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Title: A New Medley of Memories
Author: David Hunter-Blair
Release Date: July 11, 2011 [EBook #36700]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A NEW MEDLEY OF MEMORIES ***
Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: Oswald Hunter Blair]
A NEW MEDLEY OF MEMORIES
BY THE
RIGHT REV. SIR DAVID HUNTER-BLAIR
BT., O.S.B., M.A.
TITULAR ABBOT OF DUNFERMLINE
WITH PORTRAIT
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD & CO.
1922
[_All rights reserved_]
TO THE
MASTER AND SCHOLARS
OF
SAINT BENET'S HALL, OXFORD,
IN MEMORY OF
TEN HAPPY YEARS.
{vii}
FOREWORD
Some kindly critics of my _Medley of Memories_, and not a few private
correspondents (most of them unknown to me) have been good enough to
express a lively hope that I would continue my reminiscences down to a
later date than the year 1903, when I closed the volume with my jubilee
birthday.
It is in response to this wish that I have here set down some of my
recollections of the succeeding decade, concluding with the outbreak of
the Great War.
One is rather "treading on eggshells" when printing impressions of
events and persons so near our own time. But I trust that there is
nothing unkind in these more recent memories, any more than in the
former. There should not be; for I have experienced little but
kindness during a now long life; and I approach the Psalmist's limit of
days with only grateful sentiments towards the many friends who have
helped to make that life a happy as well as a varied one.
DAVID O. HUNTER-BLAIR, O.S.B.
S. Paulo, Brazil,
_March_, 1922.
{ix}
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I.--1903-1904.
The Premier Duke--Oxford Chancellorship--A Silver Jubilee--In
Canterbury Close--Hyde Park Oratory--Oxford under Water--"Twopence
each" at Christ Church--Church Music--Gregorian Centenary in
Rome--Pope Pius X.--Pilgrims and Autograph--Cradle of the
Benedictine Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
CHAPTER II.--1904.
"Sermons from Stones"--_Alcestis_ at Bradfield--Whimsical
Texts--Old Masters at Ushaw--A Mozart-Wagner Festival--Bismarck
and William II.--"Longest Word" Competition--Medal-week at
St. Andrews--Oxford Rhodes Scholars--Liddell and Scott--Lord
Rosebery at the Union--Oxford Portraits--Wytham
Abbey--Christmas in Bute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
CHAPTER III.--1905.
A "Catholic Demonstration"--Boy-prodigies--Spring Days in
Naples--"C.-B." at Oxford--Medical Sceptics--Blenheim
Hospitality--A Scoto-Irish Wedding--Dunskey
Transformed--Lunatics up-to-date--Eton War Memorial--Four
Thousand Guests at Arundel--At Exton Park--Abbotsford and
Blairquhan--Lothair's Bride . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
CHAPTER IV.--1905-1906.
Modern Gothic--Contrasts in South Wales--Chamberlain's Last
Speech--A Catholic Dining-club--Lovat Scouts' Memorial--A Tory
_débâcle_--Hampshire Marriages--On the _Côte d'Azur_--Three
Weddings--An Old Irish Peer--Guernsey in June--A Coming of Age
on the Cotswolds--The Warwick Pageant--Bank Holiday at
Scarborough . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
CHAPTER V.--1906-1907.
Melrose and Westminster--Newman Memorial Church--The Evil
Eye--Catholic Scholars at Oxford--Grace before Meat--A
Literary Dinner--A Jamaica Tragedy--An Abbatial
Blessing--Deaths of Oxford friends--Robinson Ellis--A Genteel
Watering-place--Visit to Dover--Pageants at Oxford and
Bury--Hugh Benson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
CHAPTER VI.--1907-1908.
Benedictine Honours at Oxford--Anecdotes from Sir
Hubert--Everingham and Bramham--Early Rising--Mass in a
Deer-forest--A Bishop's Visiting-cards--A Miniature College--Our
New Chancellor--Bodley's Librarian--Dean Burgon--A Welsh
Bishop--Illness and Convalescence--H.M.S. _Victory_ . . . . . . 94
{x}
CHAPTER VII.--1908.
Miss Broughton at Oxford--Notable Trees--An Infantile
Rest-cure--Equestrians from Italy--"The Colours"--A
Parson's Statistics--Two Anxious Mammas--"Let us Kill
Something"--Scottish Dessert--A Highland Bazaar--I Resign
Mastership of Hall--Notes on Newman--Scriptural
Heraldry--Myres Macership--Scots Catholic Judge--At a
_château_ in Picardy--Excursions from Oxford--St. Andrew's
Day at Cardiff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
CHAPTER VIII.--1908-1909.
Christmas at Beaufort--_Annus mirabilis_--Kenelm Vaughan--A
"Heathen Turk"--Sven Hedin--Centenary of Darwin--Oxford
and Louvain--Hugh Cecil on the House of Commons--Arundel
itself again--The Bridegroom's Father weeps--Cambridge
Fisher Society--Bodleian Congestion--Shackleton at Albert
Hall--Oakamoor, Faber, and Pugin--Welsh Pageant--Hampton
Court--Father Hell and Mr. Dams!--A Bishop's
Portrait--Gleann Mor Gathering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
CHAPTER IX.--1909-1910.
The White Garden at Beaufort--Andrew Lang--A Holy Well--The
new Ladycross--"My terrible Great-uncle!"--Off to
Brazil---King's Birthday on Board---The New City
Beautiful--Arrival at S. Paulo---An Abbey
Rebuilding--Cosmopolitan State and City--College of S.
Bento--Stray Englishmen--Progressive Paulistas--Education in
Brazil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
CHAPTER X.--1910.
Provost Hornby--Christmas in Brazil--Architecture in S.
Paulo--The Snake-farm--Guests at the Abbey--End of the
Isolation of Fort Augustus--A Benedictine Festival--Sinister
Italians--Death of Edward VII.--Brazilian Funerals--Popular
Devotion--"Fradesj estrangeiros"--Football in the
Tropics--Homeward Voyage--Santos and Madeira--Sir John Benn . . 170
CHAPTER XI.--1910-1911.
A Wiesbaden Eye Klinik--The Rhine in Rain--Cologne and
Brussels--Wedding in the Hop-Country--The New Departure at
Fort Augustus--St. Andrew's without Angus--Oxford
Again--Highland Marriage at Oratory--One Eye _versus_
Two--Cambridge _versus_ Oxford---A Question of Colour--Ex-King
Manuel--A Great Church at Norwich--_Ave Verum_ in the
Kirk--Fort Augustus Post-bag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
CHAPTER XII.--1911.
Monks and Salmon--FitzAlan Chapel--April on Thames-side--My
sacerdotal Jubilee--Kinemacolor--Apparition at an
Abbey--St. Lucius--Faithful Highlanders--Hay Centenary--Nuns
for S. Paulo--A Brief Marriage Ceremony--Pagan
Mass-music--Seventeen New Cardinals--Doune Castle--A Quest
for our Abbey Church--Great Coal Strike--at Stonyhurst and
Ware--Katherine Howard--Twentieth-Century Chinese--An
Anglo-Italian Abbey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
{xi}
CHAPTER XIII.--1912-1913.
A Concert for Cripples--Queen Amélie--May at Aix-les-Bains--A
Sample Savoyards--Hautecombe--A "Picture of the Year"--A
Benedictine O.T.C.--Pugin's "Blue Pencil"--My nomination
as Prior--Fort Augustus and the Navy--Work in the
Monastery--Ladies in the Enclosure--A Bishop's Jubilee--A
Modern Major Pendennis--My Election to Abbacy--Installation
Ceremonies--Empress Eugénie at Farnborough--A Week at Monte
Cassino--Fatiguing Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
CHAPTER XIV.--1913-1914.
St Anselm's, Rome--Election of a Primate--My Uncle's
Grave--Milan and Maredsous--Canterbury Revisited--An Oratorian
Festival--Poetical Bathos--A Benedictine Chapter--King of
Uganda at Fort Augustus--Threefold Work of our Abbey--Funeral
of Bishop Turner--Bute Chapel at Westminster--A
Patriarchal Lay-brother--Abbot Gasquet a Cardinal--Corpus
Christi at Arundel--Eucharistic Congress at Cardiff--The Great
War--Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
APPENDIX I. _Novissima Verba_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
II. Darwin's _Credo_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
{1}
A NEW MEDLEY OF MEMORIES
CHAPTER I
1903-1904
I take up again the thread of these random recollections in the autumn
of 1903, the same autumn in which I kept my jubilee birthday at St.
Andrews. I went from there successively to the Herries' at Kinharvie,
the Ralph Kerrs at Woodburn, near Edinburgh, and the Butes at
Mountstuart, meeting, curiously enough, at all three places Norfolk and
his sister, Lady Mary Howard--though it was not so curious after all,
as the Duke was accustomed to visit every autumn his Scottish relatives
at these places, as well as the Loudouns in their big rather
out-at-elbows castle in Ayrshire. He had no taste at all either for
shooting, fishing, or riding, or for other country pursuits such as
farming, forestry, or the like; but he made himself perfectly happy
during these country house visits. The least exacting of guests, he
never required to be amused, contenting himself with a game of croquet
(the only outdoor game he favoured), an occasional long walk, and a
daily romp with his young relatives, the children of the house, who
were all devoted to him. He read the newspapers perfunctorily, {2} but
seldom opened a book: he knew and cared little for literature, science,
or art, with the single exception of architecture, in which he was
keenly interested. The most devout of Catholics, he was nothing of an
ecclesiologist: official and hereditary chief of the College of Arms,
he was profoundly uninterested in heraldry, whether practically or
historically:[1] the head of the nobility of England, he was so little
of a genealogist that he was never at pains to correct the
proof--annually submitted to him as to others--of the preposterous
details of his pedigree as set forth in the pages of "Burke." I seem
to be describing an ignoramus; but the interesting thing was that the
Duke, with all his limitations, was really nothing of the kind. He
could, and did, converse on a great variety of subjects in a very
clear-headed and intelligent way; there was something engaging about
his utter unpretentiousness and deference to the opinions of others;
and he had mastered the truth that the secret of successful
conversation is to talk about what interests the other man and not what
interests oneself. No one could, in fact, talk to the Duke much, or
long, without getting to love him; and every one who came into contact
with him in their several degrees, from princes and prelates and
politicians to cabmen and crossing-sweepers, did love him. "His Grace
'as a good 'eart, that's what 'e 'as," said the old lady who used to
keep the crossing nearly opposite Norfolk House, and sat against the
railings {3} with her cat and her clean white apron (I think she did
her sweeping by deputy); "he'll never cross the square, whatever 'urry
'e's in, without saying a kind word to me." One sees him striding down
Pall Mall in his shabby suit, one gloveless hand plucking at his black
beard, the other wagging in constant salutation of passing friends, and
his kind brown eyes peering from under the brim of a hat calculated to
make the late Lord Hardwicke turn in his grave. A genuine
man--earnest, simple, affable, sincere, and yet ducal too; with a
certain grave native dignity which sat strangely well on him, and on
which it was impossible ever to presume. Panoplied in such dignity
when occasion required, as in great public ceremonies, our homely
little Duke played his part with curious efficiency; and it was often
remarked that in State pageants the figure of the Earl Marshal was
always one of the most striking in the splendid picture.
The only country seat which the premier Duke owned besides Arundel
Castle was Derwent Hall, a fine old Jacobean house in the Derwent
valley, on the borders of Yorkshire and Derbyshire. The Duke had lent
this place for some years past to his only brother as his country
residence (he later bequeathed it to him by will); and herein this same
autumn I paid a pleasant visit to Lord and Lady Edmund Talbot, on my
way south to Oxford. In London I went to see the rich and sombre
chapel of the Holy Souls just finished in Westminster Cathedral, at the
expense of my old friend Mrs. Walmesley (née Weld Blundell). The
Archbishop's white marble _cathedra_ was in course of erection in the
sanctuary, and preparations were going forward {4} for his
enthronement.[2] Eight immense pillars of onyx were lying on the
floor, and the great painted rood leaned against the wall. I was glad
to see some signs of progress.
Our principal domestic interest, on reassembling at Oxford for
Michaelmas Term, was the prospect of exchanging the remote and
incommodious semi-detached villa, in which our Benedictine Hall had
been hitherto housed, for the curious mansion near Folly Bridge, built
on arches above the river, "standing in its own grounds," as
auctioneers say (it could not well stand in any one else's!), and known
to most Oxonians as Grandpont House. Besides the Thames bubbling and
swirling at its foundations, it had a little lake of its own, and was
(except by a very circuitous _détour_) accessible only by punt. Rather
fascinating! we all thought; but when the pundits from Ampleforth Abbey
came to inspect, the floods happened to be out everywhere, and our
prospective Hall looked so like Noah's Ark floating on a waste of
waters, that they did not "see their way"[3] to approve of either the
site or the house.
Oxford was preoccupied at this time with the question of who was to
succeed to the Chancellorship {5} vacant by the death of Lord
Salisbury. I attended a meeting of the Conservative caucus summoned to
discuss the matter at the President's lodgings at St. John's. These
gatherings were generally amusing, as the President (most unbending of
old Tories) used to make occasional remarks of a disconcerting kind.
On this occasion he treated us to some reminiscences of the great
Chancellors of the past, adding, "I look round the ranks of prominent
men in the country, including cabinet ministers and ex-ministers, and I
see few if any men of outstanding or even second-rate ability"--the
point of the joke being that next to him was seated the late Chancellor
of the Exchequer, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, whose presence and counsel
had been specially invited. The names of Lords Goschen, Lansdowne,
Rosebery, and Curzon were mentioned, the first-named being evidently
the favourite. "Scholar, statesman, financier, educationalist," I
wrote of him in the _Westminster Gazette_ a day or two later, "a
distinguished son of Oriel, versatile, prudent and popular.... The
Fates seem to point to Lord Goschen as the one who shall sit in the
vacant chair."[4]
Another less famous Oriel man, my old friend Mgr. Tylee, was in Oxford
this autumn, on his annual visitation of his old college, and came to
see me several times. He gravely assured me that he had "preached his
last sermon in India"; but this was {6} a false alarm. The good
monsignore was as great a "farewellist" as Madame Patti or the late Mr.
Sims Reeves, and at least three years later I heard that he was
meditating another descent on Hindostan; though why he went there, or
why he stayed away, I imagine few people either knew or cared.[5]
We were all interested this term in the award of the senior Kennicott
Hebrew scholarship to a Catholic, Frederic Ingle of St. John's, who had
already, previous to his change of creed, gained the Pusey and Ellerton
Prize, and other honours in {7} Scriptural subjects. One could not
help wondering whether it came as a little surprise to the Anglican
examiners to find that they had awarded the scholarship to a young man
studying for the Catholic priesthood at the Collegio Beda in Rome, an
institution specially founded for the ecclesiastical education of
converts to the Roman Church. The "Hertford" this year, by the way,
the Blue Ribbon of Latin scholarship, was also held by a Catholic, a
young Jesuit of Pope's Hall--Cyril Martindale, the most brilliant
scholar of his time at Oxford, who carried off practically every
classical distinction the university had to offer. The "Hertford" was
won next year (1904) by another Catholic, Wilfrid Greene, scholar of
Christ Church.
I celebrated in 1903 not only my fiftieth birthday, but the silver
jubilee of my entrance into the Benedictine Order; and I went to keep
the latter interesting anniversary at Belmont Priory in Herefordshire,
where twenty-five years before (December 8, 1878) I had received the
novice's habit. Two or three of the older members of the community,
who had been my fellow-novices in those far-off days, were still in
residence there; and from them and all I received a warm welcome and
many kind congratulations. These jubilees, golden and silver, are apt
to make one moralize; and some words from an unknown or forgotten
source were in my mind at this time:
Such dates are milestones on the grey, monotonous road of our lives:
they are eddying pools in the stream of time, in which the memory rests
for a moment, like the whirling leaf in the torrent, until it is caught
up anew, and carried on by the resistless current towards the
everlasting ocean.
{8}
Soon after the end of term I made my way northwards, to spend
Christmas, as so many before, with the Lovats at Beaufort, where the
topic of interest was the engagement, just announced, of Norfolk to his
cousin, elder daughter of Lord Herries. We played our traditional game
of croquet in the sunshine of Christmas Day, and spent a pleasant
fortnight, of which, however, the end was saddened for me by the
premature death of my niece's husband, Charles Orr Ewing, M.P. They
had only just finished the beautiful house they had built on the site
of my old home, Dunskey, and were looking forward to happy years there.
I was at Arundel for a few days after New Year, and found the Duke very
busy with improvements, inspecting new gardening operations, and so on;
"and after all," he said, "some one will be coming by-and-by who may
not like it!" From Arundel I dawdled along the south coast to
Canterbury, and paid a delightful visit to my old friends Canon and
Mrs. Moore at their charming residence (incorporating the ancient
monastic guest-house) in the close. I spent hours exploring the
glorious cathedral--the most interesting (_me judice_) if not the most
beautiful in England. The close, too, really is a close, with a
watchman singing out in the small hours, "Past two o'clock--misty
morning--a-all's we-e-ell!" and the enclosure so complete that though
we could hear the Bishop of Dover's dinner-bell on the other side of
the wall, my host and hostess had to drive quite a long way round,
through the mediæval gate-house, to join the episcopal dinner-party.
Their schoolboy son invited me that night to accompany the watchman (an
old {9} greybeard sailor with a Guy Fawkes lantern, who looked himself
like a relic of the Middle Ages) in his eleven o'clock peregrination
round the cathedral. A weird experience! the vast edifice totally
dark[6] save for the flickering gleam of the single candle, in whose
wavering light pillars and arches and chantries and tombs peered
momentarily out of the gloom like petrified ghosts.
I saw other interesting things at Canterbury, notably St. Martin's old
church (perhaps the most venerable in the kingdom),[7] and left for
London, where, walking through Hyde Park on a sunshiny Sunday morning,
I lingered awhile to watch the perfervid stump-orators wasting their
eloquence on the most listless of audiences. "Come along, Mary Ann,
let's give one of the other blokes a turn," was the prevailing
sentiment; but I did manage to catch one gem from a Free Thought
spouter, whose advocacy of _post mortem_ annihilation was being
violently assailed by one of his hearers. "Do you mean to tell me,"
shouted the heckler, "that when I am dead I fade absolutely away and am
done with for ever?"--to which query came the prompt {10} reply, "I
sincerely hope so, sir!"[8] Lord Cathcart (a great frequenter of the
Park), to whom I repeated the above repartee, amused me by quoting an
unconsciously funny phrase he had heard from a labour orator near the
Marble Arch: "What abaht the working man? The working man is the
backbone of this country--and I tell you _strite_, that backbone 'as
got to come to the front!"[9]
I left Paddington for Oxford in absolutely the blackest fog I had ever
seen: it turned brown at Baling, grey at Maidenhead, and at Didcot the
sun was shining quite cheerfully. I found the floods almost
unprecedentedly high, and the "loved city" abundantly justifying its
playful sobriquet of "Spires and Ponds." A Catholic freshman, housed
in the ground floor of Christ Church Meadow-buildings, described to me
his dismay at the boldness and voracity of the rats which invaded his
rooms from the meadows when the floods were out. The feelings of Lady
Bute when she visited Oxford about this time, and found her treasured
son--who had boarded at a private tutor's at Harrow, and had never
roughed it in his life--literally immured in an underground cellar
beneath Peckwater Quad, may be {11} better imagined than described. It
is fair to add that the youth himself had made no complaint, and
shouted with laughter when I paid him a visit in his extraordinary
subterranean quarters in the richest college in Oxford.
The last words remind me of a visit paid me during this term by Dom
Ferotin and a colleague from Farnborough Abbey. Escorting my guests
through Christ Church, I mentioned the revenue of the House as
approximately £80,000 a year, a sum which sounded colossal when
translated into francs. "Deux millions par an! mais c'est incroyable,"
was their comment, as we mounted the great Jacobean staircase.
"Twopence each, please," said the nondescript individual who threw open
the hall door. It was an anti-climax; but we "did" the pictures
without further remark, and I remember noticing an extraordinary
resemblance (which the guide also observed) to the distinguished French
Benedictine in the striking portrait of Dr. Liddon hanging near the
fireplace. We lunched with my friend Grissell in High Street, meeting
there the Baron de Bertouche, a young man with a Danish father and a
Scottish mother, born in Italy, educated in France, owning property in
Belgium, and living in Wales--too much of a cosmopolitan, it seemed to
me, to be likely to get the commission in the Pope's Noble Guard which
appeared at that time to be his chief ambition.[10]
{12}
I remember two lectures about this time: one to the Newman Society
about Dickens, by old Percy Fitzgerald, who almost wept at hearing
irreverent undergraduates avow that the Master's pathos was "all
piffle," and that Paul Dombey and Little Nell made them sick; the other
a paper on "Armour" (his special hobby) by Lord Dillon. I asked him if
he could corroborate what I had heard as a boy, that men who took down
their ancestral armour from their castle walls to buckle on for the
great Eglinton Tournament, seventy years ago, found that they could not
get into it! I was surprised that this fact (if it be a fact) was new
to so great an authority as Lord Dillon; but we had no time to discuss
the matter. Mr. Justice Walton, the Catholic judge, also came down and
addressed the "Newman," I forget on what subject; but I remember his
being "heckled" on the question as to whether a barrister was justified
in conscience in defending (say) a murderer of whose guilt he was
personally convinced. The judge maintained that he was.
February 15 was Norfolk's wedding-day--a quiet and pious ceremony,
after his own heart, in the private chapel at Everingham. I recollect
the date, because I attended that evening a French play--Molière's _Les
Femmes Savantes_--at an Oxford convent school. It was quite well done,
entirely by girls; but the unique feature was that the "men" of the
comedy were attired as to coats, waistcoats, wigs and lace _jabots_ in
perfectly correct Louis XIV. style, but below the waist--in petticoats!
the result being that they ensconced themselves as far as possible,
throughout the play, behind {13} tables and chairs, and showed no more
of their legs than the Queen of Spain.
Going down to Arundel for Holy Week and Easter, I read in _The Times_
Hugh Macnaghten's strangely moving lines on Hector Macdonald,[11] whose
tragic death was announced this week. Easter was late this year, the
weather balmy, and the spring advanced; and the park and the whole
countryside starred with daffodils and anemones, primroses and
hyacinths. Between the many church services we enjoyed some delightful
rambles; and the Duke's marriage had made no difference to his love of
croquet and of the inevitable game of "ten questions" after dinner.
The great church looked beautiful on Easter morning, with its wealth of
spring flowers; and the florid music was no doubt finely rendered,
though I do not like Gounod in church at Easter or at any other time.
I refrained, however, when my friend the organist asked me what I
thought of his choir, from replying, as Cardinal Capranica did to a
similar question from Pope Nicholas V.--"that it seemed to him like a
sack of young swine, for he heard a great noise, but could distinguish
nothing articulate!"[12]
{14}
All the clergy of St. Philip's church dined at the castle on Easter
Sunday evening; and the young Duchess, wearing her necklace of big
diamonds (Sheffield's wedding present), was a most kind and pleasant
hostess. Two days later my friend Father MacCall and I left England
_en route_ for Rome, crossing from Newhaven to Dieppe in three-quarters
of a gale. _Infandum jubes_.... The boat was miserable, so was the
passage; but we survived it, hurried on through France and Italy (our
_direttissimo_ halting at all kinds of unnecessary places), and reached
Rome at the hour of Ave Maria, almost exactly twenty-six years since my
previous visit. What memories, as from our modest _pension_ in the Via
Sistina we looked once again on the familiar and matchless prospect!
My companion hurried off at once to the bedside of a fever-stricken
friend; and my first pilgrimage was of course to St. Peter's. I felt,
as I swung aside the heavy "baby-crusher,"[13] {15} and entered, almost
holding my breath, that strange sense of exhilaration which Eugénie de
Ferronays described so perfectly.[14] Preparations were on foot for
the coming _festa_,[15] and the "Sanpietrini" flying, as of old, a
hundred feet from the floor, hanging crimson brocades--a fearsome
spectacle. On Sunday we Benedictines kept the Gregorian festival at
our own great basilica of St. Paul's; but the chief celebration was
next day at St. Peter's, where Pope Pius X. himself pontificated in the
presence of 40,000 people, and a choir of a thousand monks (of which I
had the privilege of being one) rendered the Gregorian music with
thrilling effect. All was as in the great days of old--the Papal March
blown on silver trumpets; the long procession up the great nave of
abbots, bishops, and cardinals, conspicuous among them Cardinals
Rampolla, with his fine features and grave penetrating look, and Merry
del Val (the youthful Secretary of State), tall, dark, and strikingly
handsome; the Pontifical Court, chamberlains in their quaint mediæval
dress; and, finally, high on his _sedia gestatoria_, with the white
peacock-feather fans waving on right and left, the venerable figure of
the Pope, mitred, and wearing his long embroidered _manto_: turning
kind eyes from side to side on the vast concourse, and {16} blessing
them with uplifted hand as he passed. His Holiness celebrated the Mass
with wonderful devotion, as quiet and collected as if he had been alone
in his oratory. High above our heads, at the Elevation, the silver
trumpets sounded the well-known melody, and the Swiss Guards round the
altar brought down their halberts with a crash on the pavement.[16]
After the great function I lunched with the Giustiniani Bandinis in the
Foro Trajano, where three generations of the princely family were
living together, in Roman patriarchal fashion. But (_quantum
mutatus!_) the old Prince had sold his historic palace in the
Corso;[17] and his heir, Mondragone, who talked to me of sending his
son to Christ Church as the Master of Kynnaird, seemed to shy at the
expense.[18] They had all been at St. Peter's, in the tribune of the
"Patriciato," that morning, and were unanimous (so like Romans!) in
their {17} verdict that the glorious Gregorian music would have been
much more appropriate to a funeral!
I was happy to enjoy a nearer view of the Holy Father before leaving
Rome, in a private audience which he gave to the English Catholic
Union. A slightly stooping figure, bushy grey hair, a rather care-worn
kind face, a large penetrating eye--this was my first impression. His
manner was wonderfully simple and courteous; and by his wish
("s'accommodarsi") we sat down in a little group around him. This
absence of formality was, I thought, no excuse for the bad manners of a
lady of rank, who pulled out a fountain pen, and asked his Holiness to
sign the photograph of her extensive family.[19] The Pope looked at
the little implement and shook his head. "Non capisco queste cose de
nuova moda," he said; and we followed him into another room--I think
his private library--where he seated himself before a great golden
inkstand, and with a long quill pen wrote beneath the family group a
verse from the hundred and twenty-seventh Psalm.[20] I had an
opportunity of asking, not for an autograph, but for a blessing on our
Oxford Benedictines, and on my mother-house at Fort Augustus.
Next day my friend and I left Rome for Monte Cassino--my first visit to
the cradle of our venerable Order. I was deeply impressed, and felt,
perhaps, on the summit of the holy mount, nearer heaven, both
materially and spiritually, than I had ever {18} done before. To
celebrate Mass above the shrine of Saint Benedict, at an altar designed
by Raphael, was my Sunday privilege. The visitors at the abbey and a
devout crowd of _contadini_ (many of them from the foot of the
mountain) were my congregation; and the monks sang the plain-chant mass
grouped round a huge illuminated _Graduale_ on an enormous lectern.
Three memorable days here, and I had to hasten northward, halting very
briefly to renew old enchanting memories of Florence and Milan, and
reaching Oxford just in time for the opening of the summer term.
[1] Lord Bute once told me that it was from him that the Earl Marshal
first learned the meaning and origin of the honourable augmentation
(the demi-lion of Scotland) which he bore on his coat-armorial.
[2] One of the first acts of Pope Pius X. had been to translate Bishop
Bourne of Southwark to the metropolitan see of Westminster, in
succession to Cardinal Vaughan, who had died on June 19. Archbishop
Bourne became a Cardinal in 1911.
[3] My father used to hate this "new-fangled phrase," as he called it.
"'See my way'! What does the man mean by 'see my way'? No, I do
_not_ 'see my way,'" he used to protest when a request for a
subscription or donation was prefaced by this unlucky formula, and the
appeal was instantly consigned to the waste-paper basket.
[4] Lord Goschen was elected on November 2 without a contest, the only
other candidate "in the running" (Lord Rosebery) having declined to
stand unless unopposed. Our new Chancellor lived to hold the office
for little more than three years, dying in February, 1907.
[5] Tylee's sole connection with India was that he had once been
domestic chaplain to Lord Ripon, who, however (much to his chagrin),
left him behind in England when he went out as Viceroy. When the
monsignore preached at St. Andrews, as he occasionally did when
visiting George Angus there, the latter used to advertise him in the
local newspaper as "ex-chaplain to the late Viceroy of India," which
pleased him not a little. He was fond of preaching, and carried about
with him in a tin box (proof against white ants) a pile of sermons,
mostly translated by himself from the great French orators of the
eighteenth century, and laboriously committed to memory. I remember
his once firing off at the astonished congregation of a small seaside
chapel, _à propos des bottes_, Bossuet's funeral oration on Queen
Henrietta Maria.
Through a friend at the Vatican, Tylee got a brief or rescript from the
Pope, who was told that he went to preach in India, and commended him
in the document, with some reference to the missionary labours of St.
Francis Xavier in that country. The monsignore was immensely proud of
this. "Haven't you seen my Papal Bull?" he would cry when India
cropped up in conversation, as it generally did in his presence. The
fact was that when in India the good man used to stay with a
Commissioner or General commanding, and deliver one of his famous
sermons in the station or garrison church, to a handful of British
Catholics or Irish soldiers. He never learned a word of any native
language, and did no more missionary work in India than if he had
stayed at home in his Kensington villa.
[6] The Dean, my host told me, whilst prowling about the crypt in
semi-darkness once noticed one of the chapels lit up by a rosy gleam.
The Chapter was promptly summoned, and the canon-sacrist interrogated
as to how and why a votive red lamp had been suspended before an altar
without decanal authority. The crypt verger was called in to explain
the phenomenon. "Bless your heart, Mr. Dean," said the good man, "that
ain't no red lamp you saw--only an old oil stove which I fished up and
put in that chapel to try and dry up the damp a bit."
[7] I suppose that there had been a Christian church on the site for
thirteen centuries. On the day of my visit it was locked and
barred--discouraging to pilgrims.
[8] The converse of this story is that of the orthodox but sadly prosy
preacher who was demonstrating at great length the certainty of his own
immortality. "Yes, my brethren, the mighty mountains shall one day be
cast into the sea, but I shall live on. Nay, the seas themselves, the
vast oceans which cover the greater part of the earth, shall dry up;
but not I--not I!" And the congregation really thought that he never
would!
[9] One more instance of Park repartee I must chronicle: the Radical
politician shouting, "I want land reform--I want housing reform--I want
education reform--I want----" and the disconcerting interruption,
"Chloroform!"
[10] His mother, though a Catholic like himself, was a devotee of
"Father Ignatius," and lived at Llanthony. She travelled about
everywhere with the visionary "Monk of the Church of England," acting
as pew-opener, money-taker, and general mistress of the ceremonies at
his lectures, and had published an extraordinary biography of him.
[11] Have they ever been reprinted? I know not. Here they are:--
"Leave him alone:
The death forgotten, and the truth unknown.
Enough to know
Whate'er he feared, he never feared a foe.
Believe the best,
O English hearts! and leave him to his rest."
[12] These words were penned in 1449 by one whom a contemporary layman
described on his death as "the wisest, the most perfect, the most
learned, and the holiest prelate whom the Church has in our day
possessed." His beautiful tomb is in the Minerva church in Rome.
Exactly a century later (1549) Cirillo Franchi wrote on the same
subject, and in the same vein, to Ugolino Gualteruzzi: "It is their
greatest happiness to contrive that while one is saying _Sanctus_, the
other should say _Sabaoth_, and a third _Gloria tua_, with certain
howls, bellowings, and guttural sounds, so that they more resemble cats
in January than flowers in May!"
Who recalls now Ruskin's famous invective against modern Italian music,
in which, after lauding a part-song, "done beautifully and joyfully,"
which he heard in a smithy in Perugia, he goes on: "Of bestial howling,
and entirely frantic vomiting up of hopelessly damned souls through
their still carnal throats, I have heard more than, please God, I will
endeavour to hear ever again, in one of his summers." It is fair to
say that the reference here is probably not to church music.
[13] The name which we English used playfully to give to the great
heavy leather curtains which hang at the entrance of the Roman churches.
[14] Speaking of the impression of _triumph_ which one receives on
entering St. Peter's, she continues: "Tandis que dans les églises
gothiques, l'impression est de s'agenouiller, de joindre les mains avec
un sentiment d'humble prière et de profond regret, dans St. Pierre, au
contraire, le mouvement involuntaire serait d'ouvrir les bras en signe
de joie, de relever la tête avec bonheur et épanouissement."--_Récit
d'une Soeur_, ii. 298.
[15] The thirteenth centenary of St. Gregory the Great (d. March 12,
1904).
[16] It was at this supreme moment that an Englishman of the baser sort
once rose to his feet, and looking round exclaimed, "Is there no one in
this vast assemblage who will lift up his voice with me, and protest
against this idolatry?" "If you don't get down in double quick time,"
retorted an American who was on his knees close by, "there's one man in
this vast assemblage who will lift up his foot and kick you out of the
church!"
[17] A day or two after writing these lines (1921) I heard that this
famous palazzo had been acquired as an official residence by the
Brazilian Ambassador to the Quirinal.
[18] The Scottish Earldom of Newburgh (1660), of which Kynnaird was the
second title, had been adjudged to Prince Bandini's mother by the House
of Lords in 1858. The Duca Mandragone consulted me as to the expense
of three years at Oxford for his son. He thought the sum I named very
reasonable; but I really believe he supposed me to be quoting the
figure in _lire_, not in pounds sterling, which he found quite
impossible.
[19] Would Lady X---- (who was familiar with Courts) have acted thus in
an audience granted her by King Edward VII.? I rather think not.
[20] Verse 4. "Filii tui sicut noveliæ olivarum, in circuitu mensæ
tuæ."
{19}
CHAPTER II
1904
Abbot Gasquet, who had many friends in Oxford, was much in residence
there during the summer of 1904, as he was giving the weekly
conferences to our undergraduates. His host, Mgr. Kennard, usually
asked me to dinner on Sundays, "to keep the Abbot going," which
released me from the chilly collation (cold mutton and cold rhubarb
pie), the orthodox Sabbath evening fare in so many households.[1] I
recall the lovely Sundays of this summer term, and the crowds of
peripatetic dons and clerics in the parks and on the river bank: many
of them, I fancy, the serious-minded persons who would have thought it
their duty, a year previously, to attend the afternoon university
sermon, lately abolished. The afternoon discourse had come to be
allotted to the second-rate preachers; and I had heard of a clergyman
who, when charged with walking in the country instead of attending at
St. Mary's, defended himself by saying that he preferred "sermons from
stones" to sermons from "sticks!"[2]
{20}
The biggest clerical gathering I ever saw in Oxford was on a bright May
afternoon in 1904, when hundreds of parsons were whipped up from the
country to oppose the abolition of the statute restricting the
honour-theology examinerships to clergymen. Scores of black-coats were
hanging about the Clarendon Buildings, waiting to go in and vote; and
they "boo'd" and cat-called in the theatre, refusing to let their
opponents be heard. They carried their point by an enormous
majority.[3]
Kennard took me to London, on another day in May, to see the
Academy--some astonishing Sargents, Mrs. Wertheimer all in black, with
diamonds which made you wink, and the Duchess of Sutherland in arsenic
green, painted against a background of dewy magnolia-leaves,
extraordinarily vivid and brilliant. I was at Blenheim a few days
later, and admired there (besides the wonderful tapestries and a
roomful of Reynolds's) two striking portraits--one by Helleu, the other
by Carolus-Duran--of the young American Duchess of Marlborough.
An enjoyable event in June was the quadrennial open-air Greek play at
Bradfield College--_Alcestis_ on this occasion, not so thrilling as
_Agamemnon_ four years ago, but very well done, and the death of the
heroine really very touching. A showery {21} garden party at beautiful
Osterley followed close on this: the Crown Prince of Sweden, who was
the guest of honour, had forgotten to announce the hour of his arrival,
was not met at the station, and walked up in the rain. I sat for a
time with Bishop Patterson and the old Duke of Rutland (looking very
tottery), and we spoke of odd texts for sermons. The Bishop mentioned
a "total abstinence" preacher who could find nothing more suitable than
"The young men who carried the _bier_ stood still"! The Duke's
contribution was the verse "Let him that is on the housetop not come
down," the sermon being against "chignons," and the actual text the
last half of the verse--"Top-knot come down"! They were both pleased
with my reminiscence of a sermon preached against Galileo, in 1615,
from the text, "Viri Galilæi, quid statis aspicientes in coelum?"
As soon as I could after term I went north to Scotland, where I was
engaged to superintend the Oxford Local examinations at the Benedictine
convent school at Dumfries. It was a new experience for me to preside
over school-girls! I found them much less fidgety than boys, but it
struck me that the masses of hair tumbling into their eyes and over
their desks must be a nuisance: however, I suppose they are used to it.
The convent, founded by old Lady Herries, was delightfully placed atop
of a high hill, overlooking the river Nith, the picturesque old Border
town, and a wide expanse of my native Galloway. My work over, I went
on to visit the Edmonstoune-Cranstouns at their charming home close to
the tumbling Clyde. I found them entertaining a party of Canadian
bowlers and their ladies; {22} and in the course of the day we were all
decorated with the Order of the Maple-leaf! I went south after this to
spend a few days with my good old friend Bishop Wilkinson, at Ushaw
College, near Durham, of which he was president. An old Harrovian, and
one of the few survivors of Newman's companions at Littlemore, he was
himself a Durham man (his father had owned a large estate in the
county), and had been a keen farmer, as well as an excellent parish
priest, before his elevation to the bishopric of Hexham. He showed me
all over the finely equipped college (which he had done much to
improve), and pointing out a Dutch landscape, with cattle grazing,
hanging in a corridor, remarked, "That is by a famous 'old master.' I
don't know much about pictures, but I do know something about cows; and
God never made a cow like that one!"[4] The good old man held an
ordination during my visit, and was quite delighted (being himself a
thorough John Bull) that "John Bull" happened to be the name of one of
his candidates for the priesthood. "Come again soon," he said, when I
kissed his ring as I took my leave; "they give us wine at table when
there is a guest, and I do like a glass of sherry with my lunch." The
old bishop lived for nearly four years longer, but I never saw him
again.
I was delighted with a visit I paid a little later to Hawkesyard
Priory, the newly acquired property {23} of the Dominicans in
Staffordshire: a handsome modern house (now their school) in a
finely-timbered park, and close by the new monastery, its spacious
chapel, with carved oak stalls, a great sculptured reredos recalling
All Souls or New College, and an organ which had been in our chapel at
Eton in my school days. I made acquaintance here with the young
Blackfriar who was to matriculate in the autumn at our Benedictine
Hall--the first swallow, it was hoped, of the Dominican summer, the
revival of the venerable Order of Preachers _in gremio
universitatis_.[5]
A kind and musical friend[6] insisted on carrying me off this August to
Munich, to attend the Mozart-Wagner festival there. We stayed at the
famous old "Four Seasons," and I enjoyed renewing acquaintance, after
more than thirty years, with a city which seemed to me very like what
it was in 1871. The Mozart operas (at the small Residenz-theater) were
rather disappointing. The title-rôle in _Don Giovanni_ was perfectly
done by Feinhals; but Anna and Elvira squalled, not even in tune. The
enchanting music of Zauberflöte hardly compensated for the tedious
story; and no one except the {24} Sarastro (one Hesch, a Viennese) was
first-class. The Wagner plays, in the noble new Prinz Regenten
theatre, pleased me much more: Knote and Van Rooy were quite excellent,
and Feinhals even better as the Flying Dutchman than as Don Giovanni.
I heard more Mozart on the Assumption in our Benedictine basilica of
St. Boniface--the Twelfth Mass, done by a mixed choir in the gallery!
I preferred the Sunday high mass at the beautiful old Frauenkirche,
with its exquisite stained glass, and its towers crowned with the
curious renaissance cupolas which the Müncheners first called "Italian
caps," and later "masskrüge," or beer-mugs. I admired the attention
and devotion of the great congregation at the cathedral: a few stood,
nearly all knelt, throughout the long service, but no one seemed to
think of sitting.
We made one day the pleasant steamer trip round Lake Starnberg, with
its pretty wooded shores, and the dim mysterious snow-clad Alps
(Wetterstein and other peaks) looming in the background. A middle-aged
Graf on board (I think an ex-diplomatist) talked interestingly on many
subjects, Bismarck among others. He said that the only serious attempt
at reconciliation between him and the Kaiser, ten years before, had
been frustrated not by the latter but by Bismarck himself, who was
constantly ridiculing the young Emperor both in public and in private.
It was odd, he added, how the number _three_ had pervaded Bismarck's
life and personality. His motto was "In Trinitate robur": he had
served three emperors, fought in three wars, signed three treaties of
peace, established the Triple Alliance, had three children and three
estates; and {25} his arms were a trefoil and three oak-leaves.
Talking of Austria, our friend quoted a dictum of Talleyrand (very
interesting in 1921)--"Austria is the House of Lords of Europe: as long
as it is not dissolved it will restrain the Commons." Dining together
in our hotel at Munich, he told us that the "Four Seasons" possessed,
or had possessed, the finest wine in Europe, having bought up Prince
Metternich's famous cellar (including his priceless Johannisberger and
Steinberger Cabinet hocks) at his death. Of Metternich he said it was
a fact that in 1825 Cardinal Albani was instructed by the Pope to sound
the great statesman as to whether he desired a Cardinal's hat--"in
which case," added his Holiness, "I will propose him in the next Secret
Consistory."
We were much amused at reading in a local newspaper the result of a
"longest word" competition. The prize-winners were
"Transvaaltruppentropentransport
trampelthiertreibentrauungsthränentragödie," and
"Mekkamuselmannenmeuchelmördermohrenmuttermarmormonumentenmacher"![7] I
had hitherto considered the longest existing word to be the Cherokee
"Winitawigeginaliskawlungtanawneletisesti"; it was given me by a French
missionary to that North American tribe, whom I once met at the Comte
de Franqueville's house in Paris, {26} and who said it meant,
"They-will-now-have-finished-their-compliments-to-you-and-to-me"! I
remember the same good priest telling me that when the first French
missionary bishop went to New Zealand, he found the natives incapable
of pronouncing the word "eveque" or "bishop," their language consisting
of only thirteen letters, mostly vowels and liquids. He therefore
coined the word _picopo_, from "episcopus," which the natives applied
to all Catholics. English Catholics they called _picopo poroyaxono_,
from Port Jackson (Sydney), which most of them had visited in trading
ships; while French Catholics were known as _picopo wee-wee_, from the
constantly-heard words, "Oui, oui."
Our pleasant sojourn at Munich over, we made a bee-line home (as we had
done from England to Bavaria), without stopping anywhere _en route_, as
I was bound to be present at certain religious celebrations at
Woodchester Priory, in the Vale of Stroud. I was always much attracted
by the Gloucestershire home of the Dominican Order: it was built of the
warm cream-coloured stone of the district, and with its gables, low
spire, and high-pitched roofs looked as if it really belonged to the
pretty village, and was not, like most modern monasteries, a mere
accretion of incongruous buildings round an uninteresting
dwelling-house.[8] From Woodchester I went over one day to Weston
Birt, a vast ornate neo-Jacobean mansion set in the loveliest gardens,
and a not unworthy country pendant to the owner's {27} palace in Park
Lane, to which (as I told my hostess) I once adjudged the second place
among the great houses of London.[9]
I spent the rest of the Long Vacation at Fort Augustus, whither the
summer-like autumn had attracted many visitors, and where a golf-course
had been lately opened. Golf, too, and nothing but golf, was in the
air during my annual visit to St. Andrews, which coincided with the
Medal Week there. A lady told me that, looking for a book to give her
golfing daughter on her birthday, she was tempted by a pretty volume
called _Evangeline, Tale of a Caddie_, and was disappointed to find
that Longfellow meant something quite different by "Acadie!" "Medal
Day" was perfect, and the crowd enormous. I was passing the links as
two famous competitors (Laidlaw and Mure Fergusson) came in--a cordon
round the putting-green, and masses of spectators watching with bated
breath. No cheers or enthusiasm as at cricket or football--a curious
(and _I_ thought depressing) spectacle. In the club I came on old Lord
---- (of Session), anathematizing his luck and his partner, as his
manner was. Some one told me that it was only at golf that he really
let himself go. Once in Court he addressed a small boy, whose head
hardly appeared above the witness-box, with dignified solicitude: "Tell
me, my boy, do you understand the nature of an {28} oath?" "Aye, my
lord," came the youngster's prompt response, "ain't I your caddie?"
I think that it was at the climax of the medal-week festivities that
the news came of the sudden death (in his sleep) of Sir William
Harcourt at Nuneham, to which he had only lately succeeded. He had
survived just ten years the crowning disappointment of his life, his
passing-over for the premiership on the final resignation of Gladstone.
He had long outlived (no small achievement) the intense unpopularity of
his early years; and it seemed almost legendary to recall how three
members of parliament had once resolved to invite to dinner the
individual they disliked most in the world. Covers were laid (as the
reporters say) for six; but only one guest turned up--Sir William
Vernon Harcourt, who had been invited by all three!
I reached Oxford in October to find our Benedictine Hall migrated from
the suburbs to a much more commodious site in dull but rather dignified
Beaumont Street.[10] The proximity of a hideous "Gothic" hotel, and of
the ponderous pseudo-Italian Ashmolean Galleries, did not appeal to us;
but the site was conveniently central, and was moreover holy ground,
for we were within the actual enclosure of the old Carmelite Priory,
and close to Benedictine {29} Worcester, beyond which Cistercian Rowley
(on the actual site of whose high altar now stands the bookstall of the
L.N.W.R. station!) and Augustinian Oseney had stretched out into the
country. One of my first guests in Beaumont Street was Alfred Plowden,
the witty and genial Metropolitan magistrate, then just sixty, but as
good-looking as ever, and full of amusing yarns about his Westminster
and Brasenose days. I think he was the best _raconteur_ I ever met,
and one of the most eloquent of speakers when once "off" on a subject
in which he was really interested. On this occasion he got started on
Jamaica, where he had been private secretary to the Governor after
leaving Oxford; and his description of his experiences in that
fascinating island was delightful to listen to.
Lord Ralph Kerr's son Philip, who got his First Class in history in
June, came up this term to try for an All Souls fellowship. There is a
sharp competition nowadays for these university plums; and the
qualification is no longer, as the old jibe ran, "bene natus, bene
vestitus, medocriter doctus." I prefer the older and sounder
standard--"bene legere, bene construere, bene cantare." There seemed,
by the way, a certain whimsicality in some cases in the qualifications
for the Rhodes Scholarships here. I had a call about this time from
the Archbishop of St. John's, Newfoundland, who wished to interest me
in a scholar from that colony (called Sidney Herbert!) who was coming
up after Christmas. His Grace said that the youth had been required to
pass three "tests"--a religious one from his parish priest, an
intellectual one, from the authorities of his college, and a social
one, from {30} his classmates; and I felt some curiosity as to the
nature of the last-named.[11] Amusing stories were current at this
time about the Rhodes Scholars. One young don told me that an American
scholar had replied, when asked what was his religion, "Well, sir, I
can best describe myself as a _quasi_-Christian scientist."--"Do you
think," the don asked me, "he meant the word '_quasi_' to apply to
'Christian' or to 'scientist'?" Another young American drifted into
Keble, but never attended chapel--a circumstance unheard-of in that
exclusively Anglican preserve. Questioned as to whether he was not a
member of the "Protestant Episcopal Church" (if not, what on earth was
he doing at Keble?), he rejoined, "Certainly not; he was a 'Latter-day
Saint'!" He was deported without delay to a rather insignificant
college, where it was unkindly said that the Head was so delighted to
get a saint of any kind that he welcomed him with open arms.[12]
A Rhodes Scholar, who had been also a fellow of his university in
U.S.A., showed himself so lamentably below the expected standard, that
his Oxford tutor expressed his surprise at a scholar {31} and a fellow
knowing so little. "I think you somewhat misapprehend the position,"
was the reply. "In the University of X---- fellowships are awarded for
purely political reasons." To another college tutor, who voiced his
disappointment that after a complete course at his own university a
Rhodes Scholar should be so deplorably deficient in Greek and Latin,
came the ready explanation: "In the university where _I_ was raised,
sir, we only _skim_ the classics!" A Balliol Rhodes Scholar, who had
failed to present the essential weekly essay, replied to his tutor's
expostulation, in the inimitable drawl of the Middle West: "Well, sir,
I have not found myself able to com-pose an essay on the theme
indicated by the college authorities; but I have brought you instead a
few notes of my own on the po-sition of South Dakota in American
politics."
The mention of classics reminds me that the question of the retention
or abolition of compulsory Greek was a burning one at this time.
Congregation had voted for its abolition in the summer of 1904; but on
November 29 we reversed that decision by a majority of 36. I met Dean
Liddell's widow at dinner that week, and said that I supposed that she,
like myself, was old-fashioned enough to want Greek retained. "_Of
course_ I am," said the old lady: "Think of the Lexicon!" which I had
in truth forgotten for the moment, as well as the comfortable addition
which it no doubt made to her jointure. Rushforth of St. Mary Hall, to
whom I repeated this little dialogue after dinner, told me that he
possessed a letter from Scott to Liddell, calling his attention to
Aristoph. Lys., v. 1263, and {32} adding, "Do you think that [Greek:
chunagè parséne] in this line means 'a hunting parson'?" Talking of
Greek, I interested my friends by citing two lines from the _Ajax_,
which (I had never seen this noticed) required only a change from
plural to singular to be a perfect invocation to the Blessed Virgin:
[Greek: Kalô darógon tèn te párthena,
aeí th horônta panta ten brotois pathè.][13]
A distinguished visitor to Oxford this autumn was Lord Rosebery, who
came up to open--no, that is not the word: to unveil--but I do not
think it was ever veiled: let us say to inaugurate, Frampton's fine
bust of Lord Salisbury in the Union debating-hall. To pronounce the
panegyric of a political opponent, with whose principles, practice, and
ideals he had always been profoundly at variance, was just the task for
Lord Rosebery to perform with perfect tact, eloquence and taste. His
speech was a complete success, and so was his graceful and polished
tribute to the young president of the Union, W. G. Gladstone, whose
likeness, with his high collar and sleekly-brushed black hair, to the
youthful portrait of his illustrious grandfather, immediately behind
him, was quite noticeable.
A whimsical incident in connection with this visit of the ex-premier
may be, at this distance of time, recalled without offence. I had
repeated to his Oxford hostess a story told me by the Principal of a
Scottish university, of how Lord Rosebery, engaged to speak at a great
Liberal meeting in a {33} northern city, found himself previously
dining with a fanatically teetotal Provost, who provided for his guests
no other liquid refreshment than orangeade in large glass jugs. As
this depressing beverage circulated, the Liberal leader's spirits fell
almost to zero; and it was by the advice of my friend the principal
that, between the dinner and the meeting, he drove _ventre à terre_ to
an hotel, and quaffed a pint of dry champagne before mounting the
platform and making a speech of fiery eloquence, which the good provost
attributed entirely to the orangeade! The lady, unknown to me, passed
on this delectable story to one of the Union Committee, who took it
very seriously: the result being that when Lord Rosebery reached the
committee-room, just before the inauguration ceremony, a grave young
man whispered to him confidentially: "There are tea and coffee here;
but I have got your pint of cha[oe]pagne behind that screen: _will you
come and have it now?_" "Well, do you know?" said the great man with
his usual tact,[14] "I think for once in a way I will have a cup of
coffee!" I do not suppose he ever knew exactly why this untimely pint
of champagne was proffered to him by his undergraduate hosts; and he
probably thought no more about the matter.
Lunching with my friend Bishop Mitchinson, the {34} little Master of
Pembroke, I was shown his new portrait in the hall--quite a good
painting, but not a bit like him, though not in that respect singular
among our Oxford portraits. The supposed picture of Devorguilla,
foundress of Balliol, is, I have been assured, the likeness of an
Oxford baker's daughter, who was tried for bigamy in the eighteenth
century. An even more barefaced imposture is the "portrait" of
Egglesfield (chaplain to Queen Philippa, wife of Edward III, and
founder of Queen's), which hangs, or hung, in the hall of that college.
It is really, and manifestly, the likeness of a seventeenth-century
French prelate--probably Bossuet--in the episcopal dress of the time of
Louis XIV! Most of our Magdalen portraits are, I think, authentic; but
then they do not profess to represent personages of the early Middle
Ages! The best and most interesting portraits at Oxford belong to the
nineteenth century. I always enjoyed showing my friends those of Tait
and Manning, side by side in Balliol Hall, and recalling how their
college tutor once remarked, when they had left his room after a
lecture: "Those two undergraduates are worthy and talented young men: I
hope I shall live to see them both archbishops!" His prophetic wish
was duly fulfilled, though he had probably never dreamt of Canterbury
and Westminster!
I remember pleasant visits this autumn to the Abingdons at Wytham
Abbey, their fine old place, set in loveliest woods, within an easy
drive of Oxford. "Why Abbey?" I asked my host, who did not seem to
know that the place had never been a monastery, though part of the
house was of the fifteenth century. Lord Abingdon himself was a kind
{35} of patriarch,[15] with a daughter married four and twenty years,
and a small son not yet four. He was trying to dispose of some of his
land for building, but without great success. The Berkshire side of
the Thames (to my mind far the most beautiful and attractive) was not
the popular quarter for extensions from Oxford, which was spreading far
out towards the north in the uninteresting directions of Banbury and
Woodstock.
Term over, I went north to spend Christmas with the Butes at
Mountstuart, where I found my young host, as was only natural, much
interested in a recent decision of the Scottish Courts, which had
diverted into his pocket £40,000 which his father had bequeathed to two
of the Scottish Catholic dioceses.[16] My Christmas here (the first
for many years) was saddened by old memories; for I missed at every
turn the pervading presence of my lost friend, to whose taste and
genius the varied beauty of his island home was so largely due.
However, our large party of young people gave the right note {36} of
hilarity to the time; and if there was little sunshine without (I noted
that we had never a gleam from Christmas to New Year), there was plenty
of warmth and brightness and merriment within. The graceful crypt (all
that was yet available) of the lovely chapel was fragrant and bright
with tuberoses, chrysanthemums and white hyacinths; and the religious
services of the season were carried out with the care and reverence
which had been the rule, under Lord Bute's supervision, for more than
thirty years. The day after New Year, young Bute left home for London
and Central Africa (the attraction of the black man never seemed to
pall on him), and I made my way to our Highland Abbey to spend the
remainder of the Christmas vacation.
[1] "Do you very much mind dining in the middle of the day?" a would-be
hostess at St. Andrews once asked George Angus. "Oh, not a bit," was
his reply, "as long as I get another dinner in the evening!"
[2] It was, I think, a Scottish critic who suggested an emendation of
the line, "Sermons from stones, books in the running brooks."
Obviously, he said, the transposition was a clerical error, the true
reading being, "Sermons from books, stones in the running brooks!"
[3] Another attempt, nine years later, to abolish the same statute was
decisively defeated; but in 1920 the restriction of degrees in divinity
to Anglican clergymen was removed by a unanimous vote, though the
examinerships are still confined to clergymen.
[4] "Well, now, that is not my idea of an owl," said a casual visitor
to a bird-stuffer's shop, looking at one sitting on a perch in a rather
dark corner. "Isn't it?" replied the bird-stuffer dryly, peering up
over his spectacles. "Well, it's God's, anyhow." The owl was a live
one!
[5] The "young Blackfriar" obtained (in History) the first First Class
gained in our Hall, rose to be Provincial of his Order in England, and
had the happiness of seeing, on August 15, 1921, the foundation stone
of a Dominican church and priory laid at Oxford.
[6] Music was his hobby: by profession he was a chemist, and the City
Analyst of Oxford. I introduced him as such to dear Mgr. Kennard, who
promptly asked us both to dinner, and during the meal laboriously
discussed the mediæval history of Oxford, which he had carefully
"mugged up" beforehand. He had understood me to say that my friend's
position was that of City _Annalist_!
[7] The English of these uncouth concatenations, which are at least
evidence of the facility with which any number of German words can be
strung together into one, appears to be (as far as I can unravel them):
1. "The tearful tragedy of the marriage of a dromedary-driver on the
transport of Transvaal troops to the tropics." 2. "The maker of a
marble monument for the Moorish mother of a wholesale assassin among
the Mussulmans at Mecca." Pro-dee-gious!
[8] Such were nearly all our Benedictine priories in England--a
circumstance which added to their historic interest, if not to their
architectural homogeneity.
[9] I was once invited to write an article on the "six finest houses in
London." The word "finest," of course, wants defining. However, my
selection, in order of merit, was:--Holland House (perhaps rather a
country house in the metropolitan area than a London house),
Dorchester, Stafford, Bridgewater, and Montagu Houses, and Gwydyr
House, Whitehall. How many Londoners know the last-named?
[10] Built about a century previously, to provide proper access to
Worcester College, then and long afterwards dubbed (from its remoteness
and inaccessibility) "Botany Bay." The only approach to it had been by
a narrow lane, across which linen from the wash used to hang, and once
impeded the dignified progress of a Vice-Chancellor. "If there is a
college there," cried the potentate in a passion, "there must be a road
to it." And the result was Beaumont Street!
[11] Oxonians know the tradition that an All Souls candidate is invited
to dinner at high table, and given cherry pie; and that careful note is
taken as to the manner in which he deals with the stones!
[12] A subsequent legend related that the undergraduates of his new
college were greatly interested in discovering (from reference to an
encyclopædia) that a Latter-day Saint was equivalent to a Mormon.
"Where were the freshman's wives?" was the natural inquiry. Answer
came there none; but the excitement grew intense when it was rumoured
that he had applied to a fellow of Magdalen for six ladies' tickets for
the chapel service.
[13] "And I call to my assistance her who is ever a Virgin
And who ever looks on all the sufferings among men."
--SOPH. AJAX. v. 835.
[14] "My lord! my lord!" a Midlothian farmer (who had just been served
with an iced soufflé) whispered to his host at a tenants' dinner at
Dalmeny: "I'm afraid there's something wrang wi' the pudden: it's stane
cauld." Lord Rosebery instantly called a footman, and spoke to him in
an undertone. "No, do you know?" he said, turning to his guest with a
smile, "it is quite right. I find that this kind of pudding is _meant_
to be cold!"
[15] Less so, however, than the then Earl of Leicester (the second),
between whose eldest daughter (already a grandmother) and youngest
child there was an interval of some fifty years. Lord Ronald Gower
once told Queen Victoria (who liked such titbits of family gossip) the
astonishing, if not unique, fact that Lord Leicester married exactly a
century after his father. The Queen flatly refused to believe it; and
as the Court was at the moment at Aix-les-Bains, Lord Ronald was for
the time unable to adduce documentary evidence that he was not "pulling
her Majesty's leg." The respective dates were, as a matter of fact,
1775 and 1875.
[16] Lord Bute could never do anything quite like other people; and his
legacies to Galloway and Argyll had been hampered by conditions to
which no Catholic bishop, even if he accepted them for himself, could
possibly bind his successor.
{37}
CHAPTER III
1905
There had been an official visitation, by Abbot Gasquet, of our abbey
at Fort Augustus in January, 1905. I had been unable to attend it, but
the news reached me at Oxford that one of its results had been the
resignation of his office by the abbot. This was not so important as
it sounded; for the Holy See did not "see its way" (horrid phrase!) to
accept the proffered resignation, and the abbot remained in office.
I attended this month a Catholic "Demonstration," as it was called (a
word I always hated), in honour of the Bishop of Birmingham--or the
"Catholic Bishop of Oxford," as an enthusiastic convert, who had set up
a bookshop in the city, with a large portrait of Bishop Ilsley in the
window, chose to designate him. The function was in the town hall, and
Father Bernard Vaughan made one of his most florid orations, which got
terribly on the nerves of good old Sir John Day (the Catholic judge),
who sat next me on the platform. "Why on earth doesn't somebody stop
him?" he whispered to me in a loud "aside," as the eloquent Jesuit "let
himself go" on the subject of the Pope and the King. On the other
hand, I heard the Wesleyan Mayor, who was in the chair, murmur to _his_
{38} neighbour, "This is eloquence indeed!" "Vocal relief" (as the
reporters say at classical concerts) was afforded by a capital choir,
which sang with amazing energy, "Faith of our Fathers," and Faber's
sentimental hymn, the opening words of which--"Full in the pant" ...
are apt to call forth irreverent smiles.
I took Bernard Vaughan (who knew little of Oxford) a walk round the
city on Sunday afternoon. We looked into one of the most "advanced"
churches, where a young curate, his biretta well on the back of his
head, was catechising a class of children. "Tell me, children," we
heard him say, "who was the first Protestant?" "The Devil, Father!"
came the shrill response. "Yes, quite right, the Devil!" and we left
the church much edified.
There was good music to be heard in Oxford in those early days of the
year; and I attended some enjoyable concerts with a music-loving member
of my Hall. The boy-prodigies, of whom there were several above the
horizon at this time, generally had good audiences at Oxford; and I
used to find something inexplicably uncanny in the attainments and
performances of these gifted youngsters--Russian, German and English.
Astonishing technique--as far as was possible for half-grown
fingers--one might fairly look for; but whence the _sehnsucht_, the
passionate yearning, that one seemed to find in some, at least, of
their interpretations? That they should feel it appears incredible:
yet it could not have been a mere imitative monkey-trick, a mere echo
of the teaching of their master. And why should there be this
precocious development in music alone, of all the arts? These things
want {39} explaining psychologically. I was amused at one of these
recitals to hear the eminent violinist Marie Hall (who happened to be
sitting next me) say that the boy (it was the Russian Mischa Elman)
could not possibly play Bazzini's _Ronde des Lutins_ (he did play it,
and admirably), and also that he had suddenly "struck," to the dismay
of his _impresario_, against appearing as a "wunderkind" in sailor kit
and short socks, and had insisted on a dress suit!
The Torpids were rowed in icy weather this year; I took Lady
Gainsborough and her daughter on to Queen's barge; and Queen's (in
which they were interested) made, with the help of two Rhodes Scholars,
two bumps, amid shouts of "Go it, _Quaggas_!"--a new _petit nom_ since
my time, when only the Halls had nicknames. Tuckwell, of an older
generation than mine, reports in his reminiscences how St. Edmund Hall,
in his time, was encouraged by cries from the bank of "On, St. Edmund,
on!" and not, as in these degenerate days, "Go it, Teddy!" It was a
novelty on the river to see the coaching done from bicycles instead of
from horseback. But bicycles were ubiquitous at Oxford, and doubtless
of the greatest service; and my young Benedictines and I went far
afield awheel on architectural and other excursions. Passing the
broken and battered park railings of beautiful Nuneham (not yet
repaired by Squire "Lulu"[1]), my companion commented on their
condition; and I told him the legend of the former owner, who was so
{40} disconsolate at the death of his betrothed (a daughter of Dean
Liddell) on their wedding-day, that he never painted or repaired his
park railings again!
I heard at the end of February of the engagement (concluded in a
beauty-spot of the Italian Riviera) of my young friend Bute--he would
not be twenty-four till June--to Augusta Bellingham. A boy-and-girl
attachment which had found its natural and happy conclusion--that was
the whole story, though the papers, of course, were full of impossibly
romantic tales about both the young people. They went off straight to
Rome, in Christian fashion, to ask the Pope's blessing on their
betrothal; and I just missed them there, for I had the happiness this
spring of another brief visit to Italy, at the invitation of a
Neapolitan friend. I spent two or three delightful weeks at the
Bertolini Palace, high above dear dirty Naples, with an entrancing view
over the sunlit bay, and Vesuvius (quite quiescent) in the background.
I found the city not much changed in thirty years, and, as always, much
more attractive than its queer and half-savage population. Watching
the cab-drivers trying to urge their lumbering steeds into a canter, I
thought how oddly different are the sounds employed by different
nations to make their horses go. The Englishman makes the well-known
untransferable click with his tongue: the Norwegian imitates the sound
of a kiss: the Arab rolls an r-r-r: the Neapolitan coachman _barks_
Wow! wow! wow! The subject is worth developing.
I met at Naples, among other people, Sir Charles Wyndham, with his
unmistakable "Criterion" voice, and as cynically amusing off the stage
as he generally {41} was on it. He reminded me of what I had
forgotten--that I had once shown him all over our Abbey at Fort
Augustus. I told him of a lecture Beerbohm Tree had recently given at
Oxford, and showed him my copy of a striking passage[2] which I had
transcribed from a shorthand note of the lecture. "Noble words," the
veteran actor agreed, "I know them well; but they were not written for
his Oxford lecture. I remember them a dozen or more years ago, in an
address he gave (I think in 1891) to the Playgoers' Club; and the last
clause ran--'to point _in the twilight of a waning century_ to the
greater light beyond.' Those words would not of course be applicable
in 1904."
I had looked forward to a day in the museum, with its wonderful
sculptures and unique relics of Pompeii; but I was lost there, for the
whole collection was being rearranged, and no catalogue available. The
Cathedral too was closed, being under restoration--for the sixth time
in six centuries! Some of the Neapolitan churches seemed to me sadly
wanting in internal order and cleanliness, an exception being a
spotless and perfectly-kept convent chapel on the hill, conveniently
near me for daily mass. The German Emperor made, with his customary
suddenness, a descent on Naples during {42} my stay. The quays and
streets were hastily decorated, and there was a ferment of excitement
everywhere; but I fled from the hurly-burly by cable-railway
(_funicolì-funicolà!_) to the heights of San Martino, to visit the
desecrated and abandoned Certosa, now a "national monument": tourists
trampling about the lovely church with their hats on. It made me sick,
and I told the astonished guide so. The cloister garth, with its sixty
white marble columns, charmed and impressed me; but all _molto triste_.
Three old Carthusian monks, I heard, were still permitted to huddle in
some corner of their monastery till they dropped and died.[3]
A day I spent at Lucerne on my way home, in fog, snow, and sleet (no
sign of spring), I devoted partly to the "Kriegs-und-Frieden"
Museum--chiefly _kriegs!_ with an astonishingly complete collection of
all things appertaining to war. I went to Downside on my arrival in
England, had some talk with the kind abbot on Fort Augustus affairs,
and admired the noble church, a wonderful landmark with its lofty
tower, choir now quite complete externally, and _chevet_ of flanking
chapels. I got to Arundel in time for the functions of Holy Week, and
thought I had seen nothing more beautiful in Italy than St. Philip's
great church on Maundy Thursday, its "chapel of repose" bright with
lilies, azaleas and tulips, tall silver candlesticks and hangings of
rose-coloured velvet. I had landed in {43} England speechless with a
cold caught at Lucerne, and could neither sing nor preach. Summer Term
at Oxford opened with a snowstorm, and May Day was glacial. I found I
had been elected to the new County Club, a good house with a really
charming garden, and (to paraphrase Angelo Cyrus Bantam) "rendered
bewitching by the absence of ---- undergraduates, who have an
amalgamation of themselves at the Union." The most noteworthy visitor
to the Union this term was Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (then leader of
the Opposition), who made a somewhat vitriolic speech, lasting an hour,
against the Government. The 550 undergraduates present listened,
cheered frequently--and voted against him by a large majority, a good
deal (I heard afterwards) to the old gentleman's chagrin.
The Archbishop of Westminster (Dr. Bourne) came to Oxford in May as the
guest of Mgr. Kennard, who illuminated in his honour the garden and
quad of his pretty old house in St. Aldate's, and gave a dinner and big
reception, at neither of which I could be present, being laid up from a
bicycle-accident. It was Eights-week, and his Grace saw the races one
evening, and I think was also present at a Newman Society debate, when
a motion advocating the setting up of a Catholic University in Ireland
by the Government was rejected by a considerable majority.[4] I was
able to hobble to Balliol a few days later, when Sir Victor Horsley
delivered {44} the Boyle lecture to a crowded and distinguished
audience. I noted down as interesting one thing he said (I fancy it
was a quotation from somebody else[5]): "Every scientific truth passes
through three stages: in the first it is decried as absurd; in the
second it is said to be opposed to revealed religion; in the third
everybody knew it before!" Sir Victor's lecture left me, rightly or
wrongly, under the impression that he was something of a sceptic; and I
asked my neighbour, a clerical don of note, from Keble, why so many
medical bigwigs seemed inclined to atheism. He answered (oddly enough)
that it was only what David had prophesied long ago when he asked
despairingly (Psalm lxxxvii. 11), _Numquid medici suscitabunt et
confitebuntur tibi?_ ("Shall the physicians rise up and praise
Thee?")--a curious little bit of exegesis from an Anglican.[6]
June 16 was a busy day--a garden party at Blenheim, with special trains
for the Oxford guests; the Duchess, in blue and white and a big black
hat, welcoming her guests in her low, sweet, and curiously un-American
voice, and the little Duke rather affable in khaki (he was encamped
with the Oxfordshire Hussars in the park). We sat about under the big
cedars, and there was organ-music in the cool {45} white library, where
I noticed that Sargent's very odd group of the ducal family had been
hung--with not altogether happy effect--as a pendant to the famous and
beautiful group painted by Reynolds. I got back to Oxford just in time
for the festival dinner of the Canning and Chatham Clubs, at which my
old schoolfellow Alfred Lyttelton, Hugh Cecil, and other Tory
notabilities, were guests. Alfred spoke admirably: Hugh, though loudly
called upon, refused to speak at all. The President of Magdalen, by
whom I sat, told me in pained tones how some Christ Church
undergraduates, _suadente diabolo_, had recently scaled the wall into
Magdalen deer-park, had dragged (Heaven knew how) over the wall two of
our sacrosanct fallow deer, and had turned the poor brutes loose in the
"High"--an outrage without precedent in the college annals. I duly
sympathized.
A feature of Catholic and Benedictine interest in this year's
Commemoration was the conferring of the honorary doctorate of letters
on my old friend and fellow-novice, Dom Germain Morin, the
distinguished patristic scholar.[7] I did _not_ attend the hot and
tiresome Encænia, but I went to the Magdalen concert, where I found
myself talking between the songs to Lady Winchilsea, whose husband and
brother-in-law had been friends of mine at Eton, and had acted with me,
I think, in more than one school play. The lady was born a Harcourt,
{46} and talked interestingly about beautiful Nuneham in the days of
her girlhood. I met her again next day at Radley College, where the
annual "gaudy" was always a pleasant wind-up to the summer term. It
turned wet, and the usual concert was given, not _al fresco_, but in
the fine old panelled schoolroom with its open roof, once Sir George
Bowyer's barn.[8] Two days later I kept yet another "silver jubilee"
(following naturally on that of my receiving the Benedictine habit),
namely the anniversary of my religious profession. Being in London, I
spent the day with what piety was possible, in the Dominican monastery
at Haverstock Hill, attending high mass in the beautiful church, dining
with the good friars, and sitting awhile in their pretty shady garden.
One of the fathers told me of a notice he had personally seen affixed
to a pillar in Milan Cathedral in 1899. I copied it forthwith, as one
of the funniest things of the kind which I had ever seen. Here it is
_verbatim_:--
APPELE TO CHARITABLES.--The Brothers (so-called of Mercy) ask some
slender Arms for their Hospital They harbour all kinds of diseases, and
have no respect for religion.
I met this evening my nephew Kelburne, R.N., who had just been
appointed first lieutenant on {47} H.M.S. _Renown_ (which was to take
the Prince and Princess of Wales to India); he was looking forward to a
good spell of leave and plenty of sport in the East. He seemed very
keen on polo, and amused me with a yarn about his (naval) team having
been offered £50 if they would kill Winston Churchill in their coming
match against the House of Commons![9] The event of July was Bute's
wedding in Ireland on the 6th. I travelled straight to Castle
Bellingham two days previously, with Bute's Scots pipers in my train,
much admired by the populace. I found, of course, the little Louth
village, and indeed the whole countryside, _en fête_. The bride-elect,
in inviting me, had spoken about "a quiet wedding at home"; but how was
that possible? for the day could not be other than a popular festival
to the warm-hearted folk among whom "Miss Augusta" had spent all her
life. The wedding guests, bidden and unbidden, converged on the little
country church in every imaginable conveyance, from special trains and
motor-cars to the humble donkey-cart. The marriage service was simple
and devout, the officiant being neither cardinal nor bishop, but the
bride's own parish priest, while the music was grave plain-chant,
perfectly rendered, with an exquisite motett by Palestrina. The royal
Stuart tartan worn by the bridegroom, and the vivid St. Patrick's blue
of the bridesmaids' cloaks and hoods, made a picturesque splash of
colour against the masses of pure white lilies and marguerites with
which the church was {48} decorated. Most picturesque of all was the
going-away of the happy pair from the little fishing-harbour, whither
they were preceded, accompanied, and followed by troops of friends.
Embarking in a white barge manned by oarsmen in the Bellingham
liveries, they were rowed out to the steamer which was to take them
across the sea to their honeymoon in Galloway. The pipers, following
in another barge, played "Johnnie Stuart's gone awa'"; the band on the
pier struck up "Come Back to Erin"; and amid cheers and tears and
acclamations and blessings the white boat turned the corner of the
pierhead and glided out over the rippling sunlit waters. We were
regaled afterwards with some delightful part-singing by a famous Dublin
choir on the castle lawn. Next day I departed with the Loudouns for
Belfast, where it rained as it _can_ rain only in Ireland, and I
thought of one of Lady Dufferin's charming letters from the south of
France to her Irish relatives:--
"O that I could transport a bit of that Provence sky which I have been
enjoying, over your dear, dripping heads in Ireland! It is a terrible
drawback on the goods of life at home to lead a web-foot existence. I
sometimes fancy that I could put up with any amount of despotic
monarchy taken warm, with Burgundy, rather than the British
constitution, with all that cold water!"
We crossed to Stranraer in rain and mist, but found the sun shining in
Galloway. The Loudouns went on to Ayrshire, and I to visit my niece at
Dunskey, the new house which already looked old, with much dark oak,
good pictures, and fine old prints everywhere. I liked the long and
lofty terrace in front, commanding a beautiful view of the blue {49}
curve of the Irish Sea, the Mourne Mountains in the background, and,
far to the south-westward, the Isle of Man[10] hanging like an azure
cloud on the horizon. Everywhere round my dear old home,[11] in farms
and village, gardens and woods, were signs of the changes and
improvements wrought by the late owner, who had barely lived to see
them. _Sic vos non vobis_, I sadly said to myself, as I stood on the
point between the two bays at the foot of Dunskey Glen (his chosen
resting-place), and looked at the simple granite cross rising above the
brackens and heather. Portpatrick I found changed out of knowledge,
with its red-roofed houses, electric light, golf-course, and big hotel
on the brow of the hill. _Tout passe_. I had loved the quiet
old-world village of my childhood, but I could not grudge the place its
new prosperity, and all was full of interest to me. From Dunskey I
went on to Kelburne and Loudoun Castle--the latter big, imposing and
bare, and a little suggestive of Castle Carabas! though new pictures
and redecoration did much, later on, to improve the interior. My
examination-week at the Dumfries convent followed, diversified by an
interesting visit to the local madhouse (euphemistically known as the
"Crichton Royal Institution"), {50} said to be the finest lunatic
asylum in Britain; with splendid buildings, in perfect condition, 800
acres of fertile land, and the same number of patients, from country
gentlemen to paupers. The high wall round the establishment was being
replaced by a hedge, and the attendants were kept out of sight as much
as possible, in accordance with the modern theory of not letting
lunatics know that they were under restraint.[12] The luxuriousness of
the whole place, in comparison with the home surroundings of most of
the inmates, was very noticeable; and the spectacle of a "doited"
farm-labourer seated in an arm-chair in a carpeted lounge, reading the
_Graphic_ upside down, was certainly curious, if not instructive.
I paid a visit to Eton this summer, on the occasion of the laying of
the foundation of the South African war memorial by Princess Alexander
of Teck (her husband and brother were both Etonians), who looked
charming all in ivory white, with a long plume of Eton blue in her hat.
The school O.T.C. formed the guard of honour, the only _contretemps_
being that several of the youthful warriors were overcome by the heat,
dropping down in the ranks one after another, like so many ninepins.
The new building was to occupy the site of "m' tutors" ("the tallest
house in college," he had said to me on my first arrival, "as I am the
tallest master!"), and I walked {51} through the hideous building for
the last time--_memor temporis acti_--before going on to the head
master's party in his charming garden sloping down to the river--a
farewell function, as Dr. Warre was resigning the head mastership to
Edward Lyttelton this half, and several masters were leaving with him.
I went to London from Eton to attend Hyde's marriage to Miss Somers
Cocks, and (though the season was over) met many friends afterwards at
Lady Dudley's house in Carlton-gardens, where the wedding guests
foregathered.
A visit to Arundel a little later was signalized by great festivities
in honour of the birth of the Duke's little daughter. The four
thousand guests who, as the fancy took them, danced in the tilting-yard
(converted into a great open-air ballroom), listened to martial music
from military bands, roamed through the beautiful state-rooms, or gazed
admiringly at the myriad fairy lamps which glowed many-coloured on
castle walls, battlements, and towers, were literally of every class.
Peers and peeresses, officers and deans and doctors, and Sussex county
magnates, mingled freely with the farmers, artisans, and workmen who
were their fellow-guests. The fête wound up with a grand display of
fireworks in the park, and the host and hostess (the latter looking
very nice in her white summer frock, with flowing crimson sash and a
string of great pearls round her neck), made every one happy with their
affability and kindness.
On my way north I stayed a few days with the Gainsboroughs at Exton,
near Oakham--my first visit to the little shire of Rutland. A most
attractive place, I thought: a charming modern Jacobean {52} house (the
ruins of the Elizabethan hall, burnt down a century before, stood close
by): beautiful gardens and a nobly-timbered park, in which stands the
fine old parish church with its singularly graceful spire. Tennis, _al
fresco_ teas, and much music, occupied a few days very agreeably; and I
then went on to St. Andrews for my usual autumn sojourn, which I always
enjoyed. But my most memorable Scottish visit this autumn was to
Abbotsford, which, curiously enough, I had never yet seen, though I had
known its owners for thirty years. My grandfather and Sir Walter Scott
had been friends for many years: they were planning and building at the
same time their respective homes in the western and eastern Lowlands,
and often exchanged visits and letters. Here is a little note
(undated) in which Sir Walter acknowledged, with an apt Shakespearian
reference, a gift of game from Blairquhan:--
My Dear Sir David,--
I thank you much for your kind present. The pheasants arrived in
excellent condition, and showing, like Shakespeare's Yeomen, "the
mettle of their pasture."[13]
When are you and Lady Blair going to take another run down Tweed?
Your obliged humble servant,
WALTER SCOTT.
My father had stayed at Abbotsford as a little boy, before he entered
the Navy, and two or three years before Sir Walter's death in 1832. He
had not the customary reminiscence of having sat on {53} the great
man's knee;[14] but he remembered a beautiful collie which lay outside
the study door, and refused to let any one enter in his master's
absence. We were all brought up on Scott--his _Tales of a
Grandfather_, his novels and poems. My father seemed to know the
latter all by heart: he would reel them off (with fine elocution, too)
by the hour, and we children loved the stirring music of the Border
songs, the _Lady of the Lake_ and the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, which
only in our later and more sophisticated days suggested the answer to a
flippant conundrum.[15]
To me, of course, Abbotsford had, and has, a special and peculiar
charm, as having been for more than sixty years one of the "Catholic
Homes of Scotland."[16] The "incongruous pile" sneered at by Ruskin,
the bizarre architecture which, I suppose, made Dean Stanley describe
it as a place to be visited once and never again, are open to criticism
and easily criticized. I prefer the judgment of Andrew Lang, that "it
is hallowed ground, and one may not judge it by common standards." To
{54} Catholics it is doubly hallowed--as a Catholic centre in the sweet
Border-land which Scott knew and loved so well, and as the "darling
seat" of one who by the magic of his writings made the Catholic past of
Scotland live again, and the last words on whose dying lips were lines
from two of the noblest and most sacred hymns in the Catholic
liturgy.[17]
The Dowager Lady Bute was the occupant of Abbotsford during my visit
there, and had hoped to make it her home for some time; but her stay
was cut short by a serious motor accident, in which she and her
daughter sustained rather severe injuries. I was at the time at
Dumfries House, where Bute and his bride were happily settled for the
autumn; and there was of course great concern at the Abbotsford
disaster, which fortunately turned out less grave than was at first
feared. I was interested in the recent additions to Dumfries House,
including a fine Byzantine chapel, a saloon lit from the roof for the
Stair tapestries,[18] and a new library-billiard-room, all so cleverly
tucked in by the architect behind the existing wings, that the
beautiful Adam front remains as it was. Lady Bute, smartly frocked,
and twinkling with diamonds, sapphires, and ropes of pearls, was quite
"Lothair's bride." On Sunday we had the regulation walk to the lovely
old garden, stables, farm, and poultry-yard. A great {55} "wale" of
cocks and hens,[19] among which our hostess dropped one of her
priceless earrings, and we had a long hunt for it. Reading my Glasgow
paper in the train next day, on my way south, I came on a paragraph
announcing the "reception into the Roman Church" of the Professor of
Greek (J. S. Phillimore) at Glasgow University--a Christ Church man,
and a scholar of the highest distinction. What (I thought) will the
"unco guid" of Glasgow say now?[20]
[1] Sir William Harcourt's son, commonly known as "Lulu" (now Viscount
Harcourt), had lately inherited Nuneham on the death of his father.
[2] It ran as follows: "In an age when faith is tinged with philosophic
doubt, when love is regarded but as a spasm of the nervous system, and
life itself as but the refrain of a music-hall song, I believe that it
is still the function of art to give us light rather than darkness.
Its teaching should not be to prove that we are descended from monkeys,
but rather to remind us of our affinity with the angels. Its mission
is not to lead us through the fogs of doubt into the bogs of despair,
but to point us to the greater light beyond."
[3] On what principle, I could not help asking myself, are
Benedictines, Dominicans, Franciscans, and Jesuits (all engaged in
active work, and therefore _ex hypothesi_ dangerous), freely tolerated
in Rome, and Carthusians (whose only occupation is prayer) expelled
from Naples?
[4] On a previous occasion our Catholic Society had voted on the same
motion in precisely the contrary sense. But the opinions of the
"Newman," as of all university debating societies (not excluding the
Union), were quite fluid and indeterminate on almost every subject.
[5] Sir Charles Lyell, I am inclined to believe. But I cannot "place"
the quotation.
[6] Curious; because the Authorized translation (presumably used at
Keble) ignores the _medici_ altogether, its version being "Shall the
dead arise and praise Thee?" There is, I fancy, some authority for my
friend's interpretation; still, the context seems to show clearly that
_suscitabunt_ means "rise from the dead," and that what the words
convey is that dead doctors, like other dead men, are done with
praising God anyhow in this world.
[7] A monk of the abbey of Maredsous, in Belgium, but by birth a
Norman, a native of Caen. He was somewhat of the destructive school of
patristic critics, and I once heard it said that Dom Germain would not
die happy until he had proved to his own satisfaction that all the
supposed writings of St. Augustine were spurious!
[8] Radley House, his birthplace, had been sold to the college some
years before by Sir George Bowyer, the eminent Catholic jurist and
writer, who had preceded Manning into the Church in 1850, and who built
the beautiful church annexed to the Catholic Hospital in Great Ormond
Street (removed later to St. John's Wood). I well remember in my early
Catholic days (I think about 1876) the excitement caused by the
expulsion of Sir George--whose strongly-expressed views on the Roman
question and other matters were highly distasteful to British
Liberals--from the Reform Club.
[9] I think I heard afterwards that the sailors got him off his pony
once or twice; but the reward was not earned, and he lived to become
First Lord of the Admiralty just three years later!
[10] Only visible in the clearest weather. From a point farther south
(the Mull of Galloway) could be descried also, across the Solway Firth,
the Cumberland hills; and my grandfather, standing there, used to say
that he could see five kingdoms--the kingdom of Scotland, the kingdom
of Ireland, the kingdom of England, the kingdom of Man, and the kingdom
of Heaven!
[11] I had inherited Dunskey nearly fifty years before, on my
grandfather's death (1857). The place was bought in 1900 by Charles
Orr Ewing, M.P., who married my niece, the Glasgows' eldest daughter.
[12] A theory which, reduced to practice, had its disadvantages. I
remember Lord Rosebery writing to the papers complaining that the
lunatics of Epsom, finding no difficulty, under the new and improved
system, in escaping from duress, used occasionally to saunter from the
local asylum into his grounds, and, I think, even his house, near by.
[13] The reference, of course, is to _King Henry V._, Act iii., Sc. 2:
"And you, good yeomen,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture."
[14] My dear old cousin Felicia Skene, whose father had been one of
Scott's closest friends, told me that this had been her privilege. So
also did the late George Boyle, sometime Dean of Salisbury, who,
however, in his autobiography, speaks merely of having once seen Sir
Walter (looking very old and ill) when he came to call on his (the
Dean's) father.
[15] "If you happened to find an egg on a music-stool, what poem would
it remind you of?"
[16] James Hope Scott, the eminent parliamentary lawyer, friend of
Newman, Manning and Gladstone, and husband of Sir Walter's
granddaughter and eventual heiress, made his submission to Rome in
1851. His daughter Mary Monica (afterwards Hon. Mrs. Joseph Maxwell
Scott), inherited Abbotsford at his death; and it is now owned by her
son, General Walter Maxwell Scott.
[17] The _Dies Iræ_ and the _Stabat Mater_. See Lockhart, _Life of
Walter Scott_ (2nd Ed.), vol. x., p. 215.
[18] From the looms of Gobelin: presented by Louis XIV. to an Earl of
Stair, British Ambassador in Paris. They had come into the Dumfries
(Bute) family through the marriage of a son of the first Earl of Stair
to Penelope, Countess of Dumfries in her own right. It was a standing
grievance of our old friend the tenth Earl of Stair that these
tapestries were not at Lochinch.
[19] "Wale"=choice, or selection. A Fife laird, driving home across
Magus Moor after dining not wisely but too well, fell out of his gig,
and his wig fell off, but was recovered by his servant. "It's no' ma
wig, Davie, it's no' ma wig," he moaned as he lay in the mire,
thrusting the peruke away. "You'd best take it, sir," said the
serving-man dryly; "_there's nae wale o' wigs on Magus Moor_."
[20] They said much that was nasty, but they could not oust the
professor (though they tried their best) from his professorship. _Au
contraire_, he received promotion soon afterwards, being elected to the
Chair of Humanity; and a protest organized by certain bigots was
allowed to "lie on the table"--i.e., went into the waste-paper basket.
{56}
CHAPTER IV
1905-1906
An event of Benedictine interest in the autumn of 1905, and one which
attracted many visitors to Downside, our beautiful abbey among the
Mendip Hills, was the long-anticipated opening of the choir of the
great church. Special trains, an overflowing guest-house, elaborate
services, many congratulatory speeches, and much monastic hospitality,
were, as customary on such occasions, the order of the day.
Architecturally, I confess that I found the new choir disappointing: it
but confirmed the impression (which after many years had become a
conviction with me) that the art of building a real Gothic church on a
grand scale is lost, gone beyond hope of recovery. _Ecce signum!_
Design, material, workmanship all admirable, and the result, alas!
lifeless, as lifeless as (say) the modern cathedrals of Truro and
Liverpool and Edinburgh, the nave of Bristol, and the great church of
Our Lady at Cambridge. I have seen Downside compared with Lichfield:
nay, some one (greatly daring) placed pictures of them side by side in
some magazine. Vain comparison! Lichfield, built long centuries ago,
is _alive_ still--instinct with the life breathed into it by its
unknown creators in the ages of faith; but these great modern Gothic
churches seem to me {57} to have never lived at all, to have come into
existence still-born. No: Gothic architecture, in this century of
ours, is dead. Such life as it has is a simulated, imitative,
galvanized life, which is no more real life than the tunes ground out
of a pianola or a gramophone are real living music.[1] "'Tis true,
'tis pity: pity 'tis, 'tis true."
Another engagement which I had in the west about this time was to
preach at the opening of the new Benedictine church at Merthyr Tydvil.
Bishop Hedley and I travelled thither together from Cardiff, through a
country which God made extremely pretty, with its deep glens and hills
covered with {58} bracken and heather, but which man, in search of
coal, has blackened and defaced to an incredible extent: the whole
district, of course, a hive of industry. Lying in bed at night, I saw
through my blindless window the flames belching from a score of
furnace-chimneys down the valley, and thought what it must be to spend
one's life in such surroundings. A curious change to find oneself next
day in the verdant environment of Cardiff Castle, where, once within
the gates, one might be miles away from coalpits and from the great
industrial city close by. My room was the _quondam_ nursery, of which
the walls had been charmingly decorated by the fanciful genius of
William Burges (the restorer of the castle), with scenes from
children's fairy stories--Jack the Giant-killer and Cinderella and Red
Riding-hood and the rest, tripping round in delightful procession. The
Welsh metropolis was _en fête_ on the day of my arrival, in honour of
the town having become a city, and its mayor a lord-mayor; and Lord
Bute was giving a big luncheon to civic and other magnates in the
beautiful banqueting hall, adorned with historic frescoes and rich
stained glass. The family was smiling gently, during my visit, at the
news published "from a reliable source," that my young host was to be
the new Viceroy of Ireland. Another report, equally "reliable" (odious
word!) published, a little later, his portrait and not very eventful
biography, as that of the just-appointed Under-Foreign Secretary. Why
not Lord Chancellor or Commander-in-chief at once? one was as likely as
the other.
The reference to the commander-in-chief reminds me that the Oxford
Union was honoured this {59} (October) term by a visit from Lord
Roberts, who gave us a very informing lecture, illustrated with many
maps, on the N.W. frontier of India and was received by a crowded house
with positive shouts of welcome.[2] Almost equally well received, a
week later, was Lord Hugh Cecil, who had held no office in the Union in
his undergraduate days, but had often since taken part in its debates.
His theme on this occasion was the interminable fiscal question; and
the curiously poignant and personal note in his oratory appealed, as it
always did, to his youthful hearers, who supported him with their votes
as well as their applause.
A little later there was a great audience in the Town Hall, to hear Joe
Chamberlain inveigh against the new Government,[3] and preach _his_
fiscal gospel. He was in excellent form, and looked nothing like
seventy, though his long speech--his last, I think, before his great
break-down--certainly aged him visibly. A little incident at the
opening showed his undiminished aptitude for ready repartee. He
announced his intention of treating Tariff Reform from the Imperial
standpoint, adding, "I am not going to deal with the subject from the
economic side"; and then, as a derisive "Yah!" broke from some
disgruntled Liberals at the back of the hall, going on without a
moment's hesitation--"not, however, for the reason which I see suggests
itself to some of the _acuter_ minds among my audience!"
{60}
S---- H----, whom I found waiting to see me when I got home from the
Town Hall, told me that after two years in the Catholic Church he was
thinking of returning to the flesh-pots of Anglicanism, and said (among
other foolish things) that he had "a Renaissance mind!" I ventured to
remind him that he had also an immortal soul. How to increase his
income seemed his chief preoccupation; and he did not "see his way"
(that fatal phrase again!) to do this as a "practising" Catholic.
Wilfrid Ward, the Editor of the _Dublin Review_, had recently started a
"dining-and-debating-club" in London with a rather interesting
membership; and I went up in November to read a paper on "Catholics at
the National Universities." I was less "heckled" than I expected; but
there was some "good talk" (as old Johnson would have said), and I
enjoyed the evening. Less enjoyable was another evening spent with our
Architectural Society at Oxford, to hear a lecture by Wells (fellow and
future Warden) of Wadham, on "Tudor Oxford" an interesting topic, and
treated by a man who knew his subject, but disfigured by strongly
Protestant interpolations about monks, Jesuits, and "Bloody Mary," much
out of place in an address to a quite "undenominational" society. It
recalled another paper read to us on the inoffensive subject of
"Bells." The reader on that occasion adroitly founded on the text of
the inscriptions on church bells a violent diatribe against the
invocation of saints and other "mediæval corruptions," to the intense
annoyance of my little friend the Master of Pembroke (himself an
Anglican bishop), who sat next me, and whom I with difficulty
restrained until {61} the end of the lecture from rising to protest, as
he ultimately did with some warmth, against "turning an archæological
address into a polemical sermon."
Term over, I made my way north to Beaufort, arriving there just in time
to assist at the unveiling in the village square of Beauly, of the
Lovat Scouts' Memorial, for which I had written the inscription.[4] A
pretty function, with much local enthusiasm, an excellent speech from
The Mackintosh, our new Lord Lieutenant, and of course the inevitable
"cake and wine" banquet, at which I toasted Lovat. Christmas followed,
with a big and merry family party, the usual seasonable revels, and
some delightful singing from the wife of a Ross-shire laird, an
American lady with a well-trained voice of astonishing sweetness and
compass. The New Year found the whole country agog about the coming
General Election; and at Arundel, whither I went from Beaufort, I heard
Lady Edmund Talbot falsify Johnson's cynical dictum[5] by making an
excellent {62} speech on behalf of her husband, who was laid up in
London. He retained his seat for Chichester by a good majority; and
"dear little Wigtownshire" remained faithful to a lost cause, returning
Lord Stair's eldest son.[6] But on the whole the "Radical reaction,"
"turn of the tide," "swing of the pendulum"--whichever you liked to
call it--was complete, the very first victim of the _débâcle_ being my
brother-in-law, Charles Dalrymple, who was dismissed at Ipswich, after
twenty years' service, by nearly 2,000 votes. He had been given a
Privy Councillorship by the outgoing Government; but this poorly
compensated him for being ousted from the House of Commons, which had
been his "nursing mother" for nearly forty years.[7] Manchester was
absolutely swept by the Liberals, poor Sir James Fergusson going to
join his brother in limbo, and Arthur Balfour being beaten by a larger
majority than either of them. The final result showed--Radical members
returned, 378, against 156 Unionists. The new Ministry put educational
reform in the front of their programme; and we Catholics, with a
section of Anglicans (for they were by no means united on the subject),
organized meetings in advance against the nefarious projects of the
Government. I attended some of them, and heard many speeches, {63}
some of them terribly long and "stodgy." A Hampshire parson, by whom I
sat at one of these dreary meetings, told me, by way of illustrating
the educational standard of his peasant parishioners, that a bridegroom
would thus render the promise in the marriage-service: "With my body I
thee wash up, and with all my hurdle goods I thee and thou!" While the
bride's version of _her_ promise would be: "To 'ave an' to 'old from
this day fortnight for betterer 'orse, for richerer power, in
siggerness 'ealth, to love cherries and to bay!" I copied these
interesting formulas into my note-book on the spot.
I was happily able to escape, at the end of term, from these political
alarums and excursions to the Continent. I longed for Italy; but the
friend who accompanied me (and financed us both) insisted on carrying
me to Nice--a place I never loved; and it proved sunless, the palms
shivering in a mistral and we shivering in sympathy. I used to escape
the odious Promenade des Anglais (much more a Promenade des Allemands)
by climbing the steep steps into old-world Nizza, and talking to the
good simple folk, who (so the parish priest assured me) remained devout
and pious, and wonderfully little affected by the manners and morals of
the objectionable crowd which haunts Nice more than any other spot on
the _Côte d'Azur_, except, I suppose, Monte Carlo. The latter resort
we eschewed (my friend and host was no gambler), but we had many
strolls through the toy-city of Monaco, where the tourist is little in
evidence. I noticed, crowning the picturesque promontory, the new
cathedral built by M. Blanc out of casino profits, which the
ecclesiastical {64} authorities accepted, I suppose, on the principle
of the good old maxim, _Non olet!_[8] We took a run to Milan before
turning homewards, and after an hour in the cathedral--impressively
vast, but not (to my thinking) impressively beautiful, either without
or within--spent a long day in exploring the far more interesting
churches of SS. Maurizio, Maria delle Grazie, Vittore, Lorenzo,
Giorgio, and Ambrogio, every one well worth visiting, and the
last-named unique, of course, in charm and interest.[9] Turin, where
we stayed a day, was wet and cold; but the arcades which line the chief
streets at least keep the rain off. At Paris the sun was actually
shining, and the trees on the boulevards sprouting greenly. I read in
the English papers here of the engagement of my nephew Kelburn (the
family had only recently dropped the final e from both the title and
the castle)[10] to a Miss Hyacinth Bell, whose pretty floral name
conveyed nothing to me. The {65} new Minister of Education[11] had
also published his "Birreligious" Bill (as some wags nicknamed it): it
seemed to satisfy nobody--least of all, of course, Catholics.
I spent Easter, as usual, at Arundel, where a gathering of Maxwells
(the Duchess's young relatives) made the big house cheerful and
homelike. The summer term at Oxford was an uneventful one, the most
interesting event that I recall being our annual Canning and Chatham
dinner, with a more distinguished gathering than usual. Lord Milner
made a remarkable and interesting speech in reply to the toast of "The
Empire," and "Smith of Wadham," M.P. (the future Lord Chancellor), was
also very eloquent. The Duke of Leinster (then up at Balliol), who sat
next me, spoke of the hereditary good relations between his family and
Maynooth College, and amused me by saying that he thought it must be
"much more interesting" to be a Catholic in England than in Ireland! I
motored some of my young Benedictines over to Blenheim one day; and we
were, with other sight-seers, escorted over the show-part of the
palace. The little Duke burst in on us in one state-room, and retired
precipitately, banging the door with an audible "D--n!" "His Grace the
Dook of Marlborough!" announced, without turning a hair, the solemn
butler who was acting as showman; and our party was, of course, duly
impressed.
{66}
I was summoned this summer to three weddings, all of interest to me,
the first being that of my nephew Kelburn, a pretty country function in
Surrey. The Bishop of Worcester tied the knot--"impressively," as the
reporters say (but why cannot an Anglican dignitary read the Bible
without "mouthing" it?), and I afterwards found in his wife, Lady
Barbara Yeatman-Biggs, an old friend of my childhood.[12] Many
relatives, of course, were present here, and also, ten days later, in
the Chelsea church where Archdeacon Sinclair ("genial and impressive,"
the newspapers called _him_) united my younger sister, _en secondes
noces_, to Captain Cracroft Jarvis. I spent the evening of her wedding
in the House of Commons, where I had a mind to see our famous new
Radical Parliament-men gathered together. A very "scratch lot" they
seemed to me to be; and Archbishop Walsh of Dublin, whom I found beside
me in the D.S.G., seemed as little impressed as myself by their
"carryings-on." His Grace was so pleased with Carlyle's definition, or
description, of the House, which I quoted to him (he was apparently
unfamiliar with it), that he promptly copied it down in his note-book:
"a high-soaring, hopelessly-floundering, ever-babbling, inarticulate,
dumb dark entity!"
My third wedding was a picturesque Irish {67} one--that of Ninian
Crichton Stuart to Lord Gormanston's only daughter, with, of course, a
large party of Butes and Prestons gathered at Gormanston Castle, a huge
pile mostly modern; but the quaint little chapel, Jacobean Gothic
without and Empire style within, gaily adorned with lilies,
marguerites, and trailing smilax, dates from 1687.[13] It was far too
small to hold the wedding guests, who perforce remained on the lawn
outside. I walked with our host, later in the day, in the splendidly
timbered park, and the great picturesque untidy Irish garden; and he
held forth on the hardship of having to live uncomfortably in Ireland
after the luxury of Colonial governorships. "_Ireland!_ a rotten old
country, only fit, as some one said, to dig up and use as a
top-dressing for England!" was the summing-up of his lordship, whose
ancestors had owned the land on which we were walking for some seven
centuries.[14] I thought his bemoanings rather pathetic; but he amused
me by his recital of a prescription for "The Salvation of Ireland"
which once appeared (anonymously) in a northern newspaper. "Drain your
Bogs--Fat more Hogs--Lots more Lime--Lots more Chalk--LOTS MORE
WORK--LOTS LESS TALK!"
I returned to Oxford in time for Commemoration, at {68} which Lord
Milner and Mgr. Duchesne, two of our be-doctored guests, were very
warmly received; attended the big luncheon in All Souls' library, where
the agreeable ladies who sat on my right and left were totally unknown
to me; and drank coffee in the sunlit quad, where a band played and I
met many friends. Next day I took ship at Southampton (a noisy, shaky,
creaky ship it was) for Guernsey, on a visit to my brother, who was in
command of the Gunners there. I thought the approach to the island
very pretty on a still summer morning: quaint houses and church towers
climbing the hill among trees and gardens, with a foreground of white
sails and blue sea. Very pretty too was "Ordnance House" and its old
garden, with hedges of golden calceolarias and other attractions. I
spent a pleasant week here, delighted with the rocky coast (reminding
me of my native Wigtownshire) and the luxuriant gardens, especially
that of the Lieutenant-Governor, whose charming house (he occupied Lord
de Saumarez's seat) was full, as was to be expected,[15] of beautiful
naval prints and other relics. Of a morning I would walk down to Fort
Cornet--part of it of great antiquity--and watch my brother's guns at
sea-target practice, till my head ached with the roar and concussion.
The shooting was excellent, but the electric firing-apparatus
occasionally went wrong, which might be awkward in battle! I was
interested in the fine fifteenth-century parish church of St.
Peter-Port, of flamboyant Gothic: the effect of the interior {69}
nave-arches rising almost from the ground, with hardly any pillars, is
most singular.
I had to hurry back to "the adjacent island of Great Britain" (as the
Cumbrae minister put it),[16] to attend the jubilee dinner in London of
St. Elisabeth's Catholic Hospital, with Norfolk in the chair: a great
success, owing, I think, to the unusual circumstance that dinner and
wine were provided gratis, the result being much-enhanced subscriptions
from the grateful banqueters. I was present a little later at the
coming-of-age celebrations of Lord Gainsborough's son and heir at
Campden, the beautiful Jacobean family seat on the Cotswold slopes. We
sat down seventy to dinner on the evening of Campden's birthday; and
the youth acquitted himself excellently of what I consider (and I have
had some experience of majority banquets, including my own) one of the
most embarrassing tasks which can fall to any young man's lot. I,
being unexpectedly assigned the easier duty of replying for the
visitors, utilized the admirably appropriate opening which I had heard
not long before from the witty and eloquent American Ambassador,[17] at
the dinner of the Royal Literary Fund, and which was _not_ a "chestnut"
then, whatever it may be now.
From Campden I went on to Leamington to visit {70} another brother, who
had invited me to witness the Warwick Pageant, I think the first, and
certainly the most effective and successful, of these spectacles, for
which the craze was just beginning to spread through England. The
dramatic episodes at Warwick were not always dramatic, and the dialogue
and acting were perhaps not quite worthy of the superb surroundings;
but the setting of the spectacle was absolutely perfect. Behind us the
towers and battlements of the feudal castle rose above the woods: on
our right the giant oaks of the park, in their glorious midsummer
foliage: to our left the Avon glistening like a ribbon of burnished
silver; and in front, beyond a great expanse of verdant lawn (the
"stage" of the pageant), a prospect of enchanting wooded glades and
long-drawn sylvan avenues, down which came the long processions of
players, mounted and afoot, with singular and striking effect. Lord
and Lady Willoughby de Broke, who appeared (with the splendidly mounted
members of their hunt) as Louis XI. and Margaret of Scotland, were
conspicuous, if only because the former acted his part and spoke his
lines best of the whole company. The concerted singing was quite
charming; and charming, too, the spectacle of the hundred boys of the
famous old Warwick Grammar-school, in their pretty dresses of russet
and gold, and their masters costumed as old-world pedagogues.
Altogether a delightful and notable entertainment, which I was very
glad to have seen; and in other respects I enjoyed my visit, my brother
taking me to Kenilworth, Stoneleigh, Charlecote, and other interesting
places in that most interesting country. The August Bank-holiday found
me at Scarborough, {71} of all places in the world, spending the day
there with the two schoolboy sons of my host at a country house in the
East Riding. I recall, at the aquarium there, my interest on
discovering a "fact not generally known"--namely that fishes can, and
do, yawn. We saw a turbot yawn twice, and a cod once. The cod's yawn
was remarkable chiefly for its width, but the turbot's was much more
noteworthy. It begins at the lips, which open as if to suck in
water;[18] then the jaws distend themselves and so the yawn goes on,
works through the back of the head, stretching the plates of the skull
almost to cracking point, and finally comes out at the gills, which
open showing their red lining, and are inflated for a moment; and then,
with a gasping kind of shiver, the fish flattens out again, until, if
unusually bored, as it appeared to be by our presence, it relieves its
feelings by another yawn. I left my young friends to enjoy the varied
humours of the front; and climbing up (as I had done at Nice) "far from
the madding crowd," discovered many quaint and charming bits of old
Scarborough. A policeman told me that they reckoned that at least
120,000 visitors were in the town that day; and they all seemed
collected together to view the evening firework display above the Spa.
The biggest crowds I had ever seen were at Epsom on Derby Day, between
Mortlake and Putney on Boat-race Day, and in St. Peter's Square at Rome
on the election-day of Leo XIII.: but this great _congeries_ at
Scarborough surpassed them all in impressiveness. I {72} turned my
back on the "set pieces" and Roman candles, gazed almost awestruck at
the vast sea of upturned white faces on the beach below, lit up from
time to time by the lurid glow of coloured fires, and listened to the
cry "Ah-h-h!" of the great multitude as the rockets shrilled up into
the starlit sky. _Mirabile visu et auditu!_ it somehow made me think
(at Scarborough on Bank Holiday evening!) of the Last Day and the
Valley of Jehoshaphat. From Scarborough, before going north to
Scotland, I went for a few days to Longridge Towers, Sir Hubert
Jerningham's beautiful place near Berwick, with views on every side
over the rolling Border country. "Norham's castle steep," built nine
centuries before by Flambard, the "Magnificent" Bishop of Durham, was
on the Longridge property; and I spent some delightful hours there with
my accomplished host, who was a charming companion, and (as became a
_bachelier-ès-lettres_ of Paris University) could tell a good story as
well in French as he could in English. He showed me among many
curiosities a letter from an early Quaker which I thought worth
copying:--
FRIEND JOHN,--
I desire thee to be so kind as to go to one of those sinful men in the
flesh called an attorney, and let him take out an instrument, with a
seal fixed thereto, by means whereof we may seize the outward
tabernacle of George Green, and bring him before the lambskin men at
Westminster, and teach him to do as he would be done by; and so I rest
thy friend in the light,
M.D.
Mountstuart claimed me for a short visit when I had got across the
Border; and I found the big house very cheerful under the new and
youthful régime, and my hostess, now a happy mother, driving the baby
Lady Mary about the island and exhibiting {73} her to the admiring
farmers' wives. I made my way up the West coast to Fort Augustus to
spend the rest of the Oxford "Long," travelling thence in September to
Aberdeen to read a paper at the annual conference of the Catholic Truth
Society. There was a large attendance, Lady Lovat doing hostess at a
big reception one evening; and it was pleasant to find oneself in a
genuinely Scottish, as well as Catholic, gathering, presided over by a
Highland bishop (Æneas Chisholm of beloved memory), as patriotic and
popular as he was pious and pleasant. My paper, on "The Holy See and
the Scottish Universities," was very well received, and the local
newspapers did me the honour of reprinting it verbatim next morning,
while the _Scotsman_ devoted a leading article to it. Our principal
meeting, in the largest hall of the city, wound up not only with "Faith
of our Fathers" but "God save the King." "Is this necessary?"
whispered a prelate of Nationalist leanings to the presiding bishop, in
the middle of the loyal anthem. "It may not be necessary," replied
Bishop Chisholm, in a very audible "aside," "but it is very right and
extremely proper." _O si sic omnes!_"[19]
[1] Such seeming exceptions as the noble churches of St. John at
Norwich and St. Philip at Arundel, the Duke of Newcastle's sumptuous
chapel at Clumber, the impressive church of the Irvingites in Gordon
Square, are only satisfactory in so far as they are more or less exact
imitations of mediæval Gothic. The cloisters of Fort Augustus Abbey
are beautiful because they are reproductions, from A. W. Pugin's
note-books, of real live fifteenth-century tracery. The more the
modern Gothic architect strives to be original (a hard saying, but a
true one), the more certainly he fails. And to see how feebly
ineffective even his imitations can be, one need only look at the
entrance tower of St. Swithun's Quad at Magdalen, and compare it with
the incomparable Founder's Tower immediately opposite.
Let me add that I have no animus against Downside in particular: it is
merely an instance taken at random to illustrate my thesis. I had felt
just the same, years before, about the first grandiose plans for our
own church at Fort Augustus. "Go to Westminster Abbey--you can see it
from your windows," I wrote to the architect, "and get an inspiration
from that glorious temple of _living_ Gothic. Your elaborate designs
have no life, no reality. If they were ever realized among our
Highland hills, I should expect some genie of the Arabian Nights to
swoop down one day and whisk the whole impossible structure back to
Victoria Street!" I still recall the pleasure and approval with which
Dom Gilbert Dolan of Downside, one of the most distinguished of modern
Benedictine architects, read this letter.
[2] Who was the reporter who once announced (I believe it was really a
printer's error and not a little bit of malice) that "the Conservatives
among the audience received the candidate with welcoming snouts"?
[3] Arthur Balfour had resigned the premiership in the previous week,
and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had succeeded him.
[4] Not an easy task! for Lovat wanted the Scouts to have all the
honour, which _they_ wished assigned to him. My inscription (I believe
generally approved) ran: Erected by the Lovat Tenantry and Feuars of
the Aird and Fort Augustus Districts to Commemorate the Raising of the
Lovat Scouts for Service in South Africa by Simon Joseph, 16th Lord
Lovat, C.V.O., C.B., D.S.O., who Desired to Show that the Martial
Spirit of their Ancestors still Animates the Highlanders of To-Day, and
Whose Confidence was Justified by the Success in the Field of the
Gallant Corps Whose Existence was Due to His Loyalty and Patriotism.
A.D. 1905.
[5] "A woman speaking in public is like a dog walking on its hind legs:
it is not well done, but you are surprised to find it done at all."
[6] My native county remained consistently and uninterruptedly Tory for
fifty years--from 1868, when it returned Lord Garlics, until 1918, when
its separate representation was taken from it by the new Redistribution
Act.
[7] Sir Charles had sat in Parliament continuously, except for a few
weeks, since 1868, when he was first elected for Buteshire. It was
only this very slight break which prevented him from being at one time
the Father of the House of Commons.
[8] I heard an odd story to the effect that at the Anglican Church at
Monte Carlo no one had ever heard any hymn before No. 37 announced to
be sung; the reason being that the mention of any one from 1 to 36
would instantly have sent a quota of the congregation racing down to
stake their money on that number! It was, and is, a current
superstition that a number suggested by something as remote as possible
from gambling is likely to prove a lucky one.
[9] Due, I think, largely to the fact that though the greater part of
the church is ninth and tenth century work, it has the air of being
very much older, and seems to recall the days of St. Ambrose himself.
[10] "Kelburn" was, I believe, the old spelling. About the same time
the Duke of Athole dropped _his_ final _e_ also; and the name-board at
the well-known station, at his castle gates, displayed, as I observed
on my next journey to the Highlands, the legend "Blair Atholl," instead
of "Blair Athole" as formerly.
[11] Augustine Birrell, the distinguished essayist, whose literary
method, easy, witty, and urbane, has evoked the word "birrelling." He
succeeded Mr. Bryce a little later as Irish Secretary, and retained
that office (in which he was no more successful than most of his
predecessors) under Mr. Asquith.
[12] _Née_ Legge: one of a crowd of sisters (Ladies Louisa, Octavia,
Wilhelmina, Barbara, Charlotte, and I know not how many more) with whom
I made friends as a small boy when staying with my parents at
Aix-la-Chapelle; and we saw much of them afterwards. We children used
to call them the "Lady-legs." Their brother Augustus, who was also a
friend of my childhood, became Bishop of Lichfield in 1891.
[13] Built in James II.'s reign (the original castle was of Henry
VII.'s), when the accession of a Catholic King enabled Catholics,
British and Irish, to emerge for a short time from the Catacombs.
[14] Lord Gormanston, like Lord Talbot de Malahide and a few others,
represented the Anglo-Irish landowners of the time of Henry VII., "Lord
of Ireland." My friend Lord Kenmare was typical of the enriched
Elizabethan settlers in the country, while Sir Henry Bellingham was one
of the seventeenth-century group of immigrants popularly known as
"Cromwell's Drummers." Three out of the four mentioned were Catholics.
[15] The first baronet and Baron de Saumarez was second in command at
the Battle of the Nile, and was raised to the peerage by William IV.
[16] It was the parish minister of Millport, in Cumbrae (off the coast
of Ayrshire) who habitually prayed at Divine Service for the
"inhabitants of the Greater and the Lesser Cumbraes, and the adjacent
islands of Great Britain and Ireland!"
[17] The late Mr. Choate. "When I came into this assembly this
evening, I felt very much like the prophet Daniel when he got into the
lion's den. When Daniel looked around, and saw the company in which he
was, 'Well,' he said, '_whoever's got to do the after-dinner speaking,
it won't be me!_'"
[18] A turbot's mouth is twisted on one side, rather as if it had
belonged to a round fish which some one had accidentally trodden on,
and had squashed half-flat.
[19] My friend Lord Ralph Kerr had, some time previously, refused to
preside at a meeting of the same Society (of which he was president) in
another Scottish city, on learning that the local committee would not
permit the National Anthem to be sung at the close. The reason
alleged, that "the Irish in the audience would not stand it," did not,
naturally, strike the gallant Scottish general as an adequate one.
{74}
CHAPTER V
1906-1907
Before returning to Oxford for the autumn term of 1906, I spent a
pleasant ten days at Abbotsford with my old friends the Lane Foxes, and
visited with them Dryburgh Abbey, Galashiels, and other interesting
places. Melrose, too, we thoroughly explored, agreeing that (_pace_
Sir Walter) the time for seeing it "aright" was _not_ "by the pale
moonlight," but on a sunlit afternoon, which alone does justice to the
marvellous colouring--grey shot with rose and yellow--of the old stone.
Modern textbooks talk of the "decadence" of its architecture, but it
has details of surpassing beauty nevertheless. It was ill exchanging
the beauties of Tweedside in perfect September weather for foggy
London. I arrived there on a Sunday morning, just in time for high
mass at Westminster Cathedral, of which a fog rather enhances the
charm, softening the raw brick walls and imparting a mysterious and
shadowy splendour to the great spaces under the lofty domes. The grave
polyphonic music, perfectly rendered, greatly pleased me; but the
acoustics of the building seemed to be defective.[1] A noted preacher
was discoursing {75} to an immense congregation on "Pessimism"--so the
notice-boards informed me; but it might as well have been on Optimism
for anything I could hear of it. Walking homewards to Regent's Park, I
looked in at a Ritualistic church in Red Lion Square, where a singular
function was in progress in presence of the (schismatic) Archbishop of
Sinai, under the auspices of a body styling itself "The Anglican and
Orthodox Churches Union."[2] As I entered, a clergyman was just
remarking from the pulpit that as there was no visible Church on earth,
or as, at any rate, it was temporally broken to bits, there was no use
in looking for a visible head! a theory which his audience may or may
not have found satisfactory.[3]
I lingered for a day at Birmingham, on my way to Oxford, to attend the
opening of the nave of the Newman Memorial Church. It was the
sixty-first anniversary of Newman's reception into the Church at
Littlemore, as well as the sixth of the death of Lord Bute, whose
conversion was a fruit of the Oxford movement, of which Newman was the
inspiring genius. I was pleased with the simplicity, even austerity,
of the building, relieved to some extent by the beautiful tints of the
double row of marble monoliths, and by the warm russet of the coved
roof of Spanish chestnut. Eight or ten prelates (the Archbishop of
Westminster was the preacher) gave dignity to the function, which {76}
was followed by a rather higgledy-piggledy luncheon at the "Plough and
Harrow" next door. The Norfolk family were of course present in force
at their beloved Oratory, the Duke, with sisters, brothers-in-law,
nephews and nieces, being prominent among the large gathering. Lord
Ralph Kerr's boy, a pupil of the Fathers, showed me over the school;
and I rather marvelled to see an educational establishment of such
deserved repute housed in so quaint a collection of lean-to's and
shanties, the only thing worth looking at being the fine refectory of
the Oratory, which the schoolboys used as their dining-room.
I found Oxford swept and garnished for the new term, and my old friend
the President of Magdalen installed as Vice-chancellor, and performing
his multifarious duties (which included the matriculation of my two
Benedictine freshmen) with the mingled dignity and urbanity which
characterized him. Grissell, who was in residence this term, invited
me to luncheon to meet "a Roman Prince," and a lady who had, he said,
been miraculously cured by the Madonna of Pompeii. The cure,
unfortunately, had been incomplete or temporary, for the lady had had a
relapse, was in bed, and could not turn up. The Roman Prince, or
princeling, proved to be Don Andrea Buoncompagni-Ludovisi, descendant
of two Popes,[4] and a freshman at Merton; a pleasant youth, {77} but
his English, though fluent, was vulgar rather than princely. I
wondered where he had picked it up. A different type of Italian whom I
met the same week was the distinguished South Italian violinist, Signor
Simonetti. He had been fiddling at our Musical Club on the previous
evening--_roba Napolitana_, but clever and interesting. Our
conversation, however, turned not on music but on the "Evil Eye," as I
was anxious to know to what extent the belief in this still prevailed
in Italy. He said it was as persistent as ever, especially in the
south, and told us how the most famous advocate in Naples, in quite
recent times, was so universally accredited with this mysterious power,
that when the leader opposed to him in an impending lawsuit died on the
eve of the case coming on, another lawyer was only with the greatest
difficulty found to take his place. _He_ was killed by an accident on
the very morning of the trial; and the dreaded advocate was face to
face with the judge, who was in fear and trembling, as he expected to
have to give judgment against him. The story went that when the judge
rose to speak, his spectacles accidentally fell out of place. "I am
struck blind!" he cried out; "forgive me, Signor Avvocato--I have not
yet pronounced against you." Suddenly his spectacles fell across his
nose again. "Forgive me again," he said; "I can see after all!" The
Neapolitans laughed, but they believed all the same. When this
redoubtable advocate fell ill, half Naples was praying fervently for
his death; and if one reproached them for desiring the death of a
fellowman, the answer was, "Non è un uomo, è un _jettatore_!" Signor
Simonetti, I felt pretty sure, himself {78} sympathized with this
sentiment, although he passed it off as a joke. I contributed a tale
of a certain Count who had been pointed out to me, during my visit to
Naples in the previous year, as the most dreaded _jettatore_ in the
city. He was dining alone at a restaurant, and I was told that no one,
if they could avoid it, would sit down in his company. Meeting his
cousin, the old Duca di M----, in the street, he gave him his arm. The
Duca suddenly slipped, fell, and broke his leg. He was stunned by the
shock; and his first words, on recovering consciousness, were whispered
(in confidential Neapolitan patois) into the ear of his formidable
kinsman: "Grazie, perchè tu me putive accidere, e te si cuntentate de
m'arruinare!" ("Thanks; for you might have killed me, and you contented
yourself with laming me!")[5]
Some of us went over to Radley College for the usual All Saints' play,
the _Frogs_ of Aristophanes, in Greek; and it _was_ Greek, no doubt, to
the majority of the audience. Books of the words in English were,
however, supplied--"an attention," remarked a local paper, "which the
ladies received with unconcealed satisfaction, and the gentlemen with
satisfaction which they vainly endeavoured to conceal." Some of the
undergraduates present doubtless, like the schoolboy in _Vice Versa_,
"recognized several words from the Greek Grammar"; but what pleased me
was an elderly clergyman who declined to share his wife's copy of the
translation. "No, no, my {79} dear," he said, "I can follow the Greek
quite sufficiently well!" but before the end of the first act they were
both very contentedly looking over the English version together.
Michaelmas Term is not of course the time for triumphs in the Schools;
but we were all delighted with the final achievement of the invincible
Cyril Martindale, S.J., who this autumn crowned his previous
successes--first classes in Moderations and "Greats," the Hertford and
Craven Scholarships, and the Chancellor's and Gaisford Prizes for Latin
and Greek Verse--by carrying off the Derby Scholarship for the year.
Another Jesuit much in evidence at Oxford at this time was Bernard
Vaughan, who was preaching sermons, giving lectures, and attending
discussions and debates with characteristic energy. Colum Stuart and I
heard him deliver himself, at a full-dress meeting of the Union, on the
subject of Egotism. His perfervid oratory made one occasionally
_squirm_ (it is the only word); but he was very well received by his
young audience, and carried the House with him.
To the Jesuits and Benedictines, already domiciled in Oxford, were
added this winter the Franciscan Capuchins, who opened with some
ceremony their church and "seraphic college"[6] at Cowley. It was
something of an historic event, this returning of the Friars to Oxford
after a rustication of 367 years; and it evoked general and kindly
interest {80} quite outside Catholic circles. Sir Hubert Jerningham
accompanied me to the inaugural function, and to dinner later at Mgr.
Kennard's. We spoke of the decay of the good old custom, universal in
my youth, of grace before meals. Our host recalled a country squire
who, perfunctorily looking round his table, would mutter, "No parson?
Thank God!"[7] and hastily seat himself. I told of a Scots farmer on a
Caledonian Canal steam-boat, who, invited to "return thanks," delivered
himself of this sentiment, "O Lord, we're all floating down the stream
of time to the ocean of eternity, for Christ's sake, Amen!" and Sir
Hubert had a family story of the chaplain who, if he espied
champagne-glasses on the table, would begin his grace with "Bountiful
Jehovah!" but if only sherry-glasses, "We are not worthy of the least
of these Thy mercies." We all remembered Mr. Mallock's canon, who,
glancing with clasped hands at the _menu_, beginning with two soups,
comprising three _entrées_, and ending with Strasburg paté, began, "O
Thou that sittest between the Cherubim, whose glory is so exceeding
that even they veil their faces before Thee; consecrate to their
appointed use these poor morsels before us, and make them humble
instruments in the great scheme of our sanctification." I took Sir
Hubert next day over the Clarendon Press, which I had never myself
seen. We were both struck by two things: all the machinery was
American, and there was no electric light, the whole place being lit by
flaring {81} gas-jets.[8] We had planned that evening to go and hear
George Wyndham speak at the Union; but it occurred to us, as a happy
thought, to stay comfortably at home on a foggy November night, and
read his speech in next day's _Times_. The only important politician I
heard speak this term was Bonar Law, by whom I sat at the Conservative
Club dinner one evening. I found him a very pleasant neighbour, and he
made as good a speech as I ever heard at a gathering of the kind.
I made my way northward to Beaufort for Christmas, feeling a bit of a
wreck after a sharp bout of influenza, and enjoyed to the full the
breezy sunshine which so often prevails there in mid-winter. There was
a shooting-party at New Year, with pleasant _al fresco_ luncheons in
sheltered corners of leafless woods, and of an evening music, and ghost
stories round a great fire of beechen logs. Of telepathy between the
dying and the living Lord Hamilton gave me a striking instance. He had
served in South Africa; and at dawn, sleeping on the veldt, was aroused
by an unmistakable voice thrice calling his name. The voice was his
father's, of whose death he heard next day by cable. The quiet
conviction with which he narrated this little incident impressed me
much.
Staying at an uncle's in Edinburgh on my way south, I met at dinner
Lord Dunedin and some other interesting people; and there was some
"good {82} talk" on books and poetry. Some one quoted Swinburne's
opinion that the two finest lines in the language[9] were Browning's--
"As the king-bird, with ages on his plumes,
Travels to die in his ancestral glooms."
Three unhackneyed images, from the _City of the Soul_, I noted as
admirable:
"The distant rook's faint cawing, harsh and sweet."
"Black was his hair, as hyacinths by night."
"Wet green eyes, like a full chalk stream."
The mention of Mallock reminded me of some of his delectable similes:
"Miss Drake dropped a short curtsey, which resembled the collapse of a
concertina."
"Above them a seagull passed, like the drifting petals of a magnolia."
"She advanced slowly towards the group, moving along the carpet like a
clockwork mouse on wheels."
"Her eyes had the brown moisture that glimmers on a slug's back."
A cousin of mine at this dinner, lately returned from China, amused me
by the information that the pigeon-English word, or phrase, for a
bishop was "Number one topside heaven pidgin-man!"
On the evening of my arrival in London, a geographical friend carried
me to a notable meeting of his Society at Queen's Hall--the sailor Duke
of the Abruzzi lecturing, in quaint staccato {83} Italian-English, on
his ascent of Ruanzori, in Equatorial Africa. The King (with the
Prince of Wales) was on the platform--stout, grey-bearded, and rather
bored, I fancied, at being deprived of his after-dinner cigar: he made
a nice little speech of thanks and appreciation. A day or two later
came the startling news of the great earthquake in Jamaica, the only
Englishman who lost his life being my dear old friend Sir James
Fergusson, whose body was found beneath the ruins of a tobacconist's
shop in Kingston. He was a man of many gifts and many friends, who had
served his country with distinction in almost every part of the Empire;
and his death was a real tragedy, as well as a very real grief to me.
It was followed very shortly by that of another old friend, Susan Lady
Sherborne; and two very pleasant houses in Cornwall Gardens and Brook
Street, where I had spent many happy hours, were thus closed to me.
There was some talk, a little later, of a memorial to Sir James, the
Anglican Bishop of the West Indies suggesting that this should take the
form of subscriptions to his church restoration scheme. I ventured
strongly to deprecate this proposal in the columns of _The Times_, and
my objections were emphatically endorsed by Mr. Fleming, the well-known
Presbyterian minister in Belgravia.[10]
Two more deaths I may note in the early spring of 1907--the first that
of Professor Pelham, president {84} of Trinity; a gentleman and a
scholar, a real loss to Oxford, and (incidentally) one of my kindest
friends among college heads, just as his brother Sidney (famous slow
bowler and future archdeacon) had been thirty years before, when I was
a feather-headed freshman at Magdalen. In the same week died our
worthy Chancellor, Lord Goschen, after little more than three years of
office. Lords Rosebery and Curzon of Kedleston emerged as the
favourites among the many candidates "in the air"; but dining with a
large party at Lord Teignmouth's a little later, I heard it confidently
said that the country parsons would almost certainly "bring Curzon in."
They came up, as a matter of fact, in such swarms that they practically
swamped the election, Lord Curzon obtaining 1,101 votes against Lord
Rosebery's 440. I sat, by the way, at Lord Teignmouth's dinner next an
American "scientist" (odious word!) of some kind, who told me some odd
things about the Lower Mississippi. That river, he said, had, in 176
years, shortened itself by 242 miles--an average of about l 1/10 miles
per year. From this it followed that in the old Oolitic-Silurian
period, some 100,000 years ago, the lower Mississippi was upwards of
1,300,000 miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a
fishing-rod!
I went to Downside in March, for the solemn blessing of the new abbot,
my kind and learned friend Dom Cuthbert Butler. The elaborate ceremony
took nearly three hours: we were mercifully spared a sermon, but, _en
revanche_, the episcopal and abbatial speeches at the subsequent
luncheon were long and rather wearisome. At Fort Augustus, {85}
whatever the occasion, we never in those days derogated from the good
old monastic usage of silence, and public reading, in the refectory.
_Summum ibi fiat silentium_, said Saint Benedict: "let no _mussitatio_
[delicious Low Latin word for "whispering"] be heard there, or any
voice save that of the reader alone." The custom was one, I think, as
congenial to our guests as to their monastic hosts.
I was preoccupied at this time with the rapidly-failing health of my
oldest Oxford friend, H. D. Grissell of Brasenose, who spent half his
year in Rome, and the other half in what seemed a bit of old Rome
transported to Oxford. He was the most pertinacious and indefatigable
_collector_ I ever knew: coins, books and bindings, brass-rubbings,
autographs, book-plates, holy relics, postage-stamps, even birds'
eggs--all was fish that came to his far-flung net; and he laboured
incessantly to make all his collections, as far as possible, complete.
I found the old man at this time, rather pathetically, trying to
complete the collection of eggshells which he had begun as a Harrow boy
sixty years before. He insisted on exhibiting every drawer of his
cabinet, and was greatly pleased with the motto which, I told him, Sir
Walter Trevelyan had inscribed on _his_ egg-cabinet: "Hic Argus esto,
non Briareus"; or, in plain English, "Look, but don't touch!"[11]
Grissell said he would like to affix this classical caution to all his
collections of curios; but he did not live to do this, or indeed to do
much else of {86} any kind. He left England before Easter for Rome;
and there (as perhaps he would have wished) he died very suddenly a few
weeks later. By his own desire his body was brought back to England,
at great trouble and cost (these _post mortem_ migrations never
appealed to me), and was laid near his parents' graves in the pretty
country churchyard of Mickleham, in Surrey. There was a large
gathering in the pouring rain, Professor Robinson Ellis and I
representing his many Oxford friends. As his literary executor, I came
into possession of a great number of curious and interesting letters
and documents, dealing chiefly with Roman matters and the early days of
the Ritual movement at Oxford and elsewhere.
The Corpus Professor of Latin, old Robinson Ellis, and I saw
subsequently (perhaps drawn together by the loss of our common friend)
a good deal of one another. At "meat tea," a meal he dearly loved, we
used to sit long together, and talk classics, the only subject in which
he seemed in the least interested. I wish I had noted down all the odd
bits of erudition with which he used to entertain me. Cicero's last
words, he said (I cannot imagine on what authority) were "Causa
causarum, miserere mei!"[12] A curious story (perhaps mediæval) of
Ovid was of how two monks visited his tomb, and in gratitude for the
noble line--the best, in his own opinion, that he had ever
written--"Virtus est licitis abstinuisse bonis," began reciting Paters
and Aves for his soul. The poet's spirit, unhappily, {87} was
unappreciative of their charity; and a voice was heard from the tomb
declaiming the irreverent pentameter: "Nolo Paternoster: carpe, viator,
iter!" The professor told me that in his opinion the best elegiac
couplet ever written in English was:
"Three Patagonian apes with their arms extended akimbo:
Three on a rock were they--seedy, but happy withal."
He said that one of Dr. Johnson's acutest literary criticisms was his
remark that Tacitus seemed rather to have made notes for a historical
work than to have written a history. The word "jour," he pointed out
to me, was derived from "dies" (though every single letter was
different) through the Italian--"dies, diurnus, giorno, jour." He
asked if I could tell him the authorship of the striking couplet--
"Mors mortis! morti mortem nisi morte dedisses,
Æternae vitæ janua clausa foret."
This I was unable to do: on the other hand, I evoked a chuckle
(whimsical etymologies always pleased him) by telling him how a
fifteenth-century writer[13] had rendered the "Royal Collegiate Church
of Windsor" into Latin as "Collegium Domini Regis de _Ventomorbido_!"
At the end of Lent Term I spent a few days at Eastbourne, which struck
me (as the Honourable Mrs. Skewton struck Mr. Dombey) as being
"perfectly genteel"--no shops on the front, no minstrels or pierrots or
cockshys or vulgarity. The hill behind seemed to swarm with schools:
my host took me to one where he had two sons--a fine {88} situation,
capital playgrounds, and the head a pleasant capable-seeming little
man, who trotted briskly about on his little Chippendale legs, clad in
knickerbockers, and was as keen on his Aberdeen terriers as on his
young pupils. I remember at Eastbourne a quite appallingly ugly Town
Hall, and a surprisingly beautiful fourteenth-century church, I suppose
the only bit of old Eastbourne left. I went on to Arundel for my usual
pleasant Easter-tide visit; and after hearing much florid church-music
there, I enjoyed, on Low Sunday, the well-rendered plain-chant at
Westminster Cathedral; but I did not enjoy a terrible motett composed
by an eminent Jew--the words unintelligible and the music frankly
pagan. My nephew Kelburn and his wife ran me down one day to Chatham
in their new motor--cream-colour lined with crimson, very smart indeed.
He had been lately posted as first lieutenant to H.M.S. _Cochrane_, and
took us all over the great grey monster, vastly interesting. We buzzed
home through Cobham and Rochester, stopping to look over the grand old
Norman cathedral. "How strange," observed the simple sailor, looking
at the sculptured images round the west doorway, "to see all these old
Roman Catholic saints in a Protestant cathedral!" How I wished some of
my young Oxford friends had been by to hear him! Our whole drive to
town was of course redolent of Dickens and "Pickwick"--to me, but not
to my modern nephew and niece.
For the last week of the vacation a friend was bent on taking me to
Belgium; but great guns were blowing when we reached the coast, so we
alighted at Dover and stayed there! finding it quite {89} an
interesting place of sojourn. I was astonished at the antiquity,
extent, and interest of the Castle, especially of its church, once a
Roman barrack, and its tower, the ancient Pharos or lighthouse.
Gilbert Scott and the Royal Engineers between them had done their best
(or their worst) in the way of "restoration," disjoining the Pharos
from the main building, and adding an Early English (!) front, windows,
and door; but it still was, and is, by far the oldest edifice in
England used for religious worship, and of the greatest antiquarian
interest.
The event of the summer at Oxford was the installation of our new
Chancellor, Lord Curzon, who was by no means content, like the Duke of
Wellington, Lord Salisbury, and others of his not indistinguished
predecessors, to be quietly inducted into office by the university
officials at his own country residence. There was a great function at
the Sheldonian, and a Latin harangue from my lord which was both
elegant and well delivered, though it was thought by some that his
emotional reference to his late wife was a little out of place.
Oxford had caught the pageant-fever which was this summer devastating
England; and a great part of the term was spent (some cynics said
wasted) in the extensive preparations for our own particular show.
When they were all but complete, one of the historic "rags" by which
Christ Church has from time to time distinguished itself broke out, in
consequence of the House becoming head of the river; and among other
excesses, some damage was done to the pageant-stands already erected in
the meadows. A few days after this _émeute_ a description of it, which
is really too good to be lost, {90} appeared in the _Corriere della
Sera_ of Milan, "telephoned by our London correspondent." I translate
literally from the Italian:--
Recently the students of Oxford were beaten by those of Cambridge in
the great annual regatta: the other day they were defeated by the
sportive group (_il gruppo sportivo_) of Merton College; finally, they
allowed themselves to be vanquished by the sportive section (_la
sezione sportiva_) of the Society of Christ Church, to whom was
adjudged the primacy of the Thames. Yesterday, profoundly moved in
their _amore proprio_, the students of Oxford permitted themselves to
proceed to deplorable excesses, even to the point of applying fire to
the _stands_ erected on the riverside by the rival Societies. They set
fire also to the tent of the Secretariat of Christ Church, feeding the
flames with the chairs which they discovered in the vicinity.[14]
I believe that our Oxford pageant (in spite of the wet summer) proved
financially successful, if not altogether so artistically. A few of
the scenes were very pretty, especially the earliest (St. Frideswide),
and also the one representing Charles I. and his family at Oxford. And
the ecclesiastical and monastic episodes were instructive, if only as
showing the incompetence of twentieth-century Anglicanism to reproduce
even the externals--much more the spirit--of the Catholicism of old
England. Even more deplorable was the "comic" scene (written by the
Chichele professor of modern history!) in which the _clarum et
venerabile nomen_ of one of Oxford's saintliest sons was dragged in the
mud: Roger Racon being depicted as a mountebank cheap-jack, hawking
quack medicines from a {91} motor-bicycle![15] My brother, who had
entertained me at Warwick, came as my guest to witness the Oxford
effort; and we had the rather interesting experience of viewing it in
the company of Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain. They were both pleased
and interested; but it was impossible to deny that the poetic glamour
of the Warwick pageant (largely due to the romantic beauty of its
setting) was almost wholly wanting at Oxford.
Of the other pageants which were sprouting up all over the country
during this summer (unhappily one of the wettest on record), I attended
only one--that held at Bury St. Edmunds, which attracted me as being
mainly concerned with Benedictines. The setting was almost as fine as
at Warwick--verdant lawns, big trees and the majestic ruins of our
famous abbey all "in the picture"; and the "monks," mostly represented
by blameless curates, were at least presentable, not unkempt
ragamuffins as at Oxford.[16] The appearance of "Abbot Sampson"
(played, I was told, by a local archdeacon) was grotesque enough: he
wore throughout a purple chasuble over a black cassock, with a white
mitre, and strode about brandishing a great wooden crosier! but he
spoke his lines very well. Everything, however, was spoilt by the
pitiless rain, which {92} fell unceasingly. A clever black-haired lady
who played Boadicea (I believe the wife of an Ipswich dentist) had to
abandon her chariot and horses and appear on foot, splashing through
several inches of mud; and some of the "early British" matrons and
maidens sported umbrellas and mackintoshes! I had to leave half-way
through the performance, chilled to the bone, and firmly convinced that
open-air drama in England was a snare and a delusion.
Mark Twain, whom I have mentioned above, was one of the miscellaneous
celebrities, including Prince Arthur of Connaught and "General" Booth,
whom our Chancellor nominated for honorary degrees at his first
Encænia. I met Mrs. Whitelaw Reid (the American Ambassadress) at
dinner at Magdalen on Commemoration evening, and lunched with her a few
days later at Dorchester House. One of the attachés was told off to
show me the famous "old Masters," about which I found he knew a good
deal less than I did! The same agreeable young American accompanied me
a little later to Bradfield, to see the boys play _Antigone_: a real
summer's day, for once, and the performance was admirable, especially
that of the title-rôle, the youth who played the part proving himself a
genuine tragedian. The comments of a lady just behind us, who was
profoundly bored most of the time, were amusingly fatuous.[17]
{93}
I was in spiritual charge this term of our Catholic undergraduates
(fifty or so), their chaplain having gone off on an invalid's holiday,
and left his flock in my care. I was delighted to have the company
every week-end of Robert Hugh Benson, who was giving the Sunday
conferences in our chapel. "Far from being the snake-like gloomy type
of priest so common in fiction," a weekly paper said of him about this
time, "Father Benson is a thorough man of the world, liberal, amiable,
and vivacious." He was, of course, all this and a great deal more; and
I greatly appreciated the opportunity which these summer weeks afforded
me of becoming really intimate with him. It was the beginning of a
genuine friendship, which was only interrupted (not, please God,
broken) by his premature and lamented death seven years later.[18]
[1] "Very satisfactory, I think, from an architectural point of view,"
said the alderman to his colleague, as they surveyed together the
interior of the new town hall; "but I fear the acoustics are not
exactly what they ought to be." His companion sniffed several times.
"Do you think not?" he said. "I don't notice anything myself!"
[2] [Greek: Henôsis tes anglichánês chaì tes Orthodóxou Echchlêsías.]
[3] It was at least a convenient method of disposing of the Pope and
his claims.
[4] Collaterally, of course: Gregory XIII. (Buoncompagni), 1572-1585;
and Gregory XV. (Ludovisi), 1621-1623. I interested Don Andrea by
telling him that Gregory XIII. (reformer of the Julian Calendar and
builder of the Quirinal) was probably the last Pope officially prayed
for at Oxford, and that in his own college chapel. Mass certainly
continued to be celebrated in Merton Chapel well into the Pontificate
of Gregory XIII.
[5] The possession of the Evil Eye has never been considered
incompatible with the highest moral excellence. Pius IX., who was
venerated by his people as a saint, was nevertheless regarded by many
of them as an undoubted _jettatore_.
[6] The traditional name given by the Franciscans to their monastic
schools. But they had, if I remember rightly, sufficient sense of
humour not to apply it to their Cowley seminary.
[7] Nearly, but not quite, the shortest grace on record. That palm,
perhaps, belongs to the north country farmer wiping his mouth with the
back of his hand after a plentiful meal, and ejaculating the single
word, "Then!"
[8] Perhaps for the same reason as was given me by a Christ Church don,
who rashly prophesied that Wolsey's great hall would never be lighted
by electricity, as the additional heat given by the gas-jets was
absolutely essential by way of supplement to the huge fireplaces.
[9] A large assumption; but Swinburne was doubtless better qualified
than most people to make it. The lines are from _Sordello_ (ed. 1863,
p. 464).
[10] My own idea, suggested by a proposed memorial to Goschen at Rugby
school, where James Fergusson had been his school-fellow, was that the
memory of the latter also should be perpetuated there in some fitting
manner. I received letters cordially approving this suggestion; but I
never heard whether it was carried out in the case of either, or both,
of these distinguished public servants.
[11] Is it necessary to explain that Argus Panoptes, the all-seeing
guardian of Io, had a hundred eyes, and Briareus, the pugnacious son of
Earth and Heaven, a hundred arms? Sir Walter's application of these
myths was distinctly neat.
[12] Authentic or not, I added them to the collection of _novissima
verba_ of famous men which I had been long compiling. See Appendix.
[13] Clement Maydeston, in his _Directorii Defensorium_ (A.D. 1495).
"Windsor," of course, means the "winding shore," not the "sick wind!"
[14] The truth underlying the last sentence of this delectable report
is that some of the wilder rioters chucked the Secretary of the
Pageant's desk (containing all his papers) into the Cherwell; but it
was rescued so speedily by two of their more sober comrades that no
harm was done.
[15] This particular episode was really regarded by many people as
almost an outrage; and an article called "A Blot on the Pageant," which
I devoted to it in a weekly review, elicited many expressions of
sympathy and approval in Oxford and elsewhere.
[16] The Master of the Oxford Pageant, to whom I protested emphatically
against the scandalous caricatures of the Benedictines of Abingdon,
calmly told me that the British public looked on a monk as a comic kind
of creature, and would think itself defrauded unless he were so
represented!
[17] The lines (vv. 824-826):
[Greek: échousa ... tàn phrygian xénan
tàn, chissòs ôs atenês,
petraía blasta davasen]
seemed to strike the good lady particularly--the sound, that is, not
the sense of them. "Kisson----blast her--d--n her! Dear me!" she
remarked; "what language, to be sure! I had no idea that Antigone
[pronounced _Antigoan_] was that kind of young person!"
[18] The Rev. R. H. Benson died on October 19, 1914.
{94}
CHAPTER VI
1907-1908
The opening of the Long Vacation of 1907 was pleasantly signalized for
us Benedictines by the gratifying successes in the Final Schools of our
little Hall, which secured two first classes (in "Greats" and History),
and a second class in Theology. The _Oxford Magazine_ was kind enough
to point out that this was a remarkable achievement for a Hall
numbering nine undergraduates, and compared favourably with the
percentage of honours at any college in the university. I was given to
understand that my young theologian would also have secured his "first"
had he not objected to the matter and form of some of the questions set
him, and declined to answer them!
This cheerful news sent me in good spirits up to Dumfries for my usual
week's examinations at the Benedictine convent school there. I found
almost eighty nuns in residence, including the exiled community of the
mother house of Arras, whom (the Prioress was eighty-five, and there
were several old ladies on crutches) the great French Republic had
driven out of house and home as a "danger to the State!" I had several
interesting talks with "Madame la Prieure," who had been professed in
the reign of Louis Philippe, and who bore her cruel {95} uprootal with
true French (and Christian) resignation and cheerfulness. I do not
know if the tradition about St. Swithun holds good in Scotland; but
these days succeeding his festival (July 15) were certainly almost
continuously wet. One of the French nuns said that in her country
(Picardy) St. Medard was credited with a similar influence, and quoted
the lines--
Quan ploon per San Médar,
Ploon quarante jhiours pus tard;
and I recalled the Italian distich about St. Bibiana (December 2)--
Se piove il giorno di Santa Bibiana,
Pioverà per quaranta giorni ed una settimana.
I spent a few days at Longridge Towers, Sir Hubert Jerningham's Border
castle, when my work at Dumfries was finished, and found my host, as
usual, excellent company, and full of anecdotes, both French and
English. Speaking of a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Edmund at
Pontigny in which he had joined some years before, he said that an
English newspaper described an open-air benediction given by the
"Bishops of Estrade and Monte"; the reporters having doubtless been
informed that the bishops would _mount_ on the _platform_ to give the
blessing! He showed us a cutting from another English newspaper,
stating that MM. Navire, Chavire, and Bourrasque had been shipwrecked
and drowned at sea! Sir Hubert had a complete set of the _Revue des
Deux Mondes_ in his library; and I hunted up for his delectation a
passage in which M. Forgues, writing on English clerical life, _à
propos_ of George Eliot's first book, {96} gave an original etymology
for the word _tract_. "Il [Rev. Amos Barton] a sa _Track Society_, qui
va mettre en Fair toutes les bonnes femmes du pays, enrégimentées pour
dépister (track) les pauvres hères susceptibles de conversion." The
same writer rendered the epithet "Gallio-like" (applied by the minister
to the parishioners of Shepperton) by "pareils à des Français!"
Yorkshire, after Northumberland, claimed me for two pleasant
visits--the first to the Herries' at Everingham, with its beautiful
chapel copied from the Maison Carrée at Nîmes, and its famous
deer-park, one of the oldest in England (so Lord Herries told me), and
a very different thing, as one of Disraeli's country squires in
_Lothair_ remarks, from a mere park with deer in it. The weather was
bright and hot; and it was a pretty sight to see the droves of
fallow-deer, bucks and does together, clustering for shade under the
great trees near the house. From Everingham I went on to Bramham,
where George Lane Fox was spending a happy summer in his old home. He
took me everywhere, through the lovely gardens laid out by Lenôtre, and
(in a brougham drawn by an ancient hunter and driven by a stud-groom
not less ancient) all over the park, and up the noble beech avenue
called Bingley's Walk. My friend had lost his splendid inheritance for
conscience' sake; and it was pleasant to see him, in old age and
enfeebled health, passing happy days, through his nephew's hospitality
and kindness, at the well-loved home of his boyhood and youth.
I was glad to find myself settled for some golden weeks of August and
September at our abbey among {97} the Highland hills, where we were
this autumn favoured with almost continuous sunshine. Our many guests
came and went--some of them busy city men, enjoying to the full the
pure air, lovely surroundings, and quiet life in our guest-house, all
to the accompaniment of chiming bells and chanted psalms. Whether they
found our "brown Gregorians" as devotional as the sentimentalist of Mr.
Hichens's novel[1] I know not; but anyhow to me our monastic
plain-chant was restful and pleasant after the odd stuff in the way of
"church music" which had elsewhere assailed my ears. I confess that
after our more normal Oxford hours (though I hope we were not sluggards
at our Hall), I reconciled myself with difficulty to "the hour of our
uprising" in the monastery. The four o'clock matin-bell had always
been more or less of a penance to me (as I suppose it was to most of my
brethren), though I tried to fortify myself with Dr. Johnson's
argument--a purely academic one in the case of that lie-abed old
sage--that "it is no slight advancement to obtain for so many more
hours the _consciousness of being_"; but an American guest of ours, to
whom I cited this dictum, countered it by a forcibly-expressed opinion
"on the other side" by one of the most eminent living specialists in
insanity.[2]
{98}
One recalls delicious rambles with our brethren or our guests during
those sunlit autumn days: sometimes among the verdant Glengarry woods,
sometimes at our outlying "chapel-of-ease," some miles up the most
beautiful of the glens which run from Central Inverness-shire to the
sea. A veritable oasis this among the hills, with its green meadows,
waving pines, and graceful bridge spanning the rushing river; and all
framing the humble chapel, its eastern wall adorned with a fresco (from
the brush of one of our artist monks[3]) which the little flock--sadly
diminished of late years by emigration--greatly admired and venerated.
A week-end was sometimes spent pleasantly and not unprofitably at some
remote shooting-lodge, saying mass for Catholic tenants, and perhaps a
handful of faithful {99} Highlanders. One such visit I remember this
autumn at a lodge in Glencarron, a wild wind-swept place, with the
surrounding hilltops already snow-coated, which Lord Wimborne (for some
years Lovat's tenant at Beaufort) had recently acquired. Although in
the heart of the forest, the lodge was but two hundred yards from the
railway; there was no station, but the train would obligingly stop when
signalled by the wave of a napkin from the front door! A crofter's cow
strayed on the line one day of my stay, was, by bad luck, run over by
one of the infrequent trains, and (as a newspaper report once said of a
similar mischance) "cut literally into _calves_."[4] The night before
I left Glencarron, we were all wakened, and some of us not a little
perturbed, by two very perceptible shocks of earthquake--a phenomenon
not unusual in the district. We heard afterwards that at Glenelg, on
the west coast, the shocks had been more severe, and some damage had
been done; but, as a witty member of our party remarked, Glenelg might
have been turned inside out, or upside down, without suffering any
appreciable change.[5] On my way back to Fort Augustus I stayed a day
at Beaufort to wish _bon voyage_ to Lovat's brother-in-law and sister,
who were just off {100} to visit another married sister at our Embassy
in Japan, and (incidentally) to travel round the world. I met on the
steamer on my way home one of my Wauchope cousins, a spinster lady who
had gone some time before to live in Rome, and had asked me for letters
of introduction to "two or three Cardinals." Tired of Rome, she was
now making for the somewhat different _milieu_ of Rotherhithe, with
some work of the kind popularly called "slumming" in view.
I visited, on my way south, a married brother at his charming home in
Berwickshire, where there was much tennis, and pleasant expeditions by
motor to interesting spots on both sides of the Border. One lovely
autumn day we spent at Manderston, where our hostess had her brother,
my lord chancellor of Oxford University, staying with her. The great
man was very affable, and asked me to go and see him in Michaelmas
Term, when he would be in residence at the "Judge's Lodgings" in St.
Giles's. I joined a family gathering at Newhailes, a few days later,
for the pretty wedding of my niece, Christian Dalrymple--"a very
composed bride," remarked one of the reporters present, "as befitted a
lady who had acted as hostess to the leading lights of the Conservative
party ever since she left the schoolroom."[6] Her uncle, the Bishop of
Bath and Wells, tied the knot (of course "impressively"), and I was
glad to find myself at Newhailes in his always pleasant {101} company.
Driving with him to pay a call or two in the neighbourhood, I amused
him with an _à propos_ story of the bishop who rode out on a long round
of leaving-calls, attended by his groom, who was sent into the house,
before starting, to get some cards. When they reached the last house,
the order came, "Leave two cards here, James"; and the unexpected reply
followed: "I can't, my lord; there's only the ace of spades left!"
After a few days at Niddrie Marischal, the fascinating old seat of the
Wauchopes near Edinburgh (General "Andie" Wauchope's widow had lived
there since her husband's gallant death at Magersfontein), I went to
Cumbrae to visit Lady Bute at the Garrison, her home on that quaint
island in the Firth of Clyde. The house, too, was quaint though
comfortable, built in semi-ecclesiastical Gothic, with a sunk garden in
front, and a charming moonlight view from my window of the broad Firth,
with the twinkling lights of the tiny town in the foreground. Millport
was a favourite "doon-the-water" resort for Glasgow folk on holiday;
and I had quite a congregation at my Sunday mass in the little chapel
in the grounds, as well as a considerable catechism-class afterwards.
Winifred Lady Howard of Glossop, my lady's stepmother, was paying her a
visit, and as an inveterate globe-trotter (if the word may be
respectfully applied to an elderly peeress) kept us entertained by
stories of men and things in many lands. I spent one afternoon at the
college and "cathedral" of the Isles, the quaint group of buildings,
redolent of Butterfield and looking like an Oxford college and chapel
through the wrong end of a telescope, which the sixth Earl of Glasgow
(my {102} brother-in-law's predecessor) had more or less ruined himself
in erecting. Provost Ball, whom I found at tea with his sisters,
received me kindly, and showed me the whole establishment, which looked
rather derelict and neglected (I fancy there was very little money to
keep it going); and the college had been closed for some years. Some
of us crossed the Firth next day in an absurd little cockle of a
motor-boat (unsuitable, I thought, for those sometimes stormy seas),
and I was glad to find myself on _terra firma_, in a comfortable White
steam-car--my first experience of that mode of propulsion--which
whirled us smoothly and swiftly to Glasgow, in time for me to take the
night train to London and Oxford.
In university circles I found a certain amount of uneasy trepidation
owing to the official presence of Lord Curzon. A resident Chancellor
was a phenomenon unprecedented for centuries, and one unprovided for in
the traditional university ritual, in which the first place was
naturally assigned to the Vice-chancellor. There was much talk as to
when, and in what direction, the new broom would begin to sweep, and
amusing stories (probably _ben trovati_) of dignified heads of houses
being called over the coals at meetings of the Hebdomadal Council.
Personally the Chancellor made himself very agreeable, entertaining
everybody who was anybody at his fine old mansion, once the "town
house" of the Dukes of Marlborough. It was all, perhaps, a little
Vice-regal for us simple Oxonians, who were not accustomed to write our
names in a big book when we made an afternoon call, or to be received
by a secretary or other underling instead of by our host when we went
out to luncheon or dinner. But it {103} was all rather novel and
interesting; and in any case the little ripples caused on the surface
of Oxford society by our Chancellor's sayings and doings soon subsided;
for, as far as I remember, his term of residence did not exceed a month
or so altogether. I was kept busy all this autumn term by the
considerable work I had undertaken (the contribution of nearly eighty
articles) for the American _Catholic Encyclopædia_. One of the longest
was on Cambridge; and I felt on its completion that I knew much more
about the "sister university" than about my own! Most of my work was
done in the Bodleian Library; and it was a pleasant and welcome change
to find oneself installed in the new, well-lighted and comfortable
reading-room arranged in one of the long picture-galleries, instead of
(as heretofore) in an obscure and inconvenient corner of Duke
Humphrey's mediæval chamber. The then Bodley's Librarian was a bit of
an oddity, and perhaps not an ideal holder of one of the most difficult
and exacting offices in the university; but he was always kindness
itself to me, and, whatever his preoccupations, was always ready to put
at my service his unrivalled knowledge of books and their writers. His
memory was stored with all kinds of whimsical rhymes: sometimes he
would stop me in the street, and--at imminent peril of being run over,
for he was extraordinarily short-sighted--would peer in my face through
his big spectacles, and say, "Did you ever hear of
----the learned Archdeacon of York,
Who _would_ eat his soup with a knife and a fork:
A feat which he managed so neatly and cleverly,
That they made him the Suffragan Bishop of Beverley!"
{104} Or it would be, perhaps, "Listen to this new version of an old
saw:
Teach not your parent's mother to extract
The embryo juices of an egg by suction:
The aged lady can the feat enact
Quite irrespective of your kind instruction."
And before I had time to smile at the quip I would be dragging my
friend off the roadway on to the pavement to escape the oncoming
tramcar, bicycle or hansom cab. Sometimes we walked together, usually
in quest of some relic of antiquity in the neighbourhood, in which he
would display the most lively interest, though I really believe it was
all but invisible to his bodily eyes. One such walk was to inspect the
old lepers' chapel of St. Bartholomew, in the fields near Cowley--a
lovely derelict fragment of the ages of faith, which the local Anglican
clergy had expressed their intention of "restoring to the ancient
worship." "_You_," said my friend the librarian, with his ironic
smile, "will doubtless regard this promise as what our friend Dean
Burgon would have called 'polished banter,'" the allusion being to a
phrase in a sermon preached by the future Dean of Chichester at St.
Mary's at the time when the spread of the so-called "æsthetic movement"
was causing some concern to sensible people. "These are days," he
cried, "when we hear men speak, not in polished banter, but in sober
earnest, of 'living up to their blue china!'" I heard him speak these
words myself; and recalling that inimitable tone and accent, can
imagine the impression made by a more memorable utterance from the same
pulpit, when the new doctrines of Darwin were in the air, and the
alleged affinity of man with monkey was {105} fluttering orthodox
dovecotes. "O ye men of science! O ye men of science! leave me my
ancestors in Paradise, and I will willingly leave you yours in the
Zoological Gardens!"
I had the pleasure in November of paying a short visit to the wise and
good Bishop of Newport, for a church-opening at Cardiff. A profit as
well as a pleasure, one may hope; for indeed no one could spend any
time in Dr. Hedley's company without instruction as well as
edification. We spoke of the late Lord Bute's remarkable philological
gifts; and I asked the Bishop if he had found his ignorance of Welsh
any practical hindrance to the work of his diocese. "No," was his
reply. "Fortunately for me (for I am no Mezzofanti) I find English a
good enough means of communication with my people, the majority of whom
are neither Welsh nor English, but Irish." I told him, much to his
amusement, of the advice once given to an Englishman appointed to a
Welsh (Anglican) see, as to the proper pronunciation of the Welsh
double _l_. "May it please your lordship to place your episcopal
tongue lightly against your right reverend teeth, and to hiss like a
goose!" A young Oxford friend of mine whom I met at Cardiff carried me
thence to Lichfield to stay a night at the Choristers' House of which
his father was master. It chanced to be "Guy Fawkes Day," and I
assisted at the fireworks and bonfires of the little singing-boys, who
(I was rather interested to find) did not associate their celebration
in the slightest degree with the old "No Popery" tradition. The merry
evening concluded with some delightful part-singing.
I recall a week-end at Arundel when term was over: a large and cheerful
party, and the usual {106} "parlour games" after dinner, including
dumb-crambo, in which I was almost the only spectator; for everybody
else was acting, the Duke being a polar bear rolled up in a white
hearthrug! My customary Christmas was spent at Beaufort, in a
much-diminished family circle. Lord Lovat was on his way home from
South Africa, one brother absent on a sporting tour in Abyssinia,
another gold-mining in Rhodesia; his second sister with her husband in
Japan, and two others still _en voyage_ round the world. Some
schoolboy nephews, however, and their young sisters, were a cheerful
element in our little party, and there was a great deal of golf, good,
bad, and indifferent, on the not exactly first-class course recently
laid out in the park.[7] I had to go south soon after New Year, to tie
the knot and preach the wedding sermon at a marriage in Spanish Place
Church.[8] A thoroughly Scottish function it was, with Gordon
Highlander sergeants lining the long nave, the bridegroom's kilted
brother-officers forming a triumphal arch with their claymores, and a
big gathering of friends from the north afterwards at the Duchess of
Roxburghe's pretty house in Grosvenor Street. I attended next evening
at our Westminster dining-club, and heard {107} Father Maturin read a
clever, if not quite convincing paper, on "The Broad and Narrow Mind,"
some of his paradoxes provoking a lively subsequent discussion which I
found very interesting. I had a stimulating neighbour in Baron Anatole
von Hügel.
The opening of the Lent Term of 1908 at Oxford was dreary enough, with
a succession of the dense white fogs which only the Thames valley
generates in perfection. It is not cheering to come down morning after
morning to find what looks like a huge bale of dirty cotton-wool piled
up against one's window-panes; and the news at this time was as
depressing as the weather. We heard early in February of the brutal
murder of the King and Crown Prince of Portugal, before the eyes of
wife and mother; and I was saddened in the same month by the death of
an exemplary member of our community at Fort Augustus, though that had
been long expected. I was myself on the sick-list, and recall little
of interest during these weeks, except a most excellent lecture--of
course on boy scouts--given by General Baden-Powell, which I only
wished could have been heard, not by dons, ladies, and undergraduates,
but by the cigarette-slobbering, street-corner-loafing lads who were, I
think, more in evidence at Oxford than anywhere else. Early in March I
was in London, for the wedding of my old pupil, Charles Vaughan of
Courtfield, to the pretty niece of the Duke of Newcastle. I got to
Westminster Cathedral an hour before the appointed time: the
chapter-mass was being celebrated, and waves of sonorous plain-song
floating about the great misty domes overhead. After the ceremony I
joined the wedding guests at the Ritz for a short time, and, amid the
_frou-frou_ {108} and _va-et-vient_ of all the smart people, managed to
impart to a few intimate friends the news that I was going into
hospital in a few days, with no very certain prospect of coming out
alive!
The next fortnight or so was of course taken up with inevitable
worries--giving up work for an indefinite period, resigning for a time
(it turned out to be for good) the mastership of my Hall, and finding a
_locum tenens_ letter-writing to a host of inquiring friends, and all
this when physically fit to do nothing. I spent the last days of
freedom at Arundel, receiving from the good people there every possible
kindness; and on March 18, under the patronage of the Archangel Gabriel
(saint of the day), betook myself to my nursing home in Mandeville
Street. Nurses (mine were most kind and devoted), surgeons and
anæsthetists soon got to work; and for a time at least (in the almost
classic words of Bret Harte) "the subsequent proceedings interested me
no more."
A critical operation, followed by a slow and difficult convalescence,
ranks, of course, among the deeper experiences of a man's life. "We
were all anxious," said an Oxford friend some weeks later, a good old
chemist whom I had known for years; "for we heard that you were passing
through very deep waters." The expression was an apt one; and I
suppose no one rises from such waters quite the same man as he was
before. This is not the place to dwell on such thoughts; but one
reflection which occurs to me is that in such a time as I am now
recalling one realizes, as perhaps one had never done before, how many
kind people there are in the world, and appreciates what true
friendship is. During {109} my long stay in hospital my nearest
relations chanced to be greatly scattered, some of them in very remote
parts of the world. This made me all the more grateful for the
extraordinary kindness and attention I received, not only from approved
friends, but from many others whom I had hardly ventured to count as
such. I remember a little later compiling a kind of _libro d'oro_,
with a list of the names of all who had been good to me in word or deed
during those weary weeks. Some of them I have hardly ever seen since:
many have passed beyond the sphere of one's gratitude here on earth;
but I still sometimes con my list, and thank the dead as well as the
living for what they did for me then.
I remember my first drive--round Regent's Park, on a perfect May day,
in the steam-car of which I have already spoken; and very tiring I
found it. After a lazy fortnight at St. John's Lodge, and daily
trundles in a Bath chair among the gay flower-beds of the park, I was
able to get down into the country; and after a sojourn with Lady
Encombe and her two jolly little boys near Rickmansworth (a wonderfully
rural spot, considering its nearness to London), I made my way to
Arundel, where it was pleasant to meet the Herries's and other kind
friends. The great excitement there was the hoped-for advent of a son
and heir, who made a punctual and welcome appearance before the end of
the month, and was received, of course, with public and private
jubilations in which I was happy to be able to participate. After this
I paid quite a long visit to my soldier brother at Kneller Court, the
pretty place near Fareham which he was occupying while commanding the
Artillery in that district. There were plenty of {110} pleasant
neighbours, who treated me to pleasant motor-drives through a charming
country little known to me; and the elm-shaded hall (I believe Sir
Godfrey Kneller had really lived there once), with its gay old garden
and excellent tennis-lawn, was a popular resort for young officers from
Portsmouth and elsewhere, who dropped in almost daily to luncheon, tea,
or dinner, and doubtless found the society of a kind hostess and her
two pretty daughters a welcome diversion from their naval and military
duties. One June day we spent in Portsmouth, lunching with Sir Arthur
and Lady Fanshawe at Admiralty House, a big, cool roomy mansion like a
French château, full of fine old portraits. We went out afterwards on
the flag-captain's launch to see the _Victory_, a visit full of
interest, though I was unequal to climbing the companions connecting
the five decks. A man whom I sat next at tea in the Admiral's garden
said he was connected with the Patent Office (I do not think he was
actually Comptroller-General, but he was something high up in that
rather mysterious department of the Civil Service), and told me some
entertaining yarns about early patents and monopolies.[9] One was
granted in 1618 to two men called Atkinson and Morgan, "to find out
things in monasteries!" Another man, about the same time, secured the
exclusive right of importing lobsters, which had hitherto cost a penny;
but the patentee bought them out at sea from Dutch fishermen, and {111}
sold them at threepence. In Charles I.'s reign a "doctour in phisick"
called Grant got a patent for a "fishe-call, or looking-glass for
fishes in the sea, very useful for fishermen to call all manner of
fishes to their netts, seins, or hooks." In the same reign it was made
compulsory to bury the dead in woollen in order to encourage the wool
manufacture; and ten years later Widow Amy Potter got a (rather
gruesome) patent for the elegant woollen costume she devised for this
purpose.[10]
I went from Kneller to spend a breezy week at Brighton with Captain
Frank Grissell, to whom his brother, my old Oxford friend, had left
practically all his possessions and collections, and who had just
purchased a pretty villa in Preston Park in which to house them. No
brothers were ever more dissimilar or more devoted than Hartwell, whose
whole interests in life had been ecclesiastical and Roman, and his
brother Frank, ex-cavalry officer, to whom horses and hunting, racing
and coaching, were the salt of life. He had arranged his brother's
miscellaneous treasures, in one or two spacious rooms, with great care
and pains; and it was a curious experience to pass out of an atmosphere
and environment of religious paintings, Roman bookbindings, panels from
cardinals' coaches, Papal coins and medals, Italian ecclesiological
literature, and what the {112} French call _objets de piété_ of every
description, to the ex-lancer's own cheerful living-rooms: the walls
hung with pictures of hunters, steeplechasers, coaching and sporting
scenes; stuffed heads, tiger-skins, and other trophies of the chase
everywhere about, and the windows looking out on a pretty garden, in
the improvement and cultivation of which the owner was promising
himself unfailing interest and occupation.
"Doctor Brighton" (was not this affectionate sobriquet the invention of
Thackeray?) did much for the restoration of my health and strength; and
I was able to get to Oxford before the end of summer term, to spend a
fortnight with kind Monsignor Kennard at his charming old house in St.
Aldate's, where I had a room so close to Tom Tower that the "Great Bell
of Tom" sounded as if it were tolling at my bedside![11] In his pretty
chapel (of which the open roof was said to be a relic of Oseney Abbey),
I had the happiness, on Trinity Sunday, of celebrating Mass for the
first time for more than three months--a greatly-appreciated privilege.
[1] "A brown Gregorian is so devotional.... Gregorians are obviously
of a rich and sombre brown, just as a Salvation Army hymn is a violent
magenta."
[2] Dr. Selden Talcott, of the State Asylum, Middleton, New York;
according to whom early rising is the most prolific cause of madness.
"A peremptory command to get up, when one's sleep is as yet unfinished,
is a command which grinds the soul, curdles the blood, swells the
spleen, destroys all good intentions, and disturbs all day the mental
activities, just as the tornado disturbs and levels with advancing ruin
the forest of mighty pines.... The free and lazy savage gets up when
he feels ready, and rarely or never becomes insane." Dr. Talcott
quotes the percentage of lunacy among country people as compared with
professional men. The latter, almost without exception, get up
comparatively late, whereas our manual labourers all leave their beds
long before they should. "The early morning hours, when everything is
still, are peculiarly fitted for sleep; and it is a _gross violation of
Nature's laws_ to tear human brains out of the sound rest they enjoy at
this time." A weighty utterance, no doubt: still, it is but fair to
point out that among monks, who perhaps, as a class, get up earlier
than any men living, the number of those whose good intentions are
destroyed and mental activities disturbed, and who finally become
lunatics, is really not alarmingly large.
[3] Dom Paulinus Gorwood, who had been a choirboy at Beverley Minster,
and draughtsman in a great shipbuilding yard, and had studied religious
art in the famous Beuron Benedictine school at Prague. He had industry
as well as talent; and there were specimens of his handiwork in places
as remote from one another as the Highland Catholic Church at Beauly,
and the college chapel at St. Augustine's Abbey, Ramsgate.
[4] This printer's feat somehow reminds me of the statement in an
Edinburgh paper that a certain eminent tenor, who had had a bad fall
alighting from the train, was nevertheless "able to appear that evening
at the concert in several pieces." But the funniest printer's slip
which I remember in connection with trains was an announcement in a
Hampshire newspaper that "The Express Engine was seriously indisposed,
and confined to bed." The distinguished invalid was really the Empress
Eugénie!
[5] The word Glenelg is, of course, a palindrome, reading backwards and
forwards alike.
[6] Randolph Churchill, Joseph Chamberlain, and Arthur Balfour were
only a few among the political magnates who had enjoyed my
brother-in-law's hospitality in the fine old Georgian mansion where
Lord Hailes had entertained Dr. Johnson. Newhailes was, of course, a
very convenient "jumping-off" place for meetings in the Scottish
metropolis.
[7] About as good, perhaps, as a certain English nine-hole course over
which the secretary invited (partly by way of advertising his club) a
famous golfer to play. "Well, what do you think of our course?" asked
the secretary with some trepidation when the game was over. "Oh well,
it might be worse," was the great man's answer. "How do you mean
exactly, might be worse?" "Well," said the eminent golfer, "there
might be eighteen holes!"
[8] That of Alister Gordon, of the Gordon Highlanders, to a sister of
Charles Edmonstoune-Cranstoun, an old pupil of mine. The bridegroom
was a fine soldier, became Brigadier-General in the European War, and
fell gallantly at Ypres in July, 1917.
[9] My well-informed friend told me, if I remember right, that statutes
having been passed in more recent times, limiting the grant of patents
to actual new inventions, scientific or otherwise, nothing so amusing
as the instances he quoted were to be found in their modern records.
[10] Not more gruesome, perhaps, than an exhibition organized at
Stafford House, in my young days about London, by Anne Duchess of
Sutherland, of _wicker-work coffins_. They were spread about the
garden, where tea was likewise provided; and a dapper and smiling young
man (I suppose the patentee) was in attendance to point out the
advantages--sanitary, economic, and æsthetic--of his invention to the
Duchess's interested guests.
[11] I could not claim the concession (I believe unique) granted to an
old Captain De Moleyns, who lived--and died--close to Christ Church,
and during whose last days the immemorial ringing of "Tom" was
suspended. He was a man of very advanced age, and used to tell how as
a little boy he was rowed across Plymouth Harbour to see Napoleon
standing on the deck of the _Bellerophon_!
{113}
CHAPTER VII
1908
I passed the closing days of the summer term of 1908 very pleasantly at
Oxford, receiving many kindnesses from old friends, mingled with
expressions of regret that my official connection with the university
was approaching its close. I recall an interesting dinner-party at
Black Hall, the Morrells' delightful old house in St. Giles's, where my
neighbour was Miss Rhoda Broughton, at that time resident near Oxford.
We talked, of course, of her novels; and the pleasant-faced,
grey-haired lady was amused to hear that my sisters were not allowed to
read _Cometh Up as a Flower_, and _Red as a Rose is She_[1] (considered
strong literary food in the early 'seventies), until they "came out."
Mrs. Temple, the archbishop's widow, was also a fellow-guest: she had
taken a house in Oxford, close to "dear Keble"; but said that the noise
and uproar emanating at night from the college of "low living and high
thinking" was so great that she thought she would have to move. A
member of the lately-established {114} Faculty, or Institute, of
Forestry, who was of our party, told us some "things not generally
known" about trees, which I noted down. The biggest tree known in the
world was, he said, not in America (what a relief!), but the great
chestnut at the foot of Mount Etna, called the Chestnut of a Hundred
Horses, with a trunk over 200 ft. round, and a hole through it through
which two carriages can drive abreast. The biggest orange-tree known
was, said our oracle, in Terre Bonne, Louisiana: 50 ft. high, 15 ft.
round at base, and yielding 10,000 oranges annually. Finally, the most
valuable tree in existence was the plane-tree in Wood Street, in the
City, occupying a space worth, if rented, £300 a year--a capital value
of £9,000 or thereabouts. All these facts I thought curious.
Term over, I stayed for a little time with a sister in Kensington Gore,
very handy for Kensington Gardens, where I sat an hour or two every
morning enjoying the fresh air and verdure of that most charming of
"London's lungs," and surrounded by frolicking children, including my
small nephew. One of his little playfellows, a grandson of Lord
Portman, suddenly disappeared from the gay scene; I inquired where he
was, and was told that he had gone for a rest-cure. "Great heavens!" I
said, "a child of three!--but why, and where?"--"Oh," was the reply,
"Master Portman was taking too much notice of the busses and motor-cars
and such-like, and wouldn't go to sleep; so he is taking a rest-cure in
his nursery at the top of the house, looking over the chimney-pots!"
The modern child! but then I do not of course profess to understand
infants and their ways and needs.
{115}
The White City, with its Irish village, and a notable exhibition of
French and English pictures, was a great attraction this summer. A
kind cousin motored me thither once or twice; and I met a little later
at her house some pleasant Italian cavalry officers, smart in their
Eton blue uniforms, who were going to jump at the horse-show at
Olympia. I went, at their urgent invitation, to see their performance,
and was both interested and impressed. As an exhibition of the art of
show-jumping it seemed to me unsurpassable. The horse answered the
very slightest movement of the leg or body of its rider, who, as he
rose to each leap, was so perfectly pivoted on the insides of his knees
that his balance remained absolutely unaffected. The French
competitors combined pace and dash with their excellent horsemanship;
and the finest horses were certainly those ridden by the English. But
the cool, quiet, scientific, deliberate riding of the Italians, trained
in the finest school in the world, made all their rivals seem, somehow,
a little rough and flurried and amateurish; and they gained, as they
undoubtedly deserved, the chief honours of the show.
The heat in July was great; and I was so depressed, visiting the great
National Rose Show in the Botanic Gardens, by the spectacle of 100,000
once lovely blossoms hopelessly wilted and shrivelled, that I fled from
London to a brother's shady river-side home near Shepperton. It was
reposeful under the big elms overhanging his garden, to watch the
boat-laden Thames gliding past; and another pleasure which I enjoyed
whilst there was a quite admirable organ-recital given at a
neighbouring church--Littleton, I think it was. The kind rector showed
us round {116} and gave us tea; and the sight of the many tattered
regimental colours (Grenadier Guards and others) hanging on the church
walls drew down upon him the following lines, which I sent him next day
in acknowledgment of his courtesy:--
THE COLOURS
(Hung in churches: no longer [1908] taken into action.)
That rent is Talavera; that patch is Inkerman:
A hundred times in a hundred climes the battle round them ran.
But that is an ended chapter--they will not go to-day:
Hang them above as a link of love, where the people come to pray.
* * * * *
Perhaps when all is quiet, and the moon looks through the pane,
Under that shred the splendid dead are marshalled once again,
And hear the guns in the desert, and see the lines on the hill,
And follow the steel of the lance, and feel that England is
England still.
I found it very little cooler in Yorkshire than in London; but there
were noble trees and welcome shade in the beautiful park of Langdon,
near Northallerton, where I spent some July days, in an atmosphere a
thought too equine for my taste; however, my kind hosts (the Fifes)
were as fond of their flowers as of their horses, and were busy adding
wildernesses and rockeries and other informal beauty-spots to the
formal gardens of their new home, which they had recently bought from
Lord Teignmouth. I was driven over one day to see the Hospital of St.
John of God at Scorton, where a hundred inmates, all crippled or
disabled, were tended with admirable care and devotion by a religious
brotherhood. A local clergyman, I remember, dined with us that evening
at Langdon--a man whose mission, or hobby, seemed to be to collect and
retail such odd and out-of-the-way facts as one finds in the {117}
statistical column of _Tit-Bits_. In the course of the evening he
informed us (1) that a pound of thread spun by a silkworm will make a
thread 600 miles long; (2) that there are in the skin of the average
man 2,304,000 pores; and (3) that about 30,000 snails are eaten every
day in the city of Paris. What one feels about such facts, dumped down
on one promiscuously, is that they do not lead anywhere, or afford any
kind of opening for rational conversation.
I had rather hoped to escape the burden of my Oxford Local Examination
work this summer; but as it was apparently difficult to replace me, I
went up to Dumfries for my usual week in July. Our Convent-school
being the only centre in the district for these examinations, there
were, as usual, several candidates from outside. Among them were two
pairs of Protestant sisters (Wedderburn-Maxwells and Goldie-Scotts),
whose mamma and governess respectively sat all day in the corridor
outside the big schoolroom, keeping watch and ward, it was understood,
against the danger of their children being "got at" between the papers
by the nuns--or possibly the Benedictine examiner!--and influenced in
the direction of Popery. Our children were much amused by the way in
which these little girls were whisked away, during the intervals, from
any possible contact with their "Roman" fellow-candidates; but the
little girls themselves looked somewhat disconsolate, having perhaps
had pleasant anticipations of games, between examination-hours, in the
well-equipped playground of the school.
The kind abbot of Fort Augustus would not let me return to the
monastery, as I had expected to do when my Dumfries work was over, but
{118} suggested instead some further rest (for I was still far from
robust) with my own people in the west of Scotland. I spent a few
pleasant days first at Mountstuart, and was rather amused on the first
of August (the end of the "close season" for small birds) to see my
young host sally forth--a sailor, an architect, and an artist in his
wake--on a shooting-expedition, with as much ceremony and preparation
as if it had been the Twelfth![2] We motored out after them, and
lunched on one of the highest points of the island; drinking in, as we
ate our Irish stew, an entrancing prospect of the blue Firth, the long
sinuous Ayrshire coast, and the lofty serrated peaks of Arran. From
Bute I went on to Dunskey, a place full to me always--even under its
new, altered, and improved conditions--of a hundred happy memories.
There was an _al fresco_ entertainment--tea, music, and dancing on the
lawn--given by my niece to the tenants and their families one
afternoon; and I (mindful of old days) was happy to watch her and her
boy, the little heir, welcoming their guests. Some of their names,
Thorburns, Withers and MacWilliams, recalled the past; and they greeted
me with the friendly simple cordiality characteristic of Galloway folk.
One of our house-party had just arrived (by yacht) from the Isle of
Man, where he had been staying for some weeks. He had stories of the
quaint customs of the Men of Man, and wrote down for me the oath
administered in their courts. {119} The closing simile is delightfully
unconventional:--
By this book, and by the holy contents thereof, and by the wonderful
works that God has miraculously wrought in heaven above and in the
earth beneath in six days and seven nights, I do swear that I will,
without respect of favour or friendship, love or gain, consanguinity or
affinity, execute the laws of this isle, and between party and party as
indifferently as the herring's backbone doth lie in the middle of the
fish.
At Blairquhan I found a large party assembling for August 12: naval
cronies of my sailor brother (including the captain of H.M.S.
_Britannia_), the master of the Whaddon Chase Hunt, Selby Lowndes, with
his wife and daughter, and other pleasant people. Shooting, dancing,
bridge and golf filled up their days agreeably enough. I essayed the
last-named sport, but was mortified to find myself still as weak as a
kitten. The weather was glorious, but my brother complained that the
long drought had left not a fruit in the garden; whereupon I suggested
the substitute mentioned by Captain Topham in his _Letters from
Edinburgh_ a century and a half ago:--
The little variety of fruit which this climate brings to perfection is
the cause that the inhabitants set anything on their tables, after
dinner, that has the appearance of it; and I have often observed at the
houses of principal people a dish of small turnips, which they call
neeps, introduced in the dessert, and ate with as much avidity as if
they had been fruit of the first perfection.
The perfect summer weather accompanied me north to Beaufort, which was
doubly fortunate, as a great party was gathered there for a gigantic
bazaar, organized by one of the daughters of the house to raise funds
for a county sanatorium for consumption, in which she was greatly
interested. The difficulty of attracting _men_ to a show of the kind,
{120} especially in the shooting season, was cleverly met by including
among the attractions a novel and unique exhibition of stags' heads,
lent from all the great Highland forests. The interest of this drew
sportsmen from far and near to Beaufort, where a notable company was
assembled, including the whole Lovat family, most of the Chiefs of
clans and their wives, and, last not least, Ranguia, a genuine
chieftain from New Zealand, clad in what was understood to be his
native dress, and gifted with an astonishing voice (_tenore
robustissimo_), in which he sang Maori songs of love and war in the
great gallery at intervals during the two days of the bazaar. The most
charming of British Duchesses opened the proceedings with a speech of
enticing eloquence: sales were brisk, the weather perfect, and the
attendance enormous; and the profits, if I remember right, were
something like £4,000, so that the affair was altogether a success. We
recreated ourselves, after these fatiguing days, by a pleasant motor
drive to Oromarty, to see the splendid fleet (the Fifth Cruiser
Squadron (and some battleships of the Home Fleet) mustered in the
Firth. We went all over the _Dreadnought_, and drank tea on Kelburn's
ship, the _Cochrane_, burst a tyre on our way home and took refuge at
Balnagowan, where Lady Ross gave us dinner and sang to us perfectly
delightfully: a full and interesting day.
Ampleforth Abbey having now Masters of Arts of its own qualified to
take over the Mastership of its Oxford Hall, I took the occasion of my
enforced temporary retirement to resign the office which I had held for
nearly ten years. The inevitable regrets were tempered by the kind
tributes I received {121} both from Ampleforth and from the
Vice-chancellor of the University; and also by my friend Mgr. Kennard's
urgent invitation (which I was authorized to accept) that I should
return to Oxford for a time as his guest and assistant-chaplain. This
settled, I went south to visit the Loudouns at Loudoun Castle,
cheerfully repainted and decorated in honour of the arrival of the
family pictures, an accession to Loudoun since his brother Paulyn
Hastings' death. At Woodburn, whither I went from Loudoun, I found
Philip Kerr at home from Johannesburg (where he was, I think, Secretary
to the High Commissioner)--looking as young as ever, the cynosure of
his adoring family and of a circle of admiring friends, one or two of
whom (I think old schoolfellows at Edgbaston) were staying at Woodburn.
The talk turned, as so often in this house, on Newman and the Oratory;
and Lord Ralph Kerr read a striking passage written by Coventry
Patmore[3] soon after the great Cardinal's death:--
The steam-hammer of that intellect which could be so delicately
adjusted to its task as to be capable of either crushing a Hume or
cracking a Kingsley is no longer at work: that tongue which had the
weight of a hatchet and the edge of a razor is silent.
I recalled a characteristic sentence or two (half jest, half earnest),
from one of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce's letters to Mrs. Sarjent:--
Newman was at Ryder's, but I thought it best not to see him. I heard
that unmistakable voice like a volcano's roar, tamed into the softness
of the flute-stop, and got a glimpse (may I say it to you?) of the
serpentine form through an open door--the Father Superior!
{122}
In lighter vein Philip told us some odd Johannesburg stories. One was
of a man who had arrived there some years before with absolutely no
assets except a tin of condensed milk and a needle. He spread a report
that smallpox was on its way through the country, gave out that he was
a surgeon, and vaccinated the entire community with his needle and
condensed milk, at 5_s._ a head! From this beginning he rose to be a
wealthy capitalist, with the monopoly of selling liquor within the
precincts of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
Woodburn was admirably handy for the Edinburgh libraries, in which I
put in several days' work (much belated during my illness) for the
_Encyclopædia_. September I spent happily at St. Andrews, where my
friend and host George Angus, though now a good deal of an invalid, was
as kind and pleasant as ever. We had talks on heraldry, a favourite
subject with us both; and I remember his rubbing his hands with delight
on reading (on the authority of Juliana Berners, prioress of Sopewell),
that the four Evangelists were "gentlemen come by the right line of
that worthy conqueror Judas Maccabæus"; and also that the Four Latin
Doctors, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory, were gentlemen of
blood and coat-armour."[4] I copied from one of his early heraldic
books the arms anciently assigned to:--
_Adam_ (before the Fall)--a shield gules, whereon a shield argent borne
on an escutcheon of pretence [arms of _Eve_, she being an heiress].
_Do._ (after the Fall)--paly tranché, divided every way, and tinctured
of every colour.
{123}
_Joseph_--chequy, sable and argent.
_David_--argent a harp or.
_Gideon_--sable, a fleece argent, a chief azure gutté d'eau.
_Samson_--gules, a lion couchant or, within an orle argent, sémé of
bees sable.
I saw something at St. Andrews of another old acquaintance, Jock
Dalrymple, now Stair, who had some little time before succeeded his
father (the kind old friend of my youth), and had grown grey, portly,
and rather solemn since coming into his kingdom. He was Captain of the
Royal and Ancient this year; and although he boasted of "hating
politics," and would not trouble to vote in Parliament on the most
vital Imperial question, would sit for hours in the chair at a club
meeting, discussing the minutiae of golfing rules with a zest and
patience that never failed. Men are curiously made!
I went, while at St. Andrews, to spend a weekend with the Fairlies at
their neighbouring castle of Myres (set in the most enchanting old
Scottish garden), and said mass in a billiard-room converted by my
friend into a decorous chapel, just as had been done by Bishop Hedley
in his episcopal villa near Cardiff. I noticed with interest the mace
sculptured on one of the angular turrets. Thereby hung a tale--and a
grievance; and my host told me how the presentation of a macership in
the Court of Session went with the ownership of Myres, i.e. of the
castle, as he maintained. But though he had bought the castle, my Lord
Bute had bought the estate (marching with his lands of Falkland); and
_his_ contention was that the estate, not the castle, carried with it
the macership.[5] _Hinc illæ lacrymæ_.
{124}
I left St. Andrews early on a bright autumn morning, my kind old
friend, who had insisted on getting up to serve my mass, waving me
good-bye under his hospitable porch--a last good-bye it proved to be,
for I never saw him again.[6] Before going south I spent a few days at
Aberdeen, having some business with our good bishop. I stayed with
Malcolm Hay of Seaton (one of my very few Catholic relations) at his
pretty old place on Donside. From the windows one looked across the
river, and up a wooded brae, to the venerable towers of St. Machar's
Cathedral. Malcolm motored me one day to Blairs College; I had not
before seen the new buildings and church of our Scottish seminary,
quite an imposing pile as viewed from the much-frequented Deeside road.
We found the Archbishop of St. Andrews (Mgr. Smith) at tea with the
Rector and his professorial staff, who were all most kind and civil. I
heard here of the elevation of the eminent advocate, Campbell of
Skerrington, to the Scottish Bench--the first Catholic Lord of Session
for generations, if not centuries.
I was due in Oxford before the opening of the autumn term, in view of
my prospective "flitting" from our Benedictine Hall; but I first
fulfilled a long {125} overdue engagement to pay a visit to some French
friends (the Marquis de Franquetot and his wife) in Picardy. Their
pretty château, embowered in big chestnut-trees, was some ten miles
from Boulogne, and we drove thither on Sunday to high mass at St.
Nicholas-in-the-Market, as my host wanted me to hear the French
Bishops' joint pastoral (the first they had been permitted to issue for
a great number of years) on Christian education. M. de Franquetot said
it had been prepared under the roof of my old friend Lady Sophia
Palmer, Comtesse de Franqueville, who, with her excellent husband, had
entertained the whole hierarchy for a week at their beautiful hôtel in
the Bois de Boulogne. The congregation at St. Nicholas was very large
and devout, comprising, as I was pleased to observe,[7] many men of all
ranks and ages; and the long pastoral, addressed "aux pères et mères de
famille," and interspersed with admirable comments from the good curé,
was listened to with close attention, and approval, which the "pères de
famille" occasionally showed by thumping the floor with sticks or
umbrellas, and muttering--not always _sotto voce_--"Très bien
dit,"--"ils ont bien raison," and so on. I was very glad to have been
present. Boulogne seemed full of British trippers; and I was amused,
as we drove along the sea-front, to see the number of unmistakably
French eating-houses which labelled themselves by such enticing titles
as the "Royal English Chop {126} House" and the "Margate Bar." Some,
more accommodating still, announced in their windows that "Messrs. the
Britannic tourists who arrive furnished with their own provisions may
eat them here gratuitously." Could the _Entente_ go further? I had
hardly seen the pleasant town since I had lived for a year in its
environs with my family as a little boy; and the narrow bustling
streets looked to me much as they used to under the Empire, when my
father would point out to us the gallant Chasseurs d'Afrique swaggering
along--"the finest soldiers in the world, sir--fought beside us in the
Crimea,"--six short years before the _débâcle_ of 1870. We passed
through Pont-de-Brique, and asked for the Château Neuf, the big
rambling house in an unkempt garden which had been our home; but no one
could point it out to us.
My French visit was brought to an agreeable close by a trip across the
Channel ("Why do you call it the _English_ Channel, you others?" my
hostess asked me; "to us it is only La Manche!") in a beautiful
schooner yacht belonging to a friend of the de Franquetots. We scudded
along the English coast in bright sunshine, before a strong
south-easterly breeze, finally landing at Southampton, whence I made my
way to Kneller Court, which I found as friendly and hospitable as ever:
Admiral Sir Percy and Lady Scott at luncheon with my kind
sister-in-law, and subalterns and sub-lieutenants dropping in later for
tennis and tea. My brother drove me up to Fort Nelson, and showed me
his 60-pounders and the interior of the fort, one of the chain erected
at enormous cost by Palmerston fifty years before, and now absolutely
useless except as barracks. {127} Next day I escorted my pretty niece
by dogcart, train and tram to Hilsea, to see the Gunners'
sports--gun-driving, tent-pegging, wrestling on horseback, and so
forth. It was my fifty-fifth birthday, and my health was pledged at
dinner, with musical honours, by the merry party of relatives and
friends. On October 1 I reached Oxford, superintended the transport of
my effects from Beaumont Street (where my successor, Dom Anselm Parker,
was already installed as Master of our Hall) to St. Aldate's, and
received a kind welcome there from my host and new "chief," Mgr.
Kennard. He was suffering from the peculiar constitutional
disturbance--I believe a form of suppressed gout (King Edward was in
his last years a victim to it) which keeps people always on the move;
and this chronic restlessness took him away so constantly from Oxford
that a great deal of his pastoral work--the spiritual superintendence
of fifty or sixty Catholic undergraduates, scattered all over the
university, at once devolved to great extent on me. The experiment of
sending Catholic boys to Oxford (and Cambridge) had by this time passed
out of the experimental stage, and had on the whole justified the
anticipations of those to whose initiative it had been due. There
were, of course, a few failures and a few wastrels among our small
contingent of undergraduates; but on the whole they were a good lot of
young fellows, who did credit to the various Catholic schools where
they had been trained. And their personal kindness to me was such that
it was a real pleasure to find oneself in fairly intimate relations
with them, and to be of any service to them that one could.
{128}
The good Monsignore hardly ever returned from his many absences without
bringing a friend or two with him; and his great recreation at this
time was driving his guests about in a fine motor (a new toy) which he
had lately bought from his nephew Fritz Ponsonby, the King's equerry.
Fritz and his charming wife stayed with us this autumn, as did also our
host's brother, Colonel Hegan Kennard, who was considerably the older,
but much the more vigorous and energetic of the two.[8] He attended
service on Sunday at the Evangelical church close by, and came back
indignant. "By George, sir, I never saw anything so slovenly and
slipshod in my life; disgraceful, sir, positively disgraceful!" I took
him to hear Mrs. Garrett-Fawcett speak at a woman-suffrage debate at
the Union--a most plausible lady, but we voted against her by a large
majority. I found the motor an agreeable means of visiting various
places of interest in the neighbourhood--Dorchester Abbey, an epitome
of architecture from Early Norman to Late Perpendicular, but the
interior spoilt by the bad taste of the Ritualistic fittings; the grand
old Augustinian minster of Burford; and Cuddesdon, a miniature
cathedral, with its western porch and massive central tower. It was
over this porch that the ladies of Cuddesdon, in years gone by, wishing
to do honour on some feast-day to their beloved diocesan Samuel
Wilberforce, and not less beloved Archdeacon Alfred Pott, displayed
their joint initials wrought in evergreens. "S.O.A.P.," read {129} the
Bishop as he paused before the western gable. "Surely an enemy hath
done this," he sorrowfully muttered, and proceeded on his way.
An excursion or two from Oxford I remember this autumn: one to
Downside, where it was always a happiness to go and spend a
church-festival with my Benedictine brethren; another to Eton, where I
gazed with dismay on the new school-hall with its unsightly dome, and
wondered if this was really the best the Committee of Taste could
achieve by way of South African War Memorial.[9] I met afterwards
quite a contingent of Scotsmen (Arthur Hay, the Duke of Roxburghe's
brother, etc.) at luncheon with the Irish Guards at Victoria Barracks,
where I used to breakfast of a Sunday morning--a dissipation forbidden,
I believe, to modern Etonians--with an uncle in the Scots Fusilier
Guards, in my own school days. I went to London that evening to dine
with, and read afterwards a paper on "Jerusalem of To-day" to, the
Guild of SS. Gregory and Luke, my host being Sir John Knill, Sheriff of
London, who was two years later to occupy the civic chair, as his
excellent father had done before him. On another evening I attended
our Westminster Dining-club, to hear Fr. R. H. Benson read us an essay
on "The Value of Fiction"--interesting, as coming from a successful
novelist, and of course brilliant; but I agreed with only about half of
it.
Ninian Crichton Stuart had engaged me to go and {130} support him at
the St. Andrew's Day banquet of the Caledonian Society of Cardiff, the
suffrages of which city he was at that time wooing as Conservative
candidate, much assisted by his clever and charming wife. I stayed
with them at their pretty home near Llandaff, and we motored in to the
patriotic banquet, which began at 6.30 and lasted nearly five hours! I
proposed the principal toast, and had of course no difficulty in
showing (as one of the newspaper reports remarked) that all the chief
posts in the Empire--political, ecclesiastical, legal and
administrative, were, with the most insignificant exceptions, held by
Scotsmen. Bagpipes, of course, skirled and whisky flowed freely; and
the national enthusiasm reached its height when the haggis was borne
round the hall in procession, carried by the white-clad chef and
preceded by the pipe-major, playing his best and loudest in honour of
the "chief of pudding race." I left Llandaff next morning, Ringan,
Lady Ninian's pretty baby, crowing good-bye to me from his mother's
arms,[10] and spent an hour or two in Cardiff with Bishop Hedley, who
expressed his hope that I would help Kennard at Oxford as long as I
could, and would ultimately succeed him as chaplain. We visited
together the new and splendid town-hall, the finest municipal building
I had ever seen. The Oxford term ended in the following week, {131}
and I made my way north to Fort Augustus, where I found discussion in
progress as whether we should or should not sell our house and estate
of Ardachie, for which we had several good offers. I said yes; for the
place, though not without its attractions, had been altogether more of
a burden than a profit to us for a good many years.[11] Whilst at Fort
Augustus, I addressed, by desire of the community, letters to the
Abbot-Primate in Rome, as well as to our own bishop, urging, for many
weighty reasons, the reincorporation of our abbey into the English
Benedictine Congregation, from which it had been separated for just
twenty-six years.
[1] Parodied in _Punch_ (I think by that inveterate punster the then
editor, F. C. Burnand), under the titles of _Goeth Down as an Oyster_
and _Red in the Nose is She_. It is the Scottish hero of one of these
romances, I forget which (I mean, of course, the original, not the
parody), who shows his emotion at a critical moment by "cramming half a
yard of yellow beard into his mouth!"
[2] The bag consisted of an assortment of miscellaneous fowl. Bute was
at this period of his career something of the typical Briton whose idea
of happiness, according to some French observer, is more or less summed
up in the formula: "My friends, it is a fine day: let us go out and
kill something!"
[3] In the preface to _Rod, Root, and Flower_. The passage was quite
new to me.
[4] From the _Boke of St. Albans_ (1486).
[5] An antique privilege of the kind would appeal irresistibly to
Bute--_tenaci propositi viro_; he stuck to his guns, not only claiming
the right of presentation, but actually exercising it at the next
vacancy. I am not qualified to pronounce on the vexed question; but my
experience is that in such matters the big man usually gets his way,
and the smaller has to go to the wall. What was settled after Bute's
death I know not. Anyhow--the last Lord of Falkland lies among the
lilies in a war cemetery in France; and the memorial chapel in his
park, near by the House of Falkland, was designed by the present laird
of Myres.
[6] George Angus, for nearly a quarter of a century resident priest at
St. Andrews, died there on St. Patrick's Day (March 17), 1909.
[7] Less pleasing was it to notice the outside walls and very doors of
the old church plastered all over with flaring _affiches_ of music-hall
performances, pictures of ballet-dancers, etc. "Cette canaille de
République!" murmured in my ear, as we drove off, my friend and host,
whose sympathies were entirely with the _ancien régime_.
[8] More of a man, in short. "Dear old Charlie," he said to me, "was
good at games when he was at Harrow, and a capital runner. All the
same, he was always a bit of an old woman, and always will be!"
[9] I wrote, I fear, rather heatedly to good old Ainger (Secretary of
the War Fund), on what seemed to me the painful incongruity of the
building with its surroundings. "Many people, I believe," he replied
with admirable restraint, "feel quite as you do on this matter; but no
one has expressed himself quite so strongly!"
[10] Poor little Ringan! (his name was the ancient "pet" form of
"Ninian," the saint of Galloway). On the election-day, a year or so
afterwards, the burgesses of Cardiff smiled to see him driving through
the streets in a motor from which flew a bannerette recommending them
to "Vote for Daddy!" There was universal regret, a few days later, at
the sad news that the little electioneerer had succumbed to a chill
caught on the occasion of his first public appearance, when less than
two years old. See _post._ page 176.
[11] The actual tenant, Colonel Campbell, whose wife was a Catholic,
eventually bought the property.
{132}
CHAPTER VIII
1908-1909
I spent the Christmas of 1908, as usual, very pleasantly at Beaufort.
For the first time for many years the family was absolutely _au
complet_: the services of the season in the beautiful chapel were well
attended; and I sympathized with the happiness of my kind hostess, as
she knelt at the altar at midnight mass surrounded by all her children,
without exception. There were grandchildren, too, of all ages, who
amused themselves vastly in spite of appalling weather, rain, snow,
frost, thaw, and gales, following one another in rapid and unwelcome
succession. The children acted a pretty and touching miracle-play, the
hand-painted programme whereof still adorns my scrap-book; and there
were seasonable revels of various kinds. At New Year somebody
announced that 1909 was to be a great year of anniversaries, 1809
having been _annus mirabilis_. We remembered (with difficulty) eight
celebrities born that year--Mendelssohn, E. Barrett Browning, Darwin,
Tennyson, O. Wendell Holmes, Lord Houghton, W. E. Gladstone, and
Abraham Lincoln, but could think of no others. This reminded some one
else that I. Disraeli called thirty-seven the "fatal age of genius,"
four great men (among others) who died at that age having been Raphael,
Mozart, {133} Byron and Burns. I wound up with a statement new, I
think, to everybody, viz., that Saturday was the fatal day of the week
to the English Royal Family (Hanoverian Line). I have not followed the
matter down to quite recent times; but it is undoubtedly singular that
William III., Queen Anne, George I., II., III., and IV., the Duchess of
Kent, the Prince Consort, and Princess Alice all died on a Saturday.
I stayed at Loudoun Castle on my way south, finding there a big party
of young men and maidens--Howards of Glossop, Hastings', Bellasis',
Beauclercs, and Bethells, gathered for an Eglinton Hunt Ball (recalling
the days of my youth). Nearly all were Catholics, so I had quite a
congregation in the little chapel, redecorated (with the rest of the
castle) since my previous visit. I was back in Oxford before the
middle of January for the Lent term, to me always a more interesting
period than the golden weeks of summer, when everybody's heads seemed
to be full of nothing but amusement and sport. Our Sunday conferences
were given this term by Father Kenelm Vaughan (the late Cardinal's
missionary brother), who used to arrive for the week-ends with no
luggage save a little well-worn Bible hanging from the girdle of his
cassock and (possibly) a toothbrush in his pocket. If there ever was a
man who lived entirely in "a better country, and that an heavenly," it
was Kenelm. Like all the Vaughans, he was of striking appearance; and
his personality, as well as his appealing eloquence, made a great
impression on his young hearers, although his unconventional sayings
and doings had an occasionally disconcerting effect on our good host
and his guests, which used to remind me of {134} Jerome's "Man in the
Third Floor Back." Wilfrid Ward was with us for a day or two, with a
great flow of conversation, chiefly about himself. He read an
interesting paper to our Newman Society on "The Writing of the
Apologia"--anticipatory gleanings, of course (if the phrase is
permissible), of his great forthcoming biography, and including several
of the Cardinal's unpublished letters. There was a record meeting of
the Society a little later, to hear W. H. Mallock on (or "down on")
Socialism. Many dons of note were present, and there was a brisk
debate, W. H. M. holding his own very well. At supper afterwards I
ventured to remind him of two sentences of his (I forget from which of
his writings) which had given me much pleasure:--
"The Catholic Church is the Columbus of modern society, who will guide
us eventually to the new moral continent which other explorers are
trying in vain to reach."
"An aristocracy is the best of all possible orders, in the worst of all
possible worlds."
Our good Monsignore was nominally at home during these weeks, but in a
restless and excitable state. He would exhaust himself by feverish
energy at golf for a day or two, then rush off in his motor, "for
change," with valet and chauffeur, and return more tired than he had
gone away. He attended one evening a big golfing-dinner at the Master
of University's: dined well (according to his own account), drank hock,
old port, and Benedictine, came home and rolled about all night in
indescribable agony. Most of his duties he delegated to me, including,
sometimes, the task of "interviewing" bewildered Catholic parents, to
whom Oxford university life was an absolute _terra incognita_, and who
{135} were puzzled or anxious about their sons' doings. Poor Lady
E---- B----! I remember still the dismay with which she came to tell
me how her boy had made friends in college with an Egyptian Moslem ("an
unbaptized heathen Turk," was her description of him), and was bent on
taking "digs" (lodgings) with him in the following term. I felt
sympathy with the Catholic mother in her instinctive dislike to this
prospect; but I felt none with the indignation of another parent (a
distinguished diplomatist) at the refusal of one of the most
sought-after colleges to admit his son. The fact was, as I had, after
due inquiry, to explain tactfully to the aggrieved parent, that the
youth (a pupil of one of our smaller Catholic schools) gave himself, at
the preliminary interview with the college authorities, such
"confounded airs" (as one of the dons expressed it) that they would
have nothing to say to him. Probably the poor lad's "airs" were only
one of the many forms in which extreme shyness manifests itself; anyhow
it is fair to add that this was an exceptional case, and that our
Catholic freshmen, as a whole, made a favourable impression by their
good manners and modesty of demeanour. One Head, who had no sympathy
at all with the Catholic religion, told me that so pleased was he with
the Catholic contingent in his college, that he would willingly admit
as many more as I cared to recommend to him.
Of events of general interest this spring, I recall a fascinating
lecture by Sven Hedin on his Tibetan travels. The eminent explorer had
a bumper audience and a great reception, and was given an honorary
degree by Convocation next day. Kennard and I agreed in resenting his
arrogant and bumptious {136} manner; and the tone of some of his
remarks might have prepared us for the outburst of anti-English
fanaticism for which he made himself notorious a few years later.
There was a big gathering at the Schools one evening in celebration of
the centenary of Darwin. The oratorical tributes and panegyrics were,
as usual, so lengthy as to become wearisome; but an interesting feature
was the presence of three of Darwin's sons, of whom one (Sir George)
gave us some pleasant personal details and reminiscences of his
distinguished father. His affectionate loyalty to a parent's memory
one can sympathize with and understand; but I confess that, reading the
"pulpit references" to the centenary that week, I was puzzled to
comprehend how Christian ministers could "let themselves go" in
indiscriminating panegyric of a man of whom I hope it is not
uncharitable, as it is certainly not untrue, to say that he was, if any
man ever was, a self-confessed unbeliever in revelation and in
Christ.[1] The utterances on such an occasion of a distinguished
occupant of the university pulpit a generation earlier[2] would
certainly have been pitched in a different key; and so would those of
my old friend Dr. Frederick George Lee, whose summary of the logical
result of Darwin's teaching was--
The Incarnation is but a dream, the Supernatural a delusion. Our only
duties are to feed and to breed. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow
we die.
I received into the Church this term an undergraduate of one of the
smaller colleges, who was reading {137} for natural science honours and
rowed in his college boat; but he had evidently had time for reading
and reflection as well, and had thought the whole matter out so
carefully that I had little left to do. In order to keep him back at
the eleventh hour, his tutor (an Anglican divine of some repute) kept
propounding to him historical difficulties such as "How was it that
Henry of Navarre was allowed by the Pope to have two wives at once?"
and so on. My young friend used to bring me these nuts to crack, and
we had a good deal of fun over them.
It was proposed, and decided, before Easter that Oxford should send a
representative to Louvain in the summer, to take part in the jubilee
celebrations of the Catholic University. Cambridge, London, Glasgow,
Aberdeen, and, I believe, other universities, had all elected, as a
compliment to Louvain, to send a Catholic representative on this
occasion; and the senior proctor told me that my name had been
mentioned before the Council in this connection. Oxford, however,
declined to associate itself with the other universities in this
graceful act of courtesy--one which, as I heard privately from Louvain,
was very highly appreciated there. A clergyman of the Church of
England was nominated as the Oxford representative; and to a letter of
remonstrance which (after consulting one or two of our resident
masters) I sent to the Vice-chancellor, he replied by a
courteously-worded note of explanation--which explained nothing.
Early in March I paid an interesting little visit to Douai Abbey, in
the beautiful wooded country about Pangbourne, and lectured to the
community and their eighty pupils on Jerusalem. I had a warmly {138}
Benedictine welcome here, and was glad to see additions being made to
the buildings of the former diocesan college of Portsmouth, which the
bishop had made over to the monks when they were expelled from their
beloved home at Douai, by decree of the French Government dated April
3, 1903. Term over, I went up to Yorkshire to spend St. Benedict's
festival with my brethren at Ampleforth, where I found myself deputed
that evening to present the football colours in the college. They were
scarlet and black; but while reminding the young players that those
were the traditional colours of Mephistopheles, I disclaimed any
intention of suggesting a common origin. My stay here was saddened by
the rather unexpected news of the death of my dear old friend George
Angus of St. Andrews. He had long been the only Catholic member of his
Oxford Hall; and exactly a week before his death I had had, by a
consoling coincidence, the pleasure of reconciling to the Catholic
Church an undergraduate of the same venerable foundation.
I stayed a night in London, on my way to Arundel, to hear Lord Hugh
Cecil discourse at our Westminster Dining-club, with his usual
perfervid rhetoric, on "Some Diseases of the House of Commons." Two of
our University Members, Sir William Anson and Professor Butcher, joined
in the interesting subsequent discussion. A friend next morning
insisted on carrying me off to Selfridge's, the huge new emporium in
Oxford Street, and showing me all over it. He amused me by a story of
how there, or in some other Brobdingnagian London store, the electric
light suddenly went out, just at the busiest hour of the evening.
"There they were--thousands of {139} 'em," the narrator of the incident
is supposed to have said, "pinching the goods right and left--'aving
the time of their lives, with not a light in the 'ole place; and there
was _I_--just my blooming luck--where do you think? _in the grand piano
department!_"
I went for the week-end to Rickmansworth, to stay with Lady Encombe,
who had a little party for the laying of the foundation-stone of the
new church of the Assumptionists. The Bishop of Kimberley (S.A.) gave
a nice address. I preached next day (Sunday) in the old church, and in
the evening we all listened to a quaint Franco-English sermonette from
good Fr. Julian, the superior. Monday was Jack Encombe's tenth
birthday: I gave him _Jorrocks_, with coloured plates, which delighted
him; saw him and his brother start hunting on their ponies (their
mother following them awheel); and then left for Arundel, where I was
very glad to find myself (though not yet fully robust) able to take my
share in the solemn Easter services. I found the castle grounds at
length "redd up" and in perfect order; the hordes of workmen vanished,
and lawns and terraces and shrubberies and flower-beds twinkling in the
April sunshine. It was a joy to see the beautiful home of the Howards
looking itself again after all these years of reconstruction and
upheaval. The Duke had told me that he was determined to get the place
shipshape within a year of his second marriage, or (like Trelawny)
"know the reason why!" and he had been as good as his word. I heard
with pleasure in Easter week that my nephew had got his first in
moderations at Balliol; and with sorrow of the death of my kind old
friend Bishop {140} Wilkinson, successor of St. Cuthbert as Bishop of
Hexham, and a shining example of loyalty and devotion to his Church and
his country. I lunched in London, on my way to Oxford, with Lady
Maple, at Clarence House, the pretty residence in Regent's Park left to
her by Sir Blundell Maple. Telephoning previously to "Clarence House"
to inquire the luncheon-hour, I was informed in haughty tones that
"their Royal 'Ighnesses were in Egypt, and that nothing was known about
any luncheon!" It turned out that I was in communication with the
other Clarence House, the St. James's residence of the Duke of
Connaught.
My first duty, on returning to Oxford, was to marry my cousin John
Simeon,[3] until recently an undergraduate of the House, to Miss
Adelaide Holmes à Court. My little sermon at the Jesuit church (which
was almost filled with the wedding guests) was not intended to be
otherwise than cheerful, and I was surprised in the course of it to
observe the unusual phenomenon of the bridegroom's father dissolved in
tears! The happy couple motored off later to North Wales in a downpour
of rain, which (I heard) never once stopped during their brief
honeymoon.
Father Maturin (whose repute as an orator had been long established in
Oxford) was giving our weekly conferences this term, and I was greatly
struck with them--packed close with thought and luminous argument, and
scintillating besides with {141} genuine eloquence. I had heard many
of his pulpit orations, but I thought this series of lectures the
finest thing he had ever done, though perhaps slightly over the heads
of his undergraduate auditors. I was myself fully occupied at this
time with a long article (biographical and critical) on St. Gregory
Nazianzene,[4] which, by a happy coincidence, I completed on May 9, the
feast-day of that great saint and doctor. I took two days off for a
visit to Cambridge (my first for fourteen years) in connection with the
Fisher Society dinner, at which I represented Oxford and the "Newman."
Some distinguished guests--a Cardinal, a judge, an author, and a
statesman--failed us at the last moment; but the gathering was cheery
and successful and the after-dinner oratory much less wearisome than
usual. I visited, of course, while at Cambridge, the really noble
Catholic church of Our Lady--finer, I thought (as I had thought
before), and more impressive outside than in. I remembered that the
great church of St. John at Norwich had given me precisely the contrary
impression.
I was always bidden to (and pleased, when I could to attend) the
numerous weddings of my youthful relatives. One, in these early summer
days, was that of my pretty cousin, Eleanor Bowlby, to a Dorrien-Smith,
heir-apparent to the "King of Scilly," as his sobriquet was, though I
believe his proper local title was "Lord Proprietor." I sat at the
ceremony next to my brother-in-law Charles Dalrymple, who did not
approve of the ever-popular "O for the Wings of a Dove!" which a little
chorister warbled in the course of the service. {142} "Absurd and
unreal!" I heard him mutter. "They are going to Paris for their
honeymoon, and don't want doves' wings, or to be at rest either."[5]
On the same evening I attended, at the invitation of the genial head
master of University College School (whom I had known when on the staff
of Inverness College), an excellent presentation of _Alcestis_ in the
fine oak-panelled hall of his school at Hampstead. Not all the
audience witnessed dry-eyed the death of the poor heroine; the
sustained pathos, too, of Admetus was admirably portrayed; but the
chief honours of the evening fell to a young hero of six-foot-four, who
had played great cricket for the school against the M.C.C., and was a
most doughty and convincing Herakles. A very pleasant evening's
entertainment, which I had to abandon not quite completed to catch the
midnight train to Oxford; for I was interested in a debate in
Convocation next day, on the perennial problem of how and where to
house the ever-increasing thousands of books accruing to the Bodleian
Library. There were some drastic suggestions thrown out--one, if I
remember right, was to make a bonfire of all the obsolete works on
theology, philosophy and natural science! but our final decision was to
adopt somebody's ingenious proposal to excavate underground chambers,
with room for a million or so volumes, under the grass-plots round the
Radcliffe camera. This point settled, I went to lunch with my friend
Hadow in his rooms at Worcester, the former calefactory or
recreation-room (so he said) of {143} our whilom Benedictine students,
and looking out on a long narrow raised garden which there is reason to
believe was once the monastic bowling-green. I thought, as often
before, of the many unknown nooks and corners in this dear Oxford of
ours, each bearing its silent witness to some phase of her "strange
eventful history."
A few interesting incidents in this--my last summer term in
residence--come back to me as I write. I recall a crowded meeting at
the Town Hall enthusiastically cheering a vitriolic attack on the
Admiralty by "Lieutenant Carlyon Bellairs, M.P., R.N." (a most
un-sailor-like person); a paper, or rather a harangue, at the Newman
Society, from Hilaire Belloc on "The Church and Reality," which left us
gasping at his cleverness but rather doubtful as to his drift; and an
odd meeting of dons and dignitaries at Hertford College, whereat Lord
Hugh Cecil was accepted as prospective Parliamentary candidate for the
university. I have called it "odd"; for odd it certainly was to hear
the Master of University, who proposed Lord Hugh, assert that he did so
in spite of his own profound disagreement with him on fiscal,
ecclesiastical, and educational questions! As a matter of fact, it
mattered little what the Master of University or anybody else thought,
said, or did; for as every one knew that the six hundred clerical
members of Convocation would vote for Lord Hugh to a man, his election
was of course a foregone conclusion.
My last evening at Oxford was a happy one: a pleasant party gathered
round the Vice-chancellor's hospitable table, and after dinner the
Commemoration concert at Magdalen, Waynflete's ancient {144} hall
echoing with old madrigals perfectly rendered by the unrivalled choir,
and we guests, during the interval, flitting about the cloisters, dimly
lit with Chinese lanterns, and set out with tables of refreshments. I
left Oxford next day for Birmingham, for a jubilee celebration at the
Oratory School--a solemn memorial service in the fine church, an
admirable representation of Terence's _Phormio_ (as arranged by
Cardinal Newman), and a prize-distribution presided over by the Duke of
Norfolk. The Duke was next day the chief guest at an Oxford and
Cambridge Catholic graduates' dinner in London, and proposed the toast
of Oxford University, to which I had the pleasure of replying. I took
occasion to point out our guest's new and close family connection with
Oxford, where he had recently had three nephews, while two more were
shortly going up. His own father, the previous Duke, had been a
Cambridge man. London was so sultry during these midsummer days, that
it was pleasant to find oneself transported to the Antarctic Circle,
listening (at the Albert Hall) to Shackleton's fascinating narrative of
his trip to the South Pole. His great lantern pictures made one feel
almost cool: and the groups of solemn penguins, in their
black-and-white, pacing along the snowy shores, were quite curiously
reminiscent of a gathering of portly bishops--say at a Pan-Anglican
Congress.
I refused to stay in London (as I had proposed doing) to attend an
international anti-vivisection meeting in Trafalgar Square, when I
found that I was expected to speak (from the back of a lion?). I fled
to Surrey, to stay first with my sister at her {145} newly-acquired
home near Reigate, a pretty old house in a "careless-ordered garden" of
which Tennyson would have approved; and then to the Kennards at their
charming Elizabethan manor-house of Great Tangley. The Sunday of my
visit here I spent partly at the fine diocesan seminary of Wonersh, and
partly at the Greyfriars monastery at Chilworth. The same architect
had designed the chapels at both; and I admired the skill with which he
had achieved extremely effective results by entirely different methods
of treatment. From Surrey I travelled to Scotland, to preach a charity
sermon at Saltcoats, in Ayrshire, for the excellent work of the Society
of St. Vincent of Paul. Saltcoats was within easy reach of Kelburn,
and I went thither for a short visit, finding my sister enjoying what
was always one of the chief pleasures of her life--that of having
helped to secure the happy engagement of one of our numerous nieces,
the elder daughter of my third brother.
My Oxford Local Examination work lay this summer not among the little
maidens of Dumfries Convent School, but at St. Wilfrid's College at
Oakamoor, in the picturesque Staffordshire Highlands, a country quite
new to me. My room commanded a lovely view of wooded glens and distant
purple hills; and the place itself was full of interest, incorporating
as it did the old house of Cotton Hall, given by Lord Shrewsbury fifty
years before to Faber and his "Wilfridian" community, most of whom
joined the Oratory after their conversion to Catholicism. I admired
Pugin's church, at once graceful and austere, with the famous east
window which the architect told Lord Shrewsbury he "could {146} die
for."[6] I had a pleasant week here, presiding on the last day at the
school prize-distribution, and promising the boys a new set of Scott's
novels, to replace the one which, I was glad to see, was worn out with
assiduous reading.
Going on to Cardiff from Staffordshire, I found Lady Bute entertaining
the Cymnodorion and other mysterious Welsh societies in the castle
grounds. I was lodged in the lofty clock-tower, in one of Burges's
wonderful painted chambers, and said mass for the family and large
house-party on Sunday in the richly-decorated but tiny domestic
chapel--so tiny (it has been the dressing-room of Bute's grandfather,
who died there) that most of my congregation were outside in the
passage, and the scene recalled my mass in the Grotto of the Nativity
at Bethlehem eight years before. I had never thought to see a Pageant
again; but the Welsh one, for some reason, had been postponed to this
summer, and we all attended the opening representation on July 26, most
of our house-party, indeed, taking part in the show. Lady Bute was
Dame Wales, and Lady Ninian Stuart Glamorgan; but the great reception
of the day was reserved for Lord Tredegar, veteran of Balaclava, and
the most popular magnate of Wales, who came on in full armour as Owen
Glendower, with Lady Llangattock as Lady Glendower. I thought the
finest feature of the Pageant the singing of the national hymn, "Hen
Wlad fy nhadau," at the close, actors and audience all joining in the
stirring chorus with thrilling effect. Most of {147} the next day we
spent at Caerphilly Castle, whither Princess Louise and the Duke of
Argyll came to explore the imposing ruins.
I spent a couple of nights, on leaving Cardiff, at Belmont Priory, full
to me of old Benedictine memories; and in August I was once more my
brother's guest at his pleasant river-side home near Shepperton. One
day we devoted to a visit to Hampton Court--my first, curiously enough.
We saw everything conscientiously, great hall, state-rooms, pictures (I
had not expected so many good ones), big vine, and Dutch garden; but I
think I was most struck, entering Clock Court under the red turreted
tower, with the almost uncanny likeness of the place to the familiar
School-yard at Eton.[7] From Shepperton I presently moved higher up
the river to Goring, to attend the local regatta, of which my kind host
there was secretary and treasurer. He was likewise the leading
Catholic of the little mission, and had given up his commodious
boat-house to serve as a chapel till the pretty church was built. The
_padre_ at that time was a German priest called Hell (to which he later
added an e for euphony), while the name of the Anglican vicar, oddly
enough, was Dams! My host's son accompanied me up to town on an
excursion to the White City, where the outstanding attraction (how
strange it seems to-day!) was the aeroplane in which Blériot had
achieved the unprecedented feat of crossing the Channel. London struck
me as a curious place in mid-August: a city of aliens and country
visitors, French and German {148} chattered everywhere, and the only
familiar face among the millions that of Simon Lovat, whom I came
across at Hatchard's buying books.
George Lane Fox claimed my services as chaplain, before I returned to
Scotland, at Monkhams, the pretty place near Waltham Cross where he was
then living with his family; the house stood atop of a high hill
(pleasantly cool in these sultry August days), and was quite rural,
though the Lights o' London were clearly visible at night not many
miles away. There was a tiny chapel for our daily services, and a big
scouts' camp in the park close by, whence a quota of young worshippers
turned up for Sunday mass. George took me to see the noble church at
Waltham (surely one of the finest Norman naves in England),[8] and,
across the Lea, the beautiful and still perfect Eleanor Cross in the
market-place, before I went north to pay a few farewell visits to
Scottish relatives, in view of my approaching departure for South
America. At Blairquhan I found my brother entertaining his customary
August party, with, as usual, a considerable naval contingent. The
weather was "soft"--in other words, it rained every day and all day;
but people shot, fished, golfed, motored and played tennis quite
regardless of the elements. My brother had {149} developed a passion
for mechanical music; and the house was continuously resonant with the
weird strains of pianolas, gramophones and musical boxes. There was
music, too, of a strenuous kind when I reached Dunskey in preparation
for an amateur concert for some good object (I forget what) at
Portpatrick. My brother-in-law, David Glasgow, sang a naval song or
two with astonishing vigour and sweetness for a man of seventy-six; I
contributed "The Baby on the Shore," which I had first sung on the old
_Magdalena_ going out to Brazil in 1896; and the entertainment was so
successful that an overflow concert had to be arranged for the
following evening. I was sorry to leave the merry and pleasant party;
but I was due at Aberdeen to assist at the presentation of his portrait
to our kind old friend Bishop Chisholm, on the occasion of his
sacerdotal golden jubilee. The presentation ceremony took two hours,
and the luncheon afterwards two hours more! Why is there no time-limit
to the oratory on such occasions? I contrived to propose the health of
the whole Hierarchy of Scotland[9] in exactly six minutes (one minute
for each bishop); but the length of some of the speeches was appalling.
Next day I went on to Fort Augustus, where I found myself, after a
quarter of a century, "presiding" (as the phrase is) again at the
organ, our organist being away on a walking tour among the hills. In
the week after my return our local games (the Gleann Mhor Gathering)
came off in {150} glorious weather. Motors from neighbouring lodges
occupied the monastic lawns: the Chief of Glenmoriston and other noted
highlanders were acting as judges; and "quite a special feature (so
said one of the reporters) was given to the gay scene by the
black-robed monks, who flitted [I like that word] hither and thither
with a word of welcome for all." As a matter of fact, one of our
community (a Macdonell, to wit) was the moving spirit of the Gathering,
the success of which was in great measure owing to his efforts and
enthusiasm.
[1] I would not venture to make such a statement except on the best
authority--Darwin's own words. See Appendix.
[2] Dean Burgon. See _ante_, page 104.
[3] His grandfather, Sir John Simeon, M.P. for the Isle of Wight, had
married my father's cousin, one of the Colvilles of Culross. They were
both converts to the Catholic Church. Johnnie succeeded his father as
fourth baronet in 1915.
[4] For the _Catholic Encyclopædia_ (vol. vii., pp. 10-14).
[5] The most inappropriate wedding-anthem I ever heard was at a smart
marriage in Scotland; it was sung by a lady, and was called, "With thee
th' unsheltered moor I tread!"
[6] Pugin's ecstatic allusion was, of course, to the tracery of the
window designed by himself, not to the (contemporary) stained glass,
which is in truth _laid à faire frémir_.
[7] The likeness was the more remarkable in view of the fact that there
is a difference of eighty years in the respective dates (Eton _c._
1440, Hampton Court, _c._ 1520) of the two buildings.
[8] George was greatly amused with a description which I afterwards
sent him from a fifty-year old church paper, of a Victorian
"restoration" of this fine old church. There were oak choir-stalls (so
wrote the aggrieved reporter), but no choir, the stalls being occupied
by fashionably-dressed ladies. The only ornament of the restored
sanctuary was a gigantic Royal Arms under the East Window--"a work in
which the treatment of the Unicorn's tail is especially remarkable for
what Mr. Ruskin would call its 'loving reverence for truth.'"
[9] I amused the company, in this connection, with the tale of the
undergraduate who was asked in an examination to enumerate the Minor
Prophets. "Well," said the youth after some hesitation, "I really do
not care to make invidious distinctions!"
{151}
CHAPTER IX
1909-1910
Since my first visit to Brazil in 1896-97, my Benedictine friends
labouring in that vast country had frequently expressed the wish that I
should, if possible, return and help them in their great work of
restoration and reconstruction, for which more labourers were urgently
needed. With health in great measure restored, and the headship of our
Oxford Hall, which I had held for ten years, passed into other hands,
the way to South America seemed once again open; and the autumn of 1909
found me fully authorized to make all necessary preparations for the
voyage. I left Fort Augustus happy in the assurance that the long
anticipated, and generally desired, reunion of our abbey with the
English mother-congregation was certain to be soon realized; and stayed
at Beaufort for a few days before going south, meeting there "Abe"
Bailey (of South African renown), Hubert Jerningham, and some other
interesting people. My last glimpse of the Highlands was a golden
afternoon spent in the White Garden (the idea of one of the daughters
of the house), and a vision of serried masses of white blossoms--I
never realized before how many shades of white there are--standing up
in their pale beauty against the dark background of trees which
encircle {152} one of the most beautiful of Scottish gardens. From
Beaufort I went to Kelburn to take leave of my sister, whom I found
entertaining her Girls' Friendly Society, assisted by twenty
bluejackets from a cruiser lying off Arran. Their commander, Lord
George Seymour, had brought his sailors by express invitation to play
about and have tea with the Friendly Girls--an arrangement which seemed
quite satisfactory to all parties! I crossed the Firth next day to say
good-bye to Lady Bute, who was in residence at her pretty home in the
Isle of Cumbrae, and went on the same afternoon to visit my hospitable
cousin Mrs. Wauchope at beautiful Niddrie. The Somersets and other
agreeable folk were my fellow-guests there; and Andrew Lang arrived
next day, and seemed--shall I say it?--a little bit "out of the
picture." I was accustomed to his small affectations and egotisms and
cynical "asides," which always seemed to me more or less of a pose; for
the eminent writer was really a very kind-hearted man, and I dare say
just as humble-minded in reality as any of us. The poor Duke of
Somerset, however, who had no affectations or pretentions of any kind,
could not do with Mr. Lang at all; and I remember his imploring me
(against my usual habit) to come and sit in the smoking-room at night,
so that they should be on no account left _tête-à-tête_! On Sunday we
all walked to see the noble ruins of Craigmillar Castle, sadly
reminiscent of poor Queen Mary, and admirably tended by their present
owner, whom we chanced to meet there, and whom I interested by a tale
(oddly enough he had never heard it) of a ghost-face on the wall of his
own house at Liberton.
At Woodburn, where I spent the following Sunday, {153} and where Lord
Ralph and Lady Anne Kerr were always delighted to welcome a priest to
officiate in their tiny oratory, I found staying with Ralph his brother
Lord Walter, whose seventieth birthday we kept as a family festival,
and who on the same day retired, as Admiral of the Fleet, from the Navy
in which he had served for fifty-six years. Our birthday expedition
was a most interesting pilgrimage to the Holy Well of St. Triduana,
near Restalrig, with its beautiful vaulted Gothic roof, recently
restored by the owner, Lord Moray.[1] The unpretentious little
Catholic chapel hard by pleased me more than the elaborate and
expensive new church recently erected at Portobello, which we also
visited. I broke my journey south at Longridge Towers, and whilst
there motored over with Sir Brooke Boothby, our Minister in Chili (an
agreeable and well-informed person) to see the poor remains of the
great convent at Coldingham--sad enough, but wonderfully interesting.
I made a farewell call at Ampleforth _en route_, lingering an hour at
York to admire the west front of the minster, from which all the
scaffolding was at length down after years of careful and patient
repairs. Hurrying through London, I travelled to Brighton and Seaford,
for the opening (by the Bishop of Southwark) of the new Ladycross
school, recently transferred from Bournemouth. There was quite a
notable gathering of old pupils and friends, and I had a charming
neighbour at luncheon in the person of Madame Navarro (Mary Anderson),
on my other {154} side being Count Riccardi-Cubitt, English-born, but a
Papal Count in right of his wife. The speeches, from the bishop, Lord
Southwell, and others, were for once commendably short.
I was bidden to meet at luncheon in London next day Princess Marie
Louise--a title unfamiliar to me: it had, in fact, been lately adopted
to avoid confusion with an aunt and cousin, both also called Louise.
We spoke of the recent re-discovery of an abbey in Lincolnshire, of
which literally not a single stone had been left above ground by the
iconoclasts of the sixteenth century. "My terrible great-uncle again,
I suppose!" said Her Highness with a deprecatory smile. The reference
was to Henry VIII.! but I hazarded a conjecture that the work of
destruction dated from later and Puritan days. I attended on this same
afternoon the marriage of my old friend Herbert Maxwell's only son to
the youngest daughter of the House of Percy, at St. Peter's, Eaton
Square, the bright and ornate interior of which contrasted cheerfully
with the mirk and mire outside. The Bishop of Peterborough, the
bride's uncle, tied the knot; and the church, and the Duchess of
Northumberland's house in Grosvenor Place afterwards, were thronged
with Percys and Campbells and Glyns.
After two busy days at Oxford, devoted to packing up and to taking
hasty farewells of kind old friends (both things I detest), I went down
to Hampshire to spend the Sunday previous to sailing with my brother at
Kneller Court. The omens were inauspicious, for it blew hard all day,
with torrents of rain. Next morning, however, was calm and bright as
we motored to Southampton, where I boarded {155} R.M.S.P. _Aragon_,
nearly 5,000 tons bigger than the good old _Magdalena_. We sailed at
noon, crossed to Cherbourg in perfect weather, and found the Bay of
Biscay next day all smiles and dimples and sunshine. I did not land at
Lisbon, having seen it all before, and having no friends there. We
dropped quietly down the Tagus at sundown, just when points of light
were breaking out over the city, and all the church bells seemed to be
ringing the Angelus. We had a full ship, and our voyage was
diversified by the usual sports, of which I was an "honorary
president," my colleagues in that sinecure office being a Brazilian
coffee-king, the President-elect of Argentina, and a Belgian Baron.
There were four Scotsmen at my table in the saloon, three of them
Davids! Somewhere about the Equator we kept the birthday of King
Edward, whose health was pledged by Brazilians and Argentinos as
cordially and enthusiastically as by the British. I wrote to Fritz
Ponsonby to tell him of this, for His Majesty's information.[2] Two
days later we sighted the low green shores of Brazil. I looked with
interest at the well-remembered heights of Olinda, with the white walls
of S. Bento shining {156} in the morning sun. Somehow I did not
picture myself stationed there again, though a newspaper which came
aboard at Pernambuco announced, I noticed, that "o conhecido
educationalista sr. David Hurter-blais" was coming to that city "afim
de tratar da educação religiosa das classes populares!" The passengers
for Pernambuco, I observed, were now chucked into the Company's lighter
in a basket (in West African style), instead of having to "shin" down a
dangerous companion in a heavy swell, as we used to do. Two
lank-haired red-brown Indians, who came on board here to sell feather
fans and such things, interested me; and I recalled how Emerson had
described the aboriginals of North America as the "provisional
races"--"the red-crayon sketch of humanity laid on the canvas before
the colours for the real manhood were ready."
My destination on this voyage was not, as thirteen years previously,
the steaming Equatorial State of Pernambuco, and the venerable
half-derelict city of Olinda, whither our Benedictine pioneers had come
out from Europe soon after the fall of the Brazilian Empire, just in
time, as it seemed, to save the Benedictine Order in that vast country
from collapse and utter extinction. From Olinda the arduous work of
revival and restoration had gone quietly and steadily on, including one
by one the ancient and almost abandoned abbeys of the old Brazilian
Congregation; and it was to one of these, the monastery of our Order in
the great and growing city of S. Paulo, that my steps were now turned.
Bahia, two days voyage from Pernambuco, is a city to which (like
Constantinople) distance very decidedly lends enchantment, and I did
not land {157} there. It was raining fast, and the fantastic hilltops
were wrapped in clouds, as we entered Rio Bay. I was welcomed by a
kind Belgian monk whom I had known at Olinda in 1896, and who drove me
up to our fine old Portuguese abbey, standing on its own mount or
_morro_ close to the sea, where I had paid my respects to the last of
the old Brazilian abbots a dozen years before. A vigorous young
community now occupied the long-empty cells; and the conduct of a
flourishing college, as well as pastoral work of various kinds outside,
gave scope to their energy and zeal.
The weather next day was perfect, and my friend Dom Amaro devoted two
or three hours to driving me round the City Beautiful. Beautiful, of
course, it had always been; but I was astounded at the transformation
which had taken place in four short years. From "the cemetery of the
foreigner," as Rio had been called when its name, like those of Santos,
Havana and Panama, had been almost synonymous with pestilence and
death, it had become one of the healthiest, as it had always been one
of the loveliest, capitals in the world. Four men--Brazilians
all--minister of works, engineer, doctor, and prefect of the city,[3]
had undertaken in 1905 the gigantic task of the city's sanitation. The
extermination of the mosquitoes which caused yellow fever and malaria,
the destruction of their breeding-places, the widening of malodorous
streets, the demolition of thousands of buildings, the disinfection
{158} and removal of tens of thousands of tons of garbage, the
filling-up of swamps and marshes, were only preliminary to the colossal
work of reconstruction of which I saw some of the results. Right
through the central city was pierced the new Avenida, a broad
thoroughfare lined with noble buildings, of which the theatre, built at
enormous cost, and rivalling the Paris Opéra, struck me most. More
striking still was the new Beira Mar, the unique sea-drive skirting the
bay for four miles, and leading to the equally beautiful circular
esplanade round the Bay of Botafogo. Here I left cards and letters of
introduction on the British Minister (who, I may remark _en passant_,
never took the slightest notice of either,)[4]; and we drove homewards
in a golden sunset, the whole city flushed with rosy light, and the
heights of Corcovado and the Organ Mountains glowing purple--as purple
as the evening tints of Hymettus and Pentelicus which gave to Athens
the immortal name of [Greek: Iostéphanos], the violet-crowned. Behind
us the pointed Sugar-loaf rose grey and menacing into the opal sky; and
I recalled the quaint Brazilian tradition which tells how the Creator,
when He had made the Bay of Rio and found it very good, desired to call
man's admiring attention to His masterpiece by a mark of exclamation.
The mark of exclamation is the Sugar-loaf! We met in the Avenida,
returning from a grand _formatura_ (review) in honour of the day (it
was the anniversary of the foundation of the Republic), the
President--a {159} mulatto, by the way--and his staff, in a none too
gorgeous gala carriage. I was told that he was extremely popular.
To reach S. Paulo from Rio I had the choice of two routes, the
pleasanter being that by sea to Santos, and an ascent thence to the
inland city by one of the most wonderful of the world's railways. But
as I wished to see something of the country, I chose the twelve hours'
train journey direct from the capital--and repented my choice; for
though the first part of the route was through fine scenery, as we
climbed the lofty Serra which stretches for miles along the Brazilian
coast, the dust, heat and jolting of the train soon grew almost
insufferable. I was very glad to reach S. Paulo, where the air was
pleasantly cool and fresh (the city stands 2,100 feet above the sea,
and just outside the tropical zone[5]), and where the kind abbot of S.
Bento, whom I had known up to then only by correspondence, met me at
the station. We were soon at his monastery, which was well situated,
occupying a whole side of one of the principal squares of the city, and
of historic interest as built on the same spot where, three hundred and
ten years before, the first Benedictine foundation in the then village
of S. Paulo had been made by Frei Mauro Texeira, a zealous and fervent
monk of Bahia. The monastery, as I knew it in 1909, was an
unpretentious building of the early eighteenth century, constructed not
of stone but of _taipa_ (compressed earth), its long {160} whitewashed
front pierced by ten windows, and flanked by the façade of the church
with its low cupola'd tower. My host, Abbot Miguel, who had been
appointed prior of the restored abbey in 1900, and abbot seven years
later, had inaugurated in 1903 a school for boys, which numbered at my
arrival some 300 pupils. For their accommodation, and for that of his
growing community, he had done all that was possible with the old and
inadequate buildings of the monastery, to which he had built on various
additions. But he and his community had already decided that a
complete reconstruction of both abbey and church was absolutely
essential for the development of their educational and other work; and
I found them all studying and discussing ornate and elaborate plans by
a well-known Bavarian architect, who had "let himself go" in a west
front apparently in English Elizabethan style (recalling Hatfield), and
a Byzantine church with Perpendicular Gothic details and two lofty
towers.[6] The process of demolition, commencing with the choir of the
old church, was started a few weeks after I reached S. Paulo; and I
remember that we were nearly asphyxiated by the falling and crumbling
walls, which (as I have said) were built of a kind of adobe or dried
mud, and broke into thick clouds of blinding yellow dust as they
tumbled about our ears.
The rebuilding of the Benedictine Abbey was only {161} one feature, and
not the most considerable, of the architectural transformation which
was taking place before one's eyes in every part of S. Paulo, and was
developing it from an insignificant provincial capital into one of the
largest and most progressive cities of South America. In twenty years
the population had increased tenfold--from fifty thousand to nearly
half a million--and two facts struck me as both remarkable and
encouraging, namely that the birth-rate was more than double the
death-rate, and was (so I was told) more than double that of
London--nearly thirty-six per thousand. The State and city of S. Paulo
were alike cosmopolitan, 300,000 immigrants (more than half of them
Italians) having entered the country in the year before my arrival, and
more than half the population being of foreign birth. The vast
majority of the day-labourers in the city were Italians, on the whole
an industrious and thrifty race (though not without obvious faults),
who assimilated themselves without difficulty to the country of their
adoption. The rapidly growing prosperity of S. Paulo was shown by the
astonishing appreciation in a few years of the value of land in and
around the city--exceeding, so I was assured by a prominent American,
any phenomenon of the kind in the United States. Our Abbot had, not
long before my arrival, acquired with wise prescience a fine country
estate in the eastern outskirts, which was already worth at least ten
times what he had expended on its purchase. The _chacara_ (as such
properties are called) included a fine old house of Imperial days,
garden, farm, orchard, extensive woods, as well as a lake, football
fields, playgrounds and a rifle-range; and here our young pupils spent
{162} one day every week enjoying the open-air life and sports
unattainable in the city.
The college, or _gymnasio_, of S. Bento had already taken its
recognised place among the best educational institutions of S. Paulo.
The fathers were assisted in the work of teaching by a competent staff
of lay masters, but retained the religious, moral, and disciplinary
training of their pupils entirely in their own hands; and I was pleased
to see how eminently suited the paternal and family spirit
characteristic of Benedictine education was to Brazilian boys, and how
well on the whole they responded to the efforts of their instructors to
instil into them those habits of obedience, self-control, and moral
responsibility, in which the home training of the children of Latin
America is often so deplorably deficient. Naturally docile, pious, and
intelligent, these little boys were brought under the salutary
influence of S. Bento at an age when there seemed every hope that they
would be tided safely over the difficult years of early adolescence,
and moulded, under solid Christian guidance, into efficient and worthy
citizens of their State and their country.[7] English was taught by an
American priest, who was also an excellent musician, and trained our
little choristers very successfully. Several of the fathers spoke
English well; but I was the only British-born member of the community,
and I was naturally glad of opportunities to meet the scattered English
{163} Catholics who were to be found among the not very numerous
British resident colony. Our little old church, unattractive enough as
to externals, was yet greatly frequented by those (and they were many)
who appreciated the careful reverence of the ceremonial and grave
beauty of the monastic chant. Sermons in Portuguese and German were
already preached regularly at the Sunday masses; and to these was added
soon after my arrival an English sermon, which was very well attended.
One came sometimes in the hospitals of the city, which I visited
regularly, on stray Englishmen of another class--an injured railwayman,
perhaps, or a sick sailor from a British ship, who were glad enough,
even if not Catholics, of a friendly visit from a countryman. I
remember a young Englishman from Warrington in Lancashire (this was one
of the consoling cases), who was dying of some obscure tropical disease
in the Santa Casa, the chief hospital of the city. It was the hottest
time of year, and he suffered much, but never once murmured or
complained. He had been baptized by a Benedictine (but eighteen years
before) in his native town in England, and he looked on it, as he said,
as "a bit of real luck" to be tended by a Benedictine on his death-bed.
"O santinho inglez" (the little English saint) his nurses called him;
and his death--he was never free from pain to the last--was truly the
death of the just, and made an ineffaceable impression on those who
witnessed it. _Fiant novissima mea hujus similia!_
I soon fell into the routine of our Brazilian monastic day, which
differed a good deal (especially as to the hours for meals) from our
European time-tables. {164} Coffee betimes; breakfast ("almoço")
before noon; dinner at half-past five, after vespers, suited the school
hours, and the busy life of the community. We anticipated matins at
seven p.m.; hurried to the refectory for a dish of scalding tea
(smothered in sugar, no milk), or a glass of lemonade, then hastened
back to choir for night prayers and sundry pious exercises. This final
collation (if it may be so called) was really alarming: the scorching
tea was gulped down with a reckless rapidity which reminded one of
Quilp tossing off the hissing rum in his riverside arbour! and I used
to return to choir positively perspiring. But our commissariat was on
the whole good, if simple; we had no such privations to face as in old
days at Olinda, and as far as I was concerned the kind abbot was always
on the alert to see that I wanted for nothing. Our chacara supplied us
with farm produce of the best; and great platters of green and purple
grapes, from the same source, were at this season served up at every
meal.
The abbot, on his first free day, drove me round the interesting city.
We visited a fine girls' school, conducted by Augustinian canonesses;
the superior was sister to an Anglo-Irish Benedictine, and another nun
was a Macpherson, with an accent of that ilk. We saw, also, two
institutions founded by the Abbot, St. Adalbert's Parochial schools,
under nuns of St. Catherine, and a hospital managed by sisters of the
same Order. The hospital stood at the end of the Avenida Paulista, a
noble boulevard lined with handsome houses of every imaginable style of
architecture--Gothic, Renaissance, Moorish, Swiss, Venetian, classical,
rococo, each one in its own glowing and luxuriant garden. This,
naturally, was the rich {165} man's quarter; the working people had of
course their own dwellings, chiefly in the populous industrial district
of Braz. But I saw no slums in S. Paulo, and nowhere the depressing
contrast between ostentatious luxury and poverty-stricken squalor which
is the blot on so many European cities. In S. Paulo there was, in
fact, no poverty:[8] there was work and employment and food for all;
and it is true to say there was no need for any man to be a pauper
except through his own fault. To any one with preconceived ideas of
South American cities as centres of lethargy, indolence, and want of
enterprise, the industrial activity and abounding prosperity of S.
Paulo could not but appear as astonishing. That prosperity, as most
people know, was mainly due to the foresight and energy with which the
Paulistas had realised and utilised the fact that their famous _terra
roxa_ was adaptable for coffee-culture on a scale truly gigantic. Two
years before my arrival (in 1906-07) the production of coffee in Brazil
(three-fourths of it grown in S. Paulo) had reached the amazing figure
of twenty million sacks, five times what it had been a quarter of a
century before. Then, when the supply was found to exceed the demand,
when prices fell by leaps and bounds, and financial disaster seemed
imminent, the shrewd Paulistas conceived and adopted the
much-criticised expedient of "valorisation," the State itself
purchasing an enormous quantity of the crop, and holding it up until
prices became again normal. It was in this and in many {166} other
ways that the Paulistas showed the clearsightedness and acumen which
justly gained for their State and their capital the reputation of being
the most enterprising and progressive on the whole South American
continent.
The abbot and I finished our afternoon's drive with a little expedition
to Cantareira, a hollow among wooded hills, some twelve or fourteen
miles distant (the access is by a steam tramway), where, set in
charming gardens, are some of the spacious reservoirs feeding the city.
We drank our coffee in a rustic arbour, with bright-hued hummingbirds
glancing and circling round our heads; and returning in the luminous
violet twilight (which struck me always as particularly beautiful in
this clear, high smokeless atmosphere), called to pay our respects to
the Archbishop of the province and diocese of S. Paulo. A zealous
parish priest in the city, where he had built a fine church (St.
Cecilia's), he had been made Bishop of Coritiba at only thirty, and
translated to the metropolitan see two years later. He was not yet
thirty-eight.
I assisted, before our school broke up for the three months' summer
holidays, at some of the examinations, which were conducted in presence
of a _fiscal_ (Government official), our college being at that time
considered "equiparado," i.e., equivalent to the State secondary
schools, a condition of the privilege being some kind of more or less
nominal Government inspection. The school work, it struck me, had all
been very thoroughly done, though perhaps of a somewhat elementary
kind. A distraction to us all during the last hour was the news of a
great fire raging in the principal business street of the {167} city.
A big German warehouse, the Casa Allema, was in fact burned to the
ground; and we surveyed the conflagration (said, but never proved, to
be the work of incendiaries) from the belfry of our church tower.
The North American element in S. Paulo, though much smaller than it
became later, was already fairly numerous. A great Canadian company
was responsible for the supply of light and power to S. Paulo as well
as Rio; some of the leading officials in both cities were Catholics,
and became my kind friends. Another hospitable friend was a Scots
banker married to an American wife, whom he habitually addressed as
"Honey!"[9] There was, generally, a very friendly and hospitable
spirit among the English-speaking residents; but (as usual in foreign
cities) it was curiously confined to the circle of their own
countrymen. Some of my Brazilian acquaintances used to express regret
that the English colony, for which they had much respect, never evinced
the least desire for any sort of intimacy with them; and it used to
surprise me to find English families which had been settled in the
country for a whole generation or more, of which not a single member
knew sufficient Portuguese to carry on a quarter of an hour's
conversation with an educated Brazilian of their own class.
Personally, I found such Brazilians as I had the pleasure of meeting
{168} almost uniformly extremely agreeable people--kind, courteous,
cultivated, and refined; and I thought, and still think, the insular
aloofness of my countrymen from the people among whom it was their lot
to live, a distinct disadvantage to themselves, and a mistake from
every point of view.
It was a curious fact, and one worthy of attention from several points
of view, that at the time of which I am writing the public and official
interest of the Paulistas in educational matters, while undoubtedly
exceeding that of any other community in the Republic, was in practice
almost confined to primary schools. Nearly £400,000, a fifth of the
whole annual budget of the State, was devoted to their support and
extension; many of the school buildings were of almost palatial
appearance; the code was carefully thought out, and the teaching as a
whole efficient; and elementary education was, at least in principle,
obligatory, though the provisions of the law of 1893, which had
established a commission for bringing negligent parents to book and
fining them for non-compliance with the law, were to a great extent a
dead letter. For secondary education, on the other hand, the public
provision was of the slenderest: there were in 1909 but three State
secondary schools in the State of S. Paulo--at Campinas and Ribeirão
Preto, and in the capital; and the Lyceu in the last-named city (with a
population of over 400,000) numbered less than 150 pupils. The
all-important work of the education of the middle and upper classes of
children, both boys and girls, thus fell inevitably into the hands of
private teachers, the best colleges for both sexes (mostly _internatos_
{169} or boarding-schools) being conducted by foreign religious orders.
These institutions, receiving no State subvention of any kind, were
regarded by the State with a tolerance due less to its appreciation of
the principles on which their education was based, than to an obvious
sense of the economic advantage of leaving private associations to
undertake a work which it neglected itself. The net gain of this
policy of _laisser aller_ was that a large number of children,
belonging to the classes on which depended the future prosperity of the
country, were being carefully educated on solid Christian foundations,
without, as far as I could observe at S. Bento and elsewhere, any
sacrifice of the patriotic principles which Brazil quite rightly
desired should be instilled into the rising generation of her sons and
daughters.
[1] St. Trid's Well (as it was called before the Reformation) had the
repute of miraculously curing diseases of the eye. A satirical
sixteenth-century poet scoffs at the folk who flock to "Saint Trid's to
mend their ene."
[2] The King (so his secretary wrote to me) was "much surprised and
gratified" at hearing how the toast of his health had been received by
the foreign passengers on an English ship. I sent on the letter from
S. Paulo to the captain, who said it should be framed and hung up on
board, but I never heard if this was done. Edward VII. died less than
six months later, and on December 30, 1917, the _Aragon_, whilst on
transport service in the Mediterranean, was torpedoed (together with
her escort H.M.S. _Attack_), a few miles from Alexandria. The ship
went down within half an hour of being struck, with a loss of more than
six hundred lives.
[3] Their names are worthy of perpetuation--Lauro Muller, Paulo
Frontin, Pareiro Passo (the Haussmann of Brazil), and Dr. Oswaldo Cruz,
a pupil of Pasteur, and popularly known as the _mata-mosquitos_
(mosquito-killer).
[4] This lapse from diplomatic courtesy on the part of Sir William
Haggard was, I take pleasure in recalling, amply atoned for later by
the kindness I received from two of his successors as British
representative in Rio.
[5] The Tropic of Capricorn passes through S. Paulo--I had even heard
said, through the monastery garden of S. Bento. "Let us dig and look
for it," said one of my little pupils to whom I imparted this supposed
geographical fact.
[6] When I saw S. Bento (after a long interval) eleven years later, the
new buildings (except for the internal decoration of the church) were
practically complete. Many of the details were no doubt open to
criticism, and were in fact rather severely criticised; but it was a
tribute to the architect that the general effect of his work was
recognized as being both dignified and impressive.
[7] When I returned to S. Paulo eleven years later, I heard with
pleasure from the parents of some of our former pupils of the
satisfactory way in which their sons had turned out--a happy result
which they attributed to the excellence of their upbringing at S. Bento.
[8] Let me note once for all that whatever I say about S. Paulo, here
and elsewhere, is founded (facts and figures alike) on what I knew and
learned of the city in 1909-10. A dozen years may, and do, bring many
changes!
[9] "Honey!" said an American bride (returning from an early morning
walk) at a door--which she imagined to be that of the nuptial
chamber--in the corridor of a big hotel; "honey! it's me: let me in."
No response. "Honey! it's me, it's Mamie: open the door." Still no
answer. "Honey! honey! don't you hear? it's me, honey." Gruff
(unknown) male voice: "Madam, this is not a beehive, it's a bathroom!"
{170}
CHAPTER X
1910
The early days of December brought me news from England of the death of
Provost Hornby, my old head master at Eton, aged well over eighty. He
had birched me three times;[1] still, I bore him no malice, though I
did not feel so overcome by the news as Tom Brown did when he heard of
the death of _his_ old head master.[2] An eminent scholar, a "double
blue" at Oxford, of aspect dignified yet kindly, he had seemed to unite
all the qualities necessary or desirable for an arch-pedagogue; yet
{171} no head master had ever entered an office under a cloud of
greater unpopularity. We were all Tories at Eton in the 'sixties; and
the rumoured association of the new head with the hated word _Reform_
(which his predecessor Dr. Balston was said to have stoutly resisted)
aroused in our youthful breasts a suspicion and dislike which
culminated in the words "No Reform!" being actually chalked on the back
of his gown (I personally witnessed the outrage) as he was ascending
the stairs into Upper School. _Tempora mutantur_: I dare say there are
plenty of young Etonian Radicals nowadays; though I do seem to have
heard of Mr. Winston Churchill having been vigorously hooted in School
Yard, on his first appearance at his old school after "finding
salvation" in the Radical camp.
Two or three weeks before Christmas our abbot found himself rather
suddenly obliged to sail for Europe on important business--leaving me a
little forlorn, for he was my only real friend in our rather
cosmopolitan community, though all were kindly and pleasant. The
midsummer heat, too, was more trying than I had anticipated on this
elevated plateau; and though the nights were sensibly cooler, they were
disturbed by mosquitoes, tram-bells in the square outside, _grillos_
and _cigarras_ in our cloister garden beneath, our discordant church
bells[3] striking every quarter above one's head, and our big
watch-dog, Bismarck, baying in the yard. I accompanied the abbot to
the station, where the _dispedida_ (leave-taking) in this country was
always an affair of much demonstration and copious embracing. When
{172} he had gone we all settled down for a week's retreat, given by a
venerable-looking and (I am sure) pious, but extraordinarily grimy,
Redemptorist father, who must have found it an uncommonly hard week's
work in the then temperature, for he "doubled" each of his Portuguese
sermons by a duplicate German discourse addressed to the lay brethren.
This pious exercise over, we prepared for the Christmas festival, which
I enjoyed. It was my privilege to officiate at matins and lauds and
the solemn Mass, lasting from half-past ten till nearly two. Our
church (the demolition of which had not yet begun) was elaborately
adorned and filled with a crowd of devout communicants, young and old;
and when the long services were over, our good brothers gathered round
the Christmas crib, and sang immensely long and pious German songs far
into the small hours of morning. Later in the day I went up to
Paradise ("Paraiso," the name of one of our picturesque suburbs), and
lunched with the kind Canadian family whose pleasant hospitality
constitutes one of the most agreeable souvenirs of my sojourn at S.
Paulo, both at this time and ten years later.
After New Year we had a sudden cool spell, with a southerly wind
bringing refreshing airs from the Pole; and I profited by it to extend
my daily walk, visiting churches and other places of interest in and
about the city. Such old Portuguese churches as the _Sé_ (cathedral)
had a certain interest, though no beauty in themselves. The side
altars, surmounted by fat and florid saints boxed up in arbours of
artificial flowers, were painfully grotesque; and the big church was
decked (for Christmastide) with {173} faded red damask which, like Mrs.
Skewton's rose-coloured curtains, only made uglier what was already
ugly. A scheme, however, was afoot for pulling the whole place down;
and a model and plans for a great Gothic cathedral of white granite
were already on exhibition in a neighbouring window, and were exciting
much attention. A few of the other old churches in the city had
already been demolished to make way for new ones, mostly of an
uninteresting German Romanesque type, planned by German architects.
Native talent, however, was responsible for the splendid theatre, its
façade adorned with red granite monoliths; but the finest building in
S. Paulo (perhaps in Brazil) was the creation of an Italian architect
(Bezzi). This was the noble palace at Ypiranga--a site dear to
Brazilians as the scene of the Proclamation of Independence in
1822--now used as a museum of ethnography and natural history, and
containing collections of great and constantly increasing value and
importance. S. Paulo in 1909 was--perhaps is even now, a dozen years
later--a city still in the making;[4] but the intelligence of its
planning, the zeal of its enterprising citizens for its extension and
embellishment, and the noticeable skill and speed of the workmen
(nearly all Italians) under whose hands palatial buildings were rising
on every side, were full of promise for the future.
In 1909 the Instituto Serumtherapico, now very adequately housed at
Butantan (popularly known {174} as the "chacara dos serpentes," or
snake-farm), a mile or two from the city, was only beginning, after
years of patient and fruitful research, its remarkable work--a work of
which (like the sanitation and reconstruction of Rio and the successful
campaign against yellow fever) the credit is due to Brazilians and not
to the strangers within their gates. The serums discovered by the
founder of the Institute, Dr. Vidal Brazil, for the cure of snake-bite
are as important and beneficent, within the vast area where the
mortality from this cause has hitherto been far greater than is
generally known or supposed, as Pasteur's world-famous treatment for
hydrophobia. One serum is efficacious against the rattlesnake's bite,
another against the venom of the urutu, the jararaca, and other deadly
species, while a third is an antidote to the poison of any snake
whatever. Twenty-five per cent. of snake-bite cases have hitherto, it
is estimated, proved fatal; when the serum is administered in time cure
is practically certain. To Dr. Brazil is also due the credit of the
discovery of the mussurana, the great snake, harmless to man, which not
only kills but devours venomous reptiles of all kinds, even those as
big as, or bigger than, itself. It was expected, I was told, that the
encouragement of the propagation of this remarkable ophidian might lead
in time to the extermination of poisonous serpents not only in the
State of S. Paulo, but in every part of tropical Brazil.
The traditional Benedictine hospitality was never wanting at our abbey:
the guest-rooms were always occupied, and the guest-table in the
refectory was a kaleidoscope of changing colour--now the violet sash
and cap of a bishop from some remote State, {175} now the brown of a
Franciscan or bearded Capuchin, the white wool of a Dominican
missionary or a Trappist monk from the far interior, or the sombre
habit of one of our own brethren from some distant abbey on the long
Brazilian coast. Nor were the poorer claimants for rest and
refreshment forgotten. I remember the British Consul, after seeing the
whole establishment, saying that what pleased him most was the noonday
entertainment of the lame, blind, and halt in the entrance-hall, and
the spectacle of our good Italian porter, Brother Pio Brunelli,
dispensing the viands (which the Consul thought looked and smelled
uncommonly good) to our humble guests. Our Trappist visitor mentioned
above was "procurador" of a large agricultural settlement in charge of
his Order; and I remember understanding so much of his technical talk,
after dinner, about their methods of hauling out trees by their roots,
and their machinery for drying rice in rainy weather, as to convince me
that my Portuguese was making good progress!
All our cablegrams from England in these days were occupied with the
General Election, the result of which (275 Liberals to 273 Unionists)
was vastly interesting, leaving, as it appeared to do, the "balance of
power" absolutely in the hands of the seventy Irish Nationalists.
Several Catholic candidates (British) had been defeated, but nine were
returned to the new Parliament--five Unionists and four Rad.-Nat.-Libs.
Of greater personal interest to me was the welcome and not unexpected
news that by a Roman Decree issued on the last day of 1909 our
monastery of Fort Augustus had been reunited with the English {176}
Benedictine Congregation, our position of "splendid isolation" as a
Pontifical Abbey being thus at an end. My letters informed me that the
abbot's resignation had already been accepted, and Dom Hilary Willson
installed in office by the delegate of the English Abbot-president,
with the good will of all concerned, and the special blessing of Pope
Pius X., conveyed in a telegram from Cardinal Merry del Val, the Papal
Secretary of State. The new superior's appointment was _ad nutum
Sanctæ Sedis_, i.e. for an undetermined period; and the late abbot
(whose health was greatly impaired) was authorised to retire, as he
desired, to a "cell"--a commodious house and chapel--belonging to our
abbey, high among pine-woods near Buckie, in Banffshire.[5]
My mail brought me, too, tidings of the marriage of the sons and
daughters of quite a number of old friends--Balfour of Burleigh, North
Dalrymple (Stair's brother), the Skenes of Pitlour and All Souls,
Oxford; also of the engagement of Lovat's sister Margaret to Stirling
of Keir, and of the death (under sad circumstances already referred
to)[6] of Ninian Crichton Stuart's poor little son. I heard with
pleasure from Abbot Miguel that he hoped shortly to return to us: he
had already cabled the single word "Demoli"; our poor old choir was
under the hands of the house-breakers; and we were saying office
temporarily in the chapter-room, lighted by such inefficient lamps
{177} that I could read hardly a line of my breviary by their
glimmer.[7]
"Just a song at twilight,
When the lights are low,"
is all very well in its way; but the conditions are not suitable for
matins and lauds lasting an hour and a half! After an interval of this
discomfort, we get into our _côrozinho provisorio_ (temporary little
choir), a hantle cut out of the nave, which was still standing; and
there we recited our office during the remainder of my stay.
St. Benedict's feast this year fell after Easter; and we kept it with
solemn services in our diminished church (which was packed to the
doors), an eloquent panegyric preached by the vicar-general, and a good
many guests in the refectory. The fare was lavish--too lavish for the
temperature: there were soup, fish, oysters and prawns, three courses
of meat, "tarts and tidiness," and great platters of fruit, khakis
(persimmons), mamoes, abacaxis (small pineapples), etc. "Oh!
Todgers's could do it when it liked!"[8] I sat for a while afterwards
with our U.S.A. padre, just returned from a week's trip on an American
steamer. He had grown restive under the sumptuary laws
(cassock-wearing, etc.) of our archdiocese, and as soon as the school
holidays began, had donned his straw hat and monkey-jacket, and gone
off to enjoy himself on the _Vasari_. He was very good company, and
full of quaint Yankee tales and reminiscences. I recall one of his
stories about a man who thought he could draw, and used {178} to send
his sketches to the editor of a picture-paper whom he knew. Meeting
his friend one day, he asked him why his contributions were never used.
"Well, the fact is," said the editor, "I have an aunt living in Noo
Jersey, who can _knit_ better pictures than yours!"
On May 1 my friend Father Caton and I, desirous of seeing something of
one important element of the heterogeneous population of S. Paulo,
witnessed a procession of Garibaldians on their way to inaugurate a
statue of their hero in one of the public gardens. A sinister crowd
they were, members of some fifty Italian clubs and associations here,
Socialist, masonic, revolutionary and anti-Christian, whose gods are
Mazzini, Carducci, and their like. Round the statue was gathered a
mass of their countrymen--some ten or twelve thousand at least, mostly
Calabrians of a low type,[9] who greeted with frantic applause a
hysterical oration, with the usual denunciations of Popes and priests
and kings, from a fanatical firebrand called Olavo Bilac. A
humiliating spectacle on a May-day Sunday in the Catholic capital of a
Catholic State; but a large proportion of these Italian immigrants were
in truth the scum of their own country and of Christendom. Our abbot,
whose zeal and charity extended to all nationalities in this
cosmopolitan city, had established, with the help of some Brazilian
ladies, a free night-school for the crowds of little shoeblacks and
newspaper-sellers, practically all Italians. He preached at their
periodical First Communion festivals, entertained them afterwards to a
joyful breakfast (at which I {179} sometimes assisted with much
pleasure), and did his best to keep in touch with them as they grew up.
I remember a great Italian audience (of the better sort) in our college
hall one evening, witnessing with delighted enthusiasm three little
plays, one in Portuguese and two in Italian, acted extremely well by a
troupe of the abbot's young Italian _protégés_. With all his
charitable efforts, he could never, of course, touch more than the
fringe of the question; but he never wearied of urging on the
ecclesiastical authorities--nay, he had the opportunity at least once
of forcibly representing to the Pope himself--the paramount necessity
of some organised effort to evangelise these uninstructed masses of
Italians who were annually pouring into the country. No one realised
better than he did that united and fervent prayer was at least as
powerful a factor as pastoral labour in the work of Christianisation
which he had so greatly at heart; and it was therefore with special joy
that he saw at this time the fruition of a scheme for which he had long
been hoping, the establishment in S. Paulo of a community of enclosed
nuns of our own Order. I spent some interesting hours with him
visiting, with the chosen architect, various possible sites for the new
foundation in and about the city. That matter settled, the rest soon
followed; and he had the happiness of seeing the foundation-stone of
the new monastery laid in May, 1911, and six months later, the
inauguration of community life and the Divine Office, under Prioress
Cecilia Prado.
The first week in May brought us news of the alarming illness of Edward
VII., and twenty-four hours later of his death. The universal and
{180} spontaneous tributes to his memory in this foreign city were very
remarkable: everywhere flags flying half-mast, and many shops and
business houses closed. The newspaper articles were all most
sympathetic in tone, with (of course) any number of quaint
mis-spellings. The "Archbishop of Canter Cury" figured in several
paragraphs; but I could never make out what was meant by one statement,
viz., that the King was "successivamente alumno de Trinity, Oxford, e
de Preoun Hall, Cambridge," and that he possessed intimate technical
knowledge of the construction of fortresses. The abbot and I called at
the British Consulate to express our condolence; and a large
congregation (including many Protestants) attended mass and my sermon
at S. Bento a Sunday or two later, it having been understood that there
would be a "pulpit reference" to the national loss. The Prefect of the
city was present, and called personally on me later to express his own
sympathy and that of the municipality of S. Paulo.
Funeral services in this Latin-American capital were not, as a rule,
very edifying functions. I attended, with the Rector of our college,
the obsequies of an aged, wealthy and pious lady, Dona Veridiana Prado.
A carriage and pair of fat white horses were sent to take us to her
house, where there was a great concourse of friends and relatives; but
neither there nor in the cemetery afterwards was there much sign of
mourning, or even of respect, and not a tenth part of those present
paid the slightest attention to the actual burying of the poor lady.
We walked afterwards through the great Consolação cemetery, which
struck me as having little that was {181} consoling about it. It was
well kept, and the monuments were--expensive, the majority of white
marble, but with far too many semi-nude weeping female figures,
apparently nymphs or muses: inscriptions from Vergil, Camoens, etc.,
and such sentiments as "Death is an eternal sleep," and "An everlasting
farewell from devoted friends." The most remarkable tomb I noticed was
a tribute to an eminent hat-maker--a large relief in bronze
representing a hat-factory in full blast!
Much more consoling than the funeral of poor Dona Veridiana was the
general manifestation of faith and devotion on the festival of Corpus
Christi. All business was suspended for the day (although it was not a
state holiday); and when our procession emerged from the church and
passed slowly along one side of our busy square, I was pleased and
edified to see how every head in the great expectant crowd was bared,
and all, from cab-drivers, motor-men and police down to street arabs,
preserved, during the passing of the _Santissimo_, the same air of
hushed and reverent attention. It was a joy to feel, as I felt then,
that these poor people, whatever their defects or shortcomings,
possessed at least the crowning gift of faith. A curious reason was
given me by one of the clergy of the city for the unusual spirit of
devotion at that time manifest among the people. Halley's Comet was
just then a conspicuous object, blazing in the north-west sky. The
phenomenon, so said my informant, was very generally believed to
portend the speedy end of the world--a belief which stimulated popular
devotion, and sent many spiritual laggards to their religious duties.
However that may have been, a great deal of genuine popular {182} piety
there undoubtedly was in the big busy city. It was not only at solemn
functions on high festivals that our church was thronged by a silent
and attentive crowd; but Sunday after Sunday, at every mass from dawn
to noonday, the far too scanty space was filled by an overflowing
congregation, while the ever-increasing number of communions gave
evidence of the solid piety underlying their real love for the services
and ceremonies of the Church.
Our abbot, who returned to us from Europe on the morrow of King
Edward's death, had almost immediately to leave again for Rio, where
our brethren of S. Bento there were being fiercely attacked in the
public press. The French subprior in charge had not only refused leave
to the Government to connect the Isle of Cobras (an important military
station) with the mainland, i.e. with St. Benedict's Mount, on which
our abbey stood, but had revived an old claim of ownership to the Isle
itself. "Very imprudent," thought Abbot Miguel, who knew well the risk
of the old parrot-cry of "frades estrangeiros" (foreign monks) being
revived against us, and also shrewdly surmised that the young superior
was more or less in the hands of astute _advogados_, who (after the
manner of their tribe) were "spoiling for a fight," and scenting big
fees and profits for themselves if it came to litigation. Dom Miguel
left us quite resolved, with the robust common-sense characteristic of
him, to meet the attacks of the newspapers, interview the Papal Nuncio,
and (if necessary) the President of the Republic himself, talk over the
subprior, and give the lawyers a bit of his mind; and he did it all
very effectually! When he returned a few {183} days later, the
advocates had been sent to the right-about, all claims had been waived
(or withdrawn) to the Isle and the Marine Arsenal between our abbey and
the sea, which was also in dispute: the President and his advisers had
expressed their satisfaction with the patriotism and public spirit of
the monks: the Nuncio had sealed the whole transaction with the
Pontifical approval: the hostile press was silenced; and, in a word,
the "incident was closed"--and a very good thing too!
Among the fresh activities consequent on the new régime at Fort
Augustus was the contemplated reopening of our abbey school, which had
been closed for some years; and there was, I understood, some desire
that I should return home with a view of undertaking the work of
revival. I ventured to express the hope that the task might be
entrusted to a younger man; and Abbot Miguel had, whilst in Europe,
begged that I might be permitted to remain on in S. Paulo for at least
another year. These representations had their due effect; and I was
looking forward contentedly to a further sojourn under the Southern
Cross, when the matter was taken out of our hands by a serious
affection of the eyesight which threatened me with partial or total
blindness. There were plenty of oculists in S. Paulo; and after they
had peered and pried and peeped and tapped and talked to their hearts'
content, generally ending up with "Paciencia! come again to-morrow!"
the youngest and most capable of them diagnosed (quite correctly, as it
turned out), a rather obscure, unusual and interesting
ailment--interesting, _bien entendu_, to the oculists, not to the
patient--which necessitated more or less drastic {184} treatment. By
the advice of my friend the Consul (himself a medical man of
repute[10]), and with the concurrence of the abbot, I determined that
the necessary treatment should be undergone not in Brazil but at home.
Hasty preparations for departure, and the inevitable leave-takings,
fully occupied the next fortnight. I found time, however, to attend an
exciting football match, the winning of which by our college team gave
them the coveted championship of the S. Paulo schools. The game had
taken a wonderful hold of the Brazilian youth within the past few
years, very much to their physical and moral benefit; and many of these
youngsters, light of foot and quick of eye, shaped into uncommonly good
players. They had plenty of pluck too: in the last few minutes of the
match of which I have been speaking one of our best players, a lively
pleasant youth with a face like a Neapolitan fisher-boy's, had the
misfortune to fall with his right arm under him, and broke it badly.
He bore the severe pain like a Trojan; and when I visited him next day,
though he confessed to a sleepless night, laughingly made light of his
injury. His chief regret was being unable to join in the exodus of our
hundred and fifty boarders, who departed with much bustle and many
cheers for their month's holiday. Their long three months' vacation
was in the hot season, from November to February. {185} A few, who
stayed with us for the winter holiday, hailed from remote corners of
the State, and some from even farther afield, from Goyaz, Pernambuco,
or Matto Grosso. Two I remember whose homes were in far Amazonas; and
it took them a much longer time to journey thither (in Brazilian
territory all the time) than it would have done to reach London or
Paris. One never ceased to wonder at the amazing vastness of Brazil,
and to speculate on what the future has in store for the country when
it begins to "find itself," and seriously to develop its incomparable
resources.
Almost my last visit in S. Paulo was to the newly-appointed English
clergyman, whom I had met at a friend's house. He entertained me
hospitably at luncheon; but whilst helping me to prawn mayonnaise
begged me to say if "I shared the official belief of my Church that he
and all Protestants were irrevocably d----d." I need not say that I
evaded the question, not deeming the moment propitious for a course of
the Catechism of the Council of Trent; and we parted good friends.
On June 28 I left S. Paulo with many regrets, wondering whether I
should ever revisit the fair city and my kind friends, of whom many
mustered at the station, according to the pleasant custom of the
country, to speed the parting traveller. The rapid drop down the
serra--it was my first trip on the wonderfully-engineered "English
Railway," which enjoys the profitable monopoly of carrying passengers
and coffee (especially coffee) to the busy port of Santos--was
enjoyable and picturesque, with glimpses, between the frequent tunnels,
into deep wooded valleys, the dark uniform green of the _matto_ {186}
interspersed with the lovely azure and white blossoms of the graceful
Quaresma, or Lent tree (_Tibouchina gracilis_), one of the glories of
the Brazilian forest. The kind prior of S. Bento at Santos met me
there, and I rested for a while at his quaint and charming little
priory, perched high above the city on its flight of many steps, and
almost unchanged in appearance since its foundation two centuries and a
half before, though the buildings had, I believe, been restored early
in the eighteenth century. Higher still, and accessible only on foot,
stood the famous shrine or hermitage of Our Lady of Montserrat, served
by our Benedictine fathers ever since its foundation in 1655, and a
much-frequented place of pilgrimage. I had a drive, before going
aboard my ship, round the picturesque and prosperous little city, the
transformation of which, since I passed by it in 1896, had been almost
more rapid and astonishing than that of Rio. From a haunt of
pestilence and death, yearly subject to a devastating epidemic of
yellow fever, it had become a noted health-resort, its unrivalled
_praia_, stretching for miles along the blue waves of the Atlantic,
lined with modern hotels and charming villas standing in their own
luxuriant gardens, whither the _fina flora_ of Paulista society came
down in summer with their families to enjoy the sea-bathing and the
ocean breezes.
I was cordially welcomed on the _Araguaya_, a fine ship of over 10,000
tons, by my old friend Captain Pope, with whom I had made my first
voyage to Brazil nearly a quarter of a century before. There was a
full complement of passengers, including (at the captain's table with
me) Sir John Benn, _ex_-chairman of the London County Council and {187}
M.P. for Devonport, also Canon Valois de Castro, representative of S.
Paulo in the Federal Parliament. I landed at none of the Brazilian
ports, the ascent and descent of steep companions, sometimes in a heavy
swell, being hardly compatible with my semi-blind condition. Leaving
Pernambuco, I looked rather wistfully at the unforgotten heights of
Olinda, and wondered if I should ever see Brazil's low green shores
again. Sir John was my chief companion on deck: he was a clever
artist, and kept me amused with his delightful sketches of famous
Parliamentarians--Disraeli, Gladstone, R. Churchill, Redmond, Parnell,
Hartington, and many others--as well as of some of the more eccentric
of our fellow-passengers. At our table was an agreeable captain of the
Brazilian Navy, going to Barrow-in-Furness to bring out their new
Dreadnought, the _São Paulo_. His 400 bluejackets were on board,
smartly dressed in British fashion; but he confided to us that most of
them were raw recruits, and that some had never seen the sea till they
boarded the _Araguaya_! As our voyage progressed he grew more and more
_distrait_, lost, no doubt, in speculation as to how he and his
heterogeneous crew were ever going to get their big new battleship from
Barrow to Rio. I never heard how they got on.[11]
At Madeira I went ashore to see the Consul (Boyle, a cousin of
Glasgow's) and his pleasant wife, sat for an hour with them enjoying
the enchanting view, and returned on board in company (as I afterwards
discovered) with three professional card-sharpers, who, having been
warned off Madeira, were returning more or less _incog._ to England.
The last days of {188} our voyage were made in a fog that never
lifted--an anxious time for my friend the captain. We never sighted
Ushant light at all, and steamed far past Cherbourg, to which we had to
return dead slow, our dreary foghorn sounding continually all night
long. However, it cleared quite suddenly, and we raced across the
Channel in bright sunshine, but reached Southampton so late that a kind
brother who had come down to meet me there had been obliged to return
to London.
[1] Once quite unjustly--but that was not his fault, for he acted only
on "information received." This reminds me of Mr. Gladstone's story of
his schoolfellow Arthur Hallam (of _In Memoriam_ fame). "Hallam," said
W. E. G., indulging in some Etonian reminiscences at his own table when
not far off ninety, "was a singularly virtuous boy; but he was once
flogged by Dr. Keat, though quite unjustly. When we came into school
one day, the master, Mr. Knapp--("He was a sad scoundrel, and got into
prison later," the old gentleman added in parenthesis, "and I
subscribed to relieve his necessities"),--said at once, 'Præpostor, put
Hallam's name in the bill for breaking my window.'--'Please, sir, I
never broke any window of yours,' cried Hallam, starting up.
'Præpostor,' said Mr. Knapp, 'put Hallam's name in the bill for lying,
and breaking my window.'--'Upon my sacred word of honour, sir,' said
Hallam, jumping up again, 'I never touched your window.' But Mr. Knapp
merely said, 'Præpostor, put Hallam's name in the bill for swearing,
and lying, and breaking my window!'
[2] _Tom Brown's School Days_ (ed. 1839), pp. 370, 371.
[3] Replaced in 1920 by a new and sonorous peal. They still struck the
quarters! but anyhow in tune.
[4] "Were the Vanderbilts as great a power in the American railway and
financial world in your time as they are now?" some one asked an
Englishman who had at one time spent some years in the United States.
"No," he replied; "I think when I was out there they were only
Vanderbuilding!"
[5] His quiet sojourn at St. James's, which he had himself built and
inaugurated five years previously, was a sadly short one. I heard with
deep regret of his death there on St. Benedict's, Day (March 21) of
this year, 1910.
[6] See _ante_, page 130, _note_.
[7] This straining of the sight precipitated, I think, the affection of
the eyes which was to prove so troublesome.
[8] Dickens, _Martin Chuzzlewit_, chap. ix.
[9] "La crême de la guillotine," as our Parisian monk, Dom Denis,
described them.
[10] The O'Sullivan Beare, a graduate of Dublin University, had had an
interesting career. He had served in the Egyptian War of 1885, had
been medical officer on the Gold Coast and at Zanzibar, a Vice-consul
in East Africa, engaged in the suppression of the slave-trade, and
later Consul at Bahia and S. Paulo. He was Consul-general at Rio de
Janeiro during a great part of the European War. Col. O'Sullivan Beare
died in 1921.
[11] See, however, _post_, page 202.
{189}
CHAPTER XI
1910-1911
The first news that reached me on my landing at Southampton on July 17,
1910, was that my nephew, Alan Boyle, the intrepid young airman, had
been seriously hurt at Bournemouth--not in the "central blue," but
through the wheels of his "Avis" catching in a clover-field. His life
had probably been saved by the chance of his having borrowed (for he
always as a rule flew bareheaded) an inflated rubber cap from a friend
just before the disaster; but, as it was, his head was badly
injured.[1] After telegraphing sympathy and inquiries to the Glasgows,
I went straight to London, to interview doctor and oculist, who both
advised consultation with the famous Wiesbaden specialist,
Pagenstecher. My brother and I accordingly left England next day,
staying a night at Cologne to visit the Cathedral, which D. had never
seen, and which, marvellous as it is, struck me once again as the most
uninspired of all the great churches of Europe. We reached Wiesbaden
next evening; and I was soon established {190} in the comfortable
_klinik_ devoted to the cosmopolitan clients of the great oculist. Our
party included patients from America, Australia, Mexico and Ceylon, as
well as from every country in Europe, and I found myself at table next
to a wealthy Catholic gentleman from Yucatan, who told me much about
that little-known and marvellous country, and gave me an album of most
interesting photographs. I had feared to be caged in a dark room, but
escaped this fate, and was able to enjoy of an afternoon the excellent
music in the Kurhaus gardens. The internal decorations of the Kurhaus
were too hideous for words; but it stood charmingly among shady groves,
lakes and fountains, and there were 350 newspapers in the huge rococo
reading-room. I had some pleasant walks with my new friend from
Yucatan--one to the top of the Neroberg, where we enjoyed a really
magnificent prospect, and partook of iced coffee and kirschen-küchen in
a rustic summerhouse. Another glorious view was from the Greek Chapel,
erected by a Grand Duke of Nassau to the memory of his Russian wife,
with an extraordinarily sumptuous and beautiful interior: I was greatly
struck by it, though I could not help thinking that when the guide said
it cost £700,000 he meant marks, for it is of no great size.
Meanwhile I continued the prescribed "treatment" (unpleasant as it was)
at the hands of the eminent oculist, a mysterious-seeming old gentleman
who reminded me uncomfortably of Uncle Silas in Le Fanu's
blood-curdling novel. Our party at the Klinik was a remarkably
cheerful one, everybody seeming quite confident of being cured, or at
least greatly benefited. Personally, I soon made up my mind {191} to
the permanent loss of one eye (even though, as Dickens remarked of Mr.
Squeers, "popular prejudice runs in favour of two"); and in this
anticipation I was confirmed by the verdict of Pagenstecher's clever
son Adolf, a much more _simpatico_ person than his distinguished
parent. Anyhow I was out of the surgeons' hands (for this relief much
thanks!), and to celebrate my emancipation I dined at the Kurhaus,
listened to the admirable "Doppel-Orchester" (it was an Italian Opera
night, recalling many memories), witnessed the illuminations, and felt
quite dissipated.
I was cheered, in the midst of these preoccupations, by a very hopeful
letter from my sister, fortified by Sir Victor Horsley's favourable
prognosis of Alan's case.[2] Interesting news, too, came from Lady
Lovat (doubly interesting to me) that Simon, now nearly thirty-nine,
was engaged to my pretty young kinswoman Laura Lister.[3] And on the
same day I heard of the betrothal of a favourite niece to a
brigadier-general, with a command in West Africa (whither, I imagine,
his bride could _not_ accompany him), and a little place in
Lincolnshire. In both cases, curiously enough, the
bridegroom-expectant was more than double the age of the bride-to-be;
but I saw no reason, if they knew their own minds, why this discrepancy
should militate against their happiness.
Bethinking myself that I had never yet gone down the Rhine by water, I
boarded a steamer at Biebrich, {192} and steamed down the yellow turbid
river for eight hours in mist and rain, wishing all the time that I was
in the train. A female fellow-passenger introduced herself to me as a
former governess of the Glasgow children in the Antipodes, said she had
lost her party _and_ her purse, and requested a small loan! I spent
two pleasant days at Cologne (Sunday and the _festa_ of August 15 next
day), was edified by the immense and devout congregations and the
beautiful music in the vast cathedral, and pleased to see the simple
holiday-making of the good Rhinelanders in their pretty river-side
gardens. Brussels, my next halting-place, was crammed with visitors to
the Exhibition, or rather to the smoking ruins of what had been the
exhibition, the greater part of which had been burned down the night
before my arrival. I walked through the cheerful city, of which the
only new feature (to me) was the colossal Palace of Justice, which
seemed to dominate Brussels as the heaven-piercing spires of the Dom
dominate Cologne; but the gigantic mass of the Brussels building seemed
rather to be heaven-defying, and too suggestive of the Tower of Babel
to please me.
Letters at Brussels told me of the long-hoped-for arrival of Kelburn's
son and heir, godson to Queen Mary (her first since the King's
accession). He was named Maurice at the special wish of Her Majesty,
who (so I understood) was possessed with the odd idea that "Maurice"
was the masculine equivalent for "Mary!" Crossing from Ostend to
Dover, I encountered a well-known Scottish peer of whose demise I had
read in an English paper two days before. He was on his way home from
visiting the Passion-play at Ober Ammergau, had seen no papers, {193}
and had been surprised, and rather annoyed, at receiving letters and
telegrams at Brussels congratulating him on being still alive. I
cheered him up with a story of another man who saw his death announced
in the morning papers, and calling up an intimate friend on the
telephone, said, "Did you see in this morning's paper that I was dead?"
"Yes," replied his friend, "I did. Where are you speaking from?" When
I got to London, the same kind brother who had escorted me to Wiesbaden
took me (by way of consolation for my wasted month[4]) to lunch--on
turtle soup and punch--at the "Ship and Turtle" in the City. After a
flying visit to my kind friends at Arundel and to my sister in Surrey,
I came back to stay with him at his elm-shaded Thames-side home. We
made some pleasant expeditions thence by land and water, motoring one
day to quaint old Guildford, where we explored Archbishop Abbott's
delightfully picturesque old Jacobean almshouses, and drank tea in an
almost equally picturesque tea-shop, kept, I was carefully informed, by
_real_ ladies!
My pretty niece Cicely insisted on my presence at her wedding to her
Brigadier; and I journeyed down to Kent, on a piping August day, in the
company of crowds of Irish hoppers bound for the same county. The
marriage was from the Cranbrooks' nice place, Hemsted, in the very
heart of the Garden of England, a big Victorian house full of the first
Earl's[5] memorials of Queen Victoria, Beaconsfield, {194} and the
other great Tory statesmen of his day. Lady Jane Gathorne-Hardy did
the honours for the large house-party, as her parents were away taking
a "cure" somewhere; and the day after the pretty wedding in the pretty
parish church (the vicar, an old Magdalen man, gave a very good
address), our kind hostess escorted the whole party up to town and
entertained them to luncheon and a frivolous afternoon at the
"Follies." I left London the same night for Scotland, and met at
Beaufort, where I stayed _en route_, for our Highland abbey, Lovat's
youthful bride-elect--as tall, and I am sure as good, as the lady in
_The Green Carnation_,[6] and already an accepted and affectionate
member of the large and merry family of Frasers and Maxwells. I sailed
down our familiar canal to Fort Augustus on a marvellously still and
bright autumn afternoon; and as we slid alongside the Fort Augustus
quay and looked back on the panorama of azure lake and purple hills, a
friend and I agreed (as he colloquially put it) that it "licked the
Rhine into fits."
I found things externally little changed under the new, or restored,
Anglo-Benedictine régime, the chief visible difference being that my
brethren now wore the flapping English hood, which gave them rather the
aspect of large nuns. There was much coming and going to and from
missions and {195} locum-tenancies of vacant parishes; and our house
seemed destined to become more and more a "jumping-off place" for that
kind of work rather than a great centre of monastic life and
observance. One aim was not of course incompatible with the other,
given a large enough community; but ours was at this time small enough,
and there were several more or less permanent absentees. Most of the
latter, however, "rolled up" for the excellent retreat given us by our
good old friend Bishop Hedley, who had done us the same kindness just
twenty-one years before. He was interested, after it was over, in
hearing of our plans and hopes (then much "in the air") for re-starting
the suspended building of our much-needed church, of which the
foundation-stone had been laid nearly fifteen years previously. A
young architect (an "old boy" of the abbey school) was staying with us,
and quite prepared to produce the most fascinating designs at the
shortest notice. But money, or the lack of it, was, as usual, the
crucial point; and we did not "see our way" (horrid phrase) to resume
operations either then or in the immediate future.
I went, in these golden October days, when a wonderful stillness so
often broods over Highland hills and glens in their livery of autumnal
russet, to do chaplain for two Sundays to the Lovats, who had a large
shooting-party at Beaufort--Seftons and Howicks and Gathorne-Hardys and
some others, including an A.D.C. to the Irish Viceroy, of whom he told
me a good story. An old peer from the country presented himself at a
levee at Dublin Castle; and his Excellency engaged him in conversation,
starting as usual with the weather. {196} "Wonderful rain we've been
having: everything coming up out of the ground."--"God forbid!" said
the old peer. "I said that everything was coming up out of the
ground," repeated H.E., slightly raising his voice. "And _I_ said 'God
forbid!'" retorted the old gentleman: "I've got three wives buried
under it!"
I went from Beaufort for a day or two to Nairn, which I remember hardly
more than a poor fishing village, frequented by ladies and children for
sea-bathing, but which owes its present reputation and prosperity, like
so many other places, to its excellent golf-links. After a short stay
at Kelburn, where I found my poor nephew Alan Boyle making good
progress to recovery, I could not resist an invitation to pass a few
days at St. Andrews, where the successor of my dear friend George Angus
was anxious for me to see his new church lately opened. It was a
rather effective building, in what a descriptive report called the
"Lombardic style, adapted to suit local conditions." One of the
"adaptations" was putting the tower at the wrong end, the "local
condition" being that the lady who had built the church, and who
inhabited a villa close by, had objected to a western tower as blocking
her view of the North Sea! I strolled about the "dear romantic town,"
mounting the East Neuk road as far as "Rest and be thankful," and
feeling heavy-hearted enough, with Tennyson's lines constantly in my
mind:
I climb the hill from end to end:
Of all the landscape underneath,
I find no place that does not breathe
Some gracious memory of my friend.
{197}
For each has pleased a kindred eye,
And each reflects a happier day;
And leaving them to pass away,
I think once more he seems to die.
I came home from my last walk by the old harbour, admiring, as I had
done a hundred times before, the wonderful lights on sea and land which
one associates with St. Andrews in autumn; but feeling that I never
cared to see the place again. Soon I went south, to Oxford, where Mgr.
Kennard, who was again threatening for the _n_th time to resign, for
reasons of health, his office of chaplain, had begged me to come and
help him for as much of the Michaelmas term as I could spare. I found
him, as a matter of fact, rather exceptionally well, and ready and
anxious to recount to an intelligent listener (which I fear I was
_not_, on this subject) every one of his golfing achievements during
the past four months at Burnham, Westward Ho! North Berwick, and
elsewhere. Although quite incapable of talking "golf shop," I
contributed one anecdote (new, I believed), which I had brought from
Nairn, and which pleased my old friend. It concerned a young man and
maiden who were playing golf--the lady quite a novice--and had reached
a hole which was on the top of a little hill. The youth ran up first
to see the lie of the balls. "A stymie!" he shouted: "a dead stymie!"
The young lady came up with a sniff. "Well, do you know?" she said, "I
_thought_ I smelled something as I was walking up the hill!"
I had been invited to preach Lovat's wedding sermon on October 15; but
this, as well as much of the long choral service, had been
countermanded {198} at the eleventh hour. I went up the day before to
the family residence in Grosvenor Gardens: presents still pouring in,
and such unconsidered trifles as diamond pendants, silver salvers, gold
cigarette-cases, telescopes, and illuminated addresses, lying
promiscuously about. A small army of newspaper-reporters (whom I was
deputed to interview) swarmed in after dinner. There was a great
gathering at the Oratory next morning, where the ample space beneath
the dome makes a most effective setting for a wedding pageant. The
bride's procession was a little late; and the stalwart bridegroom,
supported by his Scots Guards brother, was (shall I say "the cynosure
of all eyes" or the "observed of all observers"?--both good old
_clichés_) in the full dress bravery of a Highland chief.[7] I went in
afterwards to sign the register, while the _primo soprano assoluto_ of
the famous choir thrilled out the Bach-Gounod "Ave Maria," as
inevitable an accompaniment of Oratory weddings as "O for the Wings of
a Dove" is of those at Sloane Street or Eaton Square. Mrs. Asquith
(the bride's aunt) entertained us afterwards in the none too spacious
reception rooms at 10, Downing Street, where the well-dressed mob,
_more suo_, made play with their elbows in their quest for their own
and other people's presents on the loaded tables. There were
representatives from the bride's home in Ribblesdale, as well as a
deputation of farmers from distant Beaufort; {199} and one heard
intermittently the broad accent of Lancashire and the slow soft
Highland speech, mingling oddly with the London cackle. The
festivities at an end, I escorted a party of youthful Maxwells to the
Zoo. We saw a much-bored tiger, which gaped at us most rudely; also a
greatly vaunted American aloe, of the
"blooming-once-in-a-hundred-years" kind, which we all thought a fraud.
I had planned to finish while at Oxford my greatly belated work for the
_Encyclopædia_, but was (perhaps unduly) mortified to find how much my
progress was impeded by my altered conditions of eyesight. Let me,
however, record here, _pour encourager les autres_ similarly
handicapped, that the initial difficulty of _focussing_ (very serious
and very discouraging at first to a one-eyed man) tends to disappear
not only quickly but completely. "Un poco paciencia," as we say in
Brazil; kind Mother Nature steps in with her compensations, and one can
only feel grateful--I hope and believe that I did--at suffering so
little from what seems, and after all is, so serious a privation.
Two of Lovat's nephews were now undergraduates at Trinity, Cambridge,
whither I went over to see them from Oxford. They gave me luncheon in
their quaint low-ceiled rooms in Trinity Street, took me to see their
sister (a pupil in a convent school), and escorted me over some of the
"lions," wanting to know at every turn whether I did not admit that
Cambridge was infinitely superior to Oxford. I handsomely owned that
we possessed nothing quite so fine, in their different ways, as King's
Chapel, the famous "backs," and the Fitzwilliam Museum {200} (to say
nothing of the Catholic church); and they were both pleased at this
tribute, though it must be confessed that the absorbing interest of
their lives at that period seemed less to be architectural masterpieces
than the internal mechanism of motor-bicycles, about which they, in
common with many of their undergraduate friends, appeared to be quite
curiously infatuated. I went on from Cambridge (an insufferably
tedious journey) to Douai Abbey, our Berkshire monastery, where one was
always sure of a welcome of Benedictine heartiness, and where I gave a
lantern-lecture on Brazil, of a popular and superficial kind, to the
good monks and their pupils. This reminds me that, as a supposed
authority on negroes (many Englishmen, I firmly believe, are under the
impression that the population of Brazil is almost exclusively black!),
I was invited by my friend the Warden of Wadham to meet the Master of
Pembroke at dinner, in order to discuss the advisability or otherwise
of admitting black, brown and yellow men freely into the university.
The Warden (a Scotsman who had never, I think, been out of Britain) was
all in favour of the "open door"; whereas the little Master of
Pembroke, who had been bishop of Barbadoes, and knew a thing or two
about blacks, was strongly for the "keep 'em out" policy, and I was
entirely with him. We had an interesting evening's talk; but the
solution of this not unimportant question (which the foundation of the
Rhodes Scholarships had brought much to the front) did not of course
rest with us. The mention of Rhodes reminds me that a conspicuous
memorial tablet had lately been erected to him in the Schools: the
design was good and simple, but the lettering of the inscription (as
{201} is too often the case on modern monuments) so deplorably bad as
to spoil the whole effect.[8]
Walking through Magdalen cloisters on a sombre November afternoon, I
came unexpectedly on the poor young King (or ex-King) of Portugal, who
was looking through the college with a single companion. He looked
(who could wonder)[9] pale, depressed and nervous; and I was shocked at
the change in his appearance since I had seen him at Blenheim on the
occasion of his previous visit to England. Professor Oman (who had
been his guest in Portugal for the anniversary celebrations at Busaco)
met him, I believe, accidentally in High Street, and showed him all
over All Souls and the Bodleian; but I heard that his listless and
apathetic demeanour underwent little change. To be a "Roi en exil"
almost before reaching man's estate is about as dreary a lot as could
fall to any man; and one could only hope that fate had something better
in prospect for the young monarch so early and so tragically dethroned.
I got to Ampleforth Abbey, on my way north, in time for our great
Benedictine festival of All Saints of our Order; but the "sweet vale of
Mowbray" was wrapt in mist and rain, and the boys' holiday spoilt. I
gave a lecture to them that evening on the lighter side of Brazil, with
stories of snakes and niggers; and another next evening on the work of
{202} the religious orders, especially our Benedictines, in the
evangelization of that vast country. I lectured in the new college
theatre, a really fine room, and acoustically very satisfactory, though
I did not care for the semi-ecclesiastical woodwork. When I got back
to Fort Augustus a few days later, I found Lovat, Lochiel, and other
local magnates there, discussing the fate of our poor little railway,
which the N.B. Company, tired of working it at a loss for several
years, had given notice to close after New Year.[10] Two pieces of
news reached me soon after my arrival--one that Congregation at Oxford
had declined, by a good majority, to abolish compulsory Greek; the
other that the Brazilian Navy was in full revolt, and the crews of
their two new Dreadnoughts (one the _São Paulo_, whose captain and crew
had come to England with me) were firing their big guns from the
harbour into the city! I could only hope that our poor abbey, which
must have been in the direct line of fire, had not suffered.[11]
My own plans were almost matured for returning to Brazil early in 1911;
but it seemed prudent now to "wait and see" if this naval _émeute_
really portended anything like a general revolution. Meanwhile I had
been authorized to accept an invitation from the Norfolks to stay with
them at Norwich, for the opening of the great church which had been
many years a-building, at the Duke's expense, in his {203} titular
city. He had taken the "Maid's Head," a delightful old half-timbered
inn, for our party, which pretty well filled it. I said an early mass
on Our Lady's _festa_, December 8, in the lady-chapel (a memorial of
the Duke's first wife),[12] of the vast, austere, and splendid
church--the only modern church in which I have ever felt as if I were
in a mediæval cathedral. Breakfasting afterwards with the
clergy--mostly Irish--the news of Ninian Crichton Stuart's victory at
Cardiff[13] (which came to us by wire) was a bit of a bombshell; but
the "Maid's Head" party were of course delighted. The inaugural
services were very splendid, though unduly prolonged by a sermon an
hour long; and though for once there was no after-luncheon oratory, the
bishop preached for another full hour in the evening. The tediousness
of my long journey back to Scotland next day was aggravated by an
amateur politician (with a wheezy cough) in my carriage, who bored me
almost to tears with a _rechauffé_ of his speeches at various
election-meetings; but I consoled myself by reading in an evening paper
that the Unionist candidate for Ayr had increased his majority
five-fold. At Edinburgh I came on my energetic old brother-in-law
Glasgow, who had come in from Ayrshire (he was then not far off
seventy-eight) to dine at a naval banquet and to vote for the
Representative Peers. I went for the week-end to the Kerrs at
Woodburn, meeting {204} there a serious young publisher, who offered me
very good terms to write a detailed history--it has never yet been
written--of Scottish Catholicism since the Reformation: a fascinating
subject, and one with which I should have loved to grapple, but life is
too short to do all, or even half, that one would like to do.
With an hour or two to spare in Glasgow on my way to the Highlands, I
lunched with my friend (the friendship was personal, not political) the
editor of the _Observer_, at his Radical Club. In the middle of the
meal a member rose with a long face, and announced an unexpected
Unionist victory at Tavistock--whereat, to the consternation of every
one, I cheered loudly! I reached Fort Augustus the same evening, to
learn of the death, at the advanced age of ninety-three, of our kind
old friend and neighbour Mrs. Ellice of Invergarry, one of the last of
the great landladies who a few years before had by a curious
coincidence owned and managed (very capably, too) some of the largest
estates in the North of Scotland. The vast Glengarry property, once
the domain of the Macdonells, and stretching from the Caledonian Canal
to the western seaboard, had been under Mrs. Ellice's sole control
since her husband's death more than thirty years before. We at Fort
Augustus, as well as the numerous Highland Catholics resident on her
estate, and under our spiritual care, had always found in her a most
friendly, kind and considerate neighbour.
Two happenings I recall at Fort Augustus during these December
days--one a remarkably interesting lecture on the theory of
lake-temperature from a Mr. Wedderburn, who had been recently on the
{205} Scottish loch survey; and the other event was our all (that is,
all the priests of the monastery) being called on to vow, promise,
swear and sign, individually and collectively, our adherence to the
Creed of Pope Pius IV., which _I_ had sworn to some thirty-six years
before.[14] This act of submission, enjoined on every Catholic priest
in Christendom, was part of the vigorous campaign against Modernism
initiated by Pope Pius X. Having discharged this duty, I betook myself
to Keir, to spend Christmas with the Stirlings. It was a family party,
including the Lovats and a few others, and we spent the season in
homely Dickens fashion, with ghost-stories and snapdragon and a
priceless Early Victorian conjurer in a crumpled dress suit, who
accompanied tricks of really incredible antiquity with a "patter"
almost prehistoric. One day we drove down to survey the grand old
cathedral of Dunblane, very carefully restored (of course for
Presbyterian worship) since I had last seen it. As we entered, we
heard the opening strains of Elgar's _Ave Verum_--
[Illustration: Music fragment: Ave verum cor-pus na-tum Ex Ma-ri-a
Vir-gi-ne! etc.]
(a Eucharistic hymn by a Catholic composer!) being played on a fine
organ, and wondered what old John Knox would have thought about it all.
Meanwhile the Catholics of Dunblane, a devout and fervent little flock
(so I was told), had perforce to content themselves with a poor loft,
where I preached {206} to them on two Sundays. At Stirling, not far
distant, there was a new church designed by Pugin--a rather dismal and
angular edifice, but anyhow spacious and well kept. On my return
journey to Fort Augustus, I found myself condemned, by the unholy
rivalry of the Caledonian and North British Railways, to a four hours'
wait at Crianlarich, where I found the temperature, on a frosty January
morning, quite as "invigorating" as did the fabled tourist.[15] I had
a few busy days at the abbey preparing for my return to South America.
My passage was booked for the middle of January: I had devoted a week
to farewells to relatives and friends--and then came the anti-climax!
On the very day on which (like the poor Sisters of Mercy) I was to have
"breasted the billows of the Atlantic"[16] _en route_ for Brazil, I
received so discouraging and peremptory a letter from my London
oculist, as to the risk to my remaining eye of a possibly stormy winter
voyage, that I had perforce to abandon the idea, and to return (like
the bad sixpence of poor Grissell's story)[17] to my {207} northern
monastery, where I received so brotherly a welcome home that I did not,
after the first disappointment, regret the change of plan. I was
inducted again into my old office of librarian (first entrusted to me
twenty-seven years before); and our young organist having gone into
residence at the Benedictine Hall at Oxford, I acted for a time as his
substitute. The post of subprior being presently vacated by the
departure of the then holder of the office for a Liverpool mission,
that also was committed to me; and as our good prior was at this time
to some extent invalided, I found myself pretty fully occupied, more
especially as I had in those days a curiously cosmopolitan
correspondence (much of it on literary or antiquarian matters), which
could not be neglected. I recall receiving by a single mail (on St.
Benedict's Day, as it chanced), letters from India, North America,
Brazil, Egypt, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Soudan!
[1] Alan, the Glasgows' youngest son, had taken up flying most
enthusiastically, living in a shed at Brooklands (his mechanic acting
as his cook), and practising continually with his Avis monoplane,
which, like himself, was of purely Scottish origin. He had been the
third flying-man to gain an aero-certificate on a machine of British
design and build.
[2] My nephew's recovery was slow and tedious; but he was ultimately
restored to health.
[3] Her grandmother, Emma Lady Ribblesdale (born a Mure of Caldwell)
was my father's first cousin.
[4] The word seems ungrateful: the time was not really wasted, for I
had done my best and knew the worst, and the suspense was anyhow over.
[5] Gathorne Hardy, who turned Gladstone out of his seat for Oxford
University in 1865, and was afterwards successively Home Secretary and
Secretary for War and for India. His grandson the third Earl (my
nephew by marriage) broke away from the Tory traditions of the family,
sold Hemsted Park to one of the Harmsworths, and set up a new home for
himself in Suffolk.
[6] "I believe she is very tall and very religious--if you notice, it
is generally short, squat people who are atheists."--_The Green
Carnation_.
[7] Possibly the last spectacle of the kind at the Oratory (but that
was in the old tin church) had been the apparition of the youthful Earl
of Loudoun in Campbell tartan kilt and philabeg, acting as best man to
his cousin Lord Bute on the latter's memorable wedding-day, April 16,
1872.
[8] The stonemason of to-day imitates (usually very badly, and with
deplorable result) the printing of a book, not in the least realizing
that a lapidary inscription is something quite different from a
sentence struck off movable metal types.
[9] It was hardly a month since the Revolution of October 3, 1910, had
driven the unfortunate youth from the uneasy throne which he had
occupied since the cruel murder of his father and brother, in the
streets of Lisbon, on February 1, 1908.
[10] The negotiations resulted in a respite for six months, after which
financial arrangements of some kind were made for keeping the line open
for the future.
[11] It was, as a matter of fact, considerably damaged: moreover, one
of the shells fired by the insurgents not only inflicted serious injury
on the Prior, Dom Joachim de Luna, but blew the poor tailor of the
monastery into atoms.
[12] Artistically reminiscent of "Duchess Flora" were the elaborate
carvings in this chapel, conventional but very charming representations
of English wild flowers.
[13] A General Election--"Peers _v._ People," as the Radicals called
it--was at this time in progress. Ninian's election for Cardiff came
as a considerable surprise to the Liberals, as well as a triumph to the
Unionists.
[14] When I escaped from the City of Confusion into the Church of God,
at Rome, on March 25, 1875.
[15] "Isn't this invigorating?" exclaimed an English traveller, as he
emerged from his stuffy carriage early on a breezy August day. "No,
sir," said the stolid Highland station-master: "it's just Crianlarich!"
[16] "In May, 1842, Sisters Ursula, Frances, and Rose left the
parent-house for the Far West--the first Sisters of Mercy who had ever
breasted the billows of the Atlantic."--_Annals of the Sisters of
Mercy_, vol. III., p. 16. It really reads as though the good nuns had
swum across!
[17] "In Italy," he said to me once, "one is welcomed back with an
embrace and a cordial 'Ben ritornato, signore!' but coming back here to
Oxford, I call to pay my respects to the good Jesuit Fathers; and the
old brother who opens the door only grumbles out, 'Well, Mr. Grissell,
here you are, back again, _like sixpenn'orth of bad halfpennies!_'"
{208}
CHAPTER XII
1911
Our brothers had good success this year with the spring salmon-netting
in Loch Ness; and I myself witnessed the landing one afternoon of nine
clean fish, all scaling between fifteen and thirty pounds. We had
always enjoyed the privilege of netting a certain number of salmon
during Lent; and I think it was this year that Lovat proposed, at a
meeting of the syndicate of riparian owners and tenants who had
recently assumed the control of the fishing, that this right should be
conceded to us as heretofore. It was agreed to with but one
dissentient voice, that of a rather cantankerous neighbour of ours who
was only, I believe, an honorary member of the syndicate, having
pleaded that he was too poor to pay his subscription. "Certainly,"
said a noble duke who had leased for some years the best spring water
in the vicinity; "by all means let the poor monks (or was it "poor
devils"?) have their salmon: it's probably all they get to eat!"
Lovat was kind enough to tell me, when he came down about this
salmon-fishing question, that he and others (unnamed) were "pulling
strings" in various quarters to get me appointed chaplain at Oxford in
succession to our dear old Kennard, who (after numerous unheeded cries
of "Wolf!") was, {209} it seemed, really resigning, and preparing to
retire for life to a dull seaside town in Somerset. I told him,
however, that I was sure there was no chance of any monk or other
"regular" being appointed: moreover I had heard that a priest hailing
from Brighton, with the patent and obvious qualification of possessing
£1,000 a year of his own, had been already chosen; and, finally, I
hoped and expected to be allowed to return to Brazil, unless I received
some very clear and unmistakable indication that I was more wanted at
home. Meanwhile the work immediately in front of me was organizing the
Bishop Hay centenary celebrations, which were to be kept at our abbey
in the autumn on a considerable scale, and of which I had been named
general secretary. Before tackling this business I was enabled to
spend Holy Week and Easter, as so often before, happily at Arundel,
where my visit this year coincided with the anniversary of Duchess
Mora's death. I officiated at the memorial service for her in the
FitzAlan chapel, always an impressive function among the venerable
monuments--some of them more than five centuries old--of bygone
FitzAlans and Howards, touched by the chequered light from the great
east window, in which the Duke and his little son are depicted in
prayer before the altar.
I went from Arundel to Brighton to see my friend Grissell, whom I found
wrestling with census-papers, and with the difficulty of inducing his
female domestics to admit (at least approximately) their real ages. I
had not, of course, had the same trouble at Fort Augustus, where our
residents varied in age from sixteen to ninety-five, the latter being
the record of our good old Brother Nathalan, whom {210} we all hoped to
see reach his century.[1] At the Union Club, whither Grissell carried
me to lunch, I remember how we (members, guests, waiters and all)
deserted our tables and flocked to the window to see--a flying man!
Gustave Hamel swooping down on the Hove lawns after flying from Hendon
(61 miles in 58 minutes), as steady as a rock on his Blériot monoplane.
It was the first 'plane I had ever seen in the air! I reached London
next morning in time to attend Linlithgow's pretty wedding at St.
Margaret's, Westminster. It was Primrose Day, and the crowds inside
and outside the church were augmented by mobs gazing idly at Dizzy's
bedecked statue in Parliament Square. I squeezed in afterwards for a
few minutes at Hereford Gardens, congratulated the bridegroom's mother,
and was amused to hear a dignified menial (who, I thought, must have
been a City toastmaster hired for the occasion) shouting out the names
of the distinguished guests in stentorian tones for the benefit of our
exceedingly deaf host. April was summerlike this year; and I was glad
to escape from the noisy stuffy town to my brother's river-side home,
where we sat in the violet twilight on the edge of Thames, watching the
crafts of all sorts and sizes gliding past in the gloaming, and
listening to the snatches of music (sometimes quite pretty and
effective) coming to us from launch or wherry across the darkling
water. "That's a quiet pretty little thing," said my brother, looking
admiringly at an electrically-propelled canoe {211} "made for two"
which was skimming up stream swiftly and silently. But the susceptible
youth to whom the remark was addressed had eyes only for the vision of
beauty in the stern. "I don't think," he said knowingly, "that you'd
find her quite so quiet if you knew her!" and was surprised at the
shout of laughter with which his remark was received. I got back to
Fort Augustus just in time to vote at the School Board elections. We,
of course, all "plumped" for our Father Andrew Macdonell, who was duly
elected, together with the local Established, United Free, and "Wee
Free" ministers, and the Stratherrick priest--a curious clerical crowd.
The exceptionally fine summer attracted an unusual number of visitors
to Fort Augustus; and we had quite a gathering for the local
celebration of King George's coronation-day, which was kept chiefly as
a children's holiday, with games, an enormous tea, and loyal and
patriotic songs and speeches. A more domestic festival, a few days
later, was the silver jubilee of my ordination, which I was glad to be
able to celebrate with my brethren. I received quite a sheaf of
letters and telegrams--I had no idea that the anniversary would be so
generally remembered--and had the pleasure of reading in a Scottish
newspaper that I was "one of the most amiable, devout, and learned
ecclesiastics of the day!" I was glad that among those present at my
jubilee Mass was one of my oldest Catholic friends, Lady Lovat,[2] who
was herself receiving congratulations this year on the birth of three
new grandchildren, including {212} sons and heirs to Lovat and the
Stirlings of Keir. Arriving at Keir a few days later, _en route_ for
my examination-centre in Staffordshire, I found my host and hostess
out, but made friends with the "younger of Keir"--_alias_ Billy
Stirling--(aged two months), who was reposing in his perambulator
"under a spreading chestnut tree" on the lawn.
My "Oxford Local" work at Oakamoor College over, I went on to Oxford
for a few days, on the tiresome (and to me rather melancholy) business
of finally packing up my goods and chattels there. Although in Long
Vacation, I found a few kind friends still in residence: and the
Hassalls took me to see the renovated west front (Wolsey's) of Christ
Church. The work, they said, had cost some £15,000, but was well worth
it. A few hours in London I devoted to taking a nephew to see the
Kinemacolor pictures--the Durbar and the Prince of Wales's investiture
at Carnarvon. By some new contrivance the primary colours, only, were
reproduced on the films, giving us the blue sky, the green grass and
the scarlet uniforms, but everything else brownish-grey: the effect was
perhaps more weird than beautiful or lifelike. The popular young
Prince was in a box with his sister, looking at his own doings at
Carnarvon; and it was curious to see the audience cheering alternately
the filmed prince and the live one, who seemed rather embarrassed by
the attention paid to him. On my northward journey I visited my
friends the Rector of Exeter College and his wife at their pretty
Westmorland home, near Oxenholme; it was a district quite new to me,
and I was delighted with the fine rolling country, and the noble view
over Morecambe Bay and towards the distant Lakes.
{213}
I found, on my return to our abbey, extensive repairs going on in view
of the expected influx of visitors in September, and the procurator in
despair at the dilatoriness of Highland workmen, recalling the famous
plumber of Carstairs.[3] All the shooting-lodges were full, and
expeditions to our monastery, when the shooters had an off-day, seemed
one of the regular attractions of the neighbourhood. I remember one of
our nearer neighbours, the shooting-tenant's wife from Glendoe, riding
down one day to call, with Lady Winifred Elwes--the ladies astride, in
ordinary frocks, on fat grey ponies, and our good lay-brother porter in
speechless astonishment at the apparition. I was glad to welcome one
day for an hour or two my old friends the Portsmouths, _en route_ for
their remote castle of Guisachan: his lordship pompously pleasant as of
old, and his wife equally pleasant without the pomposity. I presented
them to the Bishop of Chur (or Coire), Mgr. Schmitt, at that time a
guest in the abbey with his two chaplains. I had visited Chur more
than thirty years before on my way to the Engadine (before the railway
was made under the Albula Pass), and had visited the cathedral in quest
of the supposed relics of St. Lucius, the king of Britain who, Bede
says, wrote to Pope Eleutherius asking for instruction in the Christian
faith. The Bishop had never heard this story; but he said that there
was a constant tradition at Chur that Lucius was a Welsh saint who had
died there after {214} spending many years in missionary labours among
the Rhaetian Alps.[4]
I spent the last Sunday of August as chaplain to the Lovats at
Stronlairg, their remote lodge nestling under the great range of the
Mona Liadh hills, in the wildest part of Central Inverness-shire. I
have called it, and Guisachan, "remote"; but no place is really so, if
accessible by a decent road, in these motoring days; and "neighbours"
from thirty or forty miles away thought nothing of dropping in casually
to luncheon or tea. Lady Derby, whose husband had one of Lovat's
forests, came up one day with her daughter and her sister-in-law Lady
Isobel Gathorne-Hardy, from whom I was sorry to hear a disquieting
account of the health both of my niece Dorothy Cranbrook and of her
husband. With our house-party and the servants, I had quite a
congregation in our _chapelle provisoire_ on Sunday; and it was, as
always, a happiness to me to have the privilege of saying mass for a
little flock of faithful Catholics in the splendid solitude of these
Highland hills and glens.
The _triduo_, or three days' celebrations in honour of the centenary of
Bishop Hay, had been fixed for September 12-14; and we entertained more
than seventy guests in the abbey for the occasion. All the Scottish
bishops, except the aged Archbishop of Glasgow, were present, besides
Bishop Hedley, Abbot Gasquet, Monsignors, canons, heads of religious
orders, priests and devout laymen, including {215} Lovat and his
brother Alastair. The weather was perfect throughout the week; and the
religious services, though naturally the chief feature of the
celebrations, were not so prolonged or so continuous as to prevent our
visitors from enjoying many pleasant excursions by land and water. The
fine portrait of the illustrious bishop by George Watson (first
president of the Scottish Academy), lent us by Blairs College, excited
much interest; and my lantern-lecture on the Life and Times of Hay (a
collateral descendant of whom, by the way, was one of our guests), was
very well received by a distinguished audience. Many of the visitors
to the abbey and village stayed on a day or two for the local concert
and Highland Gathering. The Rotherhams, Bishop John Vaughan, Lady
Edmund Talbot and her sister Lady Alice Reyntiens, were among those who
arrived in time for these later festivities. I heard from Lord
Rotherham of the death of a very old friend, Sir William Farrer, whose
daughter had married my brother. He and his wife, whom he had long
survived (he was nearly ninety at his death) had shown to us all
constant kindness in the days of our childhood and ever since; and I
recalled pleasant days at his beautiful Berkshire home, where the
lovely gardens were the delight and recreation of his busy professional
life.[5]
{216}
The kind abbot of S. Paulo had come to England in order to escort to
Brazil a little community of nuns for his newly-founded Benedictine
convent; and I had promised to attend their _dispedida_ at Southampton
at the end of September. I found myself at Inverness among the gay
crowds attending the Northern Meeting, of which the special feature
this year was a great rally of boy-scouts from all the northern
counties, in honour of their popular Chief, Sir Robert Baden-Powell.
Seven hundred mustered, at least half of them kilted--a very pretty
sight; and "B. P." made them a stirring speech, with an interesting
account of the spread of the movement ("Escotismo," they called it in
Brazil, where it was very popular), in different parts of the world. I
travelled from Edinburgh to London with the Archbishop of York, who had
been officiating at the wedding of an Ayrshire Houldsworth. We had
last met at Dunskey, my old home in Galloway, when he was, I think,
vicar of Portsea. I journeyed straight to Southampton, where good
Abbade Miguel, an English Benedictine (Dom Sibley) who was accompanying
him to Brazil, and the seven nuns,[6] were all ready for their long
voyage. I saw them on board the good old _Aragon_ (which looked very
spick-and-span), "waved my hands (like Nancy Lee) upon the quay," and
rather wished that I was one of the party! Meanwhile I had to get back
to London, to help to marry (on a murky Saturday afternoon) my Irish
Guards friend Tom {217} Vesey[7] to Lady Cicely Browne. A "mixed
marriage," as it is called, is always a short affair, with no vocal
music, and of course no nuptial mass; but this was the briefest I ever
remember, the whole ceremony, including a five minutes' sermon from
Father Maturin, taking exactly a quarter of an hour! There was the
usual tiresome crowd afterwards at Lord Revelstoke's house in Carlton
House Terrace; but I was glad to see some old friends, and to have a
pleasant chat with Lady Bigge,[8] who, by the way, had just become Lady
Stamfordham. If there was no music at the Chelsea church, I came in
for more than I bargained for next day (Sunday), namely a performance
by a famous London choir of Beethoven's Grand Mass, a composition which
I would fain hear anywhere rather than in church. It was, of course,
excellently rendered; but as I listened to the crashing chords, I could
not help recalling the appreciation of an eminently-qualified critic,
treating of this musical masterpiece:--
"The Christian sentiment has completely left him in the _Gloria_, where
there bursts forth, not the pure and heavenly melody of a hymn of
praise and peace, but the shout of victory raised by human passions
triumphing over a conquered enemy."
Journeying north to Ampleforth Abbey, where I {218} was engaged to give
my "Bishop Hay" lecture, I read in my morning paper (1) that old Sir
William Farrer had left £300,000 (I hoped my sister-in-law would
benefit), (2) that Lady Herbert of Lea, an outstanding figure in
English Catholic life for sixty years, and a very kind friend to me in
my own early Catholic days, had died at the age of nearly ninety; (3)
that the Pope had created seventeen Cardinals and two new English
archbishoprics (Liverpool and Birmingham); but no Benedictine Cardinal,
and none for Canada or Australia, although there were two
Irish-Americans for U.S.A.! I spent November 1 and 2 at Ampleforth: on
All Saints' Day I saw the college football team give a handsome
drubbing to a visiting school--a feat to be proud of, as they were
themselves quite novices at the Rugby game. Next day, All Souls',
there were the usual solemn requiem services; but owing to the
exigencies of the school classes, the poor monks had to crowd in before
breakfast matins, lauds, prime, meditation, October devotions, tierce,
sext, none, and Pontifical high mass--with a full day's teaching to
follow! rather killing work, I should imagine. The abbot told me that
he proposed sending two of his community to Western Canada, to
"prospect" in view of founding a monastery and college there.[9]
A long day's journey from Ampleforth took me to Keir, where I found the
new house-chapel, though far from complete, available for mass on
Sunday. We drove over to Doune in the afternoon with the Norfolks (who
were my fellow-guests), and explored {219} the old castle of the Earls
of Moray, partially restored by Lord Moray's grandfather. The massive
remains I thought very impressive; and the Duke, who was perhaps more
interested in architecture than in anything else, was much taken with
the old place. He was also, however, interested in the Arundel
parlour-game of "ten questions," which we played after dinner, and in
which he displayed, through years of practice, an almost diabolical
cleverness. I travelled north to Fort Augustus after a night of
terrific gales, with fallen trees and snapped-off limbs lying
everywhere along the railway--a melancholy sight.
I had been endeavouring to interest our friends in the south in our
desire to reopen the Abbey School when feasible; but at a Council held
at the abbey on my return it was decided to leave that project in
abeyance, and to concentrate our efforts meanwhile on trying to replace
the ramshackle shed which served as our church by at least a part of
the permanent building. Harrowing appeals in the Catholic press,
embodying views of the shanty in question: a personal campaign
undertaken by some of the fathers, and begging-letters of the most
insidiously-persuasive kind, were part of the plan of campaign, which
met with a fair measure of success. There was some feeling in our
community in favour of a very much less ambitious (and expensive)
church than originally planned; but I personally would be no party to
any scheme involving the abandonment of our hopes to see built a real
abbey church, worthy of the site and the surroundings, and the erection
instead of a neat, simple, and inexpensive R.C. chapel, which seemed
the ideal of some of the less {220} imaginative of our brethren. I was
receiving invitations from various Scottish centres to repeat my Hay
lecture; and this, we thought, might be judiciously combined with
efforts on behalf of our building-fund. I went to Blairs College,
outside Aberdeen, for the old bishop's actual centenary (which we had
anticipated at Fort Augustus), and lectured to the students and their
professors there. On my way back, I visited, for the first time, our
"cell" at St. James's, high above the pretty prosperous sea-port of
Buckie. The place pleased me--a conveniently-planned house, standing
among pine-woods and meadows, with a fine prospect over land and sea;
and a nice chapel, simple and devout, with a gaily-gilt altar from
Tyrol. I gave my lecture in three other places during these weeks of
early winter: at Motherwell, where my lantern failed me, and I was
grateful to my audience for listening to an hour's dry talk without
pictures; in Edinburgh, where I had a large and very appreciative
audience; and in Glasgow, where a still bigger gathering filled the
City Hall, and was really enthusiastic. It was all very fatiguing; and
I was glad to get home and enjoy a little rest and peace before
Christmas. Beaufort, too, where I acted as Christmas chaplain as
usual, was restful this year, with only a small family party, and the
Lovats getting ready for a trip to Egypt and Khartoum. We had a long,
severe, and stormy winter in the Highlands: gale after gale, in which
our poor wooden church swayed and shivered and creaked like the old
_Araguaya_ in the Bay of Biscay; and then bitter frosts with the
thermometer down in the neighbourhood of zero, and all the able-bodied
{221} monks smashing the ice in the "lade," in order to keep the
current going for our electric light. Meanwhile we were cheered by the
general interest, even in far-off lands, in our church-building
crusade. Our Maltese father brought a cheque from his island home; and
subscriptions came from my Yucatan friend, Señor Ygnacio Peon, and from
Alastair Fraser in remote Rhodesia. I went off on a campaign south of
the Tweed, with my lantern slides as a passport; and it was never
difficult, in lecturing on the straits and struggles of the Scottish
Church in the early nineteenth century, to pass to the needs and hopes
of the Scottish Benedictines in the early twentieth. I had, as always,
a kind reception and a sympathetic hearing from our brethren at Douai
Abbey, but had the bad luck to be invalided immediately afterwards,
fortunately in the pleasant Surrey home of my sister, who took me
drives, when I was convalescent, all among the queer-shaped hills of
the North Downs, intersected by the Pilgrims' Way to Canterbury.
The national coal-strike began whilst I was at Nutwood--a million men
"downing tools," and the end impossible to foresee. Travelling, of
course, became at once infinitely troublesome and tedious;[10] however,
I made my way to Stonyhurst College, where I had a big and interested
audience (there were many young Scots among the 400 pupils), and then
managed to crawl back to London (one simply {222} sat in a station, and
waited for a train to come along some time), where I attended the
"house-warming" dinner of our Caledonian Club--I was an original
member--transferred from Charles Street to Lord Derby's fine house
overlooking St. James's Square. There were, of course,
self-congratulatory speeches; and a concert of Scottish music wound up
the evening agreeably. I paid a flying visit to Oxford this week--a
guest now in my old Hall, which had a full muster of monastic
undergraduates. The most conspicuous object in Oxford seemed to be our
"gracious tower" at Magdalen--a mass of elaborate scaffolding from top
to bottom:[11] spring-cleaning, I imagined, for the Prince of Wales,
who was going into residence there in October. I called on the new
University chaplain, installed, but not yet, apparently, quite at home
in, the old familiar house in St. Aldate's, and also managed to put in
a few hours at the Bodleian, to finish my article on William of
Wykeham, the last of eighty-three which I had written for the American
Encyclopædia. It had been interesting work, of which some tangible
results were certain vestments, pictures, and other adornments which I
had been thus able to provide for the chapel of our Benedictine Hall.
Lunching at the new Caledonian, on my way through London, I found
myself next young Bute, dreadfully depressed about the coal-strike, and
(not for the first time) looking forward to the workhouse for himself
and family. My next lecture was due at St. Edmund's College, Ware,
where I had the honour of numbering among my audience the {223}
brand-new Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster,[12] imposing in his
brand-new rose-coloured robes, but as kind and gracious as ever. In
the middle of my lecture (I had an audience of nearly 300) the "divine"
(as the church students were called) in charge of the lighting startled
us all by suddenly crying out, "There is going to be an explosion!" and
the next moment a flame shot up from the lantern almost to the ceiling.
"Only that and nothing more"; but it was quite sufficiently alarming
for the moment. Next day we enjoyed a motor-drive through the pretty
pastoral country, and saw in the course of it one curious sight--a
suffragist female (militant by the look of her) standing on a stool
just outside the lychgate of a village church, and addressing an
apparently very unreceptive audience of open-mouthed Hertfordshire
yokels.
Holy Week and Easter found me again at Arundel, where there was a
holiday gathering of many young people at the castle, the youngest
member of the party being the Duke's baby daughter, who was christened
Katherine the day after my arrival. "_Absit omen!_" whispered (not
very tactfully, I thought) the good vicar of Arundel, as we drank tea
and nibbled the christening cake after the ceremony--looking up, as he
spoke, at a portrait of the baby's luckless ancestress Queen Katherine
Howard. "Il n'y a pas de danger," I whispered back; but I don't know
whether he understood French. I was amused afterwards, talking to the
nurse of the Duchess's small nephews and nieces, to hear _her_ opinion
of the castle and its glories. {224} "A dreadful place for children,
_I_ call it, with all these towers and battlements and dungeons and
hiding-holes--one never knows where they'll get to next. A London
house for me, where there's children to look after!" The services were
jubilant, and the great church beautifully adorned on Easter Sunday,
and the choir warbled what poor Angus[13] used to call the "sensuous
harmonies" of Gounod in their best style. Yet more children arrived
after Easter, including three tomboy great-nieces of our host; and
there were great games in the vast Baron's hall--roller-skating on the
expanse of polished floor, and dancing to the rather inadequate strains
of a wheezy gramophone which had suffered from the depredatory
explorations of my lord of Arundel and Surrey and his sisters.
The Duke motored me up to London in Easter-week to attend Stafford's
wedding in Eaton-square: masses of arums and Madonna lilies, tall
upstanding plumes of Eton blue waving from the bridesmaids' heads, and
the inevitable and inappropriate "O for the Wings of a Dove!" The
Primate of All Ireland began his sermon by addressing the happy pair,
with unnecessary intimacy, as "Eilleen and George";[14] and when he had
finished we all trooped off to Grosvenor House. Duchess Millicent was
in {225} great beauty, but I was sorry to see Sutherland, with whom I
talked for five minutes, looking very ill and almost voiceless.[15] We
had a pleasant drive back to Arundel; and I was interested to notice
what one never, of course, sees travelling by rail, how completely the
scenery, the soil, even the appearance of the people, changed as we
crossed the border from Surrey into Sussex.
I recall a luncheon about this time at a big London hotel--a snug
little party of a hundred or so--with Lord Saye and Sele in the chair,
and speeches from Lord William Cecil, Sir Henry Lunn, and others, about
the development of China, and especially the projected Chinese
university. The novel toast of the "President of the Chinese Republic"
was replied to, in excellent English, by the Chinese Minister, Yew Luk
Lin, next to one of whose two agreeable daughters I was seated: they
were all three in Western garb. Next day my brother motored me down to
Eton (always a pleasure to me) to see his boy there; we went on
afterwards to Brooklands, and looked at the motors dashing round the
track and the aeroplanes swooping round, rising and alighting, all new
to me and very interesting. Another interesting evening was spent at
the Albert Hall, at the annual demonstration of the Boys' Brigade, to
which, after the drill and other performances, Prince Arthur of
Connaught presented new colours, the gift of the Princess Royal. After
this I had to go down to Ramsgate (though feeling far from fit) to give
my last lecture at the Benedictine school and abbey there. I was
interested in the {226} church--Pugin's masterpiece, as he considered
it himself, and thought it impressive, but so dark that I could not
read my breviary in it at noonday.[16] The observance of the good
monks was in some respects Italian (e.g. the reading in the refectory
was in that language); but the schoolboys seemed quite British, and
cheered my lecture with British heartiness. I should have liked to
stay a little and enjoy the hospitality of my brethren in the pure air
and sunshine of the Thanet coast; but I had to hurry back to London and
submit to a serious medical overhauling, the net result of which was an
order to go in for an immediate and drastic "cure"--if possible at
Aix-les-Bains.[17] A friend's generosity made this feasible; and, duly
authorized, I prepared to pass three weeks at the famous Savoy
watering-place.
[1] The old man died in his hundredth year, after spending nearly a
quarter of a century as a professed lay-brother in our abbey, whither
he had come as a septuagenarian, by the advice of an episcopal cousin,
to prepare for his end! See _post_, page 260.
[2] Our friendship had lasted uninterruptedly for nearly forty years,
and had now extended to two generations of her descendants.
[3] "There was an old maid of Carstairs,
Whose villa required some repairs:
When she asked if the plumber
Could finish _next summer_,
He said he would be there for years!"
[4] My impression is that the "king of Britain" was a bit of a myth,
and that the "Lucius" venerated at Chur was Saint Lucius of
Glamorgan--called in Welsh "Lleurwg" or "Lleurfer Mawr"=the "Great
Light-bearer," who, according to the Welsh tradition, was the founder
of the Church of Llandaff and of others in South Wales.
[5] Sir William and some of his nearest relations formed a remarkable
group of men who had won titles and honours in their various careers.
His brother was created Baron Farrer; one brother-in-law was Sir
Stafford Northcote, first Earl of Iddesleigh, and another was created
Baron Hobhouse; his nephew was Lord Northcote, the first
Governor-General of Australia; and he himself was given his knighthood
at the first Jubilee of Queen Victoria.
[6] Three (of whom one, the destined Superior, unhappily died on the
voyage out) were English nuns from Stanbrook Abbey, near Worcester: the
remaining four were Brazilians, who had passed through their novitiate
in the same convent.
[7] Our friendship had begun unconventionally. An anonymous article of
mine, in a weekly paper, on my Eton schoolfellows, had mentioned Tom's
father, Eustace Vesey, as "the dearest of them all." Tom, then himself
a small Etonian, wrote to me through the publisher: I of course
replied, and the friendship thus begun lasted through his school days,
his rather meteoric time at Christ Church, and afterwards.
[8] Sister to my best and oldest Oxford friend, Willie Neville. Sir
Arthur Bigge, private secretary successively to Queen Victoria, Edward
VII., and George V., was raised to the peerage as Baron Stamfordham
this year (1911).
[9] In the neighbourhood of Calgary. Nothing, however, came of the
scheme.
[10] And domestic conditions, I may add, highly uncomfortable--far more
so than in the prolonged strike some years later, for which people were
more or less prepared. "I wonder, my lord," said a lady, visiting a
bishop in his vast and unwarmed palace, "that you don't get some of
that nice Welsh coal for your big house. I forget the exact name; I
think it is called _anti-christ_ coal!"
[11] It was said to be the finest bit of scaffold-work ever put up. I
secured an excellent photograph of it.
[12] Archbishop Bourne of Westminster had been created a Cardinal by
Pius X. in the Consistory of November 27, 1911.
[13] "I never hear Gregorian music on earth," he said to me once, "but
I trust I shall hear nothing else in heaven. There are 'many mansions'
there, and I humbly hope that _my_ mansion will be as far removed as
possible from 'Hummel in B flat'!"
[14] I mentioned this in my description of the wedding on our return to
Arundel. The comment of one of our party, a lady rather "slow in the
uptake" (as we say in Scotland) was, "But what did he _mean_? Whom was
she leaning _on_? was it _King_ George?"
[15] The Duke of Sutherland died about a year later.
[16] Pugin justified his love for "dim religious" churches with his
usual delightful inconsequence. "In the thirteenth century," he said
in effect, "no one thought of reading in church: they told their beads
and made acts of faith and said their prayers. _My_ church is a
thirteenth-century church, to all intents and purposes--_ergo!_"
[17] It was a case of "inflammatory gouty eczema," too long neglected.
{227}
CHAPTER XIII
1912-1913
The Lovat family were all interested in St. Vincent's Home for
Cripples, near London, where a daughter of the house (a Sister of
Charity) was a nurse; and I attended at their invitation a concert in
aid of it, the day before I left London, at Sunderland House. The
sumptuous ball-room, with its walls of Italian marble, heavily gilt
ceiling, and chandeliers of rock crystal, made a handsome setting for a
brilliant audience, which included Queen Amélie of Portugal. Her
Majesty honoured me with a short conversation during the afternoon, and
seemed interested to hear of my sojourn, some years before, in a
Portuguese monastery (Cucujães), and of our charitable but eccentric
neighbour there, the Condessa de Penha Longa.[1] The concert, which
included two woebegone recitations from Mrs. Patrick Campbell, and a
funny song written, composed, and sung by Cyril Maude--his first
effort, he assured us, in that line[2]--was a success by which, I hope,
the poor cripples benefited considerably. {228} Next day I made a
bee-line for the south of France, going through Paris without stopping.
The season was hardly open in Aix-les-Bains; and the pretty town looked
a little _triste_, with many shops still shut up. But the spring
weather was fresh and bright, and I was much in the open air between
the stages of my "cure," which was fairly severe. I liked the friendly
Savoyards, a pious and faithful race, though with such a reputation for
_grumbling_ that their own king (Victor Amadeus II.) said of them, "Ils
ne sont jamais contents: s'il pleuvait de séquins, ils dirait que le
bon Dieu casse leurs ardoises!" They did not, however, grumble in my
hearing; and the portly curé of the new church on the hill, with whom I
made friends, praised their simplicity and virtue. He organized
various attractions during May in his church, whither I used to conduct
some of my hotel-acquaintances after dinner, assuring them that they
would be better entertained there than in losing their money on the
"little horses" in the stuffy casino. One evening there would be
_projections lumineuses_, lantern-views of some of Our Lady's loveliest
churches in France, or of the adventures of Joan of Arc, always with
racy comments from his reverence; at another time a _conférence
dialoguée_--the _vicaire_ (disguised in a red muffler) propounding
agnostic conundrums from a pew, and the _curé_ answering them
triumphantly from the pulpit, amid the plaudits of the congregation.
He was a really excellent preacher; and his series of May sermons
(which I insisted on my friends staying to hear) on "Les Péchés d'un
homme d'affaires"--"de plaisir"--"d'État," and so on, were uncommonly
practical as well as eloquent. {229} Pentecost, a great popular
festival here, was kept with piety as well as merriment. The church
was crowded with communicants from daybreak: later on the Cardinal
Archbishop of Chambéry (whom I had the pleasure of meeting at breakfast
at the presbytery) came and confirmed a large number of children who
had made their first Communions on Ascension Day, after himself giving
them a pretty searching public examination in the catechism. The
afternoon and evening were devoted to festivity--dancing, gymnastics,
military _retraites_, fireworks, illuminations, and a sort of Greenwich
Fair; all very gay and harmless.
The exigencies of my cure would not permit of distant expeditions to
Anneçy, the Grande Chartreuse, etc., which I should have liked to
visit. One interesting excursion I managed, to the Cistercian Abbey of
Hautecombe, charmingly situated on a wooded promontory overlooking Lake
Bourget. There was a resident community of thirty monks--the only one
left in France under the then anti-Christian régime. They owed their
exemption to the fact of their church being the Westminster Abbey of
Savoy, containing some thirty tombs of the ancestors of the King of
Italy, who had protested to the French Government against the expulsion
of the guardians of the ashes of his ancestors; and so they were
allowed to remain and serve God in peace. Unfortunately the fine
twelfth-century church had been restored and re-restored in debased and
florid fashion, a single chapel being all that was left intact of the
pre-Revolution building.
I left Aix, much the better for my visit, at the end of May, travelling
straight to Paris with two {230} ladies--one an extraordinarily voluble
Irish widow, in my carriage. The weather was hot; and I tired myself
out with an exhaustive and exhausting visit to the Salon and the
sculptures in the Champs Elysées. The picture of the year (surrounded
always by a silent and interested crowd) was Jean Beraud's "New Way of
the Cross,"[3] which, if it made only a percentage of French men and
women realize what the public renunciation of Christianity meant, was
calculated to do more good than many sermons. A week later I was at
Keir, where I found some anxiety caused by the serious illness of
Lovat, who was laid up with typhoid, and fretting at being unable, for
the first time since the raising of the Lovat Scouts a dozen years
before, to take command of the corps at their annual training. We
enjoyed some lovely June weather at Keir, motoring one day to
Stirling's picturesque lodge on Loch Lubnaig, and lunching _al fresco_
among stonecrops and saxifrages and pansies, on a bank overlooking the
loch and the purple mass of Ben Ledi. Another day we saw the smart
little soldier-boys of Queen Victoria's School at Dunblane get their
prizes from the Duchess of Montrose, with whose husband I had a chat
about our Etonian days together, _consule Planco_.
I was bidden to Ampleforth for the jubilee celebrations there (their
fine college had been opened in 1862), which was graced by the presence
of {231} Cardinal Bourne--a stately figure with his long scarlet train
sweeping over the green lawns in the great open-air procession which
was the central feature of the solemnities. The college O.T.C. formed
an uncommonly smart bodyguard to his Eminence, though they puzzled, and
even shocked, some of the old Benedictines present by remaining covered
(in military fashion) during the service. The after-luncheon oratory
was neither more nor less tedious than usual; but we all enjoyed later
an admirable presentment by the boys of _The Frogs_ of Aristophanes,
with Parry's delightful music. I got back to Fort Augustus in time for
the canonical visitation of the monastery by the Abbot-president, to
whom I spoke of my hope that I might be allowed to return for a time to
Brazil; but he replied to me, in effect, in the words of St. Sixtus to
his faithful deacon,[4] and I could only resign myself with what grace
I could to the inevitable. I learned on July 2, the thirty-second
anniversary of my religious profession, that our prior's resignation of
office, owing to his almost continual ill-health, had been accepted,
and that I was to be appointed in his place. Meanwhile the Oxford
Local Examinations called me (for the last time) to North
Staffordshire, where it was pleasantly cool among the hills and wooded
glens of Oakamoor. I spent a Sunday at Cheadle, in the valley below,
and admired the graceful church which Pugin had been given _carte
blanche_ by the "Good Earl of Shrewsbury" to build as he liked, with no
fear of the "accursed blue pencil" (as he called it) {232} which so
often mutilated his elaborate designs.[5] "As attractive an example of
the architect's skill as could be quoted," a severe critic[6] had
called the Cheadle church; and the tribute was well deserved. Two days
after my return to our abbey I was formally installed in office as
prior, by my good friend the abbot of Ampleforth, with the same
ceremonial which I had witnessed thirty-four years previously, when Dom
Jerome Vaughan was inducted into office in the vaulted guard-room of
the old Fort, afterwards incorporated into the monastic guest-house.
The burden of superiorship, a heavy one enough, was lightened not only
by the unanimous kindness of my own brethren, but by the cordiality
with which my appointment was greeted by friends outside, including the
bishop and clergy of our diocese of Aberdeen, who were the guests of
the abbey for their annual retreat, a few days after my installation.
A consoling message, too, came to me from the Holy Father himself
through Père Lépicier, who had come from Rome in the quality of
Apostolic Visitor to Scotland, and stayed with us for some days; a
Franco-Roman diplomatist with the suavest possible manner and address,
masking (it struck me) no little acuteness and a strong personality.
His visit, and that of the diocesan clergy, coincided with {233} St.
Oswald's Day, which we kept very happily, many of our neighbours in the
village and district, including my old friend the parish minister,
dining with us in the monastic refectory. A still older friend, George
Lane Fox, sent me a cordial telegram; and I was able to send one in
return congratulating him on the handsome testimonial he had just
received on his retirement from a quarter of a century's office as
Vice-chancellor of the Primrose League. A grief to us both, only a few
days later, was the news of the death, at our abbey of Cesena in Italy,
of his eldest son, who had been closely connected with Fort Augustus
from his childhood, first as a little boy in the abbey-school, and
later as a monk and priest of our community.
One of my first works as prior was to organize a work which we had very
gladly undertaken--that of ministering as naval chaplains to ships in
Scottish waters. The chief naval stations were Lamlash (Arran) in the
south-west and Cromarty in the northeast; and thither certain of our
fathers journeyed every week, meeting as a rule with every kindness and
consideration from the captains and officers, and getting into touch
with the considerable number of Catholic bluejackets on the various
ships. Sometimes, between the Sundays, they found time to prosecute
the quest, which was ever before us, for our church-building fund; and
our good Father Odo, in particular, reaped quite a little harvest,
during his Lamlash chaplaincy, in my native diocese of Galloway, where
there were still kind friends who remembered me, and were glad to show
sympathy with an object which I had so deeply at heart. Dom Odo was
not only a zealous priest but an {234} equally zealous antiquarian and
F.R.S.A. (Scot.). He had specialized in artificial islands, about
which he read an interesting paper this autumn at the British
Association meeting at Dundee; and he was elected about the same time
president of the Inverness Field Club, the premier scientific society
of the north of Scotland. I record this with pleasure as an example
(not, of course, an isolated one) of the Benedictine liberty which
permits and encourages the members of our Order to cultivate
freely---apart from their professional studies and avocations--such
tastes and talents as they may possess, and which, needless to say,
greatly adds to the interest and variety of their lives.
My own life was of course, after my entering on the office and duties
of prior, much more confined than heretofore to the precincts of our
Scottish abbey. This was no additional burden to me; for my life,
whether at Fort Augustus or Oxford or in Brazil, had always been a life
in community; and I had always been happy and at home in the society of
my brethren in the monastery. Perhaps the most tiring and trying
feature in my position as superior was the never-ceasing correspondence
of all kinds which it involved, and with which one had personally to
grapple; but in other ways the wise subdivision of labour which
prevails in a well-ordered religious house did much to lighten the
daily burden, and the ready willingness in all quarters to afford
whatever help and relief was needed was a constant solace and
encouragement. The busy days thus passed quickly by, varied by the
continual influx of guests--always interested and sometimes
interesting--who were never wanting in our abbey. {235} Our
neighbours, too, were kind and friendly; and their motors were often at
one's disposal for an afternoon's drive up one or other of the
beautiful glens which ran westward from our Gleann Mhor, the Great Glen
of all, to the sea. Then there were duties connected with the parish
and district Councils, to which I was elected soon after becoming
prior; and the constant interest of directing the plan of campaign in
aid of our building-fund, and the satisfaction of seeing its steady
increase. I recall, during those bright still days of late autumn
(often the loveliest season of the Highland year), a retreat given us
by an eloquent Dominican; and also a visit from Lady Lovat, who, as our
founder's widow, enjoyed the privilege of entering the monastic
enclosure with her "suite" (in this case her daughter-in-law, Lovat's
wife, and a friend)--a formal enough affair, but of course novel and
interesting to the ladies concerned. According to the quaint antique
prescription, the great bell was tolled when they entered the cloister,
warning the monks to remain in their cells: no meat nor drink could be
served to them within the enclosure: they were to visit only the
"public places" of the monastery, and were enjoined "not to gaze
curiously about them." Lady Lovat would fain have lingered in our
well-furnished library; but our little procession swept on
relentlessly, and her literary longings remained ungratified.[7]
{236}
It was not, I think, until November of this year that I spent a night
away from Fort Augustus, being bidden to Liverpool to keep, with a
large gathering of his friends, the golden jubilee of our kind old
friend Bishop Hedley. There was a High Mass, a sermon, and (of course)
a festival dinner, with many speeches--prosy, melancholy,
retrospective, or humorous, according to the mood or the idiosyncrasy
of the several speakers. My brief oration, conveying the thanks of the
guests, included two funny stories, which so favourably impressed one
of the reporters, that he announced in his paper next day that "the
honours of the evening's oratory undoubtedly rested with a venerable
and genial monk from the other side of the Border!" I stayed at
Glasgow on my way north, to take the chair at the annual festival of
the Caledonian Catholic Association, an admirably beneficent
institution in which I was glad to show my interest.[8] After the
concert, and before the ball which followed, Stirling and I left for
Keir in a hired motor-car, which broke down badly in the middle of
Cumbernauld Muir, leaving us _plantés-là_ till past midnight. There
was the residuum of a big shooting-party at Keir; and we all attended
next day a vocal recital given in the old cathedral by "Mlle.
Hommedieu"--an odd-sounding name: I wondered if she was "Miss Godman"
in private life.
I had spent Christmas so often at Beaufort (no {237} less than eleven
times since 1893) that it seemed strange to be absent from there this
year; but I had of course to preside at the solemnities in our own
church, which (notwithstanding the appalling weather conditions) was
crowded to the doors for the midnight services. We dined, as usual, in
the vacant school refectory, gaily decorated, with a blazing log fire:
there was an informal concert afterwards, and the festive evening was
enjoyed by all. I made a Christmas call on my old friend Sir Aubone
Fife,[9] whose annual quest for hinds had been interrupted by illness.
He rented the winter shooting of Inchnacardoch Forest from Lovat, and
spent every Christmas and New Year _solus_ at our little hotel, content
with his sport, his own society, and an occasional visit from me! He
had comfortable bachelor quarters in Jermyn Street: London for him was
bounded by Pall Mall and Oxford Street: his home and recreation were in
his many clubs, and he always reminded me irresistibly of a
twentieth-century Major Pendennis. I managed to put in two nights at
Beaufort in Christmas week, receiving a hearty welcome from the merry
party of Frasers and Maxwells assembled there, and returned to the
abbey for New Year's Day, in time to take part in the various holiday
entertainments--Christmas trees, theatricals, etc., organised for our
good people. Twelfth-day I spent at Keir, preaching {238} (_seated_,
my usual practice now),[10] to a good congregation in the beautiful
private chapel, which was almost complete; and before returning home I
paid a little visit to Kelburn, where I found my poor brother-in-law in
bed with a broken crown (having fallen downstairs!) but my nephew the
flying-man apparently quite recovered, I was glad to see, from _his_
more serious knock on the head at Bournemouth. I was pleased to hear
from my gunner brother, who was staying at Kelburn, of his
appointment--an excellent berth--as A.A.G. at the War Office.
The closing weeks of our long northern winter were exceptionally bleak
and stormy this year; but constant occupation made them pass quickly
enough. February 10 (St. Scholastica's Day), on which our good nuns
kept high festival, and I officiated at their solemn services, was also
the opening day of our salmon-fishing; and in the first haul we landed
fifteen fish weighing just 250 pounds, the heaviest a beautiful
26-pounder. A salmon was always an acceptable present to a kind friend
in the south: some we ate fresh (a welcome variation of our Lenten
fare), and the rest we tried to kipper.[11] February 10 was otherwise
memorable this year, as on that day I learned that our community was to
elect its abbot a month later. We voted first on the important
question whether the election should be for life, as provided in our
Constitutions, {239} or (by special indult of Rome) for a fixed term of
years, which was the usual practice in the other houses of the
Congregation. The votes--some sent by post and telegraph--were almost
equally divided; and it was finally settled that the election should be
for eight years. Nearly all our absentee monks arrived from missions,
chaplaincies, and elsewhere, for the _tractatus_, or discussions
preliminary to the election, which was fixed for Thursday in Passion
Week, under the presidency of the abbot of Ampleforth. It took place
after the customary mass of the Holy Spirit, and turned out a very
brief affair, as I was elected by more than the requisite number of
votes at the first "scrutiny," as it was called.[12] My confirmation
and installation followed immediately--and then the letters and
telegrams began pouring in, all requiring to be answered; but the roads
and railways were providentially blocked for some days before Easter,
by a March snowstorm of almost unprecedented violence, and our mail
service was entirely suspended; so I got a little breathing time! Thus
undistracted, I officiated at all the services of the season,
celebrating on Easter Sunday amid rain, hail, and driving easterly
gales that made the text of my Paschal sermon--"Jam hiems transiit,
imber abiit et recessit,"[13] sound ironical enough. I spent an
Eastertide Sunday at Keir, where spring had really set in, and while
there made an expedition or two with an archæological {240} enthusiast
who was of our party: to Stirling Castle, much finer and more spacious
than I had imagined; to the scanty remains--only the massive church
tower and the old monastic dove-cot!--of the grand old abbey of
Cambuskenneth; and to Doune Castle, where it was odd to come on workmen
installing electric light in the venerable ruins in preparation for the
coming-of-age of my Lord Doune, son of the "Bonnie Earl of Moray." I
returned to Inverness just in time to attend the funeral of Andrew
Macdonald, Sheriff-clerk of the county, a devout Catholic, and one of
the oldest and most faithful friends of our abbey and community. There
was a great gathering in the church and at the grave-side, and all
seemed impressed by the solemn rites, and by the chanting of our
monastic choir.
We were all busily occupied, during the next ten days, with
preparations for the solemnity of my abbatial benediction, which took
place on April 9, in presence of a large assemblage of invited guests
and interested onlookers. It was a particular pleasure to me to
receive the Church's benison at the hands of a friend of many years'
standing, the venerable Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, whom I had
known in old happy days at Mountstuart, as parish priest of Rothesay.
Abbots Gasquet and Smith assisted the bishop; and Lovat and other
friends were among the laymen who had their part in the august and
impressive ceremony, which lasted for fully three hours. A hundred
guests were entertained in our refectory; and I received many good
wishes during the day, including telegrams from Cardinals Bourne and
Merry del Val, Norfolk, Bute, and Charles Dalrymple, whose kind {241}
message gratified me as the only one received from any member of my
family.[14] An informal concert in the evening, in the theatre-hall of
the college, was a pleasant close to a memorable day.
An earlier date than might otherwise have been the case had been fixed
for the abbatial election at Fort Augustus by the superiors of our
Order, who desired that our abbey should be represented by its
duly-constituted head at the great Benedictine gathering which was to
take place in Italy this summer. The object of this assemblage, to
which every abbot of Black Monks (_Monachi Nigri_) in Christendom
received an invitation, was two-fold: first to assist at the
consecration of the crypt of the church at Monte Cassino, the cradle of
our venerable Order, after its complete restoration and decoration by
the Beuron School of Benedictine artists; and secondly, to elect, in
Rome, a coadjutor to the Abbot Primate of the Order, whose health had
broken down. I went south in the last week of April, and after a
flying visit to my sister in Surrey (where I said mass at the very
pretty and well-kept church at Redhill), went on to stay with the
French Benedictines at Farnborough, where two members of our Fort
Augustus community were at that time in residence. They showed me much
of interest, including the small museum of Napoleonic relics, and, of
course, the crypt containing the massive granite sarcophagi containing
the bodies of Napoleon {242} III. and his only son. It so chanced that
the aged Empress (then in her eighty-eighth year) had been praying in
the church when we entered it; and we saw her leaving in her carriage
for her château a few hundred yards away. I thought, as I glanced at
the frail shrunken figure leaning on her staff, of a summer day in
Paris forty-eight long years before, when I had seen her, a radiant and
beautiful vision, walking in the Tuileries gardens with her little son,
amid the admiring plaudits of an apparently devoted people. The young
prince was mounted on a sort of two-wheeled hobby-horse, gaily painted
and gilt, and I asked my companion (a French lady) what it might be.
"Ah!" she replied, "c'est une invention absolument nouvelle: cela
s'appelle un' 'vé-lo-ci-pède'!" The only other occasion on which I
ever saw the Empress was in Rome some ten years later, when she came,
widowed and dethroned, to pay her respects to the venerable Pontiff
Pius IX. I have described elsewhere[15] this memorable visit, which I
was privileged to witness as being at that time a chamberlain on duty
at the Vatican.
My friend MacCall, from Arundel, joined me at Dover, and we had a swift
and uneventful journey to Venice (actually my first visit!) where I
spent three crowded happy days--it was all I could spare--as the guest
of an old Eton and Oxford friend in his delightful _palazzo_ on the Rio
Marin. I cannot attempt any description: what impressed me most
vividly, perhaps, apart from the incomparable glories of S. Marco, was
our visit, in the amber and purple twilight of a Venetian May-day, to
our Benedictine {243} church of St. George--its monastery (alas! almost
derelict) and graceful rose-red campanile reflected in the deep azure
of the lagoon. I regretfully left Venice that night, and travelling
straight through Rome, in the company of abbots of various lands and
languages, reached Cassino about mid-day, and was driven up the sacred
mountain in a motor-car (an innovation since my last pilgrimage
hither!) passing, at various turns of the excellent road, groups of
peasants toiling up the rugged immemorial path to the monastery. We
were welcomed by the kind abbot at the foot of the great staircase; and
I was soon installed in a pleasant cell, with a view that almost took
one's breath away over the wild and mountainous Abruzzi,[16] and the
thin clear mountain air blowing in at one's window with delicious
freshness.
I do not think I ever attended such a series of prolonged and stately
church functions as during the week of our sojourn at Monte Cassino.
The chiefs of our Order in various countries officiated in turn at the
different solemnities; and we abbots (seventy or eighty of us) sat
perched on hard and narrow benches, tier upon tier, on either side of
the high altar. One day it was a solemn requiem mass for the deceased
benefactors of our Order: another, the consecration by the Cardinal
Legate representing {244} the Pope,[17] assisted by two Benedictine
archbishops, of the three altars in the crypt (this ceremony alone
lasted five hours, and almost finished me!), whilst on Sunday his
Eminence conducted the solemn high mass and subsequent procession, the
great church, _cortili_ beyond, and every available foot of space being
occupied by an immense and devout crowd of gaily-dressed peasants, most
of whom had slept on the bare ground in the open air on the previous
night. On this crowning day we were more than three hundred in the
vast refectory for dinner, at the end of which a choir of monks chanted
with thrilling effect the mediæval _Laudes_, or Acclamations of
Hincmar, in honour of our illustrious guests. Among these magnates was
my old friend of early days in Brazil, Bishop Gerard van Caloen, whom I
had not seen for sixteen years.[18] He had grown a long grey beard,
and his eyes looked out through his spectacles as sad and inscrutable
as ever.[19] I sat next him at the _ludus liturgico-scenicus_, one of
the diversions provided for us by the community: a grave musical
setting of the life and death of Saints Benedict and Scholastica, so
pathetic that I wept--to the surprise of my friend the bishop, who said
he never knew that I was so tender-hearted! The play was presented by
some of the young monks {245} and their pupils (they had over two
hundred in the abbey, including a lay boarding-school and two
seminaries), and on another evening they gave us a really excellent
concert of vocal and instrumental music. I do not know where space was
found for playgrounds for all these boys, for there seemed really very
little room on the mountain top for anything except the extensive
buildings. The abbot of Downside, who was a great advocate of
exercise, used to walk half-way down the hill and up again every day
after dinner: it was, as far as I could discover, the only walk
possible. In any case the available time for recreation between the
long-drawn-out religious celebrations was short enough: it was a
strenuous week, though a very interesting one, and rendered enjoyable
by the unwearied attention which the good monks, one and all, showed to
their numberless and no doubt occasionally troublesome guests. When
all was over I left Monte Cassino in the pleasant company of my friend
Abbot Miguel of S. Paulo, and travelled by an incredibly slow train to
Rome, where we found a second Benedictine welcome of not less
heartiness in the international abbey of St. Anselm on the Aventine
Hill.
[1] The lady supported an orphanage in her _castello_, and also an
incredible number of dogs, and distributed her affections equally
between the dogs and the orphans.
[2] This, however, was probably a mere appeal _ad misericordiam_.
Cyril was no novice!
[3] Representing Christ hounded along the road to Calvary by atheistic
deputies and anti-Christian schoolmasters, the latter inciting children
to fling stones at Him. On the opposite side of the way knelt a little
group of believers, children and others, with arms outstretched towards
the Saviour. Some of those looking at the picture were greatly
affected, even to tears.
[4] "Majora tibi debentur pro fide Christi certamina."--_Office of St.
Laurence_.
[5] It was Pugin's constant grievance that the poverty of English
Catholics prevented him from carrying out his grandiose ideas. A
bishop once wrote to him asking for plans for a cathedral, very
spacious, extraordinarily handsome, and--above all--cheap, money being
very scarce. Pugin lost his temper on seeing what was the sum
suggested. "My dear Lord," he wrote back, "why not say 30s. more, and
have a tower and spire when you are about it?"
[6] Sir Charles Eastlake (_History of the Gothic Revival_, p. 154).
[7] Queens Regnant (and I think Consort) have the _ex officio_ entrée
to monasteries; but Fort Augustus had never been so honoured, our only
"crowned head" visitor having been King Leopold of Belgium. I remember
Prince Henry of Battenberg, who came in a yacht with Princess Beatrice,
being put out at the latter being denied admission into the enclosure.
There was some talk of King Edward paying us a visit from Glenquoich,
where he was Lord Burton's guest; but nothing came of it.
[8] I had presided at a festival of the Association fifteen years
previously (in 1897).
[9] A fine old soldier and sportsman, who had fought in Afghanistan and
Burmah, and was afterwards appointed, first Clerk of the Cheque, and
later standard-bearer, in the King's Bodyguard. He volunteered, when
well over seventy, for service in the Great War, and was given, I
think, some post in connection with the defences of the Forth Bridge.
[10] "I preach sitting," said Bateman: "it is more conformable to
antiquity and to reason to sit than to stand."--Newman, _Loss and Gain_
(ed. 1876), page 70. My friend George Angus had followed suit at St.
Andrews.
[11] I say "tried"; for our good Belgian _chef_, who _said_ he
understood the process, used some mysterious pickle of his own
invention--with disastrous results!
[12] In the event of no candidate receiving a sufficient number of
votes, the "scrutiny" was repeated again and again--often a very
lengthy and tedious proceeding.
[13] "The winter is now past, the rain is over and gone." It was never
really safe to quote these words at Fort Augustus before (say) the end
of May.
[14] My brother-in-law, Sir Charles Dalrymple, had been one of those
who most bitterly resented my change of religion in 1875, and still
more my entrance into the Benedictine Order. But time had softened old
asperities; and we had been on affectionate terms for many years past.
[15] _A Medley of Memories_ (1st Series), pp. 81, 82.
[16] Most of the Abruzzi was included in the extensive diocese of Monte
Cassino (one of the largest in Italy), which was under the
administration of the abbot, although he was not a bishop. His
jurisdiction extended over no less than seven ancient dioceses--a fact
symbolized by the interesting and unique custom of his wearing, when he
celebrated pontifical high mass, seven different mitres in succession.
[17] Cardinal Gasparri, at that time Secretary of State to the reigning
Pontiff, Benedict XV.
[18] The pioneer of the Benedictine revival in Brazil, and my Superior
at the abbey of Olinda seventeen years before. See _A Medley of
Memories_ (1st Series), chaps, xvi. and xvii. Dom Gerard was
consecrated (titular) Bishop of Phocæa on April 18, 1906.
[19] Like Dr. Firmin's in _Philip_. "Dreary, sad, as into a great
blank desert, looked the eyes."--Thackeray, _Philip_, chap. iii.
{246}
CHAPTER XIV
1913-1914
The object of the great gathering, in the summer of 1913, of
Benedictine abbots in Rome, whither they had been especially summoned
by the _Abbas Abbatum_, Pope Pius X., was not primarily devotional or
liturgical, like the assemblage just held at Monte Cassino. It was
first and foremost a business meeting, called for the purpose of
electing a coadjutor (with right of succession) to the first Abbot
Primate of the Order, Dom Hildebrand de Hemptinne, the distinguished
Belgian prelate, who, after a life entirely devoted to the interests of
the Church and of his brother-monks, had been compelled by impaired and
enfeebled health to retire from all active work. One of his most
notable achievements had been the planning and erection, at the
instance and with the generous help of Leo XIII., of the noble monastic
college on the Aventine, which that Pontiff declared would be the
greatest material monument of his fifteen years' tenure of the see of
Peter. It was pathetic that, although in residence at St. Anselm's
College (his own beloved foundation) when we assembled there for the
business in hand, Abbot de Hemptinne was quite unable to take any part
in it, or even personally to welcome us to Rome. He appeared only once
in public during our stay {247} there--a mere wreck of the active
personality which had been so long associated with the interests and
the progress of our Order in every part of Christendom. We at Fort
Augustus owed much to his wisdom and sympathetic kindness; and I was
touched to see, during the few minutes' conversation which I had with
him, how his face lightened up, and something of the old alertness
reawakened in his voice and bearing, as we spoke of new hopes and new
developments in connection with our Scottish abbey.[1]
There were at this time just a hundred _abbates regiminis_ (i.e. ruling
abbots, excluding those holding merely titular rank) of Black Monks in
the Christian world; and of these I ranked last--for we took precedence
according to the date of appointment, not according to the antiquity of
our respective abbeys. Seventy-five were actually present in Rome and
most of the absentees had sent proxies to represent them. Four (two
from U.S.A., one Brazilian, and one Australian) were of episcopal rank,
and six others, though not bishops, exercised episcopal jurisdiction.
There were ten Arch-abbots, or abbots-president, of various national
Congregations; the rank and file being "ruling abbots" from every
country in Christendom. Latin was, of course, the official language at
our meetings, and to some extent the medium also of private
intercourse, though the variations of pronunciation made this a matter
of some difficulty. The great hall of the abbey where our sessions
were held was bad acoustically; and the magnates at the table of honour
(some of them {248} prelates of great age) mumbled so inaudibly that
we, in our humble places at the end of the hall, raised a cry of
"Altius! loquimini altius! nihil audivimus!" and others of the fathers
took up the cry of "Nihil! nihil!" At the first scrutiny the abbot of
Einsiedeln, in Switzerland, got eighty-four out of the ninety-eight
votes, which seemed decisive, and would have been so had he not, "cum
magna gratitudine," but extremely emphatically, declared that nothing
would induce him to accept. The Pope, who was appealed to, expressed
his regret, but declined to put any pressure on the reluctant abbot:
two more scrutinies followed, and finally Abbot von Stotzingen, of
Maria-laach, was elected by seventy-five votes. _Causa finita est_.
Our work finished, I had a few days to renew old happy memories of
Rome, greatly changed (I suppose materially for the better) since my
first visit in 1875. I went the round of the great basilicas, and
explored the vast cemetery of S. Lorenzo in quest of the grave of my
uncle David,[2] laid to rest there fourty-four years before. I found
it in good repair, with flowering shrubs growing round it, and read
with interest the beautiful Latin epitaph, written by the scholarly pen
of Archbishop Manning, who had received him into the Church, and
afterwards officiated at his simple funeral.
I celebrated the Whitsuntide solemnities in our own church of St.
Anselm, much impressed by the virile and sonorous chant of the monastic
choir. {249} I left Rome a few days later, travelling by night to
Milan, where I said mass early in the duomo--more impressive than I had
ever yet seen it in the dull morning light, with the vast spaces in
deep shadow, and the great jewelled windows gleaming faintly through
the murk. From Milan a long and fatiguing journey brought me to
Maredsous, the famous Belgian abbey which I had seen only once since I
had spent four months there as a young monk thirty years before. The
vast pile of building, of dark slate-coloured stone in the severest
Gothic, seemed to have altered little since 1883 (there is something
singularly, almost appallingly, unchangeable about these great
monasteries); but of course the trees about it had grown, and there
were additions near by--one the interesting school of arts and crafts
directed by the monks, where I saw excellent goldsmiths' and enamel
work done by the pupils, as well as fine embroideries. Another new and
striking feature was the nuns' abbey, a quarter of a mile away, with a
large and beautiful church open to the public. I found here an English
portress, with the English name of Sister Winifred; and the abbess, a
sister of our good abbot-primate in Rome, spoke English well; but she
persuaded me (after cake and wine) into giving a _conférence_ in French
to her community, about our doings at Monte Cassino and Rome.
It was interesting to pass straight, as I did, from a great modern
abbey in being to the impressive remains of our cathedral priory at
Canterbury, and to sleep in an Elizabethan bedroom constructed within
the ancient guest-hall of the monks. My kind host, Canon Moore,
devoted a day to showing {250} me the wonders of his cathedral; and a
party of cathedral dignitaries (and their wives) were asked to meet me
at dinner. I had some talk with a pleasant, though minor, canon,[3]
who had been for a time in charge of our choir at Magdalen. From
Canterbury I went on to Douai Abbey, to preside at their school
prize-giving, and then to keep St. Philip's _festa_ with the London
Oratorians, who had invited a Fort Augustus monk (Dom Maurus
Caruana[4]) to preach this year the panegyric of their patron saint. I
look back on these Oratory festivals as among the pleasantest of London
summer days--the marble altars in the great church aglow with roses and
lilies and orchids; music of the best from the unrivalled choir:[5]
sometimes a really eloquent sermon, and luncheon afterwards, in company
with all that was best in the Catholic society of the day, in the cool
spacious refectory, hung round with portraits of Faber and Dalgairns
and Knox and other eminent Oratorians. I sat on this occasion next a
kindly _littérateur_ and critic--so kindly a one that even when he does
attack you (as Russell Lowell put it)
"you doubt if the toes
That are trodden upon are your own or your foe's."
{251} We spoke of printers' perennial errors; and he quoted two new to
me--one from the prospectus of a new company: "Six thousand _snares_ of
five pounds each"; and the other from a speech of Lord Carnarvon:
"Every clergyman is expected nowadays to have the intellect and wisdom
of a Jeremy Taylor"--the last two words being transformed by a reporter
into "journeyman tailor!" The word "clergyman" (in these days somewhat
discredited) suggested to my friend Tennyson's dictum: "The majority of
Englishmen think of God as an immeasurable clergyman in a white tie";
and to me a line from the same poet's "May Queen," which had always
seemed to me the _ne plus ultra_ of bathos:[6]
"And that good man, the clergyman, has spoken words of peace."
I stayed a night at Kelburn on my way north to congratulate my
brother-in-law, as it was not only his eightieth birthday, but his
fortieth wedding-anniversary also fell this year. I was glad to find
myself at home again after five weeks' absence; but it was only for a
few weeks, as I had to go to Yorkshire in June, for the quinquennial
General Chapter of our Order at Ampleforth, where our first business
was to re-elect and install Abbot Gasquet as our abbot-president.[7] I
attended, a few days later, {252} a dinner of our Catholic Etonian
Association. Shane Leslie and (Mgr.) Hugh Benson both made capital
speeches, and I had the honour of proposing _Floreat Etona_. George
Lane Fox (a _quondam_ captain of the boats) was our president; and it
was interesting to learn that among Catholic Etonians were three old
captains of oppidans, Lords Abingdon and North, and Sir Francis
Burnand. I stayed for this function with the kind Oratorians, who
always had one or two Etonians in their community.[8] Their spacious
house was delightfully quiet, and the verdant shady garden might have
been two miles, instead of a bare two hundred yards, from the bustle
and traffic of Brompton Road. I assisted next day in their church at
the marriage of another Etonian Catholic, Sir Joseph Tichborne, and
looked with interest on the smart young lifeguardsman, son of the baby
defendant in the famous lawsuit more than forty years before. It is
hard now to realize the _furore_ caused by the great "Tichborne Case,"
which sapped old friendships and engendered lasting animosities among
people who had no earthly connection with it[9]--for the old English
Catholic families, which _were_ {253} closely interested in the matter,
took it very quietly and never discussed it in public. I have never
known since any popular excitement in the least like it.
I was back at Fort Augustus before the end of June; and the summer and
autumn (both wonderfully fine this year) passed quickly and happily.
Long sunshiny days brought us, as always, many visitors, among the
first being the large contingent of Glasgow Catholics who came as
usual, during their "Fair Week," to spend some days at our abbey,
partly in pious exercises and partly in enjoyable excursions. Our most
notable guest this year was perhaps the young King of Uganda (I believe
his proper title was not King but "Kabaka"), who came to Fort Augustus
for a week-end with his dusky suite, and spent some hours with us--a
tall, graceful and agreeable, but very shy, youth in a lovely robe of
peacock blue (he had arrived at the inn the night before wearing a
dingy covert-coat over a sort of white cassock). One of his
fellow-chiefs, I think the only Catholic of the party, had a huge
rosary slung round his neck during the visit to our monastery. Another
distinguished visitor was Cardinal Bourne, whose clerical secretary had
been driving him (_incog._) all over the Highlands, and over all sorts
of roads, in a little two-seater motor. This had to go into hospital
on their arrival; but through the kindness of an American neighbour I
was able to escort our guests in a roomy "Fiat" to Glengarry (our most
notable beauty-spot), and to the famous little inn, embowered in woods
on the edge of the amber rushing Garry, where there were many notable
names in the visitors' book, though {254} not, I think, up till then
the signature of a Prince of the Roman Church. His Eminence's visit
synchronized with our Highland Games and annual concert, both of which
he honoured with his presence; and next day he and his faithful
monsignor trundled off westwards in their little car, much pleased (as
we all were also) with their brief sojourn in our abbey guest-house.
Apart from the normal duties incumbent on the head of a monastic
community, I had, from the time of first taking the reins, placed three
objects in the forefront of my hopes and aspirations, and had
endeavoured never to lose sight of them. These were, first, an
increase in our numbers by the admission of suitable aspirants to our
life; secondly, the renovation and utilization of the long derelict
buildings of the abbey-school, and the reopening of the school itself
as soon as feasible; and thirdly, the hastening of the long anticipated
day when work should be resumed on our abandoned church, and a part of
it, at least, completed and opened for Divine Service. Thanks to the
goodwill and support of my own brethren, and to the interested sympathy
of many friends outside, I had the happiness of seeing all these hopes
in a fair way to be realized within a twelvemonth of my receiving the
abbatial benediction. Four of our first year's batch of novices were
ultimately admitted to profession and to holy orders: they were joined
by two priests from the Scottish mission, both of whom took their vows
after due probation; while there were also affiliated to our community
two young English monks from a German monastery near Birmingham, as
well as a novice from the monastery of Caldey, in South {255} Wales,
almost all the members of which had, with their superior, made their
submission to the Catholic Church in the previous year.[10] We were
all agreed in the wish and hope that the eminently Benedictine work of
the education of youth within our own abbey walls, discontinued for
several years, should be resumed as soon as circumstances permitted.
Carpenters and painters, plasterers and plumbers, were soon busily
engaged at the much-needed work of repair and restoration. The
buildings were practically ready for occupation in the summer of 1914;
but our hopes of reopening the school a few months later were
frustrated by the world-stirring events of July and August of that
year. It was a great satisfaction to all of us to be able, a little
later, to place our renovated college at the disposal of the Red Cross,
and to see it utilized as an Auxiliary Hospital, first for the wounded
soldiers of our gallant Belgian allies, and then for the wounded of our
own armies.[11]
The date of resuming the long suspended work on the fabric of our
greatly-needed church, which I had at least as much at heart as the two
other objects already mentioned, depended, of course, on the slow but
steady increase of our building-fund; and there were always willing
helpers, both within and without our community, toward the ingathering
of a sum without which it would have been {256} imprudent to recommence
operations. Some of our fathers showed most commendable zeal and
energy in the not very pleasant or grateful task of begging: they
planted and watered, and God certainly sent the increase. Among other
efforts, a great garden fête was organized at Terregles, near Dumfries,
the beautiful old seat of the Maxwell-Stuarts. I opened the
proceedings: the day was lovely and the grounds thronged, and a very
substantial sum was realized for our fund. It was a great joy to us
all when, thanks to the success of this and other schemes, we were at
length able to see our way (let me use the obnoxious phrase with
gratitude for once!) to approve of the new plans--a modification of, or
rather a complete departure from, Pugin's elaborate Gothic designs, and
to see our massive Norman choir gradually rising in its severe and
solid beauty. The actual commencement of the work was delayed by a
curious incident--the appearance on the far horizon of a supposed
benefactress, said to be prepared to provide funds to an untold amount
for the erection of our church, on a plan approved by herself. I had
actually to go to Harrogate to discuss this Utopian scheme--not with
the mysterious lady in person, but with a friend who was supposed to
represent her. I never even heard her name, but have every reason to
suppose that it was "Mrs. Harris!" Anyhow the next thing I heard was
that she had sailed (I think) for China, and we never saw, as the
saying goes, the "colour of her money." I do not think that we had
ever really expected to, so the disappointment was the less; and there
was no worse consequence than a little delay which we could very well
put up with after waiting for {257} so many years to get the builders
to work again.
The only event outside our own circle which I recall in the later
months of 1913 was the solemn blessing of the new abbot of Douai (an
old friend and fellow-novice of mine), at which I assisted in October.
The ceremony and subsequent luncheon lasted for nearly five solid
hours, and I began to think that I was getting too old for such
protracted functions! though I found the monks of the Berkshire abbey,
as always, most kind, considerate and hospitable. Staying at Keir on
my way home, I found a big shooting-party assembled--Tullibardines,
Elphinstones, Lovats, Shaw Stewarts and others. All day long they were
banging at pheasants (how remote those days of battues seem in 1922!)
and in the evening there were ghost-stories and music, Lady
Tullibardine's piano-playing and singing (of very high quality indeed)
giving especial pleasure to her hearers.
On our national festival of St. Andrew I had the pleasure of admitting
two novices to profession--the first ceremony of the kind since 1908.
We kept also this month the "silver jubilee" of two of our fathers, of
whom one had been born without an ear (in the musical sense), and had
never sung mass in his life, but on this unique occasion chanted the
Gospel as deacon. December brought wild and stormy weather, which did
not, however, interfere with our customary activities; and many of our
fathers were at this time out giving missions, or temporary assistance
to invalided or absent priests. One of my Boyle nephews--a flying-man
like his younger brother--was married this month {258} to the daughter
of an Australian judge:[12] I could not be present, but telegraphed to
him, "The best of luck to you on earth and in the air!" An unwelcome
December visitant was an epidemic of gastric influenza, which
prostrated some of our community for a week or two; but all were
recovered, and most of our wanderers returned, for the Christmas
festival--a real old-fashioned one as regarded the weather, with hard
frost and snow lying seven inches deep. This was a rather unusual
state of things at Fort Augustus, where the comparatively high
temperature of Loch Ness (never known to freeze even in the hardest
winters) seemed to affect the whole district.[13] Lochaber too, where
winter is as a rule wild and wet rather than cold, was this year
frostbound and snowed up; and our afternoon diversion, on a Sunday
which I spent there, was to trudge a mile or two through the snow and
see the red deer fed by hand--a pretty and unusual spectacle.
Among the domestic incidents of the New Year was the opening of our
village drill-hall, to be available to "all denominations" for
recreational purposes. Hitherto the "Churches" had run their {259} own
halls on more or less exclusive lines; but in the new one the
Protestant lion was to lie down, so to speak, with the Catholic lamb
(or _vice versa_!) and all was to be harmony and peace. I inaugurated
the new era by a lantern-lecture on "Unknown Brazil," which a kindly
newspaper report described as "brimful of information and sparkling
with anecdote and humour!" It was anyhow a successful start and the
hall proved a really valuable addition to our village assets. I was
unable to attend the next lecture--a most interesting illustrated
history of the old Fort--being called south to attend the funeral of
the Bishop of Galloway, an old and faithful friend of our house, with
whom I had been intimate for close on forty years. The funeral
procession, with crucifix and choir, vested clergy and mitred prelates,
passing through the streets of Dumfries thronged with silent mourners,
was one of the most remarkable spectacles I ever witnessed in Scotland.
Bishop Turner had long been on terms of close friendship with the Bute
family; but Bute and his brothers, being all abroad, were represented
by their brother-in-law Colin MacRae. I went south from Dumfries,
having some business with Cardinal Bourne, who talked, _inter alia_, of
the chapel (St. Andrew's) in his cathedral which was being adorned at
Bute's expense, and of the question whether the numerous texts should
be in Latin or English. I was all for Latin in the metropolitan
cathedral of the Empire, the resort of worshippers of every tongue and
every nation. His Eminence, however, favoured English, and I (like Mr.
Alfred Jingle) "did not presume to dictate."[14] I was elected this
{260} week a member of the Oxford and Cambridge Club, of which the big,
quiet, and well-furnished library was to me the chief attraction. The
Protestant drum had been, I was assured, if not beaten, at least
discreetly tapped, by a small clique of members in connection with my
candidature--a curious fact in what somebody describes as "the
so-called twentieth century"; but a gracefully-worded telegram from my
proposer and seconder[15] informed me that the plot (if there ever was
one, which I rather doubted) had failed. I went to Arundel for the
Lourdes festival, always kept solemnly there; found the kind Duke and
Duchess encircled, as usual, by a cloud of youthful Maxwells, and heard
Bernard Vaughan (just returned from the U.S.A.) preach eloquently on
"The claims of the Church" with a distinctly American accent, and,
later on, regale us in the smoking-room with a choice collection of
American chestnuts!
I got back to our abbey just in time to give the last blessing to our
good old brother Nathalan, who died at the age of ninety-nine, the
patriarch of the Benedictine Order in these islands and possibly in
Christendom. A native of Glengairn, he spoke the Aberdeenshire idiom
of his mother-Gaelic with remarkable purity and fluency; and he could
talk for hours about beasts and birds, old smuggling adventures, second
sight, and cognate subjects. His grandfather had fought for Prince
Charlie at Culloden; and he knew the name and history of {261} every
Glengairn man who had taken part in that historic battle. A man of
robust faith and deep practical piety, he was content and happy in the
monastery, which he had only entered when well over seventy. He was
totally blind (though otherwise in good health) for some time before
his death; and morning after morning his bowed and venerable figure,
supported by a younger brother, might be seen wending its way to the
chapel where he daily heard mass and received Holy Communion. I was
glad to be at home for the closing hours of the life of the good simple
old man, whose death made a felt blank in the family circle of our
community.
The early months of the eventful year 1914 passed quickly and quietly
enough at our Highland abbey. We resolved soon after Easter to accept
the contract for the building of the choir of our church--a venture of
faith, for the necessary sum was not yet all in hand; but we felt that
we were justified in making a start. A few days later came the
interesting and gratifying news that the elevation of Abbot Gasquet to
the Cardinalate--often rumoured in recent years--was actually decided
on. This entailed an "extraordinary" meeting of Chapter in connection
with the Abbot-president's resignation of that office; and going south
to attend it, I took the occasion of accepting an invitation to
officiate at the Corpus Christi procession at Arundel. It was a
curiously impressive function in that old-world English town: the long
_cortège_ of clergy and choristers and people, with the tall Venetian
lanterns, scarlet and gold, waving above their heads as they passed
slowly, to the sounds of sacred psalmody, under the grey walls of the
castle and back into the great church of {262} St. Philip. I went on
from Arundel to Oxford, to stay with Father Maturin, the acting
Catholic chaplain there (his undergraduate flock now numbered nearly a
hundred), and was delighted to see the good work he was doing. One was
always sure of a good story from him; and _à propos_ of his wish to
introduce hymn-singing at his Sunday services, he told me of the
Sunday-school superintendent who, dissatisfied with the children's
dead-alive singing of the well-known temperance hymn, "Little Drops of
Water," himself repeated the first line, adding, "Now, please, put a
little spirit into it!" My old tale of the don who objected to men
coming to church in slippers reminded him, he said, of a college dean
he had heard of in his Cowley days, who, to an undergraduate asking
leave to go down to attend his great-aunt's funeral, replied after some
hesitation, "Well, you may go; but I must say I do wish it had been for
a nearer relation!"[16]
The June of 1914 was exceptionally hot, and I found the long journey to
the Highlands so intolerably tedious and dusty that I could not resist
jumping out of the train at the head of Loch Lomond, and staying the
night there. I wrote on a picture postcard to an editorial friend in
London--"not for publication," but just to tantalize him in his stuffy
sanctum in Fleet Street:
{263}
Delightful little Highland inn. Just dined--_purée aux pois_, a Loch
Lomond trout (pink and flaky), an excellent mutton chop, and gooseberry
pie. Here is a view of Loch Lomond from my window, but the Ben has its
lace nightcap on. The colours are simply exquisite.[17]
Later in the summer I attended a great gathering at Downside (fifteen
bishops and ten abbots were guests of the abbey) for the solemn
reception of Cardinal Gasquet at his mother-house. There were imposing
church functions, of course, concerts, speeches galore, and on the
closing day of the festivities a luncheon-party of six hundred, after
which we (Cardinal, bishops, and abbots) motored off in clouds of dust
for Bristol and Cardiff, for the opening of the Eucharistic Congress
there. I stayed for the week at the castle, where were also Cardinals
Bourne and Gasquet, the Gainsboroughs, and others; the Butes gave a
banquet one evening, followed by a great reception, in honour of the
assembled dignitaries, who were also entertained by the Lord Mayor in
the splendid town hall. Just a fortnight after the closing of the
Congress, Germany declared war on Russia and France; and three days
later, on the midnight which ushered in the feast-day of Saint Oswald,
the English soldier-saint and martyr, Britain took up arms against
Germany. _Jacta est alea_!
The reverberations of the Great War were not unfelt even in our quiet
home among the Highland hills; and our life, like the life of every
class of the community in those years of storm and stress, was affected
profoundly, and in many ways, by the {264} struggle which for four long
years was rending the civilized world. A detailed record of those
years of war, even so far as we were touched by it, would be out of
place in this chronicle of peaceful days. Many of our former pupils,
and some who had worn our habit and shared our life in the cloister,
fought, and more than one died, for king and country: a band of devoted
priests--few indeed, yet a large proportion of our total number--worked
throughout the war, at home and abroad, as chaplains in the army and
the navy, two of them being severely wounded, and two decorated by the
King for their good service; and, finally, we who perforce remained at
home had the consolation and satisfaction of receiving into our
provisional hospital a long succession of wounded soldiers, Belgian and
British, and of co-operating with the good people of our village and
neighbourhood in the work of tending and succouring them. So,
according to our measure, we "did our bit" like the rest, and could
feel, when the day of peace at length dawned, that we had tried to
render service to our country at a time when she had a right to the
service of all her sons.
* * * * *
I write down these closing memories in our monastery under the Southern
Cross, in the great South American city where my brethren in Saint
Benedict, active and devoted men, but far too few for the ever-growing
work that lies ready to their hands, are leading the same life of
prayer and liturgy, untiring, pastoral labour, and the education of the
young in religion and letters, which has been the mission of our Order
all through the Christian centuries. It is high noon on this Brazilian
summer's {265} day, and the fierce sun beats down from a cloudless sky
on the luxuriant tropical garden which glows beneath the window of my
quiet cell. At the foot of the last page I inscribe the same words as
the monastic annalist inscribed of old beneath the laboriously-written
manuscript which had been the work of his life:
Explicit chronicon lx. annorum
Deus misericordie miserere miseri scriptoris.
And then, as, my task completed, I lay down my weary pen, there come
into my mind some other words--those of a great thinker and a great
writer of our own time: "Our life is planted on the surface of a
whirling sphere: our prayer is to find its tranquil centre, and revolve
no more."
So may it be!
[1] The good old abbot died three months later, on August 13, 1913.
[2] Colonel David Hunter-Blair of the Scots Fusilier Guards, whose
conversion to Catholicism, when I was a boy at Eton, had made a great
impression on me. He died of consumption at Rome on March 31, 1869.
[3] "We implore Thy protection also," petitioned a certain Dean at
family prayers, "for the minor canons of this cathedral; for even they,
O Lord, are Thy creatures."
[4] Appointed Archbishop-bishop of Malta in 1914.
[5] I liked to hear once-a-year (not oftener) the prolonged musical
masses which were the "festival use" at the Oratory. Once, arriving
rather late at the church, I found an old friend (a Gregorian-lover
like myself) waiting in the porch, and asked him how far the service
had progressed. "Thank God!" said old W---- P---- devoutly, "_the
worst is over_--they have just finished the _Gloria_!"
[6] It can be matched, I think, by two lines from a university prize
poem--not, of course, by a poet laureate!--on the "Sailing of the
Pilgrim Fathers":
"Thus, ever guided by the hand of God,
They sailed along until they reached Cape Cod!"
[7] Nine months later he was elevated to the Cardinalate, when he had,
of course, to resign his presidency of the English Benedictine
Congregation.
[8] At one time there were as many as eight; and I remember one of them
(who had himself been "in the Boats" at Eton), saying that they wanted
only a ninth to complete the crew!
[9] I recall one engagement broken off in consequence; and also a rift
between two lifelong friends which still remained unhealed long after
the "unhappy nobleman languishing in prison" (as his most notorious
supporter used to call him) had been consigned to the limbo of penal
servitude. The cost of the two trials was said to be at least
£200,000, and seriously crippled the valuable Tichborne estates for a
whole generation. My father prohibited the public discussion of the
case at Blairquhan, either in dining-room or smoking-room, or even at a
shooting-luncheon in the open air!
[10] The Caldey novice, and one of the affiliated brothers from
Erdington Abbey, both left us, after the outbreak of the Great War, and
joined the army; and the former was killed on active service.
[11] The school was finally reopened under my successor, in 1920.
[12] And an heiress--at least so a brother wrote to me. The lady's
name was Hodges; and he added (but I think this was mere banter) that
the question was, if Jack had to assume his wife's name, whether they
would be known as "Boyle-Hodges" or "Hodges-Boyle"!
[13] Our first prior, Dom Jerome Vaughan, used to be at much pains to
convince his incredulous friends in the south of the mildness of the
Fort Augustus winter. I remember his writing to the prior of Belmont,
when I was a novice there, enclosing daisies picked on Christmas Day.
Unluckily the same post brought another letter from Fort Augustus,
mentioning that the frost was so severe that all the beer was frozen in
the cellar!
[14] They were, as a matter of fact, inscribed in English, as were also
the names of the Scottish saints on the pictured walls. The chapel was
opened on St. Andrew's Day, 1915.
[15] "Many congratulations both to you and to the club," it ran.
[16] It was a don of this type who was reported to have written, in a
letter of condolence to the father of an undergraduate who had been
drowned in Sandford Lasher: "As your son had unfortunately failed to
satisfy the examiners in Responsions, he would have had to go down in
any case!" Poor Father Maturin! his love of a joke and other good
qualities were extinguished (in this life) by the sinking of
_Lusitania_ eleven months later.
[17] My friend did print it in his paper, adding, "To read this makes
one hungry for Highland air and Highland fare."
{267}
Appendix
I. PAGE 86.
NOVISSIMA VERBA
(LAST WORDS OF FORTY FAMOUS MEN)
Adam, Alexander (the famous schoolmaster) ... "It grows dark, boys: you
may go."
Addison, Joseph ... "See how a Christian can die!"
Albert Prince Consort ... "Liebes gutes Frauchen!"
Augustus (Emperor) ... "Plaudite!"
Bede (The Venerable) ... "Consummatum est."
Bossuet, Benigne ... "Fiat Voluntas Tua!"
Brontë, Charlotte (to her husband) ... "I am not going to die, am I?
He will not separate us, we have been so happy."
Byron (Lord) ... "I think I will go to sleep."
Charles II. (King) ... "Don't let poor Nellie starve."
Charles V. (Emperor) ... "Ay, Jesus!"
Chesterfield (Lord) ... "Give Dayrolles a chair."
Cicero ... "Causa causarum, miserere mei!"
Darwin, Charles B. ... "I am not in the least afraid to die."
Devonshire (8th Duke of) ... "Well, the game is over, and I am not
sorry."
Disraeli, Benjamin ... "I am overwhelmed!"
"Eliot, George" ... "Tell the doctors that I have great pain in the
left side."
Etty, William (painter) ... "Wonderful--wonderful! this death."
Frederick the Great ... "La montagne est passée; nous irons mieux."
{268}
George IV. (King) ... "Watty, what is this? It is death, my boy: they
have deceived me."
Gladstone, W. E. ... "Prions--commençons--Our Father."
Goethe, W. von ... "Draw back the curtains, and let in more light."
Goldsmith, Oliver (to the question, "Is your mind at ease?" in a
melancholy voice) ... "No, it is not."
Haydn, Joseph ... "God preserve the Emperor!"
Hood, Thomas (in a tone of relief) ... "Dying--dying."
Humboldt, A. von ... "Wie herrlich diese Strahlen! sie schienen die
Erde zum Himmel zu rufen."
Jerrold, Douglas, asked how he felt, said "he felt like one who was
waiting and was waited for."
Johnson, Samuel ... "God bless you!"
Keats, John ... "I feel the flowers growing over me."
Knox, John ... "about 11 of the clock gave a deep sigh, exclaimed, 'Now
it is come,' and presently expired."
Lacordaire, Henri ... "Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! ouvrez-moi, ouvrez-moi."
Mackintosh, Sir James ... "Happy!"
Mary Queen of Scots ... "In Te, Domine, speravi."
Mathews, Charles ... "I am ready."
Mezzofanti (Cardinal) ... "Andiamo, andiamo presto in Paradiso!"
Mirabeau, Victor ... "Let me die to the sounds of delicious music."
Napoleon Bonaparte ... "Tête d'armée."
Pope, Alexander ... "There is nothing meritorious but virtue and
friendship; and indeed friendship itself is but a part of virtue."
Rabelais ... "Je vais quérir le grand peut-être."
Scott, Walter ... "God bless you!"
Tasso, Torquato ... "In manus Tuas, Domine."
Wordsworth, William ... "God bless you!"
Ximenes, Cardinal ... "In Te, Domine, speravi."
{269}
II. PAGE 136.
DARWIN'S CREDO
"Science and Christ have nothing to do with each other, except in as
far as the habit of scientific investigation makes a man cautious about
accepting any proofs. _As far as I am concerned, I do not believe that
any revelation has ever been made_. With regard to a future life,
every one must draw his own conclusions from vague and contradictory
probabilities."--(Letter to a Jena student, dated June 5th, 1879.)
"Mr. Darwin was much less reticent to myself than in his letter to
Jena. He distinctly stated that, in his opinion, a vital or somatic
principle, apart from the somatic energy, had no more _locus standi_ in
the human than in any other races of the animal kingdom--a conclusion
that seems a mere corollary of, and indeed a position tantamount with,
his essential doctrine of human and bestial identity of nature and
genesis."--(Dr. Robert Lewins, in the _Journal of Science_.)
It may be instructive to subjoin to the above _Credo_ of Darwin those
of three other eminent Victorians, whom the present generation would
probably pronounce it unkind and ill-mannered to brand as atheistical
or un-Christian. Let them speak for themselves:--
_Stuart Mill_: "This world is a bungled business, in which no
clear-sighted man can see any signs either of wisdom or of God."
_Huxley_: "Scepticism is the highest of duties: blind faith the one
unpardonable sin."
{270}
_Matthew Arnold_: "The existence of God is an unverifiable hypothesis."
Dr. Liddon, preaching in St. Paul's Cathedral on the Sunday after
Darwin's death, devoted his matchless oratory to a eulogy in which
there was not the remotest reference to the fact that the subject of it
was a man who had formally repudiated not only Christianity but
revealed religion. Here are the eloquent canon's opening words:--
"These reflections may naturally lead us to think of the eminent man,
whose death during the past week is an event of European importance;
since he is the author of nothing less than a revolution in the modern
way of treating a large district of thought, while his works have shed
high distinction on English science."
Dr. Laing, of Cambridge University, on the other hand, expressed with
refreshing candour his objections to the proposed interment of Darwin
in Westminster Abbey:--
"They urged his claim to Abbey honours on the very ground of his having
been the chief promoter of the atheistic mock-doctrines of evolution of
species and the ape-descent of man. It is, therefore, as the high
priest of dirt-worship that the English nation has assigned to him the
privilege of being interred in a temple dedicated to the service of his
Creator."
{271}
INDEX
Abbotsford, 52, 54, 74
Aberdeen, Bishop (Chisholm) of, 73, 124, 139, 149
Abingdon, 7th Earl of, 34, 252
Abruzzi, Duca dei, 82
Aix-les-bains, visit to, 228
Amélie of Portugal, Queen, 226
Ampleforth Abbey, 120, 138, 153, 201, 217; jubilee of, 230, 251
Anderson, Mary (Mme. Navarro), 153
Angus, Rev. George, 19 _note_, 122; death of, 124 _note_, 138, 196,
224, 238
Anson, Sir William, M.P., 138
_Aragon_, R.M.S.P., 155
Argyll and the Isles, Bishop (Smith) of, 240
Arthur of Connaught, Prince, 92; Princess, 225
Arundel Castle, 3, 8, 13, 42, 51, 65, 105, 108, 109, 223, 260, 261
Asquith, Mrs., 198
Athole, Duke of, 64 _note_
Bailey, "Abe," 151
Balfour of Burleigh, Lord, 176
Balfour, Arthur, 59 _note_, 62
Ball, Provost, 102
Balston, Dr. Edward, 171
Bath and Wells, Bishop (Kennion) of, 100
Battenberg, Prince and Princess Henry of, 237 _note_
Beaufort Castle, 61, 81, 99, 106, 119, 132, 151, 195, 220, 227
Beauly, Scouts' monument at, 61
Beethoven's Grand Mars, 217
Bellairs, Lieut. Carlyon, M.P., 143
Bellingham of Castlebellingham, 47, 67 _note_
Belloc, Hilaire, 143
Belmont Priory, 7, 147
Benedictine life and work in Brazil, 159-185
Benn, Sir John, M.P., 186
Benson, Robert Hugh, 93, 129
Bertouche, Baron de, 11
Birrell, Augustine, 69 _note_
Bismarck, William II and, 24
Blairquhan, 119, 149
Blair's College, 124
Blenheim Palace, 20, 44, 65
Bodley's Librarian, 103, 104
Boulogne-sur-mer, 125, 126
Booth, "General," 92
Boothby, Sir Brooke, 153
Bourne, Archbishop, 4 _note_, 43, 75; Cardinal, 223, 231, 240, 253,
259, 263
Bowlby, Eleanor, 141
Bowyer, Sir George, 46 _note_
Boyle, Hon. Alan, 189, 196
Boyle, Dean George, 53 _note_
Boyle, James (consul), 187
Boyle, Hon. John, 257
Bradfield College, Greek plays at, 20, 92
Bramham Park, 96
Brazil, Dr. Vidal, 174
Broughton, Rhoda, 113
Buckie, 220
Buoncompagni-Ludovisi, Don Andrea, 77
Burges, William, 58
Burgon, Dean, 104, 136
Bury St. Edmunds, pageant at, 91, 92
Butcher, Professor, M.P., 138
Bute, 4th Marquis of, 1, 35, 40, 47, 54, 56, 62, 118, 146, 222, 240, 259
Bute, Dowager Marchioness of, 10, 54, 101, 152
Butler, Abbot, 84, 245
Caerphilly Castle, 147
Caldey Abbey, 255
Caledonian Club, 222
Caloen, Bishop Gerard van, 245
Cambridge, 141, 199
Campbell of Skerrington, 124
Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H., 43, 59 _note_
Campden, Viscount, 69
Canterbury, 8, 9, 249
Cardiff Castle, 59, 141, 263
Caruana, D. Maurus, 250
Castlebellingham, 47, 48
Cecil, Lord Hugh, 45, 49, 138, 143
Cecil, Lord William, 225
Chamberlain, Joseph, 59
Chambéry, Cardinal Archbishop of, 229
Cheadle, church at, 231
Choate, 69
Churchill, Winston, 47, 171
Clumber, chapel at, 57 _note_
Corehouse, 21
_Corpus Christi_ at S. Paulo, 181; at Arundel, 261
Craigmillar Castle, 152
Cranbrook, Earls of, 193, 194
Crianlarich, 206
Crichton-Stuart, Lord Colum, 79
Crichton-Stuart, Lord Ninian, 10, 67, 129, 130, 176, 203
Cuddesdon College, 128
Cumbrae, Isle of, 69 _note_, 101, 152
Curzon of Kedleston, Lord, 84, 89, 100, 102
Dalrymple, Sir Charles, 62, 141, 240, 241 _note_
Dalrymple, Hon. North, 176
Darwin, Charles, 137, 267, 268
Day, Sir John, 37
De Moleyns, Captain, 112
Derwent Hall, 3
Dillon, 17th Viscount, 12
Dolan, Dom Gilbert, 57 _note_
Dorchester Abbey, 128
Dorrien-Smith, "King of Scilly," 141
Douai Abbey, 137, 200, 221, 250, 257
Doune Castle, 218, 240
Downside Abbey, 42, 56, 84, 129, 263
Dumfries, convent-school at, 21, 49, 94, 117; asylum at, 49
Dumfries House, 54
Dunblane, cathedral at, 205; Queen Victoria's School at, 230
Dunedin, Lord, 81
Dunskey, 9, 48, 118, 149
Eastbourne, 87
Edmonstoune-Cranstouns, 21
Edward VII, King, 83, 127, 155; death of, 179
Ellice, Mrs., of Invergarry, 204
Ellis, Professor Robinson, 86, 87
Elwes, Lady Winifride, 212
Encombe, Viscountess, 109, 139; John Viscount, 139
Eton College, 50, 129, 147, 225
Eugénie, Empress, 99 _note_, 242
Everingham Park, 12, 96
"Evil Eye," the, 77
Exton Park, 51
Faber, Rev. F. W., 145, 250
Fanshawe, Admiral Sir Arthur, 120
Farnborough, Benedictine Abbey at, 11, 241
Farrer, Sir William, death of, 215, 218
Fairlie of Myers, 123
Fergusson, Sir James, 62; death of, 83
Fife, Colonel Sir Aubone, 237
Fitzgerald, Percy, 12
Fort Augustus Abbey: reunited with English Benedictines, 176; railway
at, 202; election of abbot at, 239
Franquetot, Marquis de, 125
Franqueville, Comtesse de, 125
Fraser, Hon. Alastair, 215, 221
Gainsborough, 3rd Earl of, 39, 51, 69, 263
Galloway, Bishop (Turner) of, 259
Garrett-Fawcett, Mrs., 128
Gasquet, Abbot, 19, 37, 240, 251; Cardinal, 261, 263
Giustiniani-Bandini, Prince, 16
Gladstone, W. E., at Eton, 170 _note_
Glasgow, George, 6th Earl of, 101
Glasgow, David, 7th Earl of, 149, 203
Gleann Mhor Gathering, 149, 254
Glencarron, 99
Gordon, Brig.-Gen. Alister, 106 _note_
Goring-on-Thames, 147
Gormanston, 15th Visct., 67
Gorwood, D. Paulinus, 98
Goschen, Viscount, 5, 83, 84
Gower, Lord Ronald, 35 _note_
Greene, Wilfrid, 7
Grissell, Captain Frank, 111, 209
Grissell, Hartwell, 11; death of, 86, 111, 206
Guernsey, visit to, 68
Hadow, 142
Haggard, Sir William, 158
Hallam, Arthur, at Eton, 170 _note_
Hamel, Gustave, 211
Hamilton of Dalzell, 2nd Lord, 81
Hampton Court, 147
Harcourt, Sir William, death of, 28
Hautecombe, Abbey of, 229
Hawkesyard Priory, 23
Hay, Bishop George, centenary of, 215, 216
Hay, Malcolm, 124
Hedley, Bishop, 105, 130, 195, 236
Hemptinne, Abbot Hildebrand de, 246
Hemsted Park, 193
Herbert of Lea, Lady, death of, 218
Herries, 11th Lord, 1, 95, 109
Hexham and Newcastle, Bishop (Wilkinson) of, 23; death of, 140
Hicks-Beach, Sir Michael, 5
Hornby, Provost, death of, 170
Horsley, Sir Victor, 43, 191
Howard, Lady Katherine, 223
Howard, Lady Mary, 1
Howard of Glossop, Winifred Lady, 101
Hügel, Baron Anatole von, 107
Hyde, Lord, 51
Italian cavalry officers, at Olympia, 115
Jarvis, Captain and Mrs. Cracroft, 66
Jerningham, Sir Hubert, 72, 80, 95, 151
Keir, 205, 212, 218, 230, 236, 237, 239, 257
Kelburn, Viscount, R.N., 46, 65, 192
Kennard, Mgr. Canon, 19, 20, 23, 43, 80, 112, 121, 127, 135, 197, 208
Kennard, Colonel Hegan, 128, 145
Kerr, Philip, 29, 121
Kerr, General Lord Ralph, 1, 73 _note_, 76, 121, 153, 203; Admiral Lord
Walter, 153
Kinharvie, 1
Kipling, Rudyard, at Oxford, 91
Kneller Court, 109, 126, 154
Knill, Sir John, 129
Kruse, Abbot Miguel, 159, 176, 216, 245
Ladycross School, Seaford, 153
Lane Fox, George, 74, 96, 148, 233, 252
Lang, Andrew, 53, 132
Langdon Park, 116
Lansdowne, 5th Marquis of, 5
Law, Bonar, 81
Lee, Dr. Frederick George, 136
Legge, the Ladies, 66 _note_
Leicester, 1st and 2nd Earls of, 35 _note_
Leinster, 6th Duke of, 65
Leo XIII, Pope, 246
Lépicier, Père, 232
Lichfield, Augustus, Bishop of, 66; Choristers' House at, 105
Liddell, Dean, 31
Linlithgow, 2nd Marquis of, married, 210
Lister, Hon. Laura, 191, 194; married, 198
Littleton Church, regimental colours in, 115
Longridge Towers, 72, 95, 153
Loudoun, 11th Earl of, 48, 49, 121, 133
Louvain University, Jubilee of, 137
Lovat, 14th Lord, 61, 99, 106, 148, 191; married, 198, 208, 214, 220,
240
Lovat, Alice Lady, 73, 132, 191, 211, 235
Lowndes, Selby, 119
Lucerne, visit to, 41
Lucius of Chur, St., 213, 214 _note_
Lyttelton, Hon. Alfred, 45
Lyttelton, Hon. Edward, 51
MacCall, Rev. A. N. L., 14, 242
Macdonald, Andrew, death of, 240
Macdonald, General Hector, lines on, 13 _note_
Macdonell, D. Andrew, 211
Mackintosh, The, 61
MacRae, Colin, 259
Madeira, visit to, 187
Mallock, W. H., 80, 135
Man, Isle of, 49 _note_, 118
Manderston, 100
Manning, Archbishop, 248
Maple, Lady, 146
Maredsons, Abbey of, 249
Marie Louise, Princess, 154
Maryborough, 9th Duke of, 20, 44; Consuelo Duchess of, 20, 44
Martindale, Cyril, S.J., 7, 79
Maturin, Father, 106, 140, 217, 262
Maxwell, Sir Herbert, 154
Maxwell-Scott, Hon. Joseph and Mrs., 53 _note_
Melrose Abbey, 74
Merry del Val, Cardinal, 15, 240
Merthyr Tydvil, 57
Metternich, Prince, 25
Milan, visits to, 18, 64, 249
Milner, Lord, 65, 68
Mitchinson, Bishop, 33, 60, 200
Monte Carlo, 63, 64
Monte Cassino, 17, 243-245
Montrose, Duke and Duchess of, 230
Moore, Canon Edward, 8, 249
Moray, 16th Earl of, 153, 219, 240
Morin, D. Germain, O.S.B., 45
Mountstuart, 1, 35, 72, 118
Munich, festival at, 23
Myres Castle, 123
Naples, visit to, 40
Nathalan, Brother, 209; death of, 260, 261
Neville, Rev. William, 217 _note_
Newburgh, Scoto-Italian of, 16 _note_
Newhailes, 100
Nice, visit to, 63
Niddrie-Marischal, 101, 152
Norfolk, 15th Duke of, 1, 2, 8; married, 12, 69, 76, 139, 144, 202,
219, 240
Norfolk, Flora Duchess of, 203 _note_, 209
Norfolk, Gwendolen Duchess of, 14, 65
Norham Castle, 72
Norwich, St. John's Church at, 202
Nuneham Park, 39
Oakamoor College, 145, 212, 231
Odo, Father, O.S.B., 233, 234
Olinda (Brazil), 153, 155, 157, 187
Oman, Professor, 90, 201
Oratory (Birmingham), 75, 121, 144
Oratory (London), 198, 250
Orr-Ewing, Charles, M.P., 8
Osterley Park, 21
O'Sullivan Beare, The, 154 _note_
Oxford, Benedictine Hall at, 4; chancellor of, 5; floods at, 10;
portraits at, 34; boy-prodigies at, 38; pageant at, 89-91
Oxford and Cambridge Club, 260
Pageant at Warwick, 70; Oxford, 89; Bury St. Edmunds, 91; Cardiff, 146
Paris, pictures at, 230
Parker, D. Anselm, 127
Patterson, Bishop, 21
Pelham, Professor, death of, 83
Penha Longa, Condessa de, 227
Pernambuco (Brazil), 156, 187
Phillimore, Professor J. S., 55
Pius X, Pope, 15, 17, 205, 246
Plowden, Alfred, 29
Ponsonby, Sir Frederick, 128, 153
Portugal, murder of King of, 107
Portugal, Ex-king Manoel of, 201
Prado, Dona Veridiana, 180
Pugin, A. W., 57, 145, 226, 231
Radley College, 47, 78
Rampolla, Cardinal, 15
Ramsgate, St. Augustine's Abbey at, 225
Ranguia, New Zealand chieftain, 120
Reid, Mrs. Whitelaw, 92
Restabrig, St. Triduana's well at, 153
Rhodes Scholars at Oxford, 29-31, 200
Rickmansworth, 139
Rio de Janeiro, 157, 182, 202
Ripon, 1st Marquis of, 6 _note_
Roberts, Earl, 59
Rome, Gregorian centenary at, 15; assembly of Abbots at, 246 _et seq._
Rosebery, 5th Earl of, 5, 33, 84
Ruskin, John, on music, 14 _note_; in Abbotsford, 53
Rutland, 7th Duke of, 21
St. Andrews, 27, 122, 196
St. Andrews, Archbishop (Smith) of, 124
St. Anselm's College, Rome, 246-8
Salisbury, 3rd Marquis of, death of, 5, 33, 89
Santos (Brazil), 186
Scarborough, Bank Holiday at, 71
Schmitt, Mgr., Bishop of Chur, 213
Scorton, hospital at, 116
Scott, Sir Walter, 52
Shackleton, Ernest, 144
Sherborne, Susan Lady, death of, 83
Shrewsbury, 10th Earl of, 145
Simeon, John, married, 140
Simonetti, Signor, 77
Sinclair, Archdeacon John, 66
Skene, Felicia, 53 _note_
"Smith of Wadham," F. E., 65
Somerset, 15th Duke of, 152
S. Paulo (Brazil), 156 _et seq._
Stafford, Marquis of, married, 224
Stair, 10th and 11th Earls of, 54 _note_, 123
Stirlings of Keir, 176, 205, 212, 236
Stonyhurst College, 221
Stotzingen, Abbot von, 248
Stronlairg, 214
Sutherland, 4th Duke of, 225
Sutherland, Anne Duchess of, 111 _note_; Millicent Duchess of, 20, 224
Sven Hedin, at Oxford, 135
Talbot, Lord and Lady Edmund, 3, 61, 215
Talcott, Dr. Selden, on early rising, 97 _note_
Teck, Princess Alexander of, 50
Temple, widow of Archbishop, 113
Terregles, 256
Tichborne, Sir Joseph, 252
Tredegar, Viscount, 146
Tree, Beerbohm, 41
Tullibardine, Marchioness of, 257
Twain, Mark, at Oxford, 91, 92
Tylee, Monsignor, 5, 6 _note_
Uganda, King of, at Fort Augustus, 253
University College School, 142
Ushaw College, 23
Vaughan, Father Bernard, 37, 79, 261; Prior Jerome, 258 _note_;
Charles, married, 107; Bishop John, 215; Rev. Kenelm, 133
Venice, visit to, 242
Vesey, Hon. T. E., married, 217
_Victory_, H.M.S., 110
Wales, H.R.H. Prince of, 212, 222
Walmesley, Mrs. Robert, 3
Walsh, Archbishop, 66
Waltham Abbey, 148
Ward, Wilfrid, 60, 134
Ware, St. Edmund's College, 222
Warre, Dr. Edmond, 51
Warwick, pageant at, 70
Wauchope of Niddrie, Mrs., 101, 152
Wells, J., 60
Westminster Cathedral, 3, 74, 89, 107, 259
Weston Birt, 26
Wiesbaden, visit to, 189-191
Wilberforce, Bishop Samuel, 121, 128
Wilkinson, Cicely Lady, 193
William II, Emperor, and Bismarck, 24; at Naples, 41
Willoughby de Broke, Lord and Lady, 71
Wimborne, Lord, 99
Winchilsea, Countess of, 45
Woodburn, 1, 153, 203
Woodchester Priory, 26
Worcester, Bishop of, and Lady Barbara Yeatman-Biggs, 66
Wyndham, Sir Charles, 40
Wyndham, George, 81
Wytham Abbey, 35
Yew Luk Lin (Chinese Minister), 225
York, Archbishop (Lang) of, 216
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MOUNT EVEREST
The Reconnaissance, 1921.
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