‘Read it as good news’ – a memory of Vivienne Chatterton

Recently arrived from Australia, in the autumn of 1972 I spent some weeks in the parish of Our Lady, St John’s Wood, London, before going up to graduate studies at Oxford. There I soon became very much aware of a parishioner who read regularly at Mass. When she read the Lesson, people sat on the edge of their seats. It was as though they were hearing it for the first time.

The reader, then in her 70’s and in poor health, was the singer and actress, Vivienne Chatterton, who had been prominent in film, TV, and especially radio drama from the beginnings of the BBC in the 1920’s through to the post-war period. Over the weeks I got to know her well and, naturally, spoke in appreciation of the quality of her reading. She said, “ I read it as Good News because I really believe it is Good News!” Then she told me why.

What I am recalling now is a report of her experience given to me 50 years ago. Whether it corresponds to recollections of Vivienne others may have, I do not know. I can only record the account of a remarkable conversion as I believe I heard it at the time.

Vivienne was born in London in 1896 and raised in a strict Protestant family. Sundays, she said, were terrible: church morning and evening; no music or dancing, no games, no fun whatsoever. A talented and high-spirited young woman, she escaped in her late teens and began a career in music and drama. Over the course of a long association with the BBC, she became well known, especially as a radio actress. Among other things, she had a remarkable gift for mimicry, frequently called upon for sound effects when more technical resources were not at hand. The sound made by a drop of water falling from a stalactite to a stalagmite was just one among many that she was asked to provide.

In the 1960’s her life took a downturn. Her professional career faltered as the dominance of TV over radio curtailed her media employment. Her husband L. Stanton Jefferies died in 1961. One day, almost at her wits end, she was walking the streets of London and became very oppressed by the noise and bustle of the traffic. Desperate to get off the street and find a bit of peace and quiet, she found herself passing the Catholic church at Spanish Place.

Now from her earliest years, Catholicism had been an absolute “No, No”. She had long since cast off the Protestantism of her youth. Christianity in whatever form was simply “bad news”.

Vivienne knew, though, that she might get a few moments of peace and quiet if she just went in and sat at the back of that church. So she entered, sat down at the back, and after a moment looked up towards the altar. Then, she told me, suddenly but gently a strong sense came over her: what had always been “bad news” was “good news”. The feeling came as pure gift, pure grace. In the terms of John Wesley’s Aldersgate St experience in London two centuries before, her heart was “strangely warmed”.

She heard noises in the sacristy where a priest was getting ready for Mass. She went down and said, “I want to become a Catholic,” giving the impression that she wanted to become one there and then. The priest, welcoming but surprised, said, “Well, that’s good but let’s not rush things.” So she took instruction, was received into the Church, and in due course became a reader at St John’s Wood.

Ever the professional, Vivienne never went out and read the Lesson without a good twenty minutes of preparation. I remember her going through a passage of St Paul:

Fill your minds with everything that is true, everything that is noble, everything that is good and pure, everything that we love and honour, and everything that can be thought virtuous or worthy of praise (Phil 4:8).

Every one of those adjectives – “true”, “noble”, “good”, “pure”, “virtuous”, “worthy of praise” – and the verbs “love” and “honour” had to be weighed and the right tone struck, according to their meaning and their place in the sentence as a whole.

She said to me, “You priests so often present it as bad news. But I know in my heart that it’s good news, very good news, and that’s how it must be proclaimed”. She recalled that Lord Reith, founder of the BBC whom she knew well, once observed that “while we (the media) have bad news to tell but make it sound good, the clergy, who have good news to tell, so often make it sound bad”.

Her health declined and she found it hard to get up to the lectern to read. Newcomers to the parish wondered at this elderly woman huffing and puffing her way up to the sanctuary, on crutches at the end. But then she would open her mouth and they’d be held spellbound like everyone else.

Vivienne died on New Year’s Day 1974. I was called down from Oxford to celebrate her requiem. Not long before, she had told me that she found it hard to get through the “Our Father”. As her illness took its toll, she stumbled at “Thy will be done”. But I have no doubt that the faith remained “good news” for her till the end. Certainly, for a priest beginning a scholarly career in Scripture, to have met Vivienne, to have been coached by her in the reading of the Word, and to have heard, first hand, about her remarkable conversion was a treasured privilege and grace. Fifty years on I share this memory in gratitude.

Brendan Byrne SJ taught Scripture for over four decades at Jesuit Theological College, Parkville, Australia. He is currently Professor Emeritus of New Testament at the University of Divinity (Melbourne).