Muriel Brittain - Requiem Mass : 12 January 2007
Address given by Fr Robert Gage
(formerley Vicar at St Giles’ & St Margaret’s 1981-1997)
of which the following is an abridged version

We are here to commend into God’s keeping a most remarkable person. Muriel would probably have disclaimed the idea that she was remarkable; but she was – and I think, in her heart, she knew it.     But she would not have wanted to take the credit. She knew that belonged to God.

Muriel was an unusual mixture of the traditional and the very modern. Born at Ingham Lodge on the Feast of the Epihany 1919, she thought of that house as ‘home’ all her life. Not many people these days have lived in the same house for nearly ninety years! Yet she broke through all kinds of barriers in a way that few women of her generation managed – or even tried – to do.

Muriel’s parents were also, I suspect, pretty remarkable. Her father, Octavius Cunnington (known as ‘Joey’), had a newsagent’s business at Enfield. His sister’s family lived nearby in Barnet, and young Alan and Stella Townend were often at Ingham for music and highjinks. It was a cultured family, but full of high good humour. (There were, for example, two pigs in the padock – called Alan and Stella!)

Muriel had a tutor at home, and then attended Queen Elizabeth’s School, Barnet. She went on to train at the Chelsea School of Pharmacy, and qualified as member of Society of Pharmacologists in 1942. First appointed as Assistant Pharmacist at Chase Farm Hospital, Enfield, she soon moved on to be Deputy Chief Pharmacist at Barnet General Hospital.

Then, in 1948, Muriel was made Chief Pharmacist at Westminster Children’s Hospital in Vincent Square, charged with re-opening the pharmacy there after the War. She remained in this post until 1960. People talk about a glass ceiling for women today; but Muriel’s appointment at Vincent Square was a very significant achievement.

But her career as a pharmacist was shorter than she or anyone else might have expected – thanks to Freddie Brittain. Freddie, too, grew up in Barnet, and first came to Mymms just before the First World War. He had been sent to deliver a letter to the vicar, Father Hay. That visit changed Freddie’s life. He met a very colourful character, who remained a life-long friend; and he discovered Anglo-catholicism.

Freddie spent the War years working on a hospital ship. After the War, he took advantage of a government scholarship and went up to Jesus College Cambridge. He never came down. Freddie loved people, and found the eccentricities of Cambridge wholly addictive. (He himself added a few to their number.) Like Alan Hay, he could see a comic side to the most ordinary situations, in a way that made life a constant drama of delight.

Alan Hay died in 1954 (in the fifty-sixth year of his Incumbency!), but Freddie’s association with St Giles’ Church continued. The new Vicar, George Sage, let Freddie use a room in the Vicarage whenever he was in Mymms. But Father Sage moved on after only three years. His successor, Percy Clare, was a married man. Freddie needed a new pied-a-terre.

Muriel had nursed both parents through their last illnesses, and both had died. It was suggested that Miss Cunnington might have a room to let. Indeed she did. Freddie went to meet her, and one thing led to another – but oh! so discreetely! It wasn’t until 1959 that Flo Finch, who worked at the Vicarage, said to Father Clare one morning, ‘I’ve just seen Dr Brittain and Miss Cunnington driving off in a car together!’ ‘No, Flo,’ the Vicar replied. ‘You have just seem Dr and Mrs Brittain driving off.’ ‘Owwwwww!’ said Flo.

The honeymoon must have been extraordinary. Part of it was spent with a friend of Freddie’s, who had a country house in Kent. When the new couple arrived (with what warning, I do not know), out of the car stepped Dr Brittain of Jesus College, and a nun in full habit – Sister Monica! Freddie and Muriel always shared a wild sense of humour!

In 1959, there were, of course, no women living in any Cambridge College. Muriel and Freddie were given 2 Maids Causeway, though most of their time at Cambridge was spent in Freddie’s rooms, with vacations at Mymms. Then, in 1965, the Senate granted Muriel the unique privilege of actually living in Freddie’s rooms at 13 Chapel Court. She thus became the first woman to sleep in the College (at least, officially!) since its foundation.

Muriel shared Freddie’s keen interest in people. He knew everyone in Cambridge – and, very soon, so did she. And she became so closely associated with Freddie’s work as Keeper of the Records that, when he died in 1969, she was automatically made Assistant to each subsequent Keeper of the Records. I suspect that while they held the title, she did most of the work!

In 1996, the College formally recognised Muriel’s amazing contribution to its life, especially with Old Members, by electing her a Fellow Commoner. She was immensely proud of this – and hugely pleased that the College also gave her the official gown. It arrived in characteristically dramatic circumstances.

It was the five hundredth anniversary to the day of the founding of Jesus College by Henry VII. Muriel’s gown was delivered mid-morning. The Queen came to lunch that day, and opened the new College Library. I arrived about tea-time, to be Muriel’s her guest at the annual Rustat Audit Feast – an even more splendid occasion than usual that year. We started at 7.00 with champagne in the Master’s drawing room, and we finally rose from table – after (I think) nine courses – at a quarter past midnight. I had had enough, and retired; but Muriel and the dons went on to the Combination Room!

In 1999, the College finally made Muriel ‘Keeper of the Records’. No more ‘Assistant’. She really had become part of the College. They gave her what she herself called a ‘fabulous’ eightieth birthday party, attended by more than a hundred and fifty people, including many old members and friends. The hall was decorated with eighty red and gold balloons. In his speech, the Master said, ‘Long before anyone thought of the term, Muriel was our Data Base.’ He added that – if she wanted it – she had ‘a job for life’ as Keeper of the Records. Everyone cheered!

Alas, Muriel’s health did not allow her to carry on right to the end. She did continue far beyond the point where most people would have called it a day. She loved the College, and she loved people. She gave them a lot – and they gave her even more. The College went to great lengths to help her to continue as long as possible, altering her rooms and providing an electric wheelchair; but the time came when she simply had to leave Cambridge and come back to Mymms.

I have not, so far, spoken of Muriel’s faith. It was profound. She knew as much theology as many clergy – and counted many clerics amongst her closest friends. But her faith was also simple – simple in the way that T. S. Eliot decribed: ‘costing not less than everything’. For Muriel, faith was something, not just to be believed, but to be lived. It was not worn on her sleeve, but woven through every aspect of her life. Just how deeply, I really only learned when she nearly died a few years ago.

I got a telephone call that Muriel had been taken into Addenbrooks, and was not expected to live. Happily, I was able to go to Cambridge at once, and did so. I spent about five hours with her. She thought she was dying, and so did we all. After I’d been with her a couple of hours, she suddenly asked me to ‘talk her through’ the Stations of the Cross.

After sixteen years as Vicar of South Mymms, I could do that without hesitation (though not, in these circumstances, without some trepidation). Ill as she was, Muriel made all the responses without faltering – right through all fourteen stations. She had to stop and rest, and it took us almost two hours; but she was totally ‘with it’. I have rarely felt so humble. They just don’t make ’em like that anymore!

Muriel was very clear about what she wanted for this service. She was particularly keen that the emphasis should be on the Resuurection. She left careful notes, both about the service, and about what I should say; though, with characteristic modesty, the notes about her life were fairly brief, and I’ve filled in a lot of blanks. There’s a great deal more I could say; but I want to finish – as Muriel would have wished – with some words about Resurrection.

The foundation-stone of Christian faith is the belief that God has made us. Not just the world, but us. God knows us, and loves us – and wants us to know and love him. To help us learn to do that, God has given us each other. As St John says in his First Epistle, ‘Anyone who does not love the neighbour whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.’ [1 John 4.20b]

God’s universe is always new – always in process of creation. The Creator is constantly at work. Whether he always knows what he’s going to do next, I cannot guess! I can easily understand how evolution is a mechanism of God’s creation; but I don’t see how associating God with evolution necessitates clumsy ideas about ‘Intelligent Design’.

What I’m quite sure about, is that the love of the God who is behind this extraordinarily beautiful and wonderful universe cannot be limited by what we experience as death. Yes, we all die. The life we have known here comes to an end. But God’s love for us – God’s love for Muriel – doesn’t stop, any more than our love for Muriel has stopped.

What Resurrection actually is, no one can say. Jesus died and was buried. After that, he showed himself to those who loved him. He was unmistakbly alive – though also different. The disciples didn’t always recognise him. He came and went mysteriously. But they knew: he was not dead.

If God can make a universe which is ever new, why should he not do this new thing? Jesus (as Paul says) was the first. If God can raise Jesus, he can raise us. How he does it, or what he raises us to, we shall just have to wait to find out. We cannot study this, as we might study a water molecule, or a ray of light. But, if love has any reality, Resurrection is something we can trust.

Muriel knew there are questions no one can answer; but she never faltered in her trust. She understood that, through all her life here among us, exciting and fulfilling as it was, she was always preparing for something bigger. This service is a celebration of her trust, and an expression of our trust that Muriel now knows that ‘something bigger’ at first hand : still held fast by the Love that made her, whom she now sees face to face – and reunited with Freddie, for whom her love never wavered, and whom she never ceased to miss.

May she – may they – though the mercy of God rest in peace, and rise in glory. Amen.