SISTER PHYLLIS GOULTER
RSCJ
June 20th 2008
“De mortuis nil nisi bonum” Sr Phyllis loved Latin. Among all the arts subjects she taught so well, Latin was her favourite and until her last days a Latin tag or reference brought a smile and a spark to those dark eyes. “De mortuis nil nisi bonum.” “Say naught but good about the dead”. It’s actually quite hard to say anything but good about her. She was a good family member, a good student, a good religious, a good friend, a very good teacher.
Born in Seddon in 1918 into a pioneering farming family, she began as the youngest of three, a tomboy, she claims, often creating scenes with her older ladylike sisters. The arrival of a younger brother and sister quite put her nose out of joint, she says, a protest she atoned for by a lifelong devotion to all her family. She described herself as a “country girl”. Farming in Marlborough always interested her, the droughts, the sheep and wool prices, the river-levels in the Awatere valley.
She learnt to read early, from a father who read stories, poetry, travel adventures to his children. She had two memorable aunts in our Society, Mother Eleanor Redwood and Sister Bernadine Goulter, two relatives in the Sisters of Mercy and innumerable clerical and religious relations. It was her venerated uncle Archbishop Redwood who in 1879 persuaded our Mother General to establish the convent in Timaru, which he believed would become the capital of the South Island. He himself accompanied the foundresses on the boat from Wellington and the train from Christchurch. Phyllis’s mother was an alumna. She herself boarded there from the age of eight. In her book, “Sowers and Reapers,” a short history of the Society in New Zealand, Sr Phyllis describes with great affection her education and outstanding teachers at Timaru and the grief of them all at its closure during the Depression in 1933.
So at 16, the last pupil from Timaru, she arrived at Island Bay. An RSCJ remembers: “She was pointed out to us six-year-olds as a model: she stood erect, she was on time, she smiled and above all she kept silence.” Sr Phyllis often told us how “miffed” she was when she was not allowed to wear her Blue Ribbon there for the first term. After matriculating, she wanted no “gap year” but went straight to the Noviceship in March 1936, as sure of her call to religious life as she was in all things spiritual. Because of the war, she made her Final Profession in 1944,at Rose Bay instead of in Rome, graduated from Sydney University in 1946 and immediately returned to New Zealand where, except for three years gaining a Diploma in Education in Australia, she spent the next thirty years in Wellington and Auckland, teaching English, History and Latin and serving as Mistress of Studies. She was a true scholar and a great educator.
-“She taught English at Island Bay when I was in F.VII,” writes a student, “and what adventures we had with The Passage to India, with T.S.Eliot and John Donne!”
-“At school we thought she was a gem.”
-“She was wise, dignified, gracious; very firm when occasion demanded but equally ready to excuse”.
-“Her nickname was “Ghostie” because she would appear so silently on any scene of mischiefmaking!”
-“She was an excellent teacher of history and religious education, though her treatment of the Sacrament of Matrimony did not inspire me!”
From 1970 she spent seven enjoyable, fruitful years as a lecturer at Loreto Hall Teachers’ College. Her students say:
--“A serene, seemingly frail person but a very forceful lecturer.”
-“Latecomers to her lectures found themselves shut out.”
-“A delightful sense of humour, but she demanded high standards. It was a great achievement to receive an A mark from the scrupulously fair Sister Goulter.”
-“Students with overdue or second-rate assignments came out of her office very subdued, especially the young men.”
-“College field-trips were a real experience for her, as she smothered her hatred of small creatures in the roof with an ardent interest in Social Studies and colonial New Zealand.”
-“My father always asked after “that good-looking nun.”
-“I was fortunate to be one of her students. I remember the terror, excitement, enjoyment but mainly wonderment engendered by this very talented and forward-thinking lady. Enjoyment at lectures, yes, but terror when, summoning me to her office, she accused me, not of cheating or copying (which was true) but of “plagiarism”. I was devastated. After a brief silence I had to ask her what “plagiarism” meant and was politely informed that it meant cheating, copying and misappropriation.”
And a colleague says:
-“She was always so dignified and retiring. Such an example, with her obvious love of the Sacred Heart and her superb knowledge and love of the English language. She had great difficulty with the changes, with giving up enclosure but she did not hesitate to attend my daughter’s wedding.
In 1977 a new ministry opened, admirably suited to her feel for history, when she became our New Zealand archivist and community librarian at Baradene. Such diligence in research, patience in preserving and indignation with delinquents! During these years she wrote Sowers and Reapers, which one reviewer, Sister of Mercy Veronica Delany, described as “a complex and delicate task”…in which she traced our history “in warm and vivid detail… with loving fidelity and copious recourse to contempo- rary documents.” How Sister Phyllis would have blushed to see her name on the internet!
Because her self-effacement and reticence were remarked upon by all. On this book and on the Centenary magazine of 1980 she worked tirelessly with her co-researcher, Valerie Young, touring the country in search of material, interviewing people, sharing all kinds of difficulties and hilarious adventures. Yet in these she left no written trace of herself, of her own thoughts and feelings, not a word from her Golden Jubilee in 1994, begun in Blenheim with the family, continued in Wellington with past pupils and concluded at Baradene, (with the same celebrant as we have here today.) “It was the Jubilee”, records the house journal, “of an educator, archivist, true RSCJ and warm friend”. Upon request, she did formulate her aim as an archivist: “to be an instrument in preserving the true spirit of the Society and maintaining its charism here in New Zealand.” In that capacity she had the excitement of finally visiting Rome in 1986 and of attending a seminar for Society archivists in 1990 in the United States.
In 1984 she took a course in Hospital Visiting and carried this out faithfully for several years. She took a lively interest in the Alumnae and the Associates. One of them writes “Since coming to Auckland I have found in her a great friend. I admire her intellect and her devotion to her chosen life. A chat with her about anything, but especially about God, is an uplift.”
In community, she was always so kind, alive and of good humour. One RSCJ recalls, “She was a delight in helping me to find the word, the alliteration or the symbol I was looking for. If she thought it unsuitable she gently said so and offered me another.” Again, “She helped me immensely with class planning and useful resources. She had a delightful smile and a twinkle in her eye.” And “She participated graciously in our new efforts at prayer-sharing, deepening our thoughts and lending them dignity and approbation”. And “Thankfully, the fiery flash was still there, as I experienced one day when I moved her cherished maidenhair fern in the library”.
Everyone speaks of her gentle graciousness of manner. She accepted with great sweetness, in quiet self-sacrifice, the painful changes and separations that came to her in the last years. “She was the loveliest patient I ever looked after”, says one carer at St Catherine’s, “She would smile, crinkle up her eyes and thank for the smallest service.
Her inner life was a still water that ran deep. Only a few notes remain of a renewal course she followed in Palmerston North -“Our faith, hope and love are real to the extent that we live them”. “Our prayer-life begins in acceptance of ourselves, as we are, here and now!” “God is felt more in His absence than in His presence.”
She loved the wisdom of Reverend Mother Stuart:
“No one can be educated by maxim and precept; it is by the life lived and the things loved and the ideals believed in that we tell upon one another.” And that is how she told upon us all. How blessed we were in her companionship. How good God was to preserve that fine mind of hers until the end.
Requiescat in pace. May she rejoice forever in the love of the Heart of Jesus in the wonder of Heaven.
Sr Margaret D'Ath