It was the Swinging Sixties, the world was in the grip of Beatlemania, hemlines were rising and bouffants, beehives and free love were all the rage. But in the midst of this cultural revolution, 18-year-old Eleanor Stewart from Oxfordshire decided to turn her back on a life of parties and boys and enter a convent as a nun. The news was met with relief by her parents and a mixture of consternation and unbridled hilarity by her friends.
Eleanor recounts her story in her recently published book, Kicking the Habit: From Convent to Casualty.
‘‘My mother was very relieved when I told her because she thought I was going down the primrose path of perdition. I was knocking around with young men from Oxford and she knew I was misbehaving myself. When I told her I was going to be a nun, I think she thought I would be safe and that if God had called me that is wonderful,’’ she said.
‘‘My father didn’t mind at all because he didn’t think I’d stay. They weren’t appalled or horrified, I didn’t have any difficulty in persuading them that was what I wanted to do.’’
But it was a different story when she told her friends.
‘‘With most of them it was disbelief and hilarity,’’ she said.
Eleanor’’s two-and-a-half year noviciate period of “training” was in France and shortly after taking her vows, she returned to England where she trained as a nurse and midwife in Liverpool.
Her time was split between delivering babies in the homes of the city’s most disadvantaged, and the strictures of convent life.
But as time progressed Eleanor struggled to reconcile the reclusive demands of religious life (which she loved) with the drama, excitement and occasional tragedy of the inner city hospital world. Despite the uplifting experience and fulfilment of the convent, she eventually began to question whether she could continue feeling so torn between two lives.
‘‘I was three-quarters through my midwifery after having been in religion for very nearly nine years and I said (to her superiors) that I think my place is no longer here.’’
She believes becoming a midwife was the catalyst for her decision to leave the religious life, and follow a new vocation as a mother.
‘‘I was surrounded by an atmosphere of fertility, there were babies everywhere; babies at the breast, babies in cots, babies in people’s arms, babies in my arms as I fed them. I was absolutely overwhelmed by the yearning to be a mother.’’
She added: ‘‘I think that once I started nursing there were things in my everyday life that became as important to me. I didn’t see this as a conflict. But I think underneath, like an undercurrent, I was frustrated that I couldn’t develop friendships with other people, not just men. On my way to and from the hospital I would see posters advertising a play or film and I’d think I’d love to go and see that.’’
If Eleanor’s story sounds like a series of Call the Midwife, moved to a new decade and a different city from the 1950s London of the BBC hit series, that is because it is very much how it was. But this was real life and – just like Sister Bernadette in the television drama, who is drawn into a relationship with the local GP – Sister Eleanor was beginning to realise that perhaps her true calling lay elsewhere.
Her autobiography ’Kicking the Habit’ paints a vivid picture of her divided existence between two very different worlds. She draws back the curtain on the hidden life of the convent and the remarkable diversity of the women who have felt themselves called to God.
Eleanor said her superiors were ‘‘very sweet and kind’’ about her decision to leave the convent.
‘‘They said they were sorry, that it was perfectly normal to have these feelings for babies,’’ she said.
Her superiors even offered to move Eleanor out of midwifery and back to France as a means of helping her through this crisis of conscience.
Eleanor seeking further counsel, discussed her feelings with a priest, who told her she had ‘‘lost the religious spirit.’’
‘‘I thought that was really sad. He said I had a good spirit and a good outlook on life, but I didn’t have the mind set that would allow me to carry on being a nun. He said, ‘My feeling is that you have been drifting away for some time’, which I think was true.’’
In her book Eleanor reveals a self-contained world of mutual support, understanding and friendship –and a strong sense of community in both convent and hospital. From learning the art of turkey plucking to attending births in appalling poverty-stricken conditions, this is the engaging account of a woman who experienced chapel services, death and new life on a regular if not daily basis.
It is an insight into a world where heroism co-exists with timidity – and saintliness with pragmatic opportunism.
After nearly eight years as a nun, Eleanor left the convent and moved to Portsmouth where she continued to work as a midwife and married her husband John in 1973. But sadly, Eleanor’s dream of giving birth herself was not meant to be; she had developed pelvic inflammatory disease, due to a chlamydia infection.
‘‘I got pregnant very soon after my marriage to John and was delighted. But eight weeks in, I had to be rushed to hospital by ambulance and it was confirmed that the baby was growing in my remaining Fallopian tube. I was told that removing it was the only way to save my life … which put paid to me ever being able to have a baby of my own,” she says.
‘‘It was devastating. John was very, very upset.’’
She and John subsequently adopted two children, Esme and Paul, and Eleanor, now aged 70, is a grandmother with two grandsons.
So to quote the title of her book, does she ever regret ‘kicking the habit’?
‘‘No, I don’t regret it, I think I did the right thing. The lovely thing is that I have stayed on very good terms with the Sisters. I have taken my children and husband back to the Mother House, so we have stayed in touch.’’
Kicking the Habit is not a depressing tale of the life of a nun, redeemed only by being liberated to a ‘normal’ life in the outside world. This is a happy, feel-good story which gives a positive view of Eleanor’’s life as a nun and shares just how difficult a decision it was for Eleanor to leave the Order.
*Kicking the Habit: From Convent to Casualty in 1960s Liverpool by Eleanor Stewart is published by Lion Hudson, £8.99.