CHAPTER VIII
1908-1909
I spent the Christmas of 1908, as usual, very pleasantly at Beaufort. For the first time for many years the family was absolutely au complet: the services of the season in the beautiful chapel were well attended; and I sympathized with the happiness of my kind hostess, as she knelt at the altar at midnight mass surrounded by all her children, without exception. There were grandchildren, too, of all ages, who amused themselves vastly in spite of appalling weather, rain, snow, frost, thaw, and gales, following one another in rapid and unwelcome succession. The children acted a pretty and touching miracle-play, the hand-painted programme whereof still adorns my scrap-book; and there were seasonable revels of various kinds. At New Year somebody announced that 1909 was to be a great year of anniversaries, 1809 having been annus mirabilis. We remembered (with difficulty) eight celebrities born that year—Mendelssohn, E. Barrett Browning, Darwin, Tennyson, O. Wendell Holmes, Lord Houghton, W. E. Gladstone, and Abraham Lincoln, but could think of no others. This reminded some one else that I. Disraeli called thirty-seven the "fatal age of genius," four great men (among others) who died at that age having been Raphael, Mozart, Byron and Burns. I wound up with a statement new, I think, to everybody, viz., that Saturday was the fatal day of the week to the English Royal Family (Hanoverian Line). I have not followed the matter down to quite recent times; but it is undoubtedly singular that William III., Queen Anne, George I., II., III., and IV., the Duchess of Kent, the Prince Consort, and Princess Alice all died on a Saturday.
I stayed at Loudoun Castle on my way south, finding there a big party of young men and maidens—Howards of Glossop, Hastings', Bellasis', Beauclercs, and Bethells, gathered for an Eglinton Hunt Ball (recalling the days of my youth). Nearly all were Catholics, so I had quite a congregation in the little chapel, redecorated (with the rest of the castle) since my previous visit. I was back in Oxford before the middle of January for the Lent term, to me always a more interesting period than the golden weeks of summer, when everybody's heads seemed to be full of nothing but amusement and sport. Our Sunday conferences were given this term by Father Kenelm Vaughan (the late Cardinal's missionary brother), who used to arrive for the week-ends with no luggage save a little well-worn Bible hanging from the girdle of his cassock and (possibly) a toothbrush in his pocket. If there ever was a man who lived entirely in "a better country, and that an heavenly," it was Kenelm. Like all the Vaughans, he was of striking appearance; and his personality, as well as his appealing eloquence, made a great impression on his young hearers, although his unconventional sayings and doings had an occasionally disconcerting effect on our good host and his guests, which used to remind me of Jerome's "Man in the Third Floor Back." Wilfrid Ward was with us for a day or two, with a great flow of conversation, chiefly about himself. He read an interesting paper to our Newman Society on "The Writing of the Apologia"—anticipatory gleanings, of course (if the phrase is permissible), of his great forthcoming biography, and including several of the Cardinal's unpublished letters. There was a record meeting of the Society a little later, to hear W. H. Mallock on (or "down on") Socialism. Many dons of note were present, and there was a brisk debate, W. H. M. holding his own very well. At supper afterwards I ventured to remind him of two sentences of his (I forget from which of his writings) which had given me much pleasure:—
"The Catholic Church is the Columbus of modern society, who will guide us eventually to the new moral continent which other explorers are trying in vain to reach."
"An aristocracy is the best of all possible orders, in the worst of all possible worlds."
Our good Monsignore was nominally at home during these weeks, but in a restless and excitable state. He would exhaust himself by feverish energy at golf for a day or two, then rush off in his motor, "for change," with valet and chauffeur, and return more tired than he had gone away. He attended one evening a big golfing-dinner at the Master of University's: dined well (according to his own account), drank hock, old port, and Benedictine, came home and rolled about all night in indescribable agony. Most of his duties he delegated to me, including, sometimes, the task of "interviewing" bewildered Catholic parents, to whom Oxford university life was an absolute terra incognita, and who were puzzled or anxious about their sons' doings. Poor Lady E—— B——! I remember still the dismay with which she came to tell me how her boy had made friends in college with an Egyptian Moslem ("an unbaptized heathen Turk," was her description of him), and was bent on taking "digs" (lodgings) with him in the following term. I felt sympathy with the Catholic mother in her instinctive dislike to this prospect; but I felt none with the indignation of another parent (a distinguished diplomatist) at the refusal of one of the most sought-after colleges to admit his son. The fact was, as I had, after due inquiry, to explain tactfully to the aggrieved parent, that the youth (a pupil of one of our smaller Catholic schools) gave himself, at the preliminary interview with the college authorities, such "confounded airs" (as one of the dons expressed it) that they would have nothing to say to him. Probably the poor lad's "airs" were only one of the many forms in which extreme shyness manifests itself; anyhow it is fair to add that this was an exceptional case, and that our Catholic freshmen, as a whole, made a favourable impression by their good manners and modesty of demeanour. One Head, who had no sympathy at all with the Catholic religion, told me that so pleased was he with the Catholic contingent in his college, that he would willingly admit as many more as I cared to recommend to him.
Of events of general interest this spring, I recall a fascinating lecture by Sven Hedin on his Tibetan travels. The eminent explorer had a bumper audience and a great reception, and was given an honorary degree by Convocation next day. Kennard and I agreed in resenting his arrogant and bumptious manner; and the tone of some of his remarks might have prepared us for the outburst of anti-English fanaticism for which he made himself notorious a few years later. There was a big gathering at the Schools one evening in celebration of the centenary of Darwin. The oratorical tributes and panegyrics were, as usual, so lengthy as to become wearisome; but an interesting feature was the presence of three of Darwin's sons, of whom one (Sir George) gave us some pleasant personal details and reminiscences of his distinguished father. His affectionate loyalty to a parent's memory one can sympathize with and understand; but I confess that, reading the "pulpit references" to the centenary that week, I was puzzled to comprehend how Christian ministers could "let themselves go" in indiscriminating panegyric of a man of whom I hope it is not uncharitable, as it is certainly not untrue, to say that he was, if any man ever was, a self-confessed unbeliever in revelation and in Christ.[[1]] The utterances on such an occasion of a distinguished occupant of the university pulpit a generation earlier[[2]] would certainly have been pitched in a different key; and so would those of my old friend Dr. Frederick George Lee, whose summary of the logical result of Darwin's teaching was—
The Incarnation is but a dream, the Supernatural a delusion. Our only duties are to feed and to breed. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.
I received into the Church this term an undergraduate of one of the smaller colleges, who was reading for natural science honours and rowed in his college boat; but he had evidently had time for reading and reflection as well, and had thought the whole matter out so carefully that I had little left to do. In order to keep him back at the eleventh hour, his tutor (an Anglican divine of some repute) kept propounding to him historical difficulties such as "How was it that Henry of Navarre was allowed by the Pope to have two wives at once?" and so on. My young friend used to bring me these nuts to crack, and we had a good deal of fun over them.
It was proposed, and decided, before Easter that Oxford should send a representative to Louvain in the summer, to take part in the jubilee celebrations of the Catholic University. Cambridge, London, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and, I believe, other universities, had all elected, as a compliment to Louvain, to send a Catholic representative on this occasion; and the senior proctor told me that my name had been mentioned before the Council in this connection. Oxford, however, declined to associate itself with the other universities in this graceful act of courtesy—one which, as I heard privately from Louvain, was very highly appreciated there. A clergyman of the Church of England was nominated as the Oxford representative; and to a letter of remonstrance which (after consulting one or two of our resident masters) I sent to the Vice-chancellor, he replied by a courteously-worded note of explanation—which explained nothing.
Early in March I paid an interesting little visit to Douai Abbey, in the beautiful wooded country about Pangbourne, and lectured to the community and their eighty pupils on Jerusalem. I had a warmly Benedictine welcome here, and was glad to see additions being made to the buildings of the former diocesan college of Portsmouth, which the bishop had made over to the monks when they were expelled from their beloved home at Douai, by decree of the French Government dated April 3, 1903. Term over, I went up to Yorkshire to spend St. Benedict's festival with my brethren at Ampleforth, where I found myself deputed that evening to present the football colours in the college. They were scarlet and black; but while reminding the young players that those were the traditional colours of Mephistopheles, I disclaimed any intention of suggesting a common origin. My stay here was saddened by the rather unexpected news of the death of my dear old friend George Angus of St. Andrews. He had long been the only Catholic member of his Oxford Hall; and exactly a week before his death I had had, by a consoling coincidence, the pleasure of reconciling to the Catholic Church an undergraduate of the same venerable foundation.
I stayed a night in London, on my way to Arundel, to hear Lord Hugh Cecil discourse at our Westminster Dining-club, with his usual perfervid rhetoric, on "Some Diseases of the House of Commons." Two of our University Members, Sir William Anson and Professor Butcher, joined in the interesting subsequent discussion. A friend next morning insisted on carrying me off to Selfridge's, the huge new emporium in Oxford Street, and showing me all over it. He amused me by a story of how there, or in some other Brobdingnagian London store, the electric light suddenly went out, just at the busiest hour of the evening. "There they were—thousands of 'em," the narrator of the incident is supposed to have said, "pinching the goods right and left—'aving the time of their lives, with not a light in the 'ole place; and there was I—just my blooming luck—where do you think? in the grand piano department!"
I went for the week-end to Rickmansworth, to stay with Lady Encombe, who had a little party for the laying of the foundation-stone of the new church of the Assumptionists. The Bishop of Kimberley (S.A.) gave a nice address. I preached next day (Sunday) in the old church, and in the evening we all listened to a quaint Franco-English sermonette from good Fr. Julian, the superior. Monday was Jack Encombe's tenth birthday: I gave him Jorrocks, with coloured plates, which delighted him; saw him and his brother start hunting on their ponies (their mother following them awheel); and then left for Arundel, where I was very glad to find myself (though not yet fully robust) able to take my share in the solemn Easter services. I found the castle grounds at length "redd up" and in perfect order; the hordes of workmen vanished, and lawns and terraces and shrubberies and flower-beds twinkling in the April sunshine. It was a joy to see the beautiful home of the Howards looking itself again after all these years of reconstruction and upheaval. The Duke had told me that he was determined to get the place shipshape within a year of his second marriage, or (like Trelawny) "know the reason why!" and he had been as good as his word. I heard with pleasure in Easter week that my nephew had got his first in moderations at Balliol; and with sorrow of the death of my kind old friend Bishop Wilkinson, successor of St. Cuthbert as Bishop of Hexham, and a shining example of loyalty and devotion to his Church and his country. I lunched in London, on my way to Oxford, with Lady Maple, at Clarence House, the pretty residence in Regent's Park left to her by Sir Blundell Maple. Telephoning previously to "Clarence House" to inquire the luncheon-hour, I was informed in haughty tones that "their Royal 'Ighnesses were in Egypt, and that nothing was known about any luncheon!" It turned out that I was in communication with the other Clarence House, the St. James's residence of the Duke of Connaught.
My first duty, on returning to Oxford, was to marry my cousin John Simeon,[[3]] until recently an undergraduate of the House, to Miss Adelaide Holmes à Court. My little sermon at the Jesuit church (which was almost filled with the wedding guests) was not intended to be otherwise than cheerful, and I was surprised in the course of it to observe the unusual phenomenon of the bridegroom's father dissolved in tears! The happy couple motored off later to North Wales in a downpour of rain, which (I heard) never once stopped during their brief honeymoon.
Father Maturin (whose repute as an orator had been long established in Oxford) was giving our weekly conferences this term, and I was greatly struck with them—packed close with thought and luminous argument, and scintillating besides with genuine eloquence. I had heard many of his pulpit orations, but I thought this series of lectures the finest thing he had ever done, though perhaps slightly over the heads of his undergraduate auditors. I was myself fully occupied at this time with a long article (biographical and critical) on St. Gregory Nazianzene,[[4]] which, by a happy coincidence, I completed on May 9, the feast-day of that great saint and doctor. I took two days off for a visit to Cambridge (my first for fourteen years) in connection with the Fisher Society dinner, at which I represented Oxford and the "Newman." Some distinguished guests—a Cardinal, a judge, an author, and a statesman—failed us at the last moment; but the gathering was cheery and successful and the after-dinner oratory much less wearisome than usual. I visited, of course, while at Cambridge, the really noble Catholic church of Our Lady—finer, I thought (as I had thought before), and more impressive outside than in. I remembered that the great church of St. John at Norwich had given me precisely the contrary impression.
I was always bidden to (and pleased, when I could to attend) the numerous weddings of my youthful relatives. One, in these early summer days, was that of my pretty cousin, Eleanor Bowlby, to a Dorrien-Smith, heir-apparent to the "King of Scilly," as his sobriquet was, though I believe his proper local title was "Lord Proprietor." I sat at the ceremony next to my brother-in-law Charles Dalrymple, who did not approve of the ever-popular "O for the Wings of a Dove!" which a little chorister warbled in the course of the service. "Absurd and unreal!" I heard him mutter. "They are going to Paris for their honeymoon, and don't want doves' wings, or to be at rest either."[[5]] On the same evening I attended, at the invitation of the genial head master of University College School (whom I had known when on the staff of Inverness College), an excellent presentation of Alcestis in the fine oak-panelled hall of his school at Hampstead. Not all the audience witnessed dry-eyed the death of the poor heroine; the sustained pathos, too, of Admetus was admirably portrayed; but the chief honours of the evening fell to a young hero of six-foot-four, who had played great cricket for the school against the M.C.C., and was a most doughty and convincing Herakles. A very pleasant evening's entertainment, which I had to abandon not quite completed to catch the midnight train to Oxford; for I was interested in a debate in Convocation next day, on the perennial problem of how and where to house the ever-increasing thousands of books accruing to the Bodleian Library. There were some drastic suggestions thrown out—one, if I remember right, was to make a bonfire of all the obsolete works on theology, philosophy and natural science! but our final decision was to adopt somebody's ingenious proposal to excavate underground chambers, with room for a million or so volumes, under the grass-plots round the Radcliffe camera. This point settled, I went to lunch with my friend Hadow in his rooms at Worcester, the former calefactory or recreation-room (so he said) of our whilom Benedictine students, and looking out on a long narrow raised garden which there is reason to believe was once the monastic bowling-green. I thought, as often before, of the many unknown nooks and corners in this dear Oxford of ours, each bearing its silent witness to some phase of her "strange eventful history."
A few interesting incidents in this—my last summer term in residence—come back to me as I write. I recall a crowded meeting at the Town Hall enthusiastically cheering a vitriolic attack on the Admiralty by "Lieutenant Carlyon Bellairs, M.P., R.N." (a most un-sailor-like person); a paper, or rather a harangue, at the Newman Society, from Hilaire Belloc on "The Church and Reality," which left us gasping at his cleverness but rather doubtful as to his drift; and an odd meeting of dons and dignitaries at Hertford College, whereat Lord Hugh Cecil was accepted as prospective Parliamentary candidate for the university. I have called it "odd"; for odd it certainly was to hear the Master of University, who proposed Lord Hugh, assert that he did so in spite of his own profound disagreement with him on fiscal, ecclesiastical, and educational questions! As a matter of fact, it mattered little what the Master of University or anybody else thought, said, or did; for as every one knew that the six hundred clerical members of Convocation would vote for Lord Hugh to a man, his election was of course a foregone conclusion.
My last evening at Oxford was a happy one: a pleasant party gathered round the Vice-chancellor's hospitable table, and after dinner the Commemoration concert at Magdalen, Waynflete's ancient hall echoing with old madrigals perfectly rendered by the unrivalled choir, and we guests, during the interval, flitting about the cloisters, dimly lit with Chinese lanterns, and set out with tables of refreshments. I left Oxford next day for Birmingham, for a jubilee celebration at the Oratory School—a solemn memorial service in the fine church, an admirable representation of Terence's Phormio (as arranged by Cardinal Newman), and a prize-distribution presided over by the Duke of Norfolk. The Duke was next day the chief guest at an Oxford and Cambridge Catholic graduates' dinner in London, and proposed the toast of Oxford University, to which I had the pleasure of replying. I took occasion to point out our guest's new and close family connection with Oxford, where he had recently had three nephews, while two more were shortly going up. His own father, the previous Duke, had been a Cambridge man. London was so sultry during these midsummer days, that it was pleasant to find oneself transported to the Antarctic Circle, listening (at the Albert Hall) to Shackleton's fascinating narrative of his trip to the South Pole. His great lantern pictures made one feel almost cool: and the groups of solemn penguins, in their black-and-white, pacing along the snowy shores, were quite curiously reminiscent of a gathering of portly bishops—say at a Pan-Anglican Congress.
I refused to stay in London (as I had proposed doing) to attend an international anti-vivisection meeting in Trafalgar Square, when I found that I was expected to speak (from the back of a lion?). I fled to Surrey, to stay first with my sister at her newly-acquired home near Reigate, a pretty old house in a "careless-ordered garden" of which Tennyson would have approved; and then to the Kennards at their charming Elizabethan manor-house of Great Tangley. The Sunday of my visit here I spent partly at the fine diocesan seminary of Wonersh, and partly at the Greyfriars monastery at Chilworth. The same architect had designed the chapels at both; and I admired the skill with which he had achieved extremely effective results by entirely different methods of treatment. From Surrey I travelled to Scotland, to preach a charity sermon at Saltcoats, in Ayrshire, for the excellent work of the Society of St. Vincent of Paul. Saltcoats was within easy reach of Kelburn, and I went thither for a short visit, finding my sister enjoying what was always one of the chief pleasures of her life—that of having helped to secure the happy engagement of one of our numerous nieces, the elder daughter of my third brother.
My Oxford Local Examination work lay this summer not among the little maidens of Dumfries Convent School, but at St. Wilfrid's College at Oakamoor, in the picturesque Staffordshire Highlands, a country quite new to me. My room commanded a lovely view of wooded glens and distant purple hills; and the place itself was full of interest, incorporating as it did the old house of Cotton Hall, given by Lord Shrewsbury fifty years before to Faber and his "Wilfridian" community, most of whom joined the Oratory after their conversion to Catholicism. I admired Pugin's church, at once graceful and austere, with the famous east window which the architect told Lord Shrewsbury he "could die for."[[6]] I had a pleasant week here, presiding on the last day at the school prize-distribution, and promising the boys a new set of Scott's novels, to replace the one which, I was glad to see, was worn out with assiduous reading.
Going on to Cardiff from Staffordshire, I found Lady Bute entertaining the Cymnodorion and other mysterious Welsh societies in the castle grounds. I was lodged in the lofty clock-tower, in one of Burges's wonderful painted chambers, and said mass for the family and large house-party on Sunday in the richly-decorated but tiny domestic chapel—so tiny (it has been the dressing-room of Bute's grandfather, who died there) that most of my congregation were outside in the passage, and the scene recalled my mass in the Grotto of the Nativity at Bethlehem eight years before. I had never thought to see a Pageant again; but the Welsh one, for some reason, had been postponed to this summer, and we all attended the opening representation on July 26, most of our house-party, indeed, taking part in the show. Lady Bute was Dame Wales, and Lady Ninian Stuart Glamorgan; but the great reception of the day was reserved for Lord Tredegar, veteran of Balaclava, and the most popular magnate of Wales, who came on in full armour as Owen Glendower, with Lady Llangattock as Lady Glendower. I thought the finest feature of the Pageant the singing of the national hymn, "Hen Wlad fy nhadau," at the close, actors and audience all joining in the stirring chorus with thrilling effect. Most of the next day we spent at Caerphilly Castle, whither Princess Louise and the Duke of Argyll came to explore the imposing ruins.
I spent a couple of nights, on leaving Cardiff, at Belmont Priory, full to me of old Benedictine memories; and in August I was once more my brother's guest at his pleasant river-side home near Shepperton. One day we devoted to a visit to Hampton Court—my first, curiously enough. We saw everything conscientiously, great hall, state-rooms, pictures (I had not expected so many good ones), big vine, and Dutch garden; but I think I was most struck, entering Clock Court under the red turreted tower, with the almost uncanny likeness of the place to the familiar School-yard at Eton.[[7]] From Shepperton I presently moved higher up the river to Goring, to attend the local regatta, of which my kind host there was secretary and treasurer. He was likewise the leading Catholic of the little mission, and had given up his commodious boat-house to serve as a chapel till the pretty church was built. The padre at that time was a German priest called Hell (to which he later added an e for euphony), while the name of the Anglican vicar, oddly enough, was Dams! My host's son accompanied me up to town on an excursion to the White City, where the outstanding attraction (how strange it seems to-day!) was the aeroplane in which Blériot had achieved the unprecedented feat of crossing the Channel. London struck me as a curious place in mid-August: a city of aliens and country visitors, French and German chattered everywhere, and the only familiar face among the millions that of Simon Lovat, whom I came across at Hatchard's buying books.
George Lane Fox claimed my services as chaplain, before I returned to Scotland, at Monkhams, the pretty place near Waltham Cross where he was then living with his family; the house stood atop of a high hill (pleasantly cool in these sultry August days), and was quite rural, though the Lights o' London were clearly visible at night not many miles away. There was a tiny chapel for our daily services, and a big scouts' camp in the park close by, whence a quota of young worshippers turned up for Sunday mass. George took me to see the noble church at Waltham (surely one of the finest Norman naves in England),[[8]] and, across the Lea, the beautiful and still perfect Eleanor Cross in the market-place, before I went north to pay a few farewell visits to Scottish relatives, in view of my approaching departure for South America. At Blairquhan I found my brother entertaining his customary August party, with, as usual, a considerable naval contingent. The weather was "soft"—in other words, it rained every day and all day; but people shot, fished, golfed, motored and played tennis quite regardless of the elements. My brother had developed a passion for mechanical music; and the house was continuously resonant with the weird strains of pianolas, gramophones and musical boxes. There was music, too, of a strenuous kind when I reached Dunskey in preparation for an amateur concert for some good object (I forget what) at Portpatrick. My brother-in-law, David Glasgow, sang a naval song or two with astonishing vigour and sweetness for a man of seventy-six; I contributed "The Baby on the Shore," which I had first sung on the old Magdalena going out to Brazil in 1896; and the entertainment was so successful that an overflow concert had to be arranged for the following evening. I was sorry to leave the merry and pleasant party; but I was due at Aberdeen to assist at the presentation of his portrait to our kind old friend Bishop Chisholm, on the occasion of his sacerdotal golden jubilee. The presentation ceremony took two hours, and the luncheon afterwards two hours more! Why is there no time-limit to the oratory on such occasions? I contrived to propose the health of the whole Hierarchy of Scotland[[9]] in exactly six minutes (one minute for each bishop); but the length of some of the speeches was appalling. Next day I went on to Fort Augustus, where I found myself, after a quarter of a century, "presiding" (as the phrase is) again at the organ, our organist being away on a walking tour among the hills. In the week after my return our local games (the Gleann Mhor Gathering) came off in glorious weather. Motors from neighbouring lodges occupied the monastic lawns: the Chief of Glenmoriston and other noted highlanders were acting as judges; and "quite a special feature (so said one of the reporters) was given to the gay scene by the black-robed monks, who flitted [I like that word] hither and thither with a word of welcome for all." As a matter of fact, one of our community (a Macdonell, to wit) was the moving spirit of the Gathering, the success of which was in great measure owing to his efforts and enthusiasm.
[[1]] I would not venture to make such a statement except on the best authority—Darwin's own words. See Appendix.
[[2]] Dean Burgon. See ante, page [104].
[[3]] His grandfather, Sir John Simeon, M.P. for the Isle of Wight, had married my father's cousin, one of the Colvilles of Culross. They were both converts to the Catholic Church. Johnnie succeeded his father as fourth baronet in 1915.
[[4]] For the Catholic Encyclopædia (vol. vii., pp. 10-14).
[[5]] The most inappropriate wedding-anthem I ever heard was at a smart marriage in Scotland; it was sung by a lady, and was called, "With thee th' unsheltered moor I tread!"
[[6]] Pugin's ecstatic allusion was, of course, to the tracery of the window designed by himself, not to the (contemporary) stained glass, which is in truth laid à faire frémir.
[[7]] The likeness was the more remarkable in view of the fact that there is a difference of eighty years in the respective dates (Eton c. 1440, Hampton Court, c. 1520) of the two buildings.
[[8]] George was greatly amused with a description which I afterwards sent him from a fifty-year old church paper, of a Victorian "restoration" of this fine old church. There were oak choir-stalls (so wrote the aggrieved reporter), but no choir, the stalls being occupied by fashionably-dressed ladies. The only ornament of the restored sanctuary was a gigantic Royal Arms under the East Window—"a work in which the treatment of the Unicorn's tail is especially remarkable for what Mr. Ruskin would call its 'loving reverence for truth.'"
[[9]] I amused the company, in this connection, with the tale of the undergraduate who was asked in an examination to enumerate the Minor Prophets. "Well," said the youth after some hesitation, "I really do not care to make invidious distinctions!"