Perhaps when all is quiet, and the moon looks through the pane,
Under that shred the splendid dead are marshalled once again,
And hear the guns in the desert, and see the lines on the hill,
And follow the steel of the lance, and feel that England is
England still.
I found it very little cooler in Yorkshire than in London; but there were noble trees and welcome shade in the beautiful park of Langdon, near Northallerton, where I spent some July days, in an atmosphere a thought too equine for my taste; however, my kind hosts (the Fifes) were as fond of their flowers as of their horses, and were busy adding wildernesses and rockeries and other informal beauty-spots to the formal gardens of their new home, which they had recently bought from Lord Teignmouth. I was driven over one day to see the Hospital of St. John of God at Scorton, where a hundred inmates, all crippled or disabled, were tended with admirable care and devotion by a religious brotherhood. A local clergyman, I remember, dined with us that evening at Langdon—a man whose mission, or hobby, seemed to be to collect and retail such odd and out-of-the-way facts as one finds in the statistical column of Tit-Bits. In the course of the evening he informed us (1) that a pound of thread spun by a silkworm will make a thread 600 miles long; (2) that there are in the skin of the average man 2,304,000 pores; and (3) that about 30,000 snails are eaten every day in the city of Paris. What one feels about such facts, dumped down on one promiscuously, is that they do not lead anywhere, or afford any kind of opening for rational conversation.
I had rather hoped to escape the burden of my Oxford Local Examination work this summer; but as it was apparently difficult to replace me, I went up to Dumfries for my usual week in July. Our Convent-school being the only centre in the district for these examinations, there were, as usual, several candidates from outside. Among them were two pairs of Protestant sisters (Wedderburn-Maxwells and Goldie-Scotts), whose mamma and governess respectively sat all day in the corridor outside the big schoolroom, keeping watch and ward, it was understood, against the danger of their children being "got at" between the papers by the nuns—or possibly the Benedictine examiner!—and influenced in the direction of Popery. Our children were much amused by the way in which these little girls were whisked away, during the intervals, from any possible contact with their "Roman" fellow-candidates; but the little girls themselves looked somewhat disconsolate, having perhaps had pleasant anticipations of games, between examination-hours, in the well-equipped playground of the school.
The kind abbot of Fort Augustus would not let me return to the monastery, as I had expected to do when my Dumfries work was over, but suggested instead some further rest (for I was still far from robust) with my own people in the west of Scotland. I spent a few pleasant days first at Mountstuart, and was rather amused on the first of August (the end of the "close season" for small birds) to see my young host sally forth—a sailor, an architect, and an artist in his wake—on a shooting-expedition, with as much ceremony and preparation as if it had been the Twelfth![[2]] We motored out after them, and lunched on one of the highest points of the island; drinking in, as we ate our Irish stew, an entrancing prospect of the blue Firth, the long sinuous Ayrshire coast, and the lofty serrated peaks of Arran. From Bute I went on to Dunskey, a place full to me always—even under its new, altered, and improved conditions—of a hundred happy memories. There was an al fresco entertainment—tea, music, and dancing on the lawn—given by my niece to the tenants and their families one afternoon; and I (mindful of old days) was happy to watch her and her boy, the little heir, welcoming their guests. Some of their names, Thorburns, Withers and MacWilliams, recalled the past; and they greeted me with the friendly simple cordiality characteristic of Galloway folk. One of our house-party had just arrived (by yacht) from the Isle of Man, where he had been staying for some weeks. He had stories of the quaint customs of the Men of Man, and wrote down for me the oath administered in their courts. The closing simile is delightfully unconventional:—
By this book, and by the holy contents thereof, and by the wonderful works that God has miraculously wrought in heaven above and in the earth beneath in six days and seven nights, I do swear that I will, without respect of favour or friendship, love or gain, consanguinity or affinity, execute the laws of this isle, and between party and party as indifferently as the herring's backbone doth lie in the middle of the fish.
At Blairquhan I found a large party assembling for August 12: naval cronies of my sailor brother (including the captain of H.M.S. Britannia), the master of the Whaddon Chase Hunt, Selby Lowndes, with his wife and daughter, and other pleasant people. Shooting, dancing, bridge and golf filled up their days agreeably enough. I essayed the last-named sport, but was mortified to find myself still as weak as a kitten. The weather was glorious, but my brother complained that the long drought had left not a fruit in the garden; whereupon I suggested the substitute mentioned by Captain Topham in his Letters from Edinburgh a century and a half ago:—
The little variety of fruit which this climate brings to perfection is the cause that the inhabitants set anything on their tables, after dinner, that has the appearance of it; and I have often observed at the houses of principal people a dish of small turnips, which they call neeps, introduced in the dessert, and ate with as much avidity as if they had been fruit of the first perfection.
The perfect summer weather accompanied me north to Beaufort, which was doubly fortunate, as a great party was gathered there for a gigantic bazaar, organized by one of the daughters of the house to raise funds for a county sanatorium for consumption, in which she was greatly interested. The difficulty of attracting men to a show of the kind, especially in the shooting season, was cleverly met by including among the attractions a novel and unique exhibition of stags' heads, lent from all the great Highland forests. The interest of this drew sportsmen from far and near to Beaufort, where a notable company was assembled, including the whole Lovat family, most of the Chiefs of clans and their wives, and, last not least, Ranguia, a genuine chieftain from New Zealand, clad in what was understood to be his native dress, and gifted with an astonishing voice (tenore robustissimo), in which he sang Maori songs of love and war in the great gallery at intervals during the two days of the bazaar. The most charming of British Duchesses opened the proceedings with a speech of enticing eloquence: sales were brisk, the weather perfect, and the attendance enormous; and the profits, if I remember right, were something like £4,000, so that the affair was altogether a success. We recreated ourselves, after these fatiguing days, by a pleasant motor drive to Oromarty, to see the splendid fleet (the Fifth Cruiser Squadron (and some battleships of the Home Fleet) mustered in the Firth. We went all over the Dreadnought, and drank tea on Kelburn's ship, the Cochrane, burst a tyre on our way home and took refuge at Balnagowan, where Lady Ross gave us dinner and sang to us perfectly delightfully: a full and interesting day.
Ampleforth Abbey having now Masters of Arts of its own qualified to take over the Mastership of its Oxford Hall, I took the occasion of my enforced temporary retirement to resign the office which I had held for nearly ten years. The inevitable regrets were tempered by the kind tributes I received both from Ampleforth and from the Vice-chancellor of the University; and also by my friend Mgr. Kennard's urgent invitation (which I was authorized to accept) that I should return to Oxford for a time as his guest and assistant-chaplain. This settled, I went south to visit the Loudouns at Loudoun Castle, cheerfully repainted and decorated in honour of the arrival of the family pictures, an accession to Loudoun since his brother Paulyn Hastings' death. At Woodburn, whither I went from Loudoun, I found Philip Kerr at home from Johannesburg (where he was, I think, Secretary to the High Commissioner)—looking as young as ever, the cynosure of his adoring family and of a circle of admiring friends, one or two of whom (I think old schoolfellows at Edgbaston) were staying at Woodburn. The talk turned, as so often in this house, on Newman and the Oratory; and Lord Ralph Kerr read a striking passage written by Coventry Patmore[[3]] soon after the great Cardinal's death:—
The steam-hammer of that intellect which could be so delicately adjusted to its task as to be capable of either crushing a Hume or cracking a Kingsley is no longer at work: that tongue which had the weight of a hatchet and the edge of a razor is silent.