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Title: A New Medley of Memories

Author: David Hunter-Blair

Release Date: July 11, 2011 [EBook #36700]

Language: English

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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A NEW MEDLEY OF MEMORIES ***




Produced by Al Haines

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

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."

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 chaœpagne 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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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 5s. 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.

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!"

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!"

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.

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 nth 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—

(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!'"

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.

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.

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."

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."

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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A NEW MEDLEY OF MEMORIES.

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RIGHT REV. SIR DAVID HUNTER BLAIR, BT., O.S.B.,

TITULAR ABBOT OF DUNFERMLINE.

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RAILWAY ELECTRIC TRACTION.

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Professor Lea, who is well known as the author of "Hydraulics for Engineers and Engineering Students," has here written a shorter book suitable for the courses taken in Technical Schools. Certain of the more elementary portions of the original book are included in this volume, but much of the material is new.

IONS ELECTRONS AND IONIZING RADIATIONS.

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This book, originally published in November, 1919, has been thoroughly revised. Many portions have been entirely rewritten and of these the Chapter on "The Electron Theory of Matter" should be especially mentioned. The tables of constants have been revised in accordance with the best data available and the book is in all respects abreast of the progress in this fast developing branch of modern Physics.

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