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The Abbey of Regina Laudis, home to an enclosed Benedictine order of nuns set in 400 glorious acres of Bethlehem, Connecticut, is probably the last place you would expect to find Tessa Dahl.
She was, after all, famous for years as one of the most captivating women in London - chalking up affairs with actors David Hemmings and Peter Sellers, and the socialite Dai Llewellyn.
The daughter of author Roald Dahl and Oscar-winning actress Patricia Neal, she seemed irresistible, wild and unstoppable; famous for her beauty, her sardonic wit and her filthy laugh - and later for her best-selling books.
Rift: Sophie Dahl at home with her mother Tessa some years ago. Now Tessa says Sophie refuses to talk to her, but she won't say why
But now, as her supermodel daughter Sophie awaits the birth of her first child with her husband Jamie Cullum, Tessa has chosen for herself the seclusion that comes with life in an abbey.
She is in the process of converting to Catholicism and is considering whether to become a nun. ‘I certainly don’t rule it out,’ she told me this week. ‘Not at all.’
Thus she lives on a pine-covered hill beside a bell tower surrounded by fields and grazing sheep. Seven times a day, she joins in with the Gregorian chant. She is learning to weave wool and to make butter.
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ShareWithout the permission of the Abbess, she can do nothing. And yet, Tessa tells me she is finding the peace and the meaning which have eluded her during her tumultuous life.
As someone who has battled manic depression, drink and drug addictions, been married twice and has lived on an ashram, she points out the philosopher Jung’s comment that addictions are the equivalent of a spiritual thirst for God.
This certainly rings true for her. Her chief interest now, she says, is taking instruction in the Catholic faith.
And she is hoping she may, in time, heal a rift which has developed lately with Sophie, who is refusing to speak to her. ‘She is very angry with me, and rightly so,’ Tessa says, though for now she is reluctant to explain the reasons. ‘I am hoping that eventually I will find redemption with my family.’
It is her relationship with God which preoccupies her, and she says she just ‘loves, loves, loves’ her new life at the abbey.
Close bond: Author Roald Dahl with his daughter Tessa, who like her father became a well known childrens' writer
‘My romantic journey now is with God,’ she says. ‘I am not remotely interested in sex, and I haven’t been for a long time. The celibacy part will not trouble me.’
It’s fascinating that Tessa was drawn to the abbey because of her mother’s experience there.
In 1980, Patricia was devastated after Roald Dahl began an affair and announced he wanted to leave her. What happened next, according to Tessa, is that, by chance, her mother met Maria Cooper, the daughter of her former lover Gary Cooper.
Maria was deeply religious and told her to go to the Abbey of Regina Laudis - telling her it was the one place on earth where she could be helped.
Maria had got to know of the abbey through her great friend Dolores Hart, a vivacious Hollywood actress who, after a successful career which included two starring roles opposite Elvis Presley, had found her vocation and become a nun there.
Mother Dolores and Patricia subsequently became great friends. In fact, Tessa believes the nuns saved her ‘inconsolable’ mother’s life. Patricia even spent a period as a postulant, preparing to take the veil.
Happy families: Roald Dahl with actress Patricia Neal and their four children in happier times
Patricia requested that she be buried at the abbey - choosing her own grave site. And that is how Tessa came to be there.
As she explains: ‘I wanted to help to prepare her for burial after her funeral at Martha’s Vineyard.
She had left the dress she wanted to be buried in. The nuns had made a beautiful coffin for her, painted with willow and verses from Twelfth Night. The nuns were so wonderful and invited me in.
‘Mother Dolores said: “I am going to miss your mother so much. Would you like to come to the abbey and take her room?”
‘It was just the most magical moment. My mother had been my champion, the only one who believed in me. She would stick up for me no matter what. For the past ten years, I’d been so close to her. My life revolved around her, but she was gone, and I was lost.’
'You only got attention in our family if you were brain-damaged, dead or terribly ill. There was no reward for being normal'
Tessa agreed to go to the abbey - initially for about three weeks. But she has stayed longer and is now living in the tiny room her mother used to have during her time of crisis many years ago.
By an odd chance, Tessa is 53 - the same age as her mother when she was drawn to the abbey. Both, too, were going through tremendous grief.
Each month Tessa spends two weeks at the abbey and two weeks at her home near Boston. She also looks after her animals (cats, dogs and a pig) even though she longs to be with the nuns full-time.
Tessa is reluctant to go into detail about the rift with Sophie, as well as a broader schism with other members of the family, but says: ‘Since Mummy died, the emotional pain has been almost too enormous to describe. There have been many aggravating factors.
As my sister Ophelia said in her eulogy: “We thought when we held our mother’s hand that we were holding her steady. It is only since she died that we realise that it was the other way round.” ’
Tessa goes on to say that she ‘let down’ Sophie. ‘Since then, my life has been almost unbearable. My children have always been my absolute life. I sometimes have made heinous mistakes.
‘If Mummy had still been alive it would have been sorted out. However, our family is now in horrible factions. People claim to want to help. But each person has a history and deep-seated resentment.
Lovers: Tessa had an affair with Peter Sellers (left), as well as actor David Hemmings (right), who left his wife for her - though he returned just weeks later
‘I feel totally alone. There is no trust between them and me. This is totally unfair - yet people believe what they want to believe, and sadly I am disadvantaged because I’m an “addict and alcoholic”.’
The religious sanctuary offers a haven in this context. ‘I can pray for redemption and forgiveness - and not just for myself. In the Old Testament it suits people to avoid their feelings by having a scapegoat. If I must be the scapegoat, then as much as my pain is at times almost unbearable, then so be it.
‘I have God and I have the absolute truth. I have never claimed to be perfect, just very human and loving.’
Clearly, Tessa is in awe of Mother Dolores and her nuns. ‘Being a member of their community, I feel as if I have found another family,’ she says.
Happy couple: Sophie Dahl and jazz musician Jamie Cullum announced they are to be parents. Will Tessa be allowed to visit the baby?
Meanwhile, Tessa has begun writing again and has completed her first children’s book in more than 20 years.
It’s called The Grave Yard Circus and is a captivating, wonderfully imaginative work, and one loaded with her own grief over her mother.
She wrote it by hand and presented Mother Dolores with a copy for her birthday three weeks ago.
She says: ‘I think it’s good for children, who are often fascinated by death. My father taught me that the more gruesome and grisly the better.’
She hopes to take the role of ‘monastic scholar’ at the abbey and is planning a new novel - her first since Working For Love, which she wrote in 1988, two years before her father Roald died.
She had written the book to try to please him. But cynically she says: ‘You only got attention in our family if you were brain-damaged, dead or terribly ill. There was no reward for being normal.’
It was at this point that she began to ‘self-medicate’ with drugs and booze. Not surprisingly, she was soon insolvent and divorced.
In 1997, she attempted suicide. Armed with a half-bottle of vodka, her last gram of cocaine and bottle of barbiturates, she walked into a field, planning to end it all.
Instead, she fell into a coma. It was 18 hours before she was found. She was paralysed for two years and faced months of therapy.
A nanny looked after her children Sophie, Clover, Luke and Ned — their mother, for a time, was too fragile even to live with them.
‘Until I came to the abbey, I had been living in a state of constantly waiting for the next bomb to drop,’ she says.
Now Tessa Dahl is finding some semblance of peace. She says that for the first five days after Patricia died this summer, she kept smelling bursts of her mother’s perfume.
She doesn’t doubt that her mother wanted her to follow her to this sanctuary, and was guiding her towards a new ‘family’ which could care for her.
Tessa says: ‘The nuns loved my mother so much.’ What is unspoken is her profound hope that they will now care for her in the same way.
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