Early life
On January 31, 1915, Thomas Merton was born in Prades, France, to Owen Merton, a New Zealand painter active in Europe and the United States, and Ruth Jenkins, an American Quaker and artist. He was baptized in the Church of England, in accordance with his father's wishes. Owen Merton, a struggling artist, was often absent during his son's upbringing.
In August 1915, with World War I raging, the Merton family left Prades for the United States. They settled first with Ruth's parents on Long Island, New York and then near them in Douglaston, New York. In 1917, the family moved into an old house in Flushing, New York where Merton's brother, John Paul, was born on November 2, 1918. The family was considering returning to France, when Ruth was diagnosed with stomach cancer, from which she died on October 21, 1921, in Bellevue Hospital, New York. Merton was six years old.
In 1922, Merton and his father traveled to Bermuda, having left John Paul with his in-laws, the Jenkins family, in Douglaston. While the trip was short, Merton's father fell in love with the American novelist Evelyn Scott, then married to Cyril Kay-Scott. Still grieving his mother, Merton never quite hit it off with Evelyn Scott. Her son, Creighton, later said that she was verbally abusive to Merton during their stay.
Happy to get away from the company of Evelyn Scott, in 1923 Merton returned to Douglaston to live with the Jenkins family and his brother John Paul. Owen Merton, Evelyn Scott and her husband Cyril Kay-Scott set sail for Europe, traveling through France, Italy, England and Algeria. Merton later half-jokingly referred to this odd trio as the "Bermuda Triangle". During the winter of 1924, while in Algeria, Merton's father became ill and was thought to be near death. In retrospect, the illness could have been an early symptom of the brain tumor that eventually took his life. The news of his father's illness weighed heavily on Merton. The prospect of losing his sole surviving parent filled him with anxiety.
By March 1925, Owen Merton was well enough to organize a show at the Leicester Galleries in London. He later returned to New York and then took Merton with him to live in Saint-Antonin in France. Merton returned to France with mixed feelings, as he had lived with his grandparents for the last two years and had become attached to them. During their travels, Merton's father and Evelyn Scott had discussed marriage on occasion. After the trip to New York, his father realized that it could not work, as Merton would not be reconciled to Scott. Unwilling to sacrifice his son for the romance, Owen Merton broke off the relationship.
France 1926
In 1926, when Merton was eleven, his father enrolled him in a boys' boarding school in Montauban, the Lycée Ingres. The stay brought up feelings of loneliness and depression for Merton, as he felt deserted by his father. During his initial months of schooling, Merton begged his father to remove him. As time passed, however, he gradually became more comfortable with his surroundings there. He made friends with a circle of young and aspiring writers at the Lycée and came to write two novels.
Sundays at the Lycée offered a nearby Catholic Mass, but Merton never attended. He often managed a Sunday visit home. A Protestant preacher would come to teach on Sunday at the Lycée for those who did not attend Mass, but Merton showed no interest. During the Christmas breaks of 1926 and 1927, he spent his time with friends of his father in Murat (a small town in the Auvergne). He admired the devout Catholic couple, whom he saw as good and decent people, but religion only once came up as a topic between them. Merton declared that all religions "lead to God, only in different ways, and every man should go according to his own conscience, and settle things according to his own private way of looking at things." He wanted them to argue with him, but they did not. As he came to understand later, they realized that his attitude "implied a fundamental and utter lack of faith, and a dependence on my own lights, and attachment to my own opinion"; furthermore, since "I did not believe in anything,... anything I might say I believed would be only empty talk."
Meanwhile, Owen Merton was off traveling and painting and attending an exhibition of his work in London, but in the summer of 1928 he took Merton out of the Lycée Ingres, informing him that they were headed together to England.
England 1928
Merton and his father moved to the home of Owen's aunt and uncle in Ealing, West London. Merton was soon enrolled in Ripley Court Preparatory School, another boarding school, this one in Surrey. Merton enjoyed his studies there and benefited from a greater sense of community than had existed at the lycée. On Sundays, all students attended services at the local Anglican church. Merton began routinely praying, but discontinued the practice after leaving the school.
During his holidays, Merton stayed at his great-aunt and uncle's home, where occasionally his father would visit. During the Easter vacation, 1929, Merton and Owen went to Canterbury. Merton enjoyed the countryside around Canterbury, taking long walks there. When the holiday ended, Owen returned to France, and Merton to Ripley. Towards the end of that year, Thomas Merton learned that his father was ill and living in Ealing. Merton went to see him and together they left for Scotland, where a friend had offered his house for Owen to recover in. Shortly after, Owen was taken to London to the North Middlesex Hospital. Merton soon learned his father had a brain tumor. He took the news badly, but later, when he visited Owen in hospital, the latter seemed to be recovering. This helped ease some of Merton's anxiety.
In 1930, Merton stayed at Oakham School, a boarding school in Rutland, England. He was successful there. At the end of the first year, his grandparents and John Paul visited him. His grandfather discussed his finances, telling him he would be provided for if Owen died. Merton and the family spent most of that summer visiting the hospital to see his father, who was so ill he could no longer speak. This caused Merton much pain. On 16 January 1931, just as the term at Oakham had restarted, Owen died. Tom Bennett, Owen Merton's physician and former classmate in New Zealand, became Merton's legal guardian. He let Merton use his house in London, which was unoccupied, during the Oakham holidays. That year, Merton visited Rome and Florence for a week. He also saw his grandparents in New York during the summer. Upon his return to Oakham, Merton became joint editor of the school magazine, the
Oakhamian.
At this period in his life, Merton was a complete agnostic. In 1932, on a walking tour in Germany, he got an infection under a toenail. Unwisely, he ignored it and it developed into a case of blood-poisoning so severe that at one point he thought he was going to die. But "the thought of God, the thought of prayer did not even enter my mind, either that day, or all the rest of the time that I was ill, or that whole year. Or if the thought did come to me, it was only as an occasion for its denial and rejection." His declared "creed" was "I believe in nothing."
In September, he learned he had passed the entrance exam for Clare College, Cambridge. On his 18th birthday, tasting new freedom, he went off on his own. He stopped off in Paris, Marseilles, then walked to Hyeres, where he ran out of money and wired Bennett for more. Scoldingly Bennett granted his request, which may have shown Merton he cared. Merton then walked to Saint Tropez, where he took a train to Genoa and then another to Florence. From Florence he left for Rome, a trip that in some ways changed the course of his life.
Rome 1933
Two days after arriving in Rome in February 1933, Merton moved out of his hotel and found a small pensione with views of the Palazzo Barberini and San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, two magnificent pieces of architecture rich with history. In
The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton remarks:
I had been in Rome before, on an Easter vacation from school, for about a week. I had seen the Forum and the Colosseum and the Vatican museum and St. Peter's. But I had not really seen Rome. This time, I started out again, with the misconception common to Anglo-Saxons, that the real Rome is the Rome of the ugly ruins, the hills and the slums of the city.
Merton began going to the churches, not quite knowing why he felt so drawn to them. He did not attend Mass; he was just observing and appreciating them. One day, he happened upon a church near the Roman Forum. In the apse of the church, he saw a great mosaic of Jesus Christ coming in judgement in a dark blue sky and was transfixed. Merton had a hard time leaving the place, though he was unsure why. Merton had officially found the Rome he said he didn't see on his first visit: Byzantine Christian Rome.
From this point on in his trip he set about visiting the various churches and basilicas in Rome, such as the Lateran Baptistery, Santa Costanza, the Basilica di San Clemente, Santa Prassede and Santa Pudenziana (to name a few). He purchased a Vulgate (
Latin Bible), reading the entire New Testament. One night in his
pensione, Merton had the sense that Owen was in the room with him for a few moments. This mystical experience led him to see the emptiness he felt in his life, and he said that for the first time in his life he
really prayed, asking God to deliver him from his darkness.
The Seven Storey Mountain also describes a visit to Tre Fontane, a Trappist monastery in Rome. While visiting the church there, he was at ease, yet when entering the monastery he was overtaken with anxiety. That afternoon, while alone, he remarked to himself: "I should like to become a Trappist monk." He did become a monk on his graduation, and although Trappist monks rarely speak - some even take an oath of silence - Merton was very vocal about his beliefs.
United States 1933
Merton took a boat from Italy to the United States to visit his grandparents in Douglaston for the summer, before entering Clare College. Initially he retained some of the spirit he had had in Rome, continuing to read his Latin Bible. He wanted to find a church to attend, but had still not quite quelled his antipathy towards Catholicism. He went to Zion Episcopal Church in Douglaston, but was irritated by the services there, so he went to Flushing, New York, and attended a Quaker Meeting. Merton appreciated the silence of the atmosphere but couldn't feel at home with the group. By mid-summer, he had lost nearly all the interest in organized religion that he had found in Rome. At the end of the summer he returned to England.