The inside story of the two writing-desks St. Therese used during her lifetime, with thanks to the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux
The national tour of the writing-desk of St. Therese of Lisieux sponsored by the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States is drawing a great deal of attention to this small (12 inches by 11 inches by 3 inches) wooden box on which a young woman who died at 24 produced writings that have become spiritual classics. Why are people traveling so far and crowding into churches to see this little desk? I would like to tell the story of the writing-desk in Therese’s lifetime. I must ask you to click to see the photos, but please do so: it will be worth it.
During her life as a Carmelite nun, St. Therese used two successive writing-desks. The one that is touring the United States is the writing-case she used to write the three manuscripts that became Story of a Soul.
On April 9, 1888, when Therese entered the Lisieux Carmel, she was escorted to the cell assigned to her; it was on a corridor near the garden.
When you click, view the top photo.
The Carmelite postulants and novices and the young professed still in formation were supposed to live on their own corridor, near the cell of their novice-mistress. This area was called “the novitiate.” Often, when a new postulant arrived, other nuns had to move their cells around to consolidate cells to create a novitiate area big enough. Thus, in March 1888, to prepare for Therese’s entrance, Therese’s sister Pauline, Sister Agnes of Jesus, had to move from her cell near the novitiate into a new one in the St. Elijah corridor, and Therese’s oldest sister Marie, Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart, moved into the cell Sister Agnes had vacated. Marie had not yet completed the three years of extended formation after her vows. Read the touching letter Pauline wrote to Marie about how she felt about this change of cells.
The furniture in Therese's new cell had first been prepared for another postulant, Mademoiselle Jeanne Fleuriot of Lisieux, whose father owned property adjoining the Carmel. Jeanne had been expected to enter but did not, evidently due to her father’s angry opposition. It seem s such paternal resistance was not unusual then. Celine comments on this:
“She was his oldest daughter, Jeanne. He [Mr. Fleuriot] did so much and did it so successfully that she remained in the world. Therese inherited the furniture of the cell they had prepared for Jeanne, and this furniture displeased her very much because it was nicely finished.”
[Letters of St. Therese of Lisieux, Vol. I, tr. John Clarke, O.C.D. Washington, D.C.: Washington Province of Carmelite Friars, 1982, footnote 4, p. 368.] We will see how long Therese had to wait to be free of the “nicely finished” ecritoire.
This cell looked out on the roof of the "dressmaking building" where habits were made:
This time, click and see the bottom photo.
The writing-case Therese found in her cell was of pine, lighter in color than the one seen on the tour, and also lighter in weight. See photos of this pine desk here and here on the Web site of the archives of the Carmel of Lisieux.
Therese lived In this first cell for five years. When, at an unknown date, probably in 1893, Therese moved from her first cell to a second, she took this ecritoire with her and used it during all her time in the second cell. No photo of Therese’s second cell survives, but please click below to see a photo of the cell next door, later occupied by Therese’s cousin, Marie Guerin, as a postulant. Therese used the first ecritoire until her sister Celine entered the monastery on September 14, 1894.
Therese's cell was on the other side of the left wall.
A snapshot of that time: Therese’s sister Pauline was the first to enter in October 1882. Four years later, in October 1886, Marie followed. Therese joined them in April 1888, leaving Celine and Leonie to care for their father, who was growing older and more frail. On February 12, 1889, he was committed to the Bon Saveur psychiatric hospital in Caen. In May 1892, paralyzed, he returned to Lisieux. In 1893 Leonie made a second attempt at the Monastery of the Visitation at Caen. This attempt lasted till 1895. On July 29, 1894, Louis Martin died at La Musse, an estate near Evreux which the Guerin family used as a summer home. And on September 14, 1894 Celine joined her three sisters at Carmel.
In August 1894, to prepare for Celine’s entrance, Therese moved into a cell in the St. Elijah corridor, adjacent to the chapter room. This was now the novitiate corridor. This “last cell” is the one usually shown in photographs. It is still kept as it was. Thanks to the Carmel of Lisieux, you can make a "virtual visit" to it by film.
The mystery of the two writing-desks unravelled
Therese was responsible for preparing the cell two doors down from her, next to the community’s library, for her sister Celine. We have no photograph of Celine's cell. She decided to give Celine her own ecritoire ("ecritoire no. 1), which was light to carry and still in good condition. To replace it, she mounted to the attic, where the nuns placed old, worn-out objects designated "out of use," which no one dared to throw away. There she found an old ecritoire, much heavier and rather battered. The writing surface had already split on both sides. On the Web site of the archives of the Carmel of Lisieux, you can see a photo of the first ecritoire and several photos that show the poor condition of the second ecritoire, with a short story about the two.
Since this second ecritoire was "out of use" in 1894, it was very old, probably dating as far back as the foundation of the Lisieux Carmel in 1838. Incredibly, Therese used this battered desk to produce all the major texts she wrote between September 14, 1894 and September 8, 1897, when she laid down her pen. This is the writing-case that is touring the United States in the autumn of 2013.
Testifying to Therese’s generosity and to her love of poverty, Celine recounts:
Because of her ardent love for God, Therese chose only the ugliest and most worn out articles for her personal use. I repeat that this stemmed from her love for God because by nature she was artistic and preferred objects that were attractive and in good taste . . . .
A novice had rubbed linseed oil over the cheap finish of her cell ecritoire, but immediately Saint Therese had her scrub it with a brush until every trace of the oil had disappeared. The furniture of the cell assigned to Therese had already been polished in this way by a former occupant; had it been up to her, she would have restored the original finish without more ado.
On my entrance into Carmel she passed on to me her own serviceable writing-desk and holy water font and replaced them by others no longer fit for use which she had found in the garret.
[A Memoir of My Sister Saint Therese, by Sister Genevieve of the Holy Face. New York: P.J. Kenedy and Sons, 1959].
In June 1897, when Therese began to write her third manuscript. by then she had been freed from other duties, and she often wrote out in the “chestnut walk,” using the writing-desk as she sat in the wheelchair her father had used in his last years.
When Therese was carried down to the infirmary on July 8, her ecritoire was also brought down, and she used it to write letters and to re-read and correct her writings from her sickbed.
Click and scroll down to the third image to see the photograph of a sick Carmelite, taken shortly after the death of Therese in the infirmary where Therese died. Therese's bed was often placed like this, facing the window.
The last time Therese used the ecritoire, September 8, 1890, on the seventh anniversary of her Profession,was to write her last prayer. She wrote this prayer on the reverse of the little holy card with an image of Our Lady of Victories (a devotion dear to the Martin and Guerin families, who loved her sanctuary in Paris) to which she had attached the little white flower her father had given her on Pentecost Sunday 1887, in the garden at Les Buissonnets, when he gave her his permission to enter Carmel. Therese had kept this holy card in her treasured copy of the Imitation of Christ, inserting it at the chapter “That Jesus Christ must be loved above all things.”
In her bed in the infirmary, leaning against the writing-case, with a trembling hand she wrote:
“O Mary, if I were the Queen of Heaven and you were Therese, I should wish to be Therese in order to see you as Queen of Heaven.”
These were the last words Therese wrote on earth.
See also the FAQ about Therese's writing-desk and writing.
For a treasure-house of documents, images, and information about St. Therese, her family, and her community, please visit the English Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux, where you can read all St. Therese's writings online in English. As the writing-desk continues to be a focus of prayer in the United States, please join me in a prayer of thanksgiving for the work of evangelization accomplished by the Archives and for this partnership with the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States.