cross, was received into the Church at Downside in 1909. Here he first conceived the idea of establishing a monastery similar to Downside in the United States, and after his ordination to the priesthood, set about finding ways of realizing his dream. He therefore returned to Downside, was allowed to enter the novitiate with the understanding that he would return to America, enlist the help of friends, decide on a location, and find candidates. Abbot Cuthbert Butler encouraged Dom Leonard, but made it clear that the enterprise was to be entirely American in its staffing and financing; applicants would be received and undergo their formation at Downside, and then return to the United States. Through this sponsorship the foundation could become a domus religiosa, which it did in 1919 when Dom Leonard, having acquired a suitable estate, took up permanent residence in Portsmouth, RI, exercising authority, (to use Dom Cuthbert’s phrase), ad instar prioris, and receiving the blessing of Pope Benedict XV the following year. What Portsmouth first gained from Downside under Fr. Leonard was its name, the new priory being under the patronage of Saint Gregory the Great. Although a school was not envisioned, he wanted his foundation to reflect the same spirit and sense of tradition that he had experienced at Downside, emphasizing learning, liturgy, monastic observance, and hospitality, providing a place for reflection in an atmosphere of peace, remote in its rural seclusion, but still accessible to the world. At the end of seven years, however, it was evident that the venture would not succeed, and Downside welcomed the offer of Fort Augustus to take over the monastery and establish a second house in America, having begun Saint Anselm’s in Washington, D.C., in 1924. Dom Leonard did not join the new community, preferring to retain his ties to Downside, to which he returned periodically until he finally settled at Portsmouth, where he died in 1944 after a long and fruitful life, both as an Anglican and as a convert to Roman Catholicism.
Dom Leonard Sargent, O.S.B., first conceived the idea of establishing a monastery
similar to Downside in the United States
Dom Wulstan Knowles, Abbot of Fort Augustus and first Prior of Portsmouth
under Fort Augustus, 1926-29
Several factors made the Portsmouth foundation attractive to Fort Augustus. The location was ideal for founding a monastery in a rural setting, with a school providing a traditional ministry and a means of support. A distinguished headmaster was available in Dom Hugh Diman, one of the newly professed American monks at Saint Anselm’s. And most importantly, Dom Wulstan Knowles, a highly qualified superior, with two years experience in helping to establish a priory in an urban environment, could be transferred to Rhode Island and do for Portsmouth what he had done so efficiently in Washington. Abbot Joseph McDonald, therefore, appointed Dom Wulstan the first Prior of Portsmouth to be assisted by Dom Hugh as headmaster and founder of a second boarding school, the first, prior to his conversion, being a highly reputed Episcopal school in Middletown, R.I. Over the next ten years Fort Augustus supported both the dependent houses with the manpower needed to assure survival, strength and stability through the generous loan of highly qualified monks. Some of the customs of the mother abbey, alien to the other EBC monasteries, were retained for the period of Portsmouth’s status as a dependent priory. One notable practice was the prostration of the whole community in choir at Christmas Prime for the solemn proclamation of the birth of Jesus, attracting a number of curious visitors. This and other “alien customs” were abrogated when a Superior from Ampleforth was appointed. At this time, too, the daily reading of the Rule from the translation of Fort Augustus’ Dom Hunter-Blair was replaced by the scholarly version of Ampleforth’s Dom Justin McCann.
Downside Abbey, near Bath, England
Dom Wulstan spent three-and-a-half crucial years at Portsmouth as Prior, dealing tirelessly with the problems of transforming a gentleman’s country estate into a workable monastery and school, converting a caretaker cottage into a chapel, erecting prefabricated buildings into what were envi-sioned to be temporary quarters, laying out playing fields and changing a large carriage house into a gymnasium. In April of 1926, before the school opened the following September, his first major act was to engage the leading architectural firm of Maginnis and Walsh of Boston to design an impressive neoGothic abbey church and monastery. Attached to the cloister was to be the first unit of a house to accommodate 40 boys in the Tudor Gothic style. Because of the decade of the Depression beginning in 1929 followed by the second World War, this ambitious plan was not to be realized, except for the large dormitory, named Saint Benet’s after the patron of the mother abbey in Scotland. During his tenure as Prior, Dom Wulstan worked closely with Dom Hugh Diman, the headmaster, providing him with the example needed to take over the monastic leadership when he would return to Fort Augustus. In 1929 Dom Joseph McDonald was appointed Archbishop of Edinburgh, and Dom Wulstan was chosen by the community to succeed him as Abbot. He in turn appointed Dom Hugh the new Prior of Portsmouth while also remaining headmaster of the school. Over the next twenty years Abbot Wulstan observed the growth of Portsmouth with keen interest, making frequent visits and taking satisfaction in witnessing the independence of Portsmouth in 1949. Recently, the monastery received an oil portrait of Dom Wulstan as Abbot of Fort Augustus from Dame Andrea Savage, Abbess of Stanbrook, where he had spent his last years as chaplain.
Now in his late sixties, Dom Hugh felt the need of assistance in running the School. Help came from England through engaging Dr. G. C. Bateman, who assumed the direction of the School from 1931 until 1935, adding a more distinctively English flavor, instituting the House system, appointing praeposters, adding prize days, creating school colors reflected in the blazer and official tie, starting a variety of clubs, forming musical and lecture programs, and inaugurating a disciplinary system which included a shortlived experiment in caning. The academic program was strengthened, plays were performed in Latin and French, and a course in Phonetics was taught by the Headmaster. When he returned to England after four years, Dr. Bateman left the School stronger in every way, facilitating Dom Hugh’s resumption of the headmastership. In the space of four years he had solidified the School’s reputation among the leading New England preparatory schools.
The outbreak of war in 1939 brought a change in the composition of the student body, with children of refugees arriving in 1939 and 1940, giving the School an international character, with Europe well represented by students, often titled, (but never alluded to), from Poland, Hungary, France, Bulgaria, and Belgium, but chiefly from England and from the Benedictine schools in particular: notably Ampleforth, Gilling Castle, Downside, and Douai. Some of the boys wore kilts on special occasions, while others brandished cricket bats, contributing an exotic flavor. At the end of two years most of the boys returned to England, and resumed their careers at the schools they had left. Among the boys who remained at the School were the sons of the best-selling author, A.J. Cronin, with Vincent, the elder boy, becoming a critically acclaimed writer of biographies and travel books, and the younger, Patrick, pursuing his father’s earlier career as a medical doctor.
An important contribution to both School and Monastery in the late forties came in the person of Dom Aidan Williams, whose term of office as Abbot of Belmont ended in 1948. His impact was immediate and profound. In the School he was responsible for inaugurating soccer as a competitive sport, acting as coach and utilizing the superior skills of a contingent of Latin American students, whose experience produced instant championship teams. As an instructor, he excelled in teaching a course in ethics to the Sixth Form, but more importantly, it was in the monastery that his services proved invaluable. His training at Sant’ Anselmo under the celebrated Thomist philosopher, Dom Joseph Gredt, enabled him to become Head of Monastic Studies as well as Novice Master. When he was appointed in 1954 to become Procurator in Curia, his departure left a noticeable gap in the Community.
In 1951 Dom Herbert Byrne, Abbot of Ampleforth, sent Dom Aelred Graham to become the Superior of Portsmouth, to take the place of Prior Gregory Borgstedt, who had resigned in order to help in the foundation of a contemplative monastery, Mount Saviour in Elmira, New York. Dom Aelred was a noted scholar and controversialist, who soon became notorious in the United States for an article in the Atlantic Monthly magazine, critical of the popular writer, Thomas Merton, whom he labeled “a young man in a hurry.” Subsequently, he and Merton became friends, finding a mutual interest in Zen Buddhism and exchanging books and articles as they were published. Dom Aelred’s enthusiasm for Buddhism resulted in the creation of a monastic Zen garden for his meditation, and at the end of his term as Prior, he visited India, where he had conversations with the exiled Dalai Lama, on whom he exerted a profound impression; so much so, that the Dalai Lama reciprocated by journeying to Ampleforth to see Dom Aelred shortly before his death. During his sixteen years as Prior, Dom Aelred oversaw the planning and building of the Church and Monastery, heading a campaign for the construction of several school buildings and changing the archi-tectural direction from neo-Gothic to contemporary modern by engaging Pietro Belluschi, an architect from Italy with an international reputation and responsible for an impressive list of buildings on the West and East coasts of the United States. The Abbey church, the year-long restoration of which has just been completed, is recognized as an outstanding example of ecclesiastical architecture and has exerted a significant impact on many churches nationally, but especially in Rhode Island.
Dom Aelred Graham, recognizing the need for a reliable Associate Headmaster to assist in the running of the School, looked to Ampleforth 1954 to secure one of its most popular teachers, Cecil J. Acheson, to fill this position. A convert, he had been received into the church at Downside after attending Keble College. For the next twenty years Mr. Acheson repeated the success of the earlier Doctor Bateman, reinforcing some of the best traditions of the English public school and becoming a legendary figure in the annals of Portsmouth. During his long term of office, Dom Aelred continued to be not only a forceful Superior, but a well-known lecturer, retreat master and ecumenist, anticipating some of the initiatives pro-moted by the Second Vatican Council. It was through his leadership that Portsmouth gained the necessary maturity to become a truly independent monastery, electing a monk, Dom Matthew Stark, from its own ranks to become Portsmouth’s first Abbot in 1969.
Abbot Mathew and Community 1975
A final influence on Portsmouth came about in the late 1980s, when Portsmouth was in need of a monk to fill the position of Headmaster for Dom Leo van Winkle, who had been diagnosed with cancer, which had been contracted in the early 1940s when he was working on the atomic bomb project in New Mexico. He now required an associate, and since no one in the Community had the experience, it was necessary to look elsewhere for a suitable Benedictine. Providentially, a monk who had been formerly headmaster at Fort Augustus, Dom Francis Davidson, possessed just the right qualifications for this responsibility, and in 1987 received the generous approval of Dom Nicholas Holman, Abbot of Fort Augustus, to respond to this need. In the four years of his tenure Dom Francis transformed the School from a single-sex to a coeducational institution, gradually integrating day girls into the enrollment before constructing buildings to house boarding girls. In addition to planning and raising funds for girls’ accommodations, he was also able to help in the com-pletion of the School and Monastery libraries, the former named by the donor in honor of Saint Thomas More. In order to attract talented students, he began an innovative, albeit costly, merit scholarship program, which has proved an outstanding success, raising academic standards and extend-ing the national reputation of the School.
It goes without saying that from 1949, when the General Chapter granted Portsmouth independence, the community has consistently benefited from the wise counsel and personal attention by each of the Abbots President, whose visitations and frequent informal visits have invariably been sources of inspiration and encouragement.
(This article was published in WINTER BULLETIN 2010)
About the author:
Father Damian Kearney (b.1928 - d.2016) was monk of Portsmouth Abbey, a scholar and beloved teacher of Portsmouth Abbey School. The blessings received through him for the community is numerous. His joyful presence is deeply missed by all.