The price extracted by Catholicism

Antonia White: Diaries 1958 to 1979, edited by Susan Chitty (Constable, £19.95) Desmond Albrow
FOR the novelist and writer Antonia White, Catholicism was both a bulwark against the storms of life and also an agonising bed of nails.
Like a spiritual nagging toothache, Catholicism and religion were always there to give her doubts, to bring her solace and to remind her of imperfection and of times past.
In this second and final volume of her diaries, lovingly and professionally edited by her elder daughter, Susan Chitty. we arc left in little doubt as to the price that Catholicism extracted.
Three entries relating to religion, from many in her diaries, are enough to illustrate my point. Here she is writing from hospital after an operation not long before her death: "June 22, 1979. Awfully painful. Trying to be 'good'. Frightening appliance room Jesus hold my hand.
"May 7, 1965. For months have gone a complete 'dry up' on religion. I continue to go to Mass every morning try to believe try to pray. But I feel an utter hypocrite. As soon as I try and think about my concept of religion it seems utterly meaningless to me.
"Sept 23, 1968. It is awful to say it, but so much in Catholicism
is positively repellent to me. More and more so. It is most of all this insistence on sin, Christ's atonement, the angry Father who will condemn to hell those who are not 'saved'."
The diaries, of course, deal with far more than religion. We learn of her financial problems and occasional windfalls, her excessive smoking, her literary friends, former husbands, domestic trivia and love of her daughters and grandchildren.
These are the last 20 years of her life when she suffered from writer's block her inability to produce another novel or to complete an autobiography.
Creative writing was, despite all her efforts, now beyond her, although she was quite capable of producing first-class translations from the French of Colette and Voltaire.
She also published The Hound and the Falcon, the letters to Peter Thorp, on her return to the Catholic faith in 1940 after a break of 20 years from Rome.
Much of her time and labour went into the writing of these diaries or notebooks. In fact one cannot help thinking that she used them as a pretext for evading the burden of more creative work.
Always there is that sense of frustration as she recognises the nasty truth that the muse has deserted her for good.
As early as 1965 she would note: "I don't think I am a novelist. All my novels are autobiographical. I can't 'create' characters: only describe them."
But it was not only writer's block from which Antonia White suffered. She had a mental breakdown, many of the ills to which the elderly are prone, and severe falls.
Invariably she picked herself up and did her best to cope with life, for despite her neurotic tendencies she was a brave and plucky woman. She was also immensely fortunate in her friends and in the love and generosity showed to her by her two daughters in her declining years.
What makes these diaries so enthralling is that they never try to conceal the imperfections of the author's make-up vanity, envy, the occasional flash of literary self-esteem amid the gloom.
One of the bright spots of her later life was the re-publication in 1978 of Frost in May and two earlier works. A new generation could now judge the power of her novels.
This new generation should, I think, find the diaries absorbing not least for an explanation of older attitudes to sin and to literary reputations.
The best compliment that I can pay the diaries is to say that the reader, thanks to the editing, introduction and biographical sketches, does not need to have ready any of Antonia White's books to be captivated by them.