An Infinity of Little Hours is the story of five young men who entered the Carthusian monastery of Parkminster, UK, in 1960 and 1961, to see if they could become Carthusian monks. The author, Nancy Klein Maguire, who is married to an ex-Carthusian, chose that time period because it was before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, when the order functioned much as it did when it was founded in 1084 by St. Bruno at Chartreux, France. She struck up a correspondence with these five men, and some of the other monks at Parkminster, and it is from that correspondence that she recreates their lives as Carthusian novices.
I came to the book with romantic notions about the Carthusian life. Carthusian monks and nuns live as hermits in what are called Charterhouses (after "Chartreux"). They each have their own little house and garden and spend most of their time alone in quiet prayer. They gather in the community church three times a day to pray, but are allowed to speak to each other only once a week on structured group walks. Lay (non-clerical) Brothers or Sisters take care of the household chores including cooking and delivering meals, to allow the monks and nuns to spend as much time as possible in prayer.
It all sounds quite pleasant and peaceful, but the life described in this book is anything but. The author focuses on the physical and psychological rigours of Carthusian life as experienced by the five novices in question. These rigours include wearing a hair shirt, self-flagellation, weekly baths, interrupted sleep (to pray the three-hour Night Office), frigid buildings, and a strange mix of community and isolation that could lead to protracted turf wars in which novices were sometimes pawns.
Only those who are both physically and mentally tough can survive as a Carthusian. Some postulants, those visiting to see if they feel a calling to the order, fled after a few days, or even hours. Keep in mind that many of the postulants and novices were already members of contemplative orders, such as the Trappists, and were well-practiced in solitude and simplicity of lifestyle. It is no overstatement to say that the Carthusian way of life is extreme.
At the time there was little understanding or application of psychology in the order, and since the monks and novices were kept apart, the novices got little emotional support and did not know of the little cheats that the monks used to cope with the difficult conditions. In their youthful idealism they followed the almost inhumane rules, with sometimes serious consequences for their physical and mental health.
Those among the five who don't make it don't seem to harbour any bitterness about what they experienced, though. They had, and still have, trouble adjusting to life outside the walls, but they all describe their Carthusian novitiate as a great gift. I think Maguire lets the reader down by relating so much of the downside of Parkminster and almost completely neglecting the positive. Perhaps because she got most of her information from former novices, and not present monks, she was not in a position to relate much about the success stories. As a lapsed Catholic perhaps Maguire was not able to personally understand and thus communicate the Carthusians' spiritual lives. The Carthusian life is nothing if not private, and perhaps it is a story that can only told by Carthusians themselves. But I also think the author chose to highlight the austerity of the order—she uses that word, austere, in her subtitle—rather than the spiritual fruits of the monks who labour at prayer. I will definitely be looking elsewhere for a more complete view of the Carthusians.
