1908

I passed the closing days of the summer term of 1908 very pleasantly at Oxford, receiving many kindnesses from old friends, mingled with expressions of regret that my official connection with the university was approaching its close. I recall an interesting dinner-party at Black Hall, the Morrells' delightful old house in St. Giles's, where my neighbour was Miss Rhoda Broughton, at that time resident near Oxford. We talked, of course, of her novels; and the pleasant-faced, grey-haired lady was amused to hear that my sisters were not allowed to read Cometh Up as a Flower, and Red as a Rose is She[[1]] (considered strong literary food in the early 'seventies), until they "came out." Mrs. Temple, the archbishop's widow, was also a fellow-guest: she had taken a house in Oxford, close to "dear Keble"; but said that the noise and uproar emanating at night from the college of "low living and high thinking" was so great that she thought she would have to move. A member of the lately-established Faculty, or Institute, of Forestry, who was of our party, told us some "things not generally known" about trees, which I noted down. The biggest tree known in the world was, he said, not in America (what a relief!), but the great chestnut at the foot of Mount Etna, called the Chestnut of a Hundred Horses, with a trunk over 200 ft. round, and a hole through it through which two carriages can drive abreast. The biggest orange-tree known was, said our oracle, in Terre Bonne, Louisiana: 50 ft. high, 15 ft. round at base, and yielding 10,000 oranges annually. Finally, the most valuable tree in existence was the plane-tree in Wood Street, in the City, occupying a space worth, if rented, £300 a year—a capital value of £9,000 or thereabouts. All these facts I thought curious.

Term over, I stayed for a little time with a sister in Kensington Gore, very handy for Kensington Gardens, where I sat an hour or two every morning enjoying the fresh air and verdure of that most charming of "London's lungs," and surrounded by frolicking children, including my small nephew. One of his little playfellows, a grandson of Lord Portman, suddenly disappeared from the gay scene; I inquired where he was, and was told that he had gone for a rest-cure. "Great heavens!" I said, "a child of three!—but why, and where?"—"Oh," was the reply, "Master Portman was taking too much notice of the busses and motor-cars and such-like, and wouldn't go to sleep; so he is taking a rest-cure in his nursery at the top of the house, looking over the chimney-pots!" The modern child! but then I do not of course profess to understand infants and their ways and needs.

The White City, with its Irish village, and a notable exhibition of French and English pictures, was a great attraction this summer. A kind cousin motored me thither once or twice; and I met a little later at her house some pleasant Italian cavalry officers, smart in their Eton blue uniforms, who were going to jump at the horse-show at Olympia. I went, at their urgent invitation, to see their performance, and was both interested and impressed. As an exhibition of the art of show-jumping it seemed to me unsurpassable. The horse answered the very slightest movement of the leg or body of its rider, who, as he rose to each leap, was so perfectly pivoted on the insides of his knees that his balance remained absolutely unaffected. The French competitors combined pace and dash with their excellent horsemanship; and the finest horses were certainly those ridden by the English. But the cool, quiet, scientific, deliberate riding of the Italians, trained in the finest school in the world, made all their rivals seem, somehow, a little rough and flurried and amateurish; and they gained, as they undoubtedly deserved, the chief honours of the show.

The heat in July was great; and I was so depressed, visiting the great National Rose Show in the Botanic Gardens, by the spectacle of 100,000 once lovely blossoms hopelessly wilted and shrivelled, that I fled from London to a brother's shady river-side home near Shepperton. It was reposeful under the big elms overhanging his garden, to watch the boat-laden Thames gliding past; and another pleasure which I enjoyed whilst there was a quite admirable organ-recital given at a neighbouring church—Littleton, I think it was. The kind rector showed us round and gave us tea; and the sight of the many tattered regimental colours (Grenadier Guards and others) hanging on the church walls drew down upon him the following lines, which I sent him next day in acknowledgment of his courtesy:—

THE COLOURS

(Hung in churches: no longer [1908] taken into action.)

That rent is Talavera; that patch is Inkerman:
A hundred times in a hundred climes the battle round them ran.
But that is an ended chapter—they will not go to-day:
Hang them above as a link of love, where the people come to pray.

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