"The Christian sentiment has completely left him in theGloria, where there bursts forth, not the pure and heavenly melody of a hymn of praise and peace, but the shout of victory raised by human passions triumphing over a conquered enemy."
Journeying north to Ampleforth Abbey, where Iwas engaged to give my "Bishop Hay" lecture, I read in my morning paper (1) that old Sir William Farrer had left £300,000 (I hoped my sister-in-law would benefit), (2) that Lady Herbert of Lea, an outstanding figure in English Catholic life for sixty years, and a very kind friend to me in my own early Catholic days, had died at the age of nearly ninety; (3) that the Pope had created seventeen Cardinals and two new English archbishoprics (Liverpool and Birmingham); but no Benedictine Cardinal, and none for Canada or Australia, although there were two Irish-Americans for U.S.A.! I spent November 1 and 2 at Ampleforth: on All Saints' Day I saw the college football team give a handsome drubbing to a visiting school—a feat to be proud of, as they were themselves quite novices at the Rugby game. Next day, All Souls', there were the usual solemn requiem services; but owing to the exigencies of the school classes, the poor monks had to crowd in before breakfast matins, lauds, prime, meditation, October devotions, tierce, sext, none, and Pontifical high mass—with a full day's teaching to follow! rather killing work, I should imagine. The abbot told me that he proposed sending two of his community to Western Canada, to "prospect" in view of founding a monastery and college there.[9]
A long day's journey from Ampleforth took me to Keir, where I found the new house-chapel, though far from complete, available for mass on Sunday. We drove over to Doune in the afternoon with the Norfolks (who were my fellow-guests), and exploredthe old castle of the Earls of Moray, partially restored by Lord Moray's grandfather. The massive remains I thought very impressive; and the Duke, who was perhaps more interested in architecture than in anything else, was much taken with the old place. He was also, however, interested in the Arundel parlour-game of "ten questions," which we played after dinner, and in which he displayed, through years of practice, an almost diabolical cleverness. I travelled north to Fort Augustus after a night of terrific gales, with fallen trees and snapped-off limbs lying everywhere along the railway—a melancholy sight.
I had been endeavouring to interest our friends in the south in our desire to reopen the Abbey School when feasible; but at a Council held at the abbey on my return it was decided to leave that project in abeyance, and to concentrate our efforts meanwhile on trying to replace the ramshackle shed which served as our church by at least a part of the permanent building. Harrowing appeals in the Catholic press, embodying views of the shanty in question: a personal campaign undertaken by some of the fathers, and begging-letters of the most insidiously-persuasive kind, were part of the plan of campaign, which met with a fair measure of success. There was some feeling in our community in favour of a very much less ambitious (and expensive) church than originally planned; but I personally would be no party to any scheme involving the abandonment of our hopes to see built a real abbey church, worthy of the site and the surroundings, and the erection instead of a neat, simple, and inexpensive R.C. chapel, which seemed the ideal of some of the lessimaginative of our brethren. I was receiving invitations from various Scottish centres to repeat my Hay lecture; and this, we thought, might be judiciously combined with efforts on behalf of our building-fund. I went to Blairs College, outside Aberdeen, for the old bishop's actual centenary (which we had anticipated at Fort Augustus), and lectured to the students and their professors there. On my way back, I visited, for the first time, our "cell" at St. James's, high above the pretty prosperous sea-port of Buckie. The place pleased me—a conveniently-planned house, standing among pine-woods and meadows, with a fine prospect over land and sea; and a nice chapel, simple and devout, with a gaily-gilt altar from Tyrol. I gave my lecture in three other places during these weeks of early winter: at Motherwell, where my lantern failed me, and I was grateful to my audience for listening to an hour's dry talk without pictures; in Edinburgh, where I had a large and very appreciative audience; and in Glasgow, where a still bigger gathering filled the City Hall, and was really enthusiastic. It was all very fatiguing; and I was glad to get home and enjoy a little rest and peace before Christmas. Beaufort, too, where I acted as Christmas chaplain as usual, was restful this year, with only a small family party, and the Lovats getting ready for a trip to Egypt and Khartoum. We had a long, severe, and stormy winter in the Highlands: gale after gale, in which our poor wooden church swayed and shivered and creaked like the oldAraguayain the Bay of Biscay; and then bitter frosts with the thermometer down in the neighbourhood of zero, and all the able-bodiedmonks smashing the ice in the "lade," in order to keep the current going for our electric light. Meanwhile we were cheered by the general interest, even in far-off lands, in our church-building crusade. Our Maltese father brought a cheque from his island home; and subscriptions came from my Yucatan friend, Señor Ygnacio Peon, and from Alastair Fraser in remote Rhodesia. I went off on a campaign south of the Tweed, with my lantern slides as a passport; and it was never difficult, in lecturing on the straits and struggles of the Scottish Church in the early nineteenth century, to pass to the needs and hopes of the Scottish Benedictines in the early twentieth. I had, as always, a kind reception and a sympathetic hearing from our brethren at Douai Abbey, but had the bad luck to be invalided immediately afterwards, fortunately in the pleasant Surrey home of my sister, who took me drives, when I was convalescent, all among the queer-shaped hills of the North Downs, intersected by the Pilgrims' Way to Canterbury.
The national coal-strike began whilst I was at Nutwood—a million men "downing tools," and the end impossible to foresee. Travelling, of course, became at once infinitely troublesome and tedious;[10] however, I made my way to Stonyhurst College, where I had a big and interested audience (there were many young Scots among the 400 pupils), and then managed to crawl back to London (one simplysat in a station, and waited for a train to come along some time), where I attended the "house-warming" dinner of our Caledonian Club—I was an original member—transferred from Charles Street to Lord Derby's fine house overlooking St. James's Square. There were, of course, self-congratulatory speeches; and a concert of Scottish music wound up the evening agreeably. I paid a flying visit to Oxford this week—a guest now in my old Hall, which had a full muster of monastic undergraduates. The most conspicuous object in Oxford seemed to be our "gracious tower" at Magdalen—a mass of elaborate scaffolding from top to bottom:[11] spring-cleaning, I imagined, for the Prince of Wales, who was going into residence there in October. I called on the new University chaplain, installed, but not yet, apparently, quite at home in, the old familiar house in St. Aldate's, and also managed to put in a few hours at the Bodleian, to finish my article on William of Wykeham, the last of eighty-three which I had written for the American Encyclopædia. It had been interesting work, of which some tangible results were certain vestments, pictures, and other adornments which I had been thus able to provide for the chapel of our Benedictine Hall.
Lunching at the new Caledonian, on my way through London, I found myself next young Bute, dreadfully depressed about the coal-strike, and (not for the first time) looking forward to the workhouse for himself and family. My next lecture was due at St. Edmund's College, Ware, where I had the honour of numbering among my audience thebrand-new Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster,[12] imposing in his brand-new rose-coloured robes, but as kind and gracious as ever. In the middle of my lecture (I had an audience of nearly 300) the "divine" (as the church students were called) in charge of the lighting startled us all by suddenly crying out, "There is going to be an explosion!" and the next moment a flame shot up from the lantern almost to the ceiling. "Only that and nothing more"; but it was quite sufficiently alarming for the moment. Next day we enjoyed a motor-drive through the pretty pastoral country, and saw in the course of it one curious sight—a suffragist female (militant by the look of her) standing on a stool just outside the lychgate of a village church, and addressing an apparently very unreceptive audience of open-mouthed Hertfordshire yokels.
Holy Week and Easter found me again at Arundel, where there was a holiday gathering of many young people at the castle, the youngest member of the party being the Duke's baby daughter, who was christened Katherine the day after my arrival. "Absit omen!" whispered (not very tactfully, I thought) the good vicar of Arundel, as we drank tea and nibbled the christening cake after the ceremony—looking up, as he spoke, at a portrait of the baby's luckless ancestress Queen Katherine Howard. "Il n'y a pas de danger," I whispered back; but I don't know whether he understood French. I was amused afterwards, talking to the nurse of the Duchess's small nephews and nieces, to hearheropinion of the castle and its glories."A dreadful place for children,Icall it, with all these towers and battlements and dungeons and hiding-holes—one never knows where they'll get to next. A London house for me, where there's children to look after!" The services were jubilant, and the great church beautifully adorned on Easter Sunday, and the choir warbled what poor Angus[13] used to call the "sensuous harmonies" of Gounod in their best style. Yet more children arrived after Easter, including three tomboy great-nieces of our host; and there were great games in the vast Baron's hall—roller-skating on the expanse of polished floor, and dancing to the rather inadequate strains of a wheezy gramophone which had suffered from the depredatory explorations of my lord of Arundel and Surrey and his sisters.
The Duke motored me up to London in Easter-week to attend Stafford's wedding in Eaton-square: masses of arums and Madonna lilies, tall upstanding plumes of Eton blue waving from the bridesmaids' heads, and the inevitable and inappropriate "O for the Wings of a Dove!" The Primate of All Ireland began his sermon by addressing the happy pair, with unnecessary intimacy, as "Eilleen and George";[14] and when he had finished we all trooped off to Grosvenor House. Duchess Millicent was ingreat beauty, but I was sorry to see Sutherland, with whom I talked for five minutes, looking very ill and almost voiceless.[15] We had a pleasant drive back to Arundel; and I was interested to notice what one never, of course, sees travelling by rail, how completely the scenery, the soil, even the appearance of the people, changed as we crossed the border from Surrey into Sussex.
I recall a luncheon about this time at a big London hotel—a snug little party of a hundred or so—with Lord Saye and Sele in the chair, and speeches from Lord William Cecil, Sir Henry Lunn, and others, about the development of China, and especially the projected Chinese university. The novel toast of the "President of the Chinese Republic" was replied to, in excellent English, by the Chinese Minister, Yew Luk Lin, next to one of whose two agreeable daughters I was seated: they were all three in Western garb. Next day my brother motored me down to Eton (always a pleasure to me) to see his boy there; we went on afterwards to Brooklands, and looked at the motors dashing round the track and the aeroplanes swooping round, rising and alighting, all new to me and very interesting. Another interesting evening was spent at the Albert Hall, at the annual demonstration of the Boys' Brigade, to which, after the drill and other performances, Prince Arthur of Connaught presented new colours, the gift of the Princess Royal. After this I had to go down to Ramsgate (though feeling far from fit) to give my last lecture at the Benedictine school and abbey there. I was interested in thechurch—Pugin's masterpiece, as he considered it himself, and thought it impressive, but so dark that I could not read my breviary in it at noonday.[16] The observance of the good monks was in some respects Italian (e.g. the reading in the refectory was in that language); but the schoolboys seemed quite British, and cheered my lecture with British heartiness. I should have liked to stay a little and enjoy the hospitality of my brethren in the pure air and sunshine of the Thanet coast; but I had to hurry back to London and submit to a serious medical overhauling, the net result of which was an order to go in for an immediate and drastic "cure"—if possible at Aix-les-Bains.[17] A friend's generosity made this feasible; and, duly authorized, I prepared to pass three weeks at the famous Savoy watering-place.
[1] The old man died in his hundredth year, after spending nearly a quarter of a century as a professed lay-brother in our abbey, whither he had come as a septuagenarian, by the advice of an episcopal cousin, to prepare for his end! Seepost, page260.
[2] Our friendship had lasted uninterruptedly for nearly forty years, and had now extended to two generations of her descendants.
[3] "There was an old maid of Carstairs,Whose villa required some repairs:When she asked if the plumberCould finishnext summer,He said he would be there for years!"
[4] My impression is that the "king of Britain" was a bit of a myth, and that the "Lucius" venerated at Chur was Saint Lucius of Glamorgan—called in Welsh "Lleurwg" or "Lleurfer Mawr"=the "Great Light-bearer," who, according to the Welsh tradition, was the founder of the Church of Llandaff and of others in South Wales.
[5] Sir William and some of his nearest relations formed a remarkable group of men who had won titles and honours in their various careers. His brother was created Baron Farrer; one brother-in-law was Sir Stafford Northcote, first Earl of Iddesleigh, and another was created Baron Hobhouse; his nephew was Lord Northcote, the first Governor-General of Australia; and he himself was given his knighthood at the first Jubilee of Queen Victoria.
[6] Three (of whom one, the destined Superior, unhappily died on the voyage out) were English nuns from Stanbrook Abbey, near Worcester: the remaining four were Brazilians, who had passed through their novitiate in the same convent.
[7] Our friendship had begun unconventionally. An anonymous article of mine, in a weekly paper, on my Eton schoolfellows, had mentioned Tom's father, Eustace Vesey, as "the dearest of them all." Tom, then himself a small Etonian, wrote to me through the publisher: I of course replied, and the friendship thus begun lasted through his school days, his rather meteoric time at Christ Church, and afterwards.
[8] Sister to my best and oldest Oxford friend, Willie Neville. Sir Arthur Bigge, private secretary successively to Queen Victoria, Edward VII., and George V., was raised to the peerage as Baron Stamfordham this year (1911).
[9] In the neighbourhood of Calgary. Nothing, however, came of the scheme.
[10] And domestic conditions, I may add, highly uncomfortable—far more so than in the prolonged strike some years later, for which people were more or less prepared. "I wonder, my lord," said a lady, visiting a bishop in his vast and unwarmed palace, "that you don't get some of that nice Welsh coal for your big house. I forget the exact name; I think it is calledanti-christcoal!"
[11] It was said to be the finest bit of scaffold-work ever put up. I secured an excellent photograph of it.
[12] Archbishop Bourne of Westminster had been created a Cardinal by Pius X. in the Consistory of November 27, 1911.
[13] "I never hear Gregorian music on earth," he said to me once, "but I trust I shall hear nothing else in heaven. There are 'many mansions' there, and I humbly hope thatmymansion will be as far removed as possible from 'Hummel in B flat'!"
[14] I mentioned this in my description of the wedding on our return to Arundel. The comment of one of our party, a lady rather "slow in the uptake" (as we say in Scotland) was, "But what did hemean? Whom was she leaningon? was itKingGeorge?"
[15] The Duke of Sutherland died about a year later.
[16] Pugin justified his love for "dim religious" churches with his usual delightful inconsequence. "In the thirteenth century," he said in effect, "no one thought of reading in church: they told their beads and made acts of faith and said their prayers.Mychurch is a thirteenth-century church, to all intents and purposes—ergo!"
[17] It was a case of "inflammatory gouty eczema," too long neglected.
The Lovat family were all interested in St. Vincent's Home for Cripples, near London, where a daughter of the house (a Sister of Charity) was a nurse; and I attended at their invitation a concert in aid of it, the day before I left London, at Sunderland House. The sumptuous ball-room, with its walls of Italian marble, heavily gilt ceiling, and chandeliers of rock crystal, made a handsome setting for a brilliant audience, which included Queen Amélie of Portugal. Her Majesty honoured me with a short conversation during the afternoon, and seemed interested to hear of my sojourn, some years before, in a Portuguese monastery (Cucujães), and of our charitable but eccentric neighbour there, the Condessa de Penha Longa.[1] The concert, which included two woebegone recitations from Mrs. Patrick Campbell, and a funny song written, composed, and sung by Cyril Maude—his first effort, he assured us, in that line[2]—was a success by which, I hope, the poor cripples benefited considerably.Next day I made a bee-line for the south of France, going through Paris without stopping. The season was hardly open in Aix-les-Bains; and the pretty town looked a littletriste, with many shops still shut up. But the spring weather was fresh and bright, and I was much in the open air between the stages of my "cure," which was fairly severe. I liked the friendly Savoyards, a pious and faithful race, though with such a reputation forgrumblingthat their own king (Victor Amadeus II.) said of them, "Ils ne sont jamais contents: s'il pleuvait de séquins, ils dirait que le bon Dieu casse leurs ardoises!" They did not, however, grumble in my hearing; and the portly curé of the new church on the hill, with whom I made friends, praised their simplicity and virtue. He organized various attractions during May in his church, whither I used to conduct some of my hotel-acquaintances after dinner, assuring them that they would be better entertained there than in losing their money on the "little horses" in the stuffy casino. One evening there would beprojections lumineuses, lantern-views of some of Our Lady's loveliest churches in France, or of the adventures of Joan of Arc, always with racy comments from his reverence; at another time aconférence dialoguée—thevicaire(disguised in a red muffler) propounding agnostic conundrums from a pew, and thecuréanswering them triumphantly from the pulpit, amid the plaudits of the congregation. He was a really excellent preacher; and his series of May sermons (which I insisted on my friends staying to hear) on "Les Péchés d'un homme d'affaires"—"de plaisir"—"d'État," and so on, were uncommonly practical as well as eloquent.Pentecost, a great popular festival here, was kept with piety as well as merriment. The church was crowded with communicants from daybreak: later on the Cardinal Archbishop of Chambéry (whom I had the pleasure of meeting at breakfast at the presbytery) came and confirmed a large number of children who had made their first Communions on Ascension Day, after himself giving them a pretty searching public examination in the catechism. The afternoon and evening were devoted to festivity—dancing, gymnastics, militaryretraites, fireworks, illuminations, and a sort of Greenwich Fair; all very gay and harmless.
The exigencies of my cure would not permit of distant expeditions to Anneçy, the Grande Chartreuse, etc., which I should have liked to visit. One interesting excursion I managed, to the Cistercian Abbey of Hautecombe, charmingly situated on a wooded promontory overlooking Lake Bourget. There was a resident community of thirty monks—the only one left in France under the then anti-Christian régime. They owed their exemption to the fact of their church being the Westminster Abbey of Savoy, containing some thirty tombs of the ancestors of the King of Italy, who had protested to the French Government against the expulsion of the guardians of the ashes of his ancestors; and so they were allowed to remain and serve God in peace. Unfortunately the fine twelfth-century church had been restored and re-restored in debased and florid fashion, a single chapel being all that was left intact of the pre-Revolution building.
I left Aix, much the better for my visit, at the end of May, travelling straight to Paris with twoladies—one an extraordinarily voluble Irish widow, in my carriage. The weather was hot; and I tired myself out with an exhaustive and exhausting visit to the Salon and the sculptures in the Champs Elysées. The picture of the year (surrounded always by a silent and interested crowd) was Jean Beraud's "New Way of the Cross,"[3] which, if it made only a percentage of French men and women realize what the public renunciation of Christianity meant, was calculated to do more good than many sermons. A week later I was at Keir, where I found some anxiety caused by the serious illness of Lovat, who was laid up with typhoid, and fretting at being unable, for the first time since the raising of the Lovat Scouts a dozen years before, to take command of the corps at their annual training. We enjoyed some lovely June weather at Keir, motoring one day to Stirling's picturesque lodge on Loch Lubnaig, and lunchingal frescoamong stonecrops and saxifrages and pansies, on a bank overlooking the loch and the purple mass of Ben Ledi. Another day we saw the smart little soldier-boys of Queen Victoria's School at Dunblane get their prizes from the Duchess of Montrose, with whose husband I had a chat about our Etonian days together,consule Planco.
I was bidden to Ampleforth for the jubilee celebrations there (their fine college had been opened in 1862), which was graced by the presence ofCardinal Bourne—a stately figure with his long scarlet train sweeping over the green lawns in the great open-air procession which was the central feature of the solemnities. The college O.T.C. formed an uncommonly smart bodyguard to his Eminence, though they puzzled, and even shocked, some of the old Benedictines present by remaining covered (in military fashion) during the service. The after-luncheon oratory was neither more nor less tedious than usual; but we all enjoyed later an admirable presentment by the boys ofThe Frogsof Aristophanes, with Parry's delightful music. I got back to Fort Augustus in time for the canonical visitation of the monastery by the Abbot-president, to whom I spoke of my hope that I might be allowed to return for a time to Brazil; but he replied to me, in effect, in the words of St. Sixtus to his faithful deacon,[4] and I could only resign myself with what grace I could to the inevitable. I learned on July 2, the thirty-second anniversary of my religious profession, that our prior's resignation of office, owing to his almost continual ill-health, had been accepted, and that I was to be appointed in his place. Meanwhile the Oxford Local Examinations called me (for the last time) to North Staffordshire, where it was pleasantly cool among the hills and wooded glens of Oakamoor. I spent a Sunday at Cheadle, in the valley below, and admired the graceful church which Pugin had been givencarte blancheby the "Good Earl of Shrewsbury" to build as he liked, with no fear of the "accursed blue pencil" (as he called it)which so often mutilated his elaborate designs.[5] "As attractive an example of the architect's skill as could be quoted," a severe critic[6] had called the Cheadle church; and the tribute was well deserved. Two days after my return to our abbey I was formally installed in office as prior, by my good friend the abbot of Ampleforth, with the same ceremonial which I had witnessed thirty-four years previously, when Dom Jerome Vaughan was inducted into office in the vaulted guard-room of the old Fort, afterwards incorporated into the monastic guest-house. The burden of superiorship, a heavy one enough, was lightened not only by the unanimous kindness of my own brethren, but by the cordiality with which my appointment was greeted by friends outside, including the bishop and clergy of our diocese of Aberdeen, who were the guests of the abbey for their annual retreat, a few days after my installation. A consoling message, too, came to me from the Holy Father himself through Père Lépicier, who had come from Rome in the quality of Apostolic Visitor to Scotland, and stayed with us for some days; a Franco-Roman diplomatist with the suavest possible manner and address, masking (it struck me) no little acuteness and a strong personality. His visit, and that of the diocesan clergy, coincided withSt. Oswald's Day, which we kept very happily, many of our neighbours in the village and district, including my old friend the parish minister, dining with us in the monastic refectory. A still older friend, George Lane Fox, sent me a cordial telegram; and I was able to send one in return congratulating him on the handsome testimonial he had just received on his retirement from a quarter of a century's office as Vice-chancellor of the Primrose League. A grief to us both, only a few days later, was the news of the death, at our abbey of Cesena in Italy, of his eldest son, who had been closely connected with Fort Augustus from his childhood, first as a little boy in the abbey-school, and later as a monk and priest of our community.
One of my first works as prior was to organize a work which we had very gladly undertaken—that of ministering as naval chaplains to ships in Scottish waters. The chief naval stations were Lamlash (Arran) in the south-west and Cromarty in the northeast; and thither certain of our fathers journeyed every week, meeting as a rule with every kindness and consideration from the captains and officers, and getting into touch with the considerable number of Catholic bluejackets on the various ships. Sometimes, between the Sundays, they found time to prosecute the quest, which was ever before us, for our church-building fund; and our good Father Odo, in particular, reaped quite a little harvest, during his Lamlash chaplaincy, in my native diocese of Galloway, where there were still kind friends who remembered me, and were glad to show sympathy with an object which I had so deeply at heart. Dom Odo was not only a zealous priest but anequally zealous antiquarian and F.R.S.A. (Scot.). He had specialized in artificial islands, about which he read an interesting paper this autumn at the British Association meeting at Dundee; and he was elected about the same time president of the Inverness Field Club, the premier scientific society of the north of Scotland. I record this with pleasure as an example (not, of course, an isolated one) of the Benedictine liberty which permits and encourages the members of our Order to cultivate freely—-apart from their professional studies and avocations—such tastes and talents as they may possess, and which, needless to say, greatly adds to the interest and variety of their lives.
My own life was of course, after my entering on the office and duties of prior, much more confined than heretofore to the precincts of our Scottish abbey. This was no additional burden to me; for my life, whether at Fort Augustus or Oxford or in Brazil, had always been a life in community; and I had always been happy and at home in the society of my brethren in the monastery. Perhaps the most tiring and trying feature in my position as superior was the never-ceasing correspondence of all kinds which it involved, and with which one had personally to grapple; but in other ways the wise subdivision of labour which prevails in a well-ordered religious house did much to lighten the daily burden, and the ready willingness in all quarters to afford whatever help and relief was needed was a constant solace and encouragement. The busy days thus passed quickly by, varied by the continual influx of guests—always interested and sometimes interesting—who were never wanting in our abbey.Our neighbours, too, were kind and friendly; and their motors were often at one's disposal for an afternoon's drive up one or other of the beautiful glens which ran westward from our Gleann Mhor, the Great Glen of all, to the sea. Then there were duties connected with the parish and district Councils, to which I was elected soon after becoming prior; and the constant interest of directing the plan of campaign in aid of our building-fund, and the satisfaction of seeing its steady increase. I recall, during those bright still days of late autumn (often the loveliest season of the Highland year), a retreat given us by an eloquent Dominican; and also a visit from Lady Lovat, who, as our founder's widow, enjoyed the privilege of entering the monastic enclosure with her "suite" (in this case her daughter-in-law, Lovat's wife, and a friend)—a formal enough affair, but of course novel and interesting to the ladies concerned. According to the quaint antique prescription, the great bell was tolled when they entered the cloister, warning the monks to remain in their cells: no meat nor drink could be served to them within the enclosure: they were to visit only the "public places" of the monastery, and were enjoined "not to gaze curiously about them." Lady Lovat would fain have lingered in our well-furnished library; but our little procession swept on relentlessly, and her literary longings remained ungratified.[7]
It was not, I think, until November of this year that I spent a night away from Fort Augustus, being bidden to Liverpool to keep, with a large gathering of his friends, the golden jubilee of our kind old friend Bishop Hedley. There was a High Mass, a sermon, and (of course) a festival dinner, with many speeches—prosy, melancholy, retrospective, or humorous, according to the mood or the idiosyncrasy of the several speakers. My brief oration, conveying the thanks of the guests, included two funny stories, which so favourably impressed one of the reporters, that he announced in his paper next day that "the honours of the evening's oratory undoubtedly rested with a venerable and genial monk from the other side of the Border!" I stayed at Glasgow on my way north, to take the chair at the annual festival of the Caledonian Catholic Association, an admirably beneficent institution in which I was glad to show my interest.[8] After the concert, and before the ball which followed, Stirling and I left for Keir in a hired motor-car, which broke down badly in the middle of Cumbernauld Muir, leaving usplantés-làtill past midnight. There was the residuum of a big shooting-party at Keir; and we all attended next day a vocal recital given in the old cathedral by "Mlle. Hommedieu"—an odd-sounding name: I wondered if she was "Miss Godman" in private life.
I had spent Christmas so often at Beaufort (noless than eleven times since 1893) that it seemed strange to be absent from there this year; but I had of course to preside at the solemnities in our own church, which (notwithstanding the appalling weather conditions) was crowded to the doors for the midnight services. We dined, as usual, in the vacant school refectory, gaily decorated, with a blazing log fire: there was an informal concert afterwards, and the festive evening was enjoyed by all. I made a Christmas call on my old friend Sir Aubone Fife,[9] whose annual quest for hinds had been interrupted by illness. He rented the winter shooting of Inchnacardoch Forest from Lovat, and spent every Christmas and New Yearsolusat our little hotel, content with his sport, his own society, and an occasional visit from me! He had comfortable bachelor quarters in Jermyn Street: London for him was bounded by Pall Mall and Oxford Street: his home and recreation were in his many clubs, and he always reminded me irresistibly of a twentieth-century Major Pendennis. I managed to put in two nights at Beaufort in Christmas week, receiving a hearty welcome from the merry party of Frasers and Maxwells assembled there, and returned to the abbey for New Year's Day, in time to take part in the various holiday entertainments—Christmas trees, theatricals, etc., organised for our good people. Twelfth-day I spent at Keir, preaching(seated, my usual practice now),[10] to a good congregation in the beautiful private chapel, which was almost complete; and before returning home I paid a little visit to Kelburn, where I found my poor brother-in-law in bed with a broken crown (having fallen downstairs!) but my nephew the flying-man apparently quite recovered, I was glad to see, fromhismore serious knock on the head at Bournemouth. I was pleased to hear from my gunner brother, who was staying at Kelburn, of his appointment—an excellent berth—as A.A.G. at the War Office.
The closing weeks of our long northern winter were exceptionally bleak and stormy this year; but constant occupation made them pass quickly enough. February 10 (St. Scholastica's Day), on which our good nuns kept high festival, and I officiated at their solemn services, was also the opening day of our salmon-fishing; and in the first haul we landed fifteen fish weighing just 250 pounds, the heaviest a beautiful 26-pounder. A salmon was always an acceptable present to a kind friend in the south: some we ate fresh (a welcome variation of our Lenten fare), and the rest we tried to kipper.[11] February 10 was otherwise memorable this year, as on that day I learned that our community was to elect its abbot a month later. We voted first on the important question whether the election should be for life, as provided in our Constitutions,or (by special indult of Rome) for a fixed term of years, which was the usual practice in the other houses of the Congregation. The votes—some sent by post and telegraph—were almost equally divided; and it was finally settled that the election should be for eight years. Nearly all our absentee monks arrived from missions, chaplaincies, and elsewhere, for thetractatus, or discussions preliminary to the election, which was fixed for Thursday in Passion Week, under the presidency of the abbot of Ampleforth. It took place after the customary mass of the Holy Spirit, and turned out a very brief affair, as I was elected by more than the requisite number of votes at the first "scrutiny," as it was called.[12] My confirmation and installation followed immediately—and then the letters and telegrams began pouring in, all requiring to be answered; but the roads and railways were providentially blocked for some days before Easter, by a March snowstorm of almost unprecedented violence, and our mail service was entirely suspended; so I got a little breathing time! Thus undistracted, I officiated at all the services of the season, celebrating on Easter Sunday amid rain, hail, and driving easterly gales that made the text of my Paschal sermon—"Jam hiems transiit, imber abiit et recessit,"[13] sound ironical enough. I spent an Eastertide Sunday at Keir, where spring had really set in, and while there made an expedition or two with an archæologicalenthusiast who was of our party: to Stirling Castle, much finer and more spacious than I had imagined; to the scanty remains—only the massive church tower and the old monastic dove-cot!—of the grand old abbey of Cambuskenneth; and to Doune Castle, where it was odd to come on workmen installing electric light in the venerable ruins in preparation for the coming-of-age of my Lord Doune, son of the "Bonnie Earl of Moray." I returned to Inverness just in time to attend the funeral of Andrew Macdonald, Sheriff-clerk of the county, a devout Catholic, and one of the oldest and most faithful friends of our abbey and community. There was a great gathering in the church and at the grave-side, and all seemed impressed by the solemn rites, and by the chanting of our monastic choir.
We were all busily occupied, during the next ten days, with preparations for the solemnity of my abbatial benediction, which took place on April 9, in presence of a large assemblage of invited guests and interested onlookers. It was a particular pleasure to me to receive the Church's benison at the hands of a friend of many years' standing, the venerable Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, whom I had known in old happy days at Mountstuart, as parish priest of Rothesay. Abbots Gasquet and Smith assisted the bishop; and Lovat and other friends were among the laymen who had their part in the august and impressive ceremony, which lasted for fully three hours. A hundred guests were entertained in our refectory; and I received many good wishes during the day, including telegrams from Cardinals Bourne and Merry del Val, Norfolk, Bute, and Charles Dalrymple, whose kindmessage gratified me as the only one received from any member of my family.[14] An informal concert in the evening, in the theatre-hall of the college, was a pleasant close to a memorable day.
An earlier date than might otherwise have been the case had been fixed for the abbatial election at Fort Augustus by the superiors of our Order, who desired that our abbey should be represented by its duly-constituted head at the great Benedictine gathering which was to take place in Italy this summer. The object of this assemblage, to which every abbot of Black Monks (Monachi Nigri) in Christendom received an invitation, was two-fold: first to assist at the consecration of the crypt of the church at Monte Cassino, the cradle of our venerable Order, after its complete restoration and decoration by the Beuron School of Benedictine artists; and secondly, to elect, in Rome, a coadjutor to the Abbot Primate of the Order, whose health had broken down. I went south in the last week of April, and after a flying visit to my sister in Surrey (where I said mass at the very pretty and well-kept church at Redhill), went on to stay with the French Benedictines at Farnborough, where two members of our Fort Augustus community were at that time in residence. They showed me much of interest, including the small museum of Napoleonic relics, and, of course, the crypt containing the massive granite sarcophagi containing the bodies of NapoleonIII. and his only son. It so chanced that the aged Empress (then in her eighty-eighth year) had been praying in the church when we entered it; and we saw her leaving in her carriage for her château a few hundred yards away. I thought, as I glanced at the frail shrunken figure leaning on her staff, of a summer day in Paris forty-eight long years before, when I had seen her, a radiant and beautiful vision, walking in the Tuileries gardens with her little son, amid the admiring plaudits of an apparently devoted people. The young prince was mounted on a sort of two-wheeled hobby-horse, gaily painted and gilt, and I asked my companion (a French lady) what it might be. "Ah!" she replied, "c'est une invention absolument nouvelle: cela s'appelle un' 'vé-lo-ci-pède'!" The only other occasion on which I ever saw the Empress was in Rome some ten years later, when she came, widowed and dethroned, to pay her respects to the venerable Pontiff Pius IX. I have described elsewhere[15] this memorable visit, which I was privileged to witness as being at that time a chamberlain on duty at the Vatican.
My friend MacCall, from Arundel, joined me at Dover, and we had a swift and uneventful journey to Venice (actually my first visit!) where I spent three crowded happy days—it was all I could spare—as the guest of an old Eton and Oxford friend in his delightfulpalazzoon the Rio Marin. I cannot attempt any description: what impressed me most vividly, perhaps, apart from the incomparable glories of S. Marco, was our visit, in the amber and purple twilight of a Venetian May-day, to our Benedictinechurch of St. George—its monastery (alas! almost derelict) and graceful rose-red campanile reflected in the deep azure of the lagoon. I regretfully left Venice that night, and travelling straight through Rome, in the company of abbots of various lands and languages, reached Cassino about mid-day, and was driven up the sacred mountain in a motor-car (an innovation since my last pilgrimage hither!) passing, at various turns of the excellent road, groups of peasants toiling up the rugged immemorial path to the monastery. We were welcomed by the kind abbot at the foot of the great staircase; and I was soon installed in a pleasant cell, with a view that almost took one's breath away over the wild and mountainous Abruzzi,[16] and the thin clear mountain air blowing in at one's window with delicious freshness.
I do not think I ever attended such a series of prolonged and stately church functions as during the week of our sojourn at Monte Cassino. The chiefs of our Order in various countries officiated in turn at the different solemnities; and we abbots (seventy or eighty of us) sat perched on hard and narrow benches, tier upon tier, on either side of the high altar. One day it was a solemn requiem mass for the deceased benefactors of our Order: another, the consecration by the Cardinal Legate representingthe Pope,[17] assisted by two Benedictine archbishops, of the three altars in the crypt (this ceremony alone lasted five hours, and almost finished me!), whilst on Sunday his Eminence conducted the solemn high mass and subsequent procession, the great church,cortilibeyond, and every available foot of space being occupied by an immense and devout crowd of gaily-dressed peasants, most of whom had slept on the bare ground in the open air on the previous night. On this crowning day we were more than three hundred in the vast refectory for dinner, at the end of which a choir of monks chanted with thrilling effect the mediævalLaudes, or Acclamations of Hincmar, in honour of our illustrious guests. Among these magnates was my old friend of early days in Brazil, Bishop Gerard van Caloen, whom I had not seen for sixteen years.[18] He had grown a long grey beard, and his eyes looked out through his spectacles as sad and inscrutable as ever.[19] I sat next him at theludus liturgico-scenicus, one of the diversions provided for us by the community: a grave musical setting of the life and death of Saints Benedict and Scholastica, so pathetic that I wept—to the surprise of my friend the bishop, who said he never knew that I was so tender-hearted! The play was presented by some of the young monksand their pupils (they had over two hundred in the abbey, including a lay boarding-school and two seminaries), and on another evening they gave us a really excellent concert of vocal and instrumental music. I do not know where space was found for playgrounds for all these boys, for there seemed really very little room on the mountain top for anything except the extensive buildings. The abbot of Downside, who was a great advocate of exercise, used to walk half-way down the hill and up again every day after dinner: it was, as far as I could discover, the only walk possible. In any case the available time for recreation between the long-drawn-out religious celebrations was short enough: it was a strenuous week, though a very interesting one, and rendered enjoyable by the unwearied attention which the good monks, one and all, showed to their numberless and no doubt occasionally troublesome guests. When all was over I left Monte Cassino in the pleasant company of my friend Abbot Miguel of S. Paulo, and travelled by an incredibly slow train to Rome, where we found a second Benedictine welcome of not less heartiness in the international abbey of St. Anselm on the Aventine Hill.