The Eagle and the Dove was published by Michael Joseph in 1943. It is a dual biography of two Catholic saints who share a name but almost nothing else: Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582), the great Spanish mystic and reformer of the Carmelite order, and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897), the French Carmelite nun whose “Little Way” of spiritual childhood became one of the most influential devotional writings of the modern Catholic Church.
Teresa of Ávila is the eagle: bold, practical, intellectually formidable, traveling across Spain founding reformed convents, fighting the Inquisition, writing masterpieces of mystical theology, commanding obedience through force of personality. Thérèse of Lisieux is the dove: enclosed, hidden, dying of tuberculosis at twenty-four, writing her autobiography in obedience to a superior’s command, achieving sanctity through the accumulation of small, invisible acts of love.
Sackville-West — not herself Catholic, and temperamentally more eagle than dove — writes about both with sympathy and insight. Her Teresa is magnificent: a woman of genius operating in a world that denied women authority, achieving her ends through a combination of mystical charisma and shrewd political maneuvering. Her Thérèse is more surprising — Sackville-West overcomes her natural resistance to Thérèse’s sugary piety to find the genuine steel beneath.
Collecting The Eagle and the Dove
First edition (Michael Joseph, London, 1943): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $50–$150
- Very good: $20–$50