A New Medley of Memories

by Sir David Oswald Hunter Blair

S—— H——, whom I found waiting to see me when I got home from the Town Hall, told me that after two years in the Catholic Church he was thinking of returning to the flesh-pots of Anglicanism, and said (among other foolish things) that he had "a Renaissance mind!" I ventured to remind him that he had also an immortal soul. How to increase his income seemed his chief preoccupation; and he did not "see his way" (that fatal phrase again!) to do this as a "practising" Catholic.

Wilfrid Ward, the Editor of the Dublin Review, had recently started a "dining-and-debating-club" in London with a rather interesting membership; and I went up in November to read a paper on "Catholics at the National Universities." I was less "heckled" than I expected; but there was some "good talk" (as old Johnson would have said), and I enjoyed the evening. Less enjoyable was another evening spent with our Architectural Society at Oxford, to hear a lecture by Wells (fellow and future Warden) of Wadham, on "Tudor Oxford" an interesting topic, and treated by a man who knew his subject, but disfigured by strongly Protestant interpolations about monks, Jesuits, and "Bloody Mary," much out of place in an address to a quite "undenominational" society. It recalled another paper read to us on the inoffensive subject of "Bells." The reader on that occasion adroitly founded on the text of the inscriptions on church bells a violent diatribe against the invocation of saints and other "mediæval corruptions," to the intense annoyance of my little friend the Master of Pembroke (himself an Anglican bishop), who sat next me, and whom I with difficulty restrained until the end of the lecture from rising to protest, as he ultimately did with some warmth, against "turning an archæological address into a polemical sermon."

Term over, I made my way north to Beaufort, arriving there just in time to assist at the unveiling in the village square of Beauly, of the Lovat Scouts' Memorial, for which I had written the inscription.[[4]] A pretty function, with much local enthusiasm, an excellent speech from The Mackintosh, our new Lord Lieutenant, and of course the inevitable "cake and wine" banquet, at which I toasted Lovat. Christmas followed, with a big and merry family party, the usual seasonable revels, and some delightful singing from the wife of a Ross-shire laird, an American lady with a well-trained voice of astonishing sweetness and compass. The New Year found the whole country agog about the coming General Election; and at Arundel, whither I went from Beaufort, I heard Lady Edmund Talbot falsify Johnson's cynical dictum[[5]] by making an excellent speech on behalf of her husband, who was laid up in London. He retained his seat for Chichester by a good majority; and "dear little Wigtownshire" remained faithful to a lost cause, returning Lord Stair's eldest son.[[6]] But on the whole the "Radical reaction," "turn of the tide," "swing of the pendulum"—whichever you liked to call it—was complete, the very first victim of the débâcle being my brother-in-law, Charles Dalrymple, who was dismissed at Ipswich, after twenty years' service, by nearly 2,000 votes. He had been given a Privy Councillorship by the outgoing Government; but this poorly compensated him for being ousted from the House of Commons, which had been his "nursing mother" for nearly forty years.[[7]] Manchester was absolutely swept by the Liberals, poor Sir James Fergusson going to join his brother in limbo, and Arthur Balfour being beaten by a larger majority than either of them. The final result showed—Radical members returned, 378, against 156 Unionists. The new Ministry put educational reform in the front of their programme; and we Catholics, with a section of Anglicans (for they were by no means united on the subject), organized meetings in advance against the nefarious projects of the Government. I attended some of them, and heard many speeches, some of them terribly long and "stodgy." A Hampshire parson, by whom I sat at one of these dreary meetings, told me, by way of illustrating the educational standard of his peasant parishioners, that a bridegroom would thus render the promise in the marriage-service: "With my body I thee wash up, and with all my hurdle goods I thee and thou!" While the bride's version of her promise would be: "To 'ave an' to 'old from this day fortnight for betterer 'orse, for richerer power, in siggerness 'ealth, to love cherries and to bay!" I copied these interesting formulas into my note-book on the spot.

I was happily able to escape, at the end of term, from these political alarums and excursions to the Continent. I longed for Italy; but the friend who accompanied me (and financed us both) insisted on carrying me to Nice—a place I never loved; and it proved sunless, the palms shivering in a mistral and we shivering in sympathy. I used to escape the odious Promenade des Anglais (much more a Promenade des Allemands) by climbing the steep steps into old-world Nizza, and talking to the good simple folk, who (so the parish priest assured me) remained devout and pious, and wonderfully little affected by the manners and morals of the objectionable crowd which haunts Nice more than any other spot on the Côte d'Azur, except, I suppose, Monte Carlo. The latter resort we eschewed (my friend and host was no gambler), but we had many strolls through the toy-city of Monaco, where the tourist is little in evidence. I noticed, crowning the picturesque promontory, the new cathedral built by M. Blanc out of casino profits, which the ecclesiastical authorities accepted, I suppose, on the principle of the good old maxim, Non olet![[8]] We took a run to Milan before turning homewards, and after an hour in the cathedral—impressively vast, but not (to my thinking) impressively beautiful, either without or within—spent a long day in exploring the far more interesting churches of SS. Maurizio, Maria delle Grazie, Vittore, Lorenzo, Giorgio, and Ambrogio, every one well worth visiting, and the last-named unique, of course, in charm and interest.[[9]] Turin, where we stayed a day, was wet and cold; but the arcades which line the chief streets at least keep the rain off. At Paris the sun was actually shining, and the trees on the boulevards sprouting greenly. I read in the English papers here of the engagement of my nephew Kelburn (the family had only recently dropped the final e from both the title and the castle)[[10]] to a Miss Hyacinth Bell, whose pretty floral name conveyed nothing to me. The new Minister of Education[[11]] had also published his "Birreligious" Bill (as some wags nicknamed it): it seemed to satisfy nobody—least of all, of course, Catholics.

I spent Easter, as usual, at Arundel, where a gathering of Maxwells (the Duchess's young relatives) made the big house cheerful and homelike. The summer term at Oxford was an uneventful one, the most interesting event that I recall being our annual Canning and Chatham dinner, with a more distinguished gathering than usual. Lord Milner made a remarkable and interesting speech in reply to the toast of "The Empire," and "Smith of Wadham," M.P. (the future Lord Chancellor), was also very eloquent. The Duke of Leinster (then up at Balliol), who sat next me, spoke of the hereditary good relations between his family and Maynooth College, and amused me by saying that he thought it must be "much more interesting" to be a Catholic in England than in Ireland! I motored some of my young Benedictines over to Blenheim one day; and we were, with other sight-seers, escorted over the show-part of the palace. The little Duke burst in on us in one state-room, and retired precipitately, banging the door with an audible "D—n!" "His Grace the Dook of Marlborough!" announced, without turning a hair, the solemn butler who was acting as showman; and our party was, of course, duly impressed.

I was summoned this summer to three weddings, all of interest to me, the first being that of my nephew Kelburn, a pretty country function in Surrey. The Bishop of Worcester tied the knot—"impressively," as the reporters say (but why cannot an Anglican dignitary read the Bible without "mouthing" it?), and I afterwards found in his wife, Lady Barbara Yeatman-Biggs, an old friend of my childhood.[[12]] Many relatives, of course, were present here, and also, ten days later, in the Chelsea church where Archdeacon Sinclair ("genial and impressive," the newspapers called him) united my younger sister, en secondes noces, to Captain Cracroft Jarvis. I spent the evening of her wedding in the House of Commons, where I had a mind to see our famous new Radical Parliament-men gathered together. A very "scratch lot" they seemed to me to be; and Archbishop Walsh of Dublin, whom I found beside me in the D.S.G., seemed as little impressed as myself by their "carryings-on." His Grace was so pleased with Carlyle's definition, or description, of the House, which I quoted to him (he was apparently unfamiliar with it), that he promptly copied it down in his note-book: "a high-soaring, hopelessly-floundering, ever-babbling, inarticulate, dumb dark entity!"

My third wedding was a picturesque Irish one—that of Ninian Crichton Stuart to Lord Gormanston's only daughter, with, of course, a large party of Butes and Prestons gathered at Gormanston Castle, a huge pile mostly modern; but the quaint little chapel, Jacobean Gothic without and Empire style within, gaily adorned with lilies, marguerites, and trailing smilax, dates from 1687.[[13]] It was far too small to hold the wedding guests, who perforce remained on the lawn outside. I walked with our host, later in the day, in the splendidly timbered park, and the great picturesque untidy Irish garden; and he held forth on the hardship of having to live uncomfortably in Ireland after the luxury of Colonial governorships. "Ireland! a rotten old country, only fit, as some one said, to dig up and use as a top-dressing for England!" was the summing-up of his lordship, whose ancestors had owned the land on which we were walking for some seven centuries.[[14]] I thought his bemoanings rather pathetic; but he amused me by his recital of a prescription for "The Salvation of Ireland" which once appeared (anonymously) in a northern newspaper. "Drain your Bogs—Fat more Hogs—Lots more Lime—Lots more Chalk—LOTS MORE WORK—LOTS LESS TALK!"

I returned to Oxford in time for Commemoration, at which Lord Milner and Mgr. Duchesne, two of our be-doctored guests, were very warmly received; attended the big luncheon in All Souls' library, where the agreeable ladies who sat on my right and left were totally unknown to me; and drank coffee in the sunlit quad, where a band played and I met many friends. Next day I took ship at Southampton (a noisy, shaky, creaky ship it was) for Guernsey, on a visit to my brother, who was in command of the Gunners there. I thought the approach to the island very pretty on a still summer morning: quaint houses and church towers climbing the hill among trees and gardens, with a foreground of white sails and blue sea. Very pretty too was "Ordnance House" and its old garden, with hedges of golden calceolarias and other attractions. I spent a pleasant week here, delighted with the rocky coast (reminding me of my native Wigtownshire) and the luxuriant gardens, especially that of the Lieutenant-Governor, whose charming house (he occupied Lord de Saumarez's seat) was full, as was to be expected,[[15]] of beautiful naval prints and other relics. Of a morning I would walk down to Fort Cornet—part of it of great antiquity—and watch my brother's guns at sea-target practice, till my head ached with the roar and concussion. The shooting was excellent, but the electric firing-apparatus occasionally went wrong, which might be awkward in battle! I was interested in the fine fifteenth-century parish church of St. Peter-Port, of flamboyant Gothic: the effect of the interior nave-arches rising almost from the ground, with hardly any pillars, is most singular.

I had to hurry back to "the adjacent island of Great Britain" (as the Cumbrae minister put it),[[16]] to attend the jubilee dinner in London of St. Elisabeth's Catholic Hospital, with Norfolk in the chair: a great success, owing, I think, to the unusual circumstance that dinner and wine were provided gratis, the result being much-enhanced subscriptions from the grateful banqueters. I was present a little later at the coming-of-age celebrations of Lord Gainsborough's son and heir at Campden, the beautiful Jacobean family seat on the Cotswold slopes. We sat down seventy to dinner on the evening of Campden's birthday; and the youth acquitted himself excellently of what I consider (and I have had some experience of majority banquets, including my own) one of the most embarrassing tasks which can fall to any young man's lot. I, being unexpectedly assigned the easier duty of replying for the visitors, utilized the admirably appropriate opening which I had heard not long before from the witty and eloquent American Ambassador,[[17]] at the dinner of the Royal Literary Fund, and which was not a "chestnut" then, whatever it may be now.