Looking down Cory’s Lane

Continuing our glimpse back at previous monastic publications, we find in the monastery’s Newsletter of 1993 that editor Fr. Damian Kearney provided a brief historical note on the foundation of the monastery. We reprint his article, which offers interesting details on the life of Dom Leonard Sargent and others. We also include some notes Dom Damian provided which give us a glimpse into some monastic happenings from thirty years ago.

In November of this year [1993] Portsmouth marks the 75th anniversary of the first Mass said by its founder, Dom Leonard Sargent, in the original building of the monastery, the Manor House. In 1918, as the great war was coming to an end, Dom Leonard was serving as chaplain to the Newman Academy, an excellent Catholic boarding school in New Jersey, waiting for a property to become available so that he could found a monastery. A former Episcopal priest and member of the Order of the Holy Cross at Graymoor in New York, he had been received into the church in 1909 at Downside Abbey in England; here he found the reality of a Benedictine vocation he had earlier experienced as an Anglican seminarian.

A young Leonard Sargent

After being ordained by Cardinal O’Connell in Boston in 1910, he served as a curate in Brookline before being given permission to be chaplain at the Newman Academy in New Jersey. It was here that Father Sargent decided to found a monastery in the tradition of Downside, and accordingly he applied for admission to the community of that Abbey. After making his simple profession, he returned to the United States and resumed his chaplaincy at Newman. While at the school, he formed a friendship with one of the students, later to become one of America’s foremost writers, F. Scott Fitzgerald. In the monastery library is a copy of a book given by him to Dom Leonard for Christmas and inscribed with the poem composed for the occasion.

Dom Benedict Brosnahan

Just two weeks after the Armistice, marking the end of hostilities, Dom Leonard came to Portsmouth to celebrate a Mass of thanksgiving for the purchase of the Hall estate which would become the nucleus of his monastery. Appropriately, the occasion of the Mass was the First Sunday at Advent, but it was not until June of the following year that he was able to take up residence with another monk, Dom Benedict Brosnahan, an American who had been professed a Downside and who also had the idea of starting a house of the English Congregation in America. In 1919 the house was given canonical status, becoming a “domus formata”. Dom Leonard envisioned the founding of a school at Portsmouth, but lacked the means to accomplish this. In the meantime, the monastery would serve as a center for retreats, scholarship, the liturgy and other specifically monastic pursuits. Under Downside, however, the monastery did not prosper, since American vocations were few, and short-lived when they did come. In 1926, therefore, since the mother house in England could not afford to send the needed monks, the monastery was turned over to Fort Augustus in Scotland, with Dom Leonard given the option of remaining at Portsmouth or returning to England.

Calefactory portrait of Dom Hugh Diman

A small contingent of monks was sent from Scotland, headed by Prior Wulstan Knowles, who was later to become Abbot of Fort Augustus. A school was immediately founded under the leadership of the distinguished convert from the episcopal ministry, Dom Hugh Diman, who, 30 years before, had founded the well-known school of Saint George’s in Middletown, R. I. With his assumption of the office of headmaster and later of prior, both monastery and school flourished and the character of Portsmouth was given the distinctive character it retains to this day, a blend of high educational standards in the school as its primary mission and a commitment to a life of work and prayer consistent with Saint Benedict’s Rule which carries over into the school.

From Dom Damian’s records, with his handwritten notes;
news of Mrs. George Hall’s death, seventy-five years ago

In 1949 the monastery, dedicated to Saint Gregory the Great, was placed under the patronage of Our Lady, Queen of Peace, a title linking her with the motto of Saint Benedict and by a happy coincidence, with the name of the island on which Portsmouth is situated, the original island of Rhode Island, called by the Indians, “Aquidneck”, meaning Peace.

Father Damian Kearney (1976)

Some notes on the article: Other sources indicate that Dom Leonard was not initially entirely supportive of creating a school, preferring a more purely contemplative monastic foundation. And while some sources associate the name “Aquidneck” with “Isle of Peace,” others suggest the Algonquin word simply means “at the island.” Founder of the colony of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, said he never learned what it actually meant. On a further note, some sources indicate that it is unclear exactly when the first Mass was said here, with two different dates being proposed.

News from 1993
In his “monastery notes” for this issue of the Newsletter, Fr. Damian tells us that Dom Julian Stead traveled to Denver for the World Youth Day with a small group of students, “enjoying the hospitality of St. Walburga’s Convent just outside the city.” Fr. Damian also notes that Fr. Julian’s book on St. Benedict’s Rule has been completed, to be published that autumn. He mentions that “Dom Paschal spent most of the summer in Washington, D.C., at Catholic University, continuing his studies in Canon Law, while Dom Joseph attended Notre Dame for courses in Scripture and Business Administration.” The Ampleforth Lourdes Pilgrimage was joined by a Portsmouth contingent that included Dom Caedmon and then headmaster John Wilkinson. The issue also mentions that Dom Benedict Lang was serving at this time as Director of Oblates and offered the conference for the September meeting.