Correspondence

I promised to read you something from her letters. So here we go!  In reading some paragraphs you will get to know a young woman who was full of life, wanting to make the very best use of her opportunities and above all please her parents.

9 October 1916: “…  Yesterday afternoon we gave a concert in the Salon to the Sisters and the students who wanted to hear us. I played, from memory, the Caprice Waltz and the Allegro Appassionata of St Saens. They were very kind to us. Bernadette played the Sermon to the Birds of List. Yesterday morning we went to the High Mass in the Church of St. Francis Xavier. Beautiful singing. I will return there if I can. In the afternoon we went for a walk in Central Park. Tomorrow we will go back to Macy’s. There I saw escalators. My father would have enjoyed riding up on them. What a huge store! How rich, how beautiful. I want to carry out my intention of going to bed early, for I do not want to lose my rosy cheeks. Here they tell me that I have not got New York colours …”

13th October 1916 “…the temperature is ideal. Aline and I went shopping like real Americans. I found some high boots, brown and very smart for $3.85.  I needed them and so bought them, as well as a bag for $1. My companion is very funny and how I laughed.  In another shop we bought white silk stockings. On Wednesday afternoon we went, with an Irish girl, to visit the Fine Arts Museum, or rather, we began to visit it. One needs to spend many days there to see it all. We spent time in the room where there were pianos and musical instruments… In the morning I go to Mass in the church of the Assumption Fathers. My appetite is very good, you certainly will not recognise me at Christmas. We play ball games and laugh – I should say so! If the Yanks are forming an idea of us French Canadians they will just have to recognise the virtue of cheerfulness...”

19 October 1916.”… Let me tell you about the Conservatoire. I did not receive my timetable until Tuesday. My piano teacher is a Mr Newstead, I have Mr Richardson for harmony and also lessons from Mr Tappe.  I met Mr Newstead on Tuesday and, after asking me to play the Bach Prelude, he told me “your fingers are strong and you use them well. Now, as necessary, you must use your wrists more, your arm and your fore-arm”. He then made me play the Allegro and at the very end he gave me a little pat on the shoulder and said “You are talented, I hope you will have a very good year”.   He is English and does not want to speak French. No problem, I will break my neck to speak his language…”

5 November 1916.  “I have just returned from a concert given by Paderewiski. It was worth coming from Quebec simply to hear him. At present he is thought to be the greatest pianist in the world. He played eight pieces and of them, the audience made him repeat the Second Rhapsody of List. There was rapturous applause from the audience - the great Carnegie Hall was completely full.  You cannot imagine how good it is to be in New York.”

New York

Here we are in New York

The journey had been arranged for the October of 1916, but in May Dina’s mother suffered a serious accident. Dina feared, not only for her mother, but she also saw a threat to her plans to go to New York. She says, “In the very moment that my serious and important plans on which my whole future perhaps depended, Jesus asked me to sacrifice my desires”.  To have felt such anxiety is normal and she needed a big grace to renounce her plans cheerfully.  But, having accepted this possibility, things changed; her mother made a complete recovery and when summer came Dina was again able to begin to dream and prepare for the forthcoming journey.

Three young Canadians: Dina, Bernadette and Aline,  accompanied by Mr Bélanger, undertook the journey to New York. Dina wrote to her mother telling her that the passing scenery was enchanting and that during the journey they had played cards, laughed endlessly,  according to her, as she had not done in the previous nineteen years, adding  that, in reality, to be going to New York, made her feel that she was in paradise.

In New York Dina’s parents had chosen the Residence Our Lady of Peace, run by the Religious of Jesus and Mary. On arriving Dina was disappointed to find that she would have to share a room with another – only one single room was available and her father advised them to offer it to Aline. For Dina, who was used to being alone, this was a problem, but nobody noticed. Later on, when a single room became available, both Dina and Bernadette decided to remain together. The two had discovered the biblical treasure of friendship.

The three young women got on marvellously well together. All three loved dancing and spent hours enjoying themselves at it.  Dina’s friends were aware of her unselfish kindness, for while being very cheerful and full of laughter and jokes, she was also very sharp and knew how to tease without being hurtful.

Nothing distinguished Dina exteriorly from the others but there was something different – a greater reserve, an evenness of character and temperament. She never spoke badly of any one, and if somebody did so, Dina had a remarkable ability to change the conversation or emphasise the qualities or the strong points of that person.

As an artist Dina greatly enjoyed the concerts that she attended and according to her teachers, made great progress in both piano and harmony. In her commitment to her studies Dina wished to please and thank her parents for the great sacrifice they had made with her departure and, in order to compensate in some way for her absence, she wrote to them almost daily. The letters are those of a cheerful young woman, spontaneously happy with everything – but this does not reveal anything of that which nourished her inner-life. She went to Mass and Holy Communion everyday and followed the prayer- plan that she had drawn up previously.

We have the 278 letters that were written to her parents during her stay in New York, which they donated after her death.  Next time you will be able to read some extracts from them so that you will get to know Dina better.

Passion for music

Do you know, Jesus continued to work with Dina and she responded lovingly, making an effort to hide her intense interior life from the other people’s eyes. When she was sixteen a Vocation Retreat confirmed her desire to be a religious, a desire she had cherished for some time.

She eventually leaves boarding - school and returns home. By now she is a splendid young person, tall, graceful, simple, amiable and intelligent – in a word charming.  She is about to enter life in the world, marked out by the social position of a well-off family, but secretly her only ideal in life is Jesus. Her motto was “Death rather than sin” had become fully present in her life and she will be completely faithful to it.

One day she told her mother that she wanted to be a religious. Dina is very young, only sixteen years old and her mother asked her to think about it. Was that which her mother had asked for during her pregnancy going to be realised? The parish priest’s advice is along the same lines; she is too young, she must know more of the world, she owes it to her parents. They are delighted to be able to enjoy her company, expressing their ever- greater affection with gifts. Dina sorrowfully accepts the delay, but is grateful for the love, the clothes, the jewellery that her parents offer her. According to what she tells us, she abandoned her plans into the hands of Jesus and there was no lack of generosity on her part, she was full of peace with the decision.

Dina continued studying the piano until she obtained her Teachers Certificate. She began to give concerts which were received with great praise, a praise which she thought to be exaggerated, for her ideal of a pianist was so high that she knew very well that she did not merit these eulogies. But nevertheless she accepted all the demonstrations of appreciation gratefully. Her outward control was so great that no one realised what these concerts cost her and even her parents thought that she did not mind at all playing the piano in public. She wrote “No one could suspect the martyrdom, yes, I am not afraid to use that word, the martyrdom I experienced in the midst of the flowers and the applause”.

Dina not only continued her piano studies and enjoyed her social life, but also multiplied her works of charity, giving of her time to the apostolate. The love of Jesus and her desire to help others grew. How does she do it? She makes the most of the opportunities that come along. At the beginning of World War I, in 1914, she offered herself totally to Our Lord in a spirit of reparation and love. She would have been capable of giving her life for others. Who could imagine that there burned within this young artist, brilliant pianist so kind and simple, such a deep interior life? The Little Prince was so right when he said “what is essential is invisible to the eye”.

Seeing such exceptional musical talent in their daughter, her parents decided to send her to New York to perfect her studies. Dina, who was passionate about music and the beauty of harmony which she was beginning to discover, was delighted with this decision and even feels a certain vanity in being able to perfect her studies at a great Conservatoire. The vanity does not last long; “Jesus did not allow these illusions to fool me. I already knew that of myself I was not much, even when acknowledging that God had given me a certain talent…”

We will meet again in New York