The Seven Storey Mountain

Merton recalls that he was not interested in France, and that he actively protested going there, but he looks back on the experience with gratitude; even his childhood self recognized that France held for him a profound sense of home.

Merton’s father struggles to make a living as a painter in the south of France.

Although he brought the boys to France intending to give them a good education, after visiting the school he had selected, he decides against it. Merton says that he is grateful for this because it was a French Protestant school for mostly privileged children.

They soon move to another town, traveling by train through the French countryside, and eventually to St. Antonin in the Pyrenees near where Merton was born. The town’s center has a church with great bells. Inside is a relic to St. Antonin, but it is in ruins because of religious wars long ago. His father’s family comes to visit them, and they travel through Switzerland, which Merton doesn’t like. In the spring of 1928, his father returns to France after showing his work in England in an exhibition. By now, young Merton is beginning to feel comfortably French, but his father announces that they are moving immediately to England. He is slated to start school at Oakham in the Midlands while living with his Aunt Maud.

Merton attends Oakham from ages 14 to 17, beginning in 1929, during which time he learns that his father is sick. His father returns to the hospital, where he later dies of a brain tumor. At school, the young Merton studies philosophy and versions of religion that the older Merton no longer agrees with. At age 17, Merton experiences his own health scare: His foot and tooth both ached. The dentist informs him his tooth is infected and that he needs to have it pulled without anesthesia. Merton was in such pain that he consents, but instead of feeling better, he feels worse as the day goes on. He has what is called “blood poisoning,” or sepsis (107). Although he believes he might die, the young Merton doesn’t care. Looking back on this, the older Merton is grateful that he didn’t die because he didn’t know enough then to see life and death as meaningful, as elements of his relationship with God.

At this time, Merton takes an accidental pilgrimage to see the art of significant churches. The later Merton reflects that he was traveling for the wrong reasons, but he still considers these moments to have been consequential in his spiritual journey. He goes to the Quaker meeting in Flushing, Queens, that his mother had attended, but he finds himself at odds with the mediocrity of ideas there. The later Merton reflects that appreciated the community of Quakers, but struggles to see their spiritual merit. He travels to the World’s Fair in Chicago, where he is entranced. He finds himself devoid of his religious hunger by the time he returns to New York, and he gets caught up in the burlesque scene there.

He goes to England and begins university at Clare College, Cambridge University. He finds himself far from God there.

When his Aunt Maud dies in November, he realizes that his childhood and his understanding of England has died too.

Looking back on his time at Cambridge, Merton counts his reading of Dante’s Divine Comedy among the only virtues of his college experience, other than the fact that God had been merciful to fly as far from him as possible. He describes the disgust he feels when he thinks of his arrogant college self.

The young Merton strays so far from his studies that his advisor, Tom, summons him to a meeting, and still, he doesn’t care. Eventually, he is told to stay in New York because he is wasting his time in Cambridge. Finally, the older Merton describes the looming descent into war at that time, and he reflects on the extent of God’s mercy.

Merton’s journey back to America begins the process of his conversion not to Catholicism but to Communism. He is able to see the spiritual mess he’d become in Cambridge, and finds a kind of spiritual solution in his new beliefs. He is in love with Russian culture, and despite evidence of people suffering under Communism in the Soviet Union, he clings to the idea. The later Merton reflects that he saw Communism when he was young as “an easy and handy religion.” It told a neat story about good and evil, and its disdain for the bourgeoisie aligned with his artistic upbringing (148). Merton becomes involved with the Communist Party briefly, attending some meetings and giving speeches. However, he soon finds himself uninterested. The older Merton reflects that his real interest wasn’t in helping humanity. He’d been interested in helping himself.

He starts classes at Columbia University in 1935 at age 20, and joins a fraternity there. The fraternity has a history of hazing so severe that it once drove someone to suicide. Merton reflects that this hit him hard, but it was a fleeting emotion. The young Merton at Columbia becomes busy with many interests and little discipline.

In 1936, Merton’s Pop died. Merton reflects that his Bonnemaman experienced many close brushes that brought her near to death, but she managed to hang on longer than anyone expected, and he attributes this to the power of prayer.

While on the train home from work with a date, Merton experiences a vicious bout of vertigo. He checks himself into the Pennsylvania Hotel, where he sees a physician who advises him to give up some of his activities. As a result, he becomes obsessed with his diet. The later Merton writes that this was a petty and pointless preoccupation. He had lost everything despite indulging in life as he wanted. Finding himself on the brink of spiritual anguish, however, he gains spiritual devotion.