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 onH.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 wasdecorated. 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 itcanrain 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 bluecurve 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"),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 theGraphicupside 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 onlycontretempsbeing 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 walkedthrough 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 Jacobeanhouse (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 frescoteas, 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 onthe 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—hisTales 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, theLady of the Lakeand theLay 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." ToCatholics 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
"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 thereforeex hypothesidangerous), 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 themedicialtogether, 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 thatsuscitabuntmeans "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 toKing Henry V., Act iii., Sc. 2:
"And you, good yeomen,Whose limbs were made in England, show us hereThe 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] TheDies Iræand theStabat 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.
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, isalivestill—instinct with the life breathed into it by its unknown creators in the ages of faith; but these great modern Gothic churches seem to meto 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 withbracken 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 thequondamnursery, 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 wasen fêteon 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(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 preachhisfiscal 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 theacuterminds among my audience!"
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 theDublin 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 untilthe 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 excellentspeech 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 thedébâclebeing 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,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 ofherpromise 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 theCôte 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 ecclesiasticalauthorities 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. Thenew 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.
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 calledhim) 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 Irishone—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, atwhich 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 interiornave-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 wasnota "chestnut" then, whatever it may be now.
From Campden I went on to Leamington to visitanother 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,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 greatcongeriesat Scarborough surpassed them all in impressiveness. Iturned 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 abachelier-ès-lettresof 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:—