[1] Once quite unjustly—but that was not his fault, for he acted only on "information received." This reminds me of Mr. Gladstone's story of his schoolfellow Arthur Hallam (ofIn Memoriamfame). "Hallam," said W. E. G., indulging in some Etonian reminiscences at his own table when not far off ninety, "was a singularly virtuous boy; but he was once flogged by Dr. Keat, though quite unjustly. When we came into school one day, the master, Mr. Knapp—("He was a sad scoundrel, and got into prison later," the old gentleman added in parenthesis, "and I subscribed to relieve his necessities"),—said at once, 'Præpostor, put Hallam's name in the bill for breaking my window.'—'Please, sir, I never broke any window of yours,' cried Hallam, starting up. 'Præpostor,' said Mr. Knapp, 'put Hallam's name in the bill for lying, and breaking my window.'—'Upon my sacred word of honour, sir,' said Hallam, jumping up again, 'I never touched your window.' But Mr. Knapp merely said, 'Præpostor, put Hallam's name in the bill for swearing, and lying, and breaking my window!'
[2]Tom Brown's School Days(ed. 1839), pp. 370, 371.
[3] Replaced in 1920 by a new and sonorous peal. They still struck the quarters! but anyhow in tune.
[4] "Were the Vanderbilts as great a power in the American railway and financial world in your time as they are now?" some one asked an Englishman who had at one time spent some years in the United States. "No," he replied; "I think when I was out there they were only Vanderbuilding!"
[5] His quiet sojourn at St. James's, which he had himself built and inaugurated five years previously, was a sadly short one. I heard with deep regret of his death there on St. Benedict's, Day (March 21) of this year, 1910.
[6] Seeante, page130,note.
[7] This straining of the sight precipitated, I think, the affection of the eyes which was to prove so troublesome.
[8] Dickens,Martin Chuzzlewit, chap. ix.
[9] "La crême de la guillotine," as our Parisian monk, Dom Denis, described them.
[10] The O'Sullivan Beare, a graduate of Dublin University, had had an interesting career. He had served in the Egyptian War of 1885, had been medical officer on the Gold Coast and at Zanzibar, a Vice-consul in East Africa, engaged in the suppression of the slave-trade, and later Consul at Bahia and S. Paulo. He was Consul-general at Rio de Janeiro during a great part of the European War. Col. O'Sullivan Beare died in 1921.
[11] See, however,post, page202.
The first news that reached me on my landing at Southampton on July 17, 1910, was that my nephew, Alan Boyle, the intrepid young airman, had been seriously hurt at Bournemouth—not in the "central blue," but through the wheels of his "Avis" catching in a clover-field. His life had probably been saved by the chance of his having borrowed (for he always as a rule flew bareheaded) an inflated rubber cap from a friend just before the disaster; but, as it was, his head was badly injured.[1] After telegraphing sympathy and inquiries to the Glasgows, I went straight to London, to interview doctor and oculist, who both advised consultation with the famous Wiesbaden specialist, Pagenstecher. My brother and I accordingly left England next day, staying a night at Cologne to visit the Cathedral, which D. had never seen, and which, marvellous as it is, struck me once again as the most uninspired of all the great churches of Europe. We reached Wiesbaden next evening; and I was soon establishedin the comfortableklinikdevoted to the cosmopolitan clients of the great oculist. Our party included patients from America, Australia, Mexico and Ceylon, as well as from every country in Europe, and I found myself at table next to a wealthy Catholic gentleman from Yucatan, who told me much about that little-known and marvellous country, and gave me an album of most interesting photographs. I had feared to be caged in a dark room, but escaped this fate, and was able to enjoy of an afternoon the excellent music in the Kurhaus gardens. The internal decorations of the Kurhaus were too hideous for words; but it stood charmingly among shady groves, lakes and fountains, and there were 350 newspapers in the huge rococo reading-room. I had some pleasant walks with my new friend from Yucatan—one to the top of the Neroberg, where we enjoyed a really magnificent prospect, and partook of iced coffee and kirschen-küchen in a rustic summerhouse. Another glorious view was from the Greek Chapel, erected by a Grand Duke of Nassau to the memory of his Russian wife, with an extraordinarily sumptuous and beautiful interior: I was greatly struck by it, though I could not help thinking that when the guide said it cost £700,000 he meant marks, for it is of no great size.
Meanwhile I continued the prescribed "treatment" (unpleasant as it was) at the hands of the eminent oculist, a mysterious-seeming old gentleman who reminded me uncomfortably of Uncle Silas in Le Fanu's blood-curdling novel. Our party at the Klinik was a remarkably cheerful one, everybody seeming quite confident of being cured, or at least greatly benefited. Personally, I soon made up my mindto the permanent loss of one eye (even though, as Dickens remarked of Mr. Squeers, "popular prejudice runs in favour of two"); and in this anticipation I was confirmed by the verdict of Pagenstecher's clever son Adolf, a much moresimpaticoperson than his distinguished parent. Anyhow I was out of the surgeons' hands (for this relief much thanks!), and to celebrate my emancipation I dined at the Kurhaus, listened to the admirable "Doppel-Orchester" (it was an Italian Opera night, recalling many memories), witnessed the illuminations, and felt quite dissipated.
I was cheered, in the midst of these preoccupations, by a very hopeful letter from my sister, fortified by Sir Victor Horsley's favourable prognosis of Alan's case.[2] Interesting news, too, came from Lady Lovat (doubly interesting to me) that Simon, now nearly thirty-nine, was engaged to my pretty young kinswoman Laura Lister.[3] And on the same day I heard of the betrothal of a favourite niece to a brigadier-general, with a command in West Africa (whither, I imagine, his bride couldnotaccompany him), and a little place in Lincolnshire. In both cases, curiously enough, the bridegroom-expectant was more than double the age of the bride-to-be; but I saw no reason, if they knew their own minds, why this discrepancy should militate against their happiness.
Bethinking myself that I had never yet gone down the Rhine by water, I boarded a steamer at Biebrich,and steamed down the yellow turbid river for eight hours in mist and rain, wishing all the time that I was in the train. A female fellow-passenger introduced herself to me as a former governess of the Glasgow children in the Antipodes, said she had lost her partyandher purse, and requested a small loan! I spent two pleasant days at Cologne (Sunday and thefestaof August 15 next day), was edified by the immense and devout congregations and the beautiful music in the vast cathedral, and pleased to see the simple holiday-making of the good Rhinelanders in their pretty river-side gardens. Brussels, my next halting-place, was crammed with visitors to the Exhibition, or rather to the smoking ruins of what had been the exhibition, the greater part of which had been burned down the night before my arrival. I walked through the cheerful city, of which the only new feature (to me) was the colossal Palace of Justice, which seemed to dominate Brussels as the heaven-piercing spires of the Dom dominate Cologne; but the gigantic mass of the Brussels building seemed rather to be heaven-defying, and too suggestive of the Tower of Babel to please me.
Letters at Brussels told me of the long-hoped-for arrival of Kelburn's son and heir, godson to Queen Mary (her first since the King's accession). He was named Maurice at the special wish of Her Majesty, who (so I understood) was possessed with the odd idea that "Maurice" was the masculine equivalent for "Mary!" Crossing from Ostend to Dover, I encountered a well-known Scottish peer of whose demise I had read in an English paper two days before. He was on his way home from visiting the Passion-play at Ober Ammergau, had seen no papers,and had been surprised, and rather annoyed, at receiving letters and telegrams at Brussels congratulating him on being still alive. I cheered him up with a story of another man who saw his death announced in the morning papers, and calling up an intimate friend on the telephone, said, "Did you see in this morning's paper that I was dead?" "Yes," replied his friend, "I did. Where are you speaking from?" When I got to London, the same kind brother who had escorted me to Wiesbaden took me (by way of consolation for my wasted month[4]) to lunch—on turtle soup and punch—at the "Ship and Turtle" in the City. After a flying visit to my kind friends at Arundel and to my sister in Surrey, I came back to stay with him at his elm-shaded Thames-side home. We made some pleasant expeditions thence by land and water, motoring one day to quaint old Guildford, where we explored Archbishop Abbott's delightfully picturesque old Jacobean almshouses, and drank tea in an almost equally picturesque tea-shop, kept, I was carefully informed, byrealladies!
My pretty niece Cicely insisted on my presence at her wedding to her Brigadier; and I journeyed down to Kent, on a piping August day, in the company of crowds of Irish hoppers bound for the same county. The marriage was from the Cranbrooks' nice place, Hemsted, in the very heart of the Garden of England, a big Victorian house full of the first Earl's[5] memorials of Queen Victoria, Beaconsfield,and the other great Tory statesmen of his day. Lady Jane Gathorne-Hardy did the honours for the large house-party, as her parents were away taking a "cure" somewhere; and the day after the pretty wedding in the pretty parish church (the vicar, an old Magdalen man, gave a very good address), our kind hostess escorted the whole party up to town and entertained them to luncheon and a frivolous afternoon at the "Follies." I left London the same night for Scotland, and met at Beaufort, where I stayeden route, for our Highland abbey, Lovat's youthful bride-elect—as tall, and I am sure as good, as the lady inThe Green Carnation,[6] and already an accepted and affectionate member of the large and merry family of Frasers and Maxwells. I sailed down our familiar canal to Fort Augustus on a marvellously still and bright autumn afternoon; and as we slid alongside the Fort Augustus quay and looked back on the panorama of azure lake and purple hills, a friend and I agreed (as he colloquially put it) that it "licked the Rhine into fits."
I found things externally little changed under the new, or restored, Anglo-Benedictine régime, the chief visible difference being that my brethren now wore the flapping English hood, which gave them rather the aspect of large nuns. There was much coming and going to and from missions andlocum-tenancies of vacant parishes; and our house seemed destined to become more and more a "jumping-off place" for that kind of work rather than a great centre of monastic life and observance. One aim was not of course incompatible with the other, given a large enough community; but ours was at this time small enough, and there were several more or less permanent absentees. Most of the latter, however, "rolled up" for the excellent retreat given us by our good old friend Bishop Hedley, who had done us the same kindness just twenty-one years before. He was interested, after it was over, in hearing of our plans and hopes (then much "in the air") for re-starting the suspended building of our much-needed church, of which the foundation-stone had been laid nearly fifteen years previously. A young architect (an "old boy" of the abbey school) was staying with us, and quite prepared to produce the most fascinating designs at the shortest notice. But money, or the lack of it, was, as usual, the crucial point; and we did not "see our way" (horrid phrase) to resume operations either then or in the immediate future.
I went, in these golden October days, when a wonderful stillness so often broods over Highland hills and glens in their livery of autumnal russet, to do chaplain for two Sundays to the Lovats, who had a large shooting-party at Beaufort—Seftons and Howicks and Gathorne-Hardys and some others, including an A.D.C. to the Irish Viceroy, of whom he told me a good story. An old peer from the country presented himself at a levee at Dublin Castle; and his Excellency engaged him in conversation, starting as usual with the weather."Wonderful rain we've been having: everything coming up out of the ground."—"God forbid!" said the old peer. "I said that everything was coming up out of the ground," repeated H.E., slightly raising his voice. "AndIsaid 'God forbid!'" retorted the old gentleman: "I've got three wives buried under it!"
I went from Beaufort for a day or two to Nairn, which I remember hardly more than a poor fishing village, frequented by ladies and children for sea-bathing, but which owes its present reputation and prosperity, like so many other places, to its excellent golf-links. After a short stay at Kelburn, where I found my poor nephew Alan Boyle making good progress to recovery, I could not resist an invitation to pass a few days at St. Andrews, where the successor of my dear friend George Angus was anxious for me to see his new church lately opened. It was a rather effective building, in what a descriptive report called the "Lombardic style, adapted to suit local conditions." One of the "adaptations" was putting the tower at the wrong end, the "local condition" being that the lady who had built the church, and who inhabited a villa close by, had objected to a western tower as blocking her view of the North Sea! I strolled about the "dear romantic town," mounting the East Neuk road as far as "Rest and be thankful," and feeling heavy-hearted enough, with Tennyson's lines constantly in my mind:
I climb the hill from end to end:Of all the landscape underneath,I find no place that does not breatheSome gracious memory of my friend.
For each has pleased a kindred eye,And each reflects a happier day;And leaving them to pass away,I think once more he seems to die.
I came home from my last walk by the old harbour, admiring, as I had done a hundred times before, the wonderful lights on sea and land which one associates with St. Andrews in autumn; but feeling that I never cared to see the place again. Soon I went south, to Oxford, where Mgr. Kennard, who was again threatening for thenth time to resign, for reasons of health, his office of chaplain, had begged me to come and help him for as much of the Michaelmas term as I could spare. I found him, as a matter of fact, rather exceptionally well, and ready and anxious to recount to an intelligent listener (which I fear I wasnot, on this subject) every one of his golfing achievements during the past four months at Burnham, Westward Ho! North Berwick, and elsewhere. Although quite incapable of talking "golf shop," I contributed one anecdote (new, I believed), which I had brought from Nairn, and which pleased my old friend. It concerned a young man and maiden who were playing golf—the lady quite a novice—and had reached a hole which was on the top of a little hill. The youth ran up first to see the lie of the balls. "A stymie!" he shouted: "a dead stymie!" The young lady came up with a sniff. "Well, do you know?" she said, "IthoughtI smelled something as I was walking up the hill!"
I had been invited to preach Lovat's wedding sermon on October 15; but this, as well as much of the long choral service, had been countermandedat the eleventh hour. I went up the day before to the family residence in Grosvenor Gardens: presents still pouring in, and such unconsidered trifles as diamond pendants, silver salvers, gold cigarette-cases, telescopes, and illuminated addresses, lying promiscuously about. A small army of newspaper-reporters (whom I was deputed to interview) swarmed in after dinner. There was a great gathering at the Oratory next morning, where the ample space beneath the dome makes a most effective setting for a wedding pageant. The bride's procession was a little late; and the stalwart bridegroom, supported by his Scots Guards brother, was (shall I say "the cynosure of all eyes" or the "observed of all observers"?—both good oldclichés) in the full dress bravery of a Highland chief.[7] I went in afterwards to sign the register, while theprimo soprano assolutoof the famous choir thrilled out the Bach-Gounod "Ave Maria," as inevitable an accompaniment of Oratory weddings as "O for the Wings of a Dove" is of those at Sloane Street or Eaton Square. Mrs. Asquith (the bride's aunt) entertained us afterwards in the none too spacious reception rooms at 10, Downing Street, where the well-dressed mob,more suo, made play with their elbows in their quest for their own and other people's presents on the loaded tables. There were representatives from the bride's home in Ribblesdale, as well as a deputation of farmers from distant Beaufort;and one heard intermittently the broad accent of Lancashire and the slow soft Highland speech, mingling oddly with the London cackle. The festivities at an end, I escorted a party of youthful Maxwells to the Zoo. We saw a much-bored tiger, which gaped at us most rudely; also a greatly vaunted American aloe, of the "blooming-once-in-a-hundred-years" kind, which we all thought a fraud.
I had planned to finish while at Oxford my greatly belated work for theEncyclopædia, but was (perhaps unduly) mortified to find how much my progress was impeded by my altered conditions of eyesight. Let me, however, record here,pour encourager les autressimilarly handicapped, that the initial difficulty offocussing(very serious and very discouraging at first to a one-eyed man) tends to disappear not only quickly but completely. "Un poco paciencia," as we say in Brazil; kind Mother Nature steps in with her compensations, and one can only feel grateful—I hope and believe that I did—at suffering so little from what seems, and after all is, so serious a privation.
Two of Lovat's nephews were now undergraduates at Trinity, Cambridge, whither I went over to see them from Oxford. They gave me luncheon in their quaint low-ceiled rooms in Trinity Street, took me to see their sister (a pupil in a convent school), and escorted me over some of the "lions," wanting to know at every turn whether I did not admit that Cambridge was infinitely superior to Oxford. I handsomely owned that we possessed nothing quite so fine, in their different ways, as King's Chapel, the famous "backs," and the Fitzwilliam Museum(to say nothing of the Catholic church); and they were both pleased at this tribute, though it must be confessed that the absorbing interest of their lives at that period seemed less to be architectural masterpieces than the internal mechanism of motor-bicycles, about which they, in common with many of their undergraduate friends, appeared to be quite curiously infatuated. I went on from Cambridge (an insufferably tedious journey) to Douai Abbey, our Berkshire monastery, where one was always sure of a welcome of Benedictine heartiness, and where I gave a lantern-lecture on Brazil, of a popular and superficial kind, to the good monks and their pupils. This reminds me that, as a supposed authority on negroes (many Englishmen, I firmly believe, are under the impression that the population of Brazil is almost exclusively black!), I was invited by my friend the Warden of Wadham to meet the Master of Pembroke at dinner, in order to discuss the advisability or otherwise of admitting black, brown and yellow men freely into the university. The Warden (a Scotsman who had never, I think, been out of Britain) was all in favour of the "open door"; whereas the little Master of Pembroke, who had been bishop of Barbadoes, and knew a thing or two about blacks, was strongly for the "keep 'em out" policy, and I was entirely with him. We had an interesting evening's talk; but the solution of this not unimportant question (which the foundation of the Rhodes Scholarships had brought much to the front) did not of course rest with us. The mention of Rhodes reminds me that a conspicuous memorial tablet had lately been erected to him in the Schools: the design was good and simple, but the lettering of the inscription (asis too often the case on modern monuments) so deplorably bad as to spoil the whole effect.[8]
Walking through Magdalen cloisters on a sombre November afternoon, I came unexpectedly on the poor young King (or ex-King) of Portugal, who was looking through the college with a single companion. He looked (who could wonder)[9] pale, depressed and nervous; and I was shocked at the change in his appearance since I had seen him at Blenheim on the occasion of his previous visit to England. Professor Oman (who had been his guest in Portugal for the anniversary celebrations at Busaco) met him, I believe, accidentally in High Street, and showed him all over All Souls and the Bodleian; but I heard that his listless and apathetic demeanour underwent little change. To be a "Roi en exil" almost before reaching man's estate is about as dreary a lot as could fall to any man; and one could only hope that fate had something better in prospect for the young monarch so early and so tragically dethroned.
I got to Ampleforth Abbey, on my way north, in time for our great Benedictine festival of All Saints of our Order; but the "sweet vale of Mowbray" was wrapt in mist and rain, and the boys' holiday spoilt. I gave a lecture to them that evening on the lighter side of Brazil, with stories of snakes and niggers; and another next evening on the work ofthe religious orders, especially our Benedictines, in the evangelization of that vast country. I lectured in the new college theatre, a really fine room, and acoustically very satisfactory, though I did not care for the semi-ecclesiastical woodwork. When I got back to Fort Augustus a few days later, I found Lovat, Lochiel, and other local magnates there, discussing the fate of our poor little railway, which the N.B. Company, tired of working it at a loss for several years, had given notice to close after New Year.[10] Two pieces of news reached me soon after my arrival—one that Congregation at Oxford had declined, by a good majority, to abolish compulsory Greek; the other that the Brazilian Navy was in full revolt, and the crews of their two new Dreadnoughts (one theSão Paulo, whose captain and crew had come to England with me) were firing their big guns from the harbour into the city! I could only hope that our poor abbey, which must have been in the direct line of fire, had not suffered.[11]
My own plans were almost matured for returning to Brazil early in 1911; but it seemed prudent now to "wait and see" if this navalémeutereally portended anything like a general revolution. Meanwhile I had been authorized to accept an invitation from the Norfolks to stay with them at Norwich, for the opening of the great church which had been many years a-building, at the Duke's expense, in histitular city. He had taken the "Maid's Head," a delightful old half-timbered inn, for our party, which pretty well filled it. I said an early mass on Our Lady'sfesta, December 8, in the lady-chapel (a memorial of the Duke's first wife),[12] of the vast, austere, and splendid church—the only modern church in which I have ever felt as if I were in a mediæval cathedral. Breakfasting afterwards with the clergy—mostly Irish—the news of Ninian Crichton Stuart's victory at Cardiff[13] (which came to us by wire) was a bit of a bombshell; but the "Maid's Head" party were of course delighted. The inaugural services were very splendid, though unduly prolonged by a sermon an hour long; and though for once there was no after-luncheon oratory, the bishop preached for another full hour in the evening. The tediousness of my long journey back to Scotland next day was aggravated by an amateur politician (with a wheezy cough) in my carriage, who bored me almost to tears with arechaufféof his speeches at various election-meetings; but I consoled myself by reading in an evening paper that the Unionist candidate for Ayr had increased his majority five-fold. At Edinburgh I came on my energetic old brother-in-law Glasgow, who had come in from Ayrshire (he was then not far off seventy-eight) to dine at a naval banquet and to vote for the Representative Peers. I went for the week-end to the Kerrs at Woodburn, meetingthere a serious young publisher, who offered me very good terms to write a detailed history—it has never yet been written—of Scottish Catholicism since the Reformation: a fascinating subject, and one with which I should have loved to grapple, but life is too short to do all, or even half, that one would like to do.
With an hour or two to spare in Glasgow on my way to the Highlands, I lunched with my friend (the friendship was personal, not political) the editor of theObserver, at his Radical Club. In the middle of the meal a member rose with a long face, and announced an unexpected Unionist victory at Tavistock—whereat, to the consternation of every one, I cheered loudly! I reached Fort Augustus the same evening, to learn of the death, at the advanced age of ninety-three, of our kind old friend and neighbour Mrs. Ellice of Invergarry, one of the last of the great landladies who a few years before had by a curious coincidence owned and managed (very capably, too) some of the largest estates in the North of Scotland. The vast Glengarry property, once the domain of the Macdonells, and stretching from the Caledonian Canal to the western seaboard, had been under Mrs. Ellice's sole control since her husband's death more than thirty years before. We at Fort Augustus, as well as the numerous Highland Catholics resident on her estate, and under our spiritual care, had always found in her a most friendly, kind and considerate neighbour.
Two happenings I recall at Fort Augustus during these December days—one a remarkably interesting lecture on the theory of lake-temperature from a Mr. Wedderburn, who had been recently on theScottish loch survey; and the other event was our all (that is, all the priests of the monastery) being called on to vow, promise, swear and sign, individually and collectively, our adherence to the Creed of Pope Pius IV., whichIhad sworn to some thirty-six years before.[14] This act of submission, enjoined on every Catholic priest in Christendom, was part of the vigorous campaign against Modernism initiated by Pope Pius X. Having discharged this duty, I betook myself to Keir, to spend Christmas with the Stirlings. It was a family party, including the Lovats and a few others, and we spent the season in homely Dickens fashion, with ghost-stories and snapdragon and a priceless Early Victorian conjurer in a crumpled dress suit, who accompanied tricks of really incredible antiquity with a "patter" almost prehistoric. One day we drove down to survey the grand old cathedral of Dunblane, very carefully restored (of course for Presbyterian worship) since I had last seen it. As we entered, we heard the opening strains of Elgar'sAve Verum—
Music fragment: Ave verum cor-pus na-tum Ex Ma-ri-a Vir-gi-ne! etc.
Music fragment: Ave verum cor-pus na-tum Ex Ma-ri-a Vir-gi-ne! etc.
(a Eucharistic hymn by a Catholic composer!) being played on a fine organ, and wondered what old John Knox would have thought about it all. Meanwhile the Catholics of Dunblane, a devout and fervent little flock (so I was told), had perforce to content themselves with a poor loft, where I preachedto them on two Sundays. At Stirling, not far distant, there was a new church designed by Pugin—a rather dismal and angular edifice, but anyhow spacious and well kept. On my return journey to Fort Augustus, I found myself condemned, by the unholy rivalry of the Caledonian and North British Railways, to a four hours' wait at Crianlarich, where I found the temperature, on a frosty January morning, quite as "invigorating" as did the fabled tourist.[15] I had a few busy days at the abbey preparing for my return to South America. My passage was booked for the middle of January: I had devoted a week to farewells to relatives and friends—and then came the anti-climax! On the very day on which (like the poor Sisters of Mercy) I was to have "breasted the billows of the Atlantic"[16]en routefor Brazil, I received so discouraging and peremptory a letter from my London oculist, as to the risk to my remaining eye of a possibly stormy winter voyage, that I had perforce to abandon the idea, and to return (like the bad sixpence of poor Grissell's story)[17] to mynorthern monastery, where I received so brotherly a welcome home that I did not, after the first disappointment, regret the change of plan. I was inducted again into my old office of librarian (first entrusted to me twenty-seven years before); and our young organist having gone into residence at the Benedictine Hall at Oxford, I acted for a time as his substitute. The post of subprior being presently vacated by the departure of the then holder of the office for a Liverpool mission, that also was committed to me; and as our good prior was at this time to some extent invalided, I found myself pretty fully occupied, more especially as I had in those days a curiously cosmopolitan correspondence (much of it on literary or antiquarian matters), which could not be neglected. I recall receiving by a single mail (on St. Benedict's Day, as it chanced), letters from India, North America, Brazil, Egypt, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Soudan!
[1] Alan, the Glasgows' youngest son, had taken up flying most enthusiastically, living in a shed at Brooklands (his mechanic acting as his cook), and practising continually with his Avis monoplane, which, like himself, was of purely Scottish origin. He had been the third flying-man to gain an aero-certificate on a machine of British design and build.
[2] My nephew's recovery was slow and tedious; but he was ultimately restored to health.
[3] Her grandmother, Emma Lady Ribblesdale (born a Mure of Caldwell) was my father's first cousin.
[4] The word seems ungrateful: the time was not really wasted, for I had done my best and knew the worst, and the suspense was anyhow over.
[5] Gathorne Hardy, who turned Gladstone out of his seat for Oxford University in 1865, and was afterwards successively Home Secretary and Secretary for War and for India. His grandson the third Earl (my nephew by marriage) broke away from the Tory traditions of the family, sold Hemsted Park to one of the Harmsworths, and set up a new home for himself in Suffolk.
[6] "I believe she is very tall and very religious—if you notice, it is generally short, squat people who are atheists."—The Green Carnation.
[7] Possibly the last spectacle of the kind at the Oratory (but that was in the old tin church) had been the apparition of the youthful Earl of Loudoun in Campbell tartan kilt and philabeg, acting as best man to his cousin Lord Bute on the latter's memorable wedding-day, April 16, 1872.
[8] The stonemason of to-day imitates (usually very badly, and with deplorable result) the printing of a book, not in the least realizing that a lapidary inscription is something quite different from a sentence struck off movable metal types.
[9] It was hardly a month since the Revolution of October 3, 1910, had driven the unfortunate youth from the uneasy throne which he had occupied since the cruel murder of his father and brother, in the streets of Lisbon, on February 1, 1908.
[10] The negotiations resulted in a respite for six months, after which financial arrangements of some kind were made for keeping the line open for the future.
[11] It was, as a matter of fact, considerably damaged: moreover, one of the shells fired by the insurgents not only inflicted serious injury on the Prior, Dom Joachim de Luna, but blew the poor tailor of the monastery into atoms.
[12] Artistically reminiscent of "Duchess Flora" were the elaborate carvings in this chapel, conventional but very charming representations of English wild flowers.
[13] A General Election—"Peersv.People," as the Radicals called it—was at this time in progress. Ninian's election for Cardiff came as a considerable surprise to the Liberals, as well as a triumph to the Unionists.
[14] When I escaped from the City of Confusion into the Church of God, at Rome, on March 25, 1875.
[15] "Isn't this invigorating?" exclaimed an English traveller, as he emerged from his stuffy carriage early on a breezy August day. "No, sir," said the stolid Highland station-master: "it's just Crianlarich!"
[16] "In May, 1842, Sisters Ursula, Frances, and Rose left the parent-house for the Far West—the first Sisters of Mercy who had ever breasted the billows of the Atlantic."—Annals of the Sisters of Mercy, vol. III., p. 16. It really reads as though the good nuns had swum across!
[17] "In Italy," he said to me once, "one is welcomed back with an embrace and a cordial 'Ben ritornato, signore!' but coming back here to Oxford, I call to pay my respects to the good Jesuit Fathers; and the old brother who opens the door only grumbles out, 'Well, Mr. Grissell, here you are, back again,like sixpenn'orth of bad halfpennies!'"
Our brothers had good success this year with the spring salmon-netting in Loch Ness; and I myself witnessed the landing one afternoon of nine clean fish, all scaling between fifteen and thirty pounds. We had always enjoyed the privilege of netting a certain number of salmon during Lent; and I think it was this year that Lovat proposed, at a meeting of the syndicate of riparian owners and tenants who had recently assumed the control of the fishing, that this right should be conceded to us as heretofore. It was agreed to with but one dissentient voice, that of a rather cantankerous neighbour of ours who was only, I believe, an honorary member of the syndicate, having pleaded that he was too poor to pay his subscription. "Certainly," said a noble duke who had leased for some years the best spring water in the vicinity; "by all means let the poor monks (or was it "poor devils"?) have their salmon: it's probably all they get to eat!"
Lovat was kind enough to tell me, when he came down about this salmon-fishing question, that he and others (unnamed) were "pulling strings" in various quarters to get me appointed chaplain at Oxford in succession to our dear old Kennard, who (after numerous unheeded cries of "Wolf!") was,it seemed, really resigning, and preparing to retire for life to a dull seaside town in Somerset. I told him, however, that I was sure there was no chance of any monk or other "regular" being appointed: moreover I had heard that a priest hailing from Brighton, with the patent and obvious qualification of possessing £1,000 a year of his own, had been already chosen; and, finally, I hoped and expected to be allowed to return to Brazil, unless I received some very clear and unmistakable indication that I was more wanted at home. Meanwhile the work immediately in front of me was organizing the Bishop Hay centenary celebrations, which were to be kept at our abbey in the autumn on a considerable scale, and of which I had been named general secretary. Before tackling this business I was enabled to spend Holy Week and Easter, as so often before, happily at Arundel, where my visit this year coincided with the anniversary of Duchess Mora's death. I officiated at the memorial service for her in the FitzAlan chapel, always an impressive function among the venerable monuments—some of them more than five centuries old—of bygone FitzAlans and Howards, touched by the chequered light from the great east window, in which the Duke and his little son are depicted in prayer before the altar.
I went from Arundel to Brighton to see my friend Grissell, whom I found wrestling with census-papers, and with the difficulty of inducing his female domestics to admit (at least approximately) their real ages. I had not, of course, had the same trouble at Fort Augustus, where our residents varied in age from sixteen to ninety-five, the latter being the record of our good old Brother Nathalan, whomwe all hoped to see reach his century.[1] At the Union Club, whither Grissell carried me to lunch, I remember how we (members, guests, waiters and all) deserted our tables and flocked to the window to see—a flying man! Gustave Hamel swooping down on the Hove lawns after flying from Hendon (61 miles in 58 minutes), as steady as a rock on his Blériot monoplane. It was the first 'plane I had ever seen in the air! I reached London next morning in time to attend Linlithgow's pretty wedding at St. Margaret's, Westminster. It was Primrose Day, and the crowds inside and outside the church were augmented by mobs gazing idly at Dizzy's bedecked statue in Parliament Square. I squeezed in afterwards for a few minutes at Hereford Gardens, congratulated the bridegroom's mother, and was amused to hear a dignified menial (who, I thought, must have been a City toastmaster hired for the occasion) shouting out the names of the distinguished guests in stentorian tones for the benefit of our exceedingly deaf host. April was summerlike this year; and I was glad to escape from the noisy stuffy town to my brother's river-side home, where we sat in the violet twilight on the edge of Thames, watching the crafts of all sorts and sizes gliding past in the gloaming, and listening to the snatches of music (sometimes quite pretty and effective) coming to us from launch or wherry across the darkling water. "That's a quiet pretty little thing," said my brother, looking admiringly at an electrically-propelled canoe"made for two" which was skimming up stream swiftly and silently. But the susceptible youth to whom the remark was addressed had eyes only for the vision of beauty in the stern. "I don't think," he said knowingly, "that you'd find her quite so quiet if you knew her!" and was surprised at the shout of laughter with which his remark was received. I got back to Fort Augustus just in time to vote at the School Board elections. We, of course, all "plumped" for our Father Andrew Macdonell, who was duly elected, together with the local Established, United Free, and "Wee Free" ministers, and the Stratherrick priest—a curious clerical crowd. The exceptionally fine summer attracted an unusual number of visitors to Fort Augustus; and we had quite a gathering for the local celebration of King George's coronation-day, which was kept chiefly as a children's holiday, with games, an enormous tea, and loyal and patriotic songs and speeches. A more domestic festival, a few days later, was the silver jubilee of my ordination, which I was glad to be able to celebrate with my brethren. I received quite a sheaf of letters and telegrams—I had no idea that the anniversary would be so generally remembered—and had the pleasure of reading in a Scottish newspaper that I was "one of the most amiable, devout, and learned ecclesiastics of the day!" I was glad that among those present at my jubilee Mass was one of my oldest Catholic friends, Lady Lovat,[2] who was herself receiving congratulations this year on the birth of three new grandchildren, includingsons and heirs to Lovat and the Stirlings of Keir. Arriving at Keir a few days later,en routefor my examination-centre in Staffordshire, I found my host and hostess out, but made friends with the "younger of Keir"—aliasBilly Stirling—(aged two months), who was reposing in his perambulator "under a spreading chestnut tree" on the lawn.
My "Oxford Local" work at Oakamoor College over, I went on to Oxford for a few days, on the tiresome (and to me rather melancholy) business of finally packing up my goods and chattels there. Although in Long Vacation, I found a few kind friends still in residence: and the Hassalls took me to see the renovated west front (Wolsey's) of Christ Church. The work, they said, had cost some £15,000, but was well worth it. A few hours in London I devoted to taking a nephew to see the Kinemacolor pictures—the Durbar and the Prince of Wales's investiture at Carnarvon. By some new contrivance the primary colours, only, were reproduced on the films, giving us the blue sky, the green grass and the scarlet uniforms, but everything else brownish-grey: the effect was perhaps more weird than beautiful or lifelike. The popular young Prince was in a box with his sister, looking at his own doings at Carnarvon; and it was curious to see the audience cheering alternately the filmed prince and the live one, who seemed rather embarrassed by the attention paid to him. On my northward journey I visited my friends the Rector of Exeter College and his wife at their pretty Westmorland home, near Oxenholme; it was a district quite new to me, and I was delighted with the fine rolling country, and the noble view over Morecambe Bay and towards the distant Lakes.
I found, on my return to our abbey, extensive repairs going on in view of the expected influx of visitors in September, and the procurator in despair at the dilatoriness of Highland workmen, recalling the famous plumber of Carstairs.[3] All the shooting-lodges were full, and expeditions to our monastery, when the shooters had an off-day, seemed one of the regular attractions of the neighbourhood. I remember one of our nearer neighbours, the shooting-tenant's wife from Glendoe, riding down one day to call, with Lady Winifred Elwes—the ladies astride, in ordinary frocks, on fat grey ponies, and our good lay-brother porter in speechless astonishment at the apparition. I was glad to welcome one day for an hour or two my old friends the Portsmouths,en routefor their remote castle of Guisachan: his lordship pompously pleasant as of old, and his wife equally pleasant without the pomposity. I presented them to the Bishop of Chur (or Coire), Mgr. Schmitt, at that time a guest in the abbey with his two chaplains. I had visited Chur more than thirty years before on my way to the Engadine (before the railway was made under the Albula Pass), and had visited the cathedral in quest of the supposed relics of St. Lucius, the king of Britain who, Bede says, wrote to Pope Eleutherius asking for instruction in the Christian faith. The Bishop had never heard this story; but he said that there was a constant tradition at Chur that Lucius was a Welsh saint who had died there afterspending many years in missionary labours among the Rhaetian Alps.[4]
I spent the last Sunday of August as chaplain to the Lovats at Stronlairg, their remote lodge nestling under the great range of the Mona Liadh hills, in the wildest part of Central Inverness-shire. I have called it, and Guisachan, "remote"; but no place is really so, if accessible by a decent road, in these motoring days; and "neighbours" from thirty or forty miles away thought nothing of dropping in casually to luncheon or tea. Lady Derby, whose husband had one of Lovat's forests, came up one day with her daughter and her sister-in-law Lady Isobel Gathorne-Hardy, from whom I was sorry to hear a disquieting account of the health both of my niece Dorothy Cranbrook and of her husband. With our house-party and the servants, I had quite a congregation in ourchapelle provisoireon Sunday; and it was, as always, a happiness to me to have the privilege of saying mass for a little flock of faithful Catholics in the splendid solitude of these Highland hills and glens.
Thetriduo, or three days' celebrations in honour of the centenary of Bishop Hay, had been fixed for September 12-14; and we entertained more than seventy guests in the abbey for the occasion. All the Scottish bishops, except the aged Archbishop of Glasgow, were present, besides Bishop Hedley, Abbot Gasquet, Monsignors, canons, heads of religious orders, priests and devout laymen, includingLovat and his brother Alastair. The weather was perfect throughout the week; and the religious services, though naturally the chief feature of the celebrations, were not so prolonged or so continuous as to prevent our visitors from enjoying many pleasant excursions by land and water. The fine portrait of the illustrious bishop by George Watson (first president of the Scottish Academy), lent us by Blairs College, excited much interest; and my lantern-lecture on the Life and Times of Hay (a collateral descendant of whom, by the way, was one of our guests), was very well received by a distinguished audience. Many of the visitors to the abbey and village stayed on a day or two for the local concert and Highland Gathering. The Rotherhams, Bishop John Vaughan, Lady Edmund Talbot and her sister Lady Alice Reyntiens, were among those who arrived in time for these later festivities. I heard from Lord Rotherham of the death of a very old friend, Sir William Farrer, whose daughter had married my brother. He and his wife, whom he had long survived (he was nearly ninety at his death) had shown to us all constant kindness in the days of our childhood and ever since; and I recalled pleasant days at his beautiful Berkshire home, where the lovely gardens were the delight and recreation of his busy professional life.[5]
The kind abbot of S. Paulo had come to England in order to escort to Brazil a little community of nuns for his newly-founded Benedictine convent; and I had promised to attend theirdispedidaat Southampton at the end of September. I found myself at Inverness among the gay crowds attending the Northern Meeting, of which the special feature this year was a great rally of boy-scouts from all the northern counties, in honour of their popular Chief, Sir Robert Baden-Powell. Seven hundred mustered, at least half of them kilted—a very pretty sight; and "B. P." made them a stirring speech, with an interesting account of the spread of the movement ("Escotismo," they called it in Brazil, where it was very popular), in different parts of the world. I travelled from Edinburgh to London with the Archbishop of York, who had been officiating at the wedding of an Ayrshire Houldsworth. We had last met at Dunskey, my old home in Galloway, when he was, I think, vicar of Portsea. I journeyed straight to Southampton, where good Abbade Miguel, an English Benedictine (Dom Sibley) who was accompanying him to Brazil, and the seven nuns,[6] were all ready for their long voyage. I saw them on board the good oldAragon(which looked very spick-and-span), "waved my hands (like Nancy Lee) upon the quay," and rather wished that I was one of the party! Meanwhile I had to get back to London, to help to marry (on a murky Saturday afternoon) my Irish Guards friend TomVesey[7] to Lady Cicely Browne. A "mixed marriage," as it is called, is always a short affair, with no vocal music, and of course no nuptial mass; but this was the briefest I ever remember, the whole ceremony, including a five minutes' sermon from Father Maturin, taking exactly a quarter of an hour! There was the usual tiresome crowd afterwards at Lord Revelstoke's house in Carlton House Terrace; but I was glad to see some old friends, and to have a pleasant chat with Lady Bigge,[8] who, by the way, had just become Lady Stamfordham. If there was no music at the Chelsea church, I came in for more than I bargained for next day (Sunday), namely a performance by a famous London choir of Beethoven's Grand Mass, a composition which I would fain hear anywhere rather than in church. It was, of course, excellently rendered; but as I listened to the crashing chords, I could not help recalling the appreciation of an eminently-qualified critic, treating of this musical masterpiece:—