Out of the habit
Former nun Caroline Dawnay found a new life when she fell in love
Fifty-two years ago, Caroline Tindal (as she was then) walked down the aisle in a wedding dress made by her mother with the precious family veil of old Honiton lace over her head. The priest was waiting for her at the altar rails but there was no bridegroom or best man beside him because the nineteen-year-old bride was not marrying a mere mortal, but Christ himself. In other words, she was becoming a nun.
In front of her family, the pupils from the convent’s school and the rest of the religious community, the priest placed a white nun’s veil over the old lace veil, and then Caroline was taken to a side room where her wedding dress was removed and she was clothed in her newly blessed habit.
‘My hair was cut off, and the headdress put on – a bonnet with a pie frill around the face – and then the veil pinned on top. Endless layers went under the habit: a long thick petticoat, a white chemise, the long black dress and then the pellerin, a short cape with lots of buttons down the front. Finally, the rosary was attached to my waist and a very large pocket sewed onto the inside of the habit with scissors and a pincushion attached to it; very useful!
‘This ritual was a profound stripping-off of my old life, symbolised above all by having my hair cut. Hair has always been seen as a woman’s crowning glory and the removal of this – and the fact that no one would ever see my hair again – was very strange and denuding somehow.
‘The habit felt heavy and bulky, and I knew I
Caroline Dawnay in Uniqlo jacket, John Lewis jumper and charity-shop skirt (inset: 1965)
The Oldie eventually left the convent. While she was making up her mind about this, she was allowed a spell in the outside world, to adjust. She worked as a medical secretary. During this time, she met Peter, a publisher, the man who became her husband.
‘We fell in love and my mother superior joked that it would be difficult to have an engaged nun on the books; so they’d better get a dispensation for me to leave the order.’
When Dawnay had entered the convent in the mid-sixties, she’d worn a grey suit and pink jumper: ‘Very suitable and sedate.’ This is the outfit she was given back to wear for her departure.
She was unphased by the move into civvies after so long in a habit (which had, in any case, become less austere over the years). She shared a flat with a friend and became addicted to charity shops and learned from her mother.
‘She was very beautiful, made a lot of her clothes, and ours, and had an eye for colour and design. She insisted on looking her best every day, even though there were seven of us to look after and we lived in a very rural part of Ireland. So I didn’t have a problem. I knew I had to look professional as I worked for a doctor at first, and then, after my marriage, until now, as a teacher of special needs children.’
Dawnay has always cut her own hair – she has only been to the hairdresser
in her life, and that was the morning of her wedding to Peter (when she again wore th the Honiton lace veil).
She still loves poking around c charity shops, and occasionally h has a pretty fabric made up by a l local dressmaker. If it is a really s special occasion – like their son’s w wedding – she doesn’t feel guilty a about buying something a little m more expensive.
‘As for looking good, I think it co comes from inside. I am happy; I lo love my husband and the village I liv live in. There is never a moment w when I don’t meet a friend or ne neighbour and pass the time of da day, as they say in Ireland.’