One of the most visited venues for guests of the Abbey is the Stillman Dining Hall, perhaps nearly as much a part of the oblate pilgrimage to the monastery as the visit to the Church of St. Gregory the Great. Oblates will routinely make the brief trek to and from the Stillman for the ample brunch provided thanks to our dedicated dining hall staff. Both of these edifices were the architectural handiwork of Pietro Belluschi and were constructed at the same time. While the “students’ dining hall” appeared somewhat under the radar, shadowed and overshadowed by the adjacent glorious Church, it soon came online, humbly up and running for the Dedication of its neighbor. Its financing was subsequently settled through the generosity of Chauncey Devereux Stillman (1907-1989), and as the dedication plaque in the foyer tells us, was given in memory of his brother, Eliot Wight Stillman.

Chauncey Stillman

Chauncey Stillman was a man of significant stature and impact. We see that legacy reflected in the Mass that annually is offered in his memory, with the 25th anniversary commemoration in 2014 presided over by the likes of Timothy Cardinal Dolan. His enduring interests are perpetuated by the Wethersfield and Homeland Foundations. The latter had been created by Stillman in 1938, and he left it with the threefold purpose of maintaining the Wethersfield Estate in New York, promoting the cultural and intellectual programs of the Wethersfield Institute, and supporting institutions that foster the Catholic Faith and Christian life and culture. Born in New York City to Charles Chauncey Stillman and Mary Wight, he graduated from Groton School and Harvard University, subsequently earning a degree in architecture from Columbia University. His marriage to Theodora Moran Jay in 1939 lasted for ten years, producing three daughters, the first of whom died in infancy. Mr. Stillman had indeed already been acquainted with tragedy, having lost his brother and both of his parents during his Harvard years. It seems that his philanthropic engagement he had inherited from his parents, his father having been a great supporter of Harvard. His working life included directorship of the Freeport Minerals Company, extensive service in the military as a naval officer in World War II, and stints at the U.S. Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Dining Hall under construction

(image: 1960 monastery Bulletin)

A selection of excerpts from the testimonials included in the “Remembrance of a Life in Full” published at the 25th anniversary of his death elicits some outlines his personality. “Every time I stayed overnight, Chauncey would yield his own bedroom to me so that I might wake up seeing the Gilbert Stuart face of Washington. It was typical that he gave the impression that he was the guest” (Fr. George William Rutler). “You know, there are several aspects of Mr. Stillman that come to mind. One eccentricity perhaps, but more an indication of the precision of his mind, was the fact that he would send my letters back to me corrected with red ink, insofar as spelling and grammar were concerned! He has perfectly beautiful handwriting himself, very precise, reflective of his training as an architect, I supposed” (Charles P. Bolton). “Your grandfather never assumed that he had special privilege or status that wealth can sometimes infer because of it… (I remember we) always had a 10 am drive in one of his carriages – usually with a coach and four; during the winter and with snow, it would be a sled that he drove himself” (Robert Riera, son of Admiral Emmer Riera).

Luncheon for the Dedication of the Church

(image: 1960 Monastery Bulletin)

Other testimonials bear witness to the importance to him of his faith. His dedication to Catholicism solidified his relationship with Portsmouth Priory. Chauncey Stillman was, like the founders of our monastery (Leonard Sargent) and our school (J. Hugh Diman), an adult convert to Catholicism. In a 1954 Harvard Reunion publication, he wrote that he joined the Catholic Church in 1952 “after three decades of deliberation.” He began to put his efforts into cultivating Catholic culture and education, as seen in the creation of a chair in Catholic studies at Harvard, and in the funding of such projects as our own dining hall. The Wethersfield Foundation has made available a letter he wrote to his sister Elizabeth that articulates his movement into the Catholic Church. It is not only a testament to his conversion, but also revelatory autobiographically of the man and his way of speaking and thinking. We are fortunate to have this window into mind and heart of this individual who has been so supportive of Portsmouth, so we reproduce in full here the letter Chauncey Stillman wrote to his sister Elizbeth to explain to her his conversion to Catholicism.

Dearest Elizabeth,

I’ve long put off writing you this letter wondering how to do it without distressing you. Now I rely most earnestly on your love and respect, and Lang’s, for sympathy when I tell you that I am taking a step of greatest significance to me: that is joining the Catholic Church. Only two considerations mar my happiness about it – that you may be troubled at first to learn it, and that I will henceforth be attending a different service from Lily and Theo. To you two, as to them eventually, I owe some account of the path that has led me to conversion.

Summarily – too simply put to mean much – of course my reason is that I am convinced that the whole truth is contained in the Catholic Faith. Chesterton remarked, “It is impossible to be just to the Catholic Church. The moment men cease to pull against it, they feel the tug towards it.” As you know, I’ve felt this tug for years. To resist it longer would be a denial, a refusal to bear witness to the light as I see it.

Students in the newly named “Stillman Dining Hall”

(image: 1961 monastery Bulletin)

Many years ago I started finding that every secular expression of the human spirit that struck me as valid, beautiful, wholesome, could be traced back, if one sought far enough, to the mainstream of Christianity, usually pre-Reformation. This proved true of architecture, painting, music; economics, social ethics, psychology, – even romantic poetry. It took me a long time (me lazy, scatter-brained, and no scholar) to face up to the inference that all these peripheral paths that I wandered across led from a central highway.
An obstacle has been the notion that the Catholic Faith required a servile, unreasoning submission to authority. Fortunately life has given me a number of Catholic friends, notably Louis Warren, Martha Hamlen, and the Emmett Rieras. Although I have never seriously discussed religion with any of them, their lives have shown me that the assumption that they were in any way unfree was a chimera. Gradually my distrust of spiritual authority per se dissolved, to be replaced by the desire for duty, enrollment, under such authority as “an obligation freely undertaken.”

Here my navy experiences helped by an analogy. Submission to authority, it became plain to me, is a condition of honorable service. For instance, in the navy there were men above me to whom I must submit, and men below me to whom I must transmit authority. My own effectiveness and peace of mind depended on subordination, on my acceptance of my place in an order. So, in creation, I as a man rank somewhere between animal and angel. The Church recognizes, reflects this hierarchic condition of man. She doesn’t expect each seaman or junior officer to route the task force or to write fleet doctrine, but she requires his full duty for the successful accomplishment of the entire mission. When a man sets out on a long combat voyage he does well to travel with professional officers, the most reliable charts, and tested instruments.

I feel in this step I make no repudiation of any positive tenet of the Episcopal Church. I am grateful for familiarity with “her august and passionate liturgy,” for having known such ministers as Bishop Rhinelander, Arthur Ketchum, and Tooie Kinsolving. In joining the Catholic Church I feel I am abandoning no birthright but reclaiming the full one that your and my ancestors enjoyed for some 1500 years, then relinquished some 450 years ago. I have found the rooted tree from which the branch was lopped.

As an undergraduate I was surprised to hear Bishop Rhinelander remark that the Protestant Reformation was the greatest tragedy in history. I remembered the remark on reading Belloc to the effect that the tragedy was two-fold in that the north lost the full faith whereas the Catholic Church lost “the genius of the north.” I guess he means that she lost the peculiar contribution that lay within the Teutonic (including Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian) people. I mention this realizing ruefully how alien to us yankees the surface of Catholic practice and people can seem. But I have learned to distinguish between faith and its temporal vessels.

Solely on my own hook I sought instruction, choosing a priest mainly because his office was on 76th Street and Madison. No friend has been consulted. I have never been proselytized; in fact I have been lengthily and rather austerely quizzed on my sincerity.

I doubt if my external life will show much change. I daresay I will continue to be a stumbling, erratic person. But I know I will get back on course more quickly after each aberration, and with no more wanderings into “adventures of discontent.” I know that I will continue and increase in the love of the same people, particularly yourselves.

Always devotedly,
Chauncey

July 1951