[1] I would not venture to make such a statement except on the best authority—Darwin's own words. See Appendix.
[2] Dean Burgon. Seeante, page104.
[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 theCatholic 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 truthlaid 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 (Etonc.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!"
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 encircleone 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 lefttête-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,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 Ampleforthen 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 otherside 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 boardedR.M.S.P.Aragon, nearly 5,000 tons bigger than the good oldMagdalena. 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 shiningin 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 landthere. 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 ormorroclose 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 disinfectionand 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 remarken 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 grandformatura(review) in honour of the day (it was the anniversary of the foundation of the Republic), the President—amulatto, 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 oftaipa(compressed earth), its longwhitewashed 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 onlyone 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. Thechacara(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 spentone day every week enjoying the open-air life and sports unattainable in the city.
The college, orgymnasio, 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 EnglishCatholics 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.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 richman'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 famousterra roxawas 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 manyother 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 afiscal(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 thecity. 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 meetingalmost 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 (mostlyinternatosor 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 oflaisser allerwas 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, theAragon, 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 themata-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!"
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 ofhisold 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; yetno 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 wordReform(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,grillosandcigarrasin 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 thedispedida(leave-taking) in this country was always an affair of much demonstration and copious embracing. Whenhe 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 theSé(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) withfaded 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 knownas 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,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 EnglishBenedictine 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 wasad 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 lampsthat 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 ourcôrozinho 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 theVasari. 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 usedto 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 canknitbetter 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 Isometimes 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 Italianprotégés. 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 andspontaneous 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 wasconsoling 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 theSantissimo, 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 popularpiety 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 astuteadvogados, 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 fewdays 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 drastictreatment. 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.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 themattointerspersed 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 unrivalledpraia, stretching for miles along the blue waves of the Atlantic, lined with modern hotels and charming villas standing in their own luxuriant gardens, whither thefina floraof Paulista society came down in summer with their families to enjoy the sea-bathing and the ocean breezes.
I was cordially welcomed on theAraguaya, 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 andM.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, theSão 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 theAraguaya! As our voyage progressed he grew more and moredistrait, 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 lessincog.to England. The last days ofour 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.