A New Medley of Memories

by Sir David Oswald Hunter Blair

Gideon—sable, a fleece argent, a chief azure gutté d'eau.

Samson—gules, a lion couchant or, within an orle argent, sémé of bees sable.

I saw something at St. Andrews of another old acquaintance, Jock Dalrymple, now Stair, who had some little time before succeeded his father (the kind old friend of my youth), and had grown grey, portly, and rather solemn since coming into his kingdom. He was Captain of the Royal and Ancient this year; and although he boasted of "hating politics," and would not trouble to vote in Parliament on the most vital Imperial question, would sit for hours in the chair at a club meeting, discussing the minutiae of golfing rules with a zest and patience that never failed. Men are curiously made!

I went, while at St. Andrews, to spend a weekend with the Fairlies at their neighbouring castle of Myres (set in the most enchanting old Scottish garden), and said mass in a billiard-room converted by my friend into a decorous chapel, just as had been done by Bishop Hedley in his episcopal villa near Cardiff. I noticed with interest the mace sculptured on one of the angular turrets. Thereby hung a tale—and a grievance; and my host told me how the presentation of a macership in the Court of Session went with the ownership of Myres, i.e. of the castle, as he maintained. But though he had bought the castle, my Lord Bute had bought the estate (marching with his lands of Falkland); and his contention was that the estate, not the castle, carried with it the macership.[[5]] Hinc illæ lacrymæ.

I left St. Andrews early on a bright autumn morning, my kind old friend, who had insisted on getting up to serve my mass, waving me good-bye under his hospitable porch—a last good-bye it proved to be, for I never saw him again.[[6]] Before going south I spent a few days at Aberdeen, having some business with our good bishop. I stayed with Malcolm Hay of Seaton (one of my very few Catholic relations) at his pretty old place on Donside. From the windows one looked across the river, and up a wooded brae, to the venerable towers of St. Machar's Cathedral. Malcolm motored me one day to Blairs College; I had not before seen the new buildings and church of our Scottish seminary, quite an imposing pile as viewed from the much-frequented Deeside road. We found the Archbishop of St. Andrews (Mgr. Smith) at tea with the Rector and his professorial staff, who were all most kind and civil. I heard here of the elevation of the eminent advocate, Campbell of Skerrington, to the Scottish Bench—the first Catholic Lord of Session for generations, if not centuries.

I was due in Oxford before the opening of the autumn term, in view of my prospective "flitting" from our Benedictine Hall; but I first fulfilled a long overdue engagement to pay a visit to some French friends (the Marquis de Franquetot and his wife) in Picardy. Their pretty château, embowered in big chestnut-trees, was some ten miles from Boulogne, and we drove thither on Sunday to high mass at St. Nicholas-in-the-Market, as my host wanted me to hear the French Bishops' joint pastoral (the first they had been permitted to issue for a great number of years) on Christian education. M. de Franquetot said it had been prepared under the roof of my old friend Lady Sophia Palmer, Comtesse de Franqueville, who, with her excellent husband, had entertained the whole hierarchy for a week at their beautiful hôtel in the Bois de Boulogne. The congregation at St. Nicholas was very large and devout, comprising, as I was pleased to observe,[[7]] many men of all ranks and ages; and the long pastoral, addressed "aux pères et mères de famille," and interspersed with admirable comments from the good curé, was listened to with close attention, and approval, which the "pères de famille" occasionally showed by thumping the floor with sticks or umbrellas, and muttering—not always sotto voce—"Très bien dit,"—"ils ont bien raison," and so on. I was very glad to have been present. Boulogne seemed full of British trippers; and I was amused, as we drove along the sea-front, to see the number of unmistakably French eating-houses which labelled themselves by such enticing titles as the "Royal English Chop House" and the "Margate Bar." Some, more accommodating still, announced in their windows that "Messrs. the Britannic tourists who arrive furnished with their own provisions may eat them here gratuitously." Could the Entente go further? I had hardly seen the pleasant town since I had lived for a year in its environs with my family as a little boy; and the narrow bustling streets looked to me much as they used to under the Empire, when my father would point out to us the gallant Chasseurs d'Afrique swaggering along—"the finest soldiers in the world, sir—fought beside us in the Crimea,"—six short years before the débâcle of 1870. We passed through Pont-de-Brique, and asked for the Château Neuf, the big rambling house in an unkempt garden which had been our home; but no one could point it out to us.

My French visit was brought to an agreeable close by a trip across the Channel ("Why do you call it the English Channel, you others?" my hostess asked me; "to us it is only La Manche!") in a beautiful schooner yacht belonging to a friend of the de Franquetots. We scudded along the English coast in bright sunshine, before a strong south-easterly breeze, finally landing at Southampton, whence I made my way to Kneller Court, which I found as friendly and hospitable as ever: Admiral Sir Percy and Lady Scott at luncheon with my kind sister-in-law, and subalterns and sub-lieutenants dropping in later for tennis and tea. My brother drove me up to Fort Nelson, and showed me his 60-pounders and the interior of the fort, one of the chain erected at enormous cost by Palmerston fifty years before, and now absolutely useless except as barracks. Next day I escorted my pretty niece by dogcart, train and tram to Hilsea, to see the Gunners' sports—gun-driving, tent-pegging, wrestling on horseback, and so forth. It was my fifty-fifth birthday, and my health was pledged at dinner, with musical honours, by the merry party of relatives and friends. On October 1 I reached Oxford, superintended the transport of my effects from Beaumont Street (where my successor, Dom Anselm Parker, was already installed as Master of our Hall) to St. Aldate's, and received a kind welcome there from my host and new "chief," Mgr. Kennard. He was suffering from the peculiar constitutional disturbance—I believe a form of suppressed gout (King Edward was in his last years a victim to it) which keeps people always on the move; and this chronic restlessness took him away so constantly from Oxford that a great deal of his pastoral work—the spiritual superintendence of fifty or sixty Catholic undergraduates, scattered all over the university, at once devolved to great extent on me. The experiment of sending Catholic boys to Oxford (and Cambridge) had by this time passed out of the experimental stage, and had on the whole justified the anticipations of those to whose initiative it had been due. There were, of course, a few failures and a few wastrels among our small contingent of undergraduates; but on the whole they were a good lot of young fellows, who did credit to the various Catholic schools where they had been trained. And their personal kindness to me was such that it was a real pleasure to find oneself in fairly intimate relations with them, and to be of any service to them that one could.

The good Monsignore hardly ever returned from his many absences without bringing a friend or two with him; and his great recreation at this time was driving his guests about in a fine motor (a new toy) which he had lately bought from his nephew Fritz Ponsonby, the King's equerry. Fritz and his charming wife stayed with us this autumn, as did also our host's brother, Colonel Hegan Kennard, who was considerably the older, but much the more vigorous and energetic of the two.[[8]] He attended service on Sunday at the Evangelical church close by, and came back indignant. "By George, sir, I never saw anything so slovenly and slipshod in my life; disgraceful, sir, positively disgraceful!" I took him to hear Mrs. Garrett-Fawcett speak at a woman-suffrage debate at the Union—a most plausible lady, but we voted against her by a large majority. I found the motor an agreeable means of visiting various places of interest in the neighbourhood—Dorchester Abbey, an epitome of architecture from Early Norman to Late Perpendicular, but the interior spoilt by the bad taste of the Ritualistic fittings; the grand old Augustinian minster of Burford; and Cuddesdon, a miniature cathedral, with its western porch and massive central tower. It was over this porch that the ladies of Cuddesdon, in years gone by, wishing to do honour on some feast-day to their beloved diocesan Samuel Wilberforce, and not less beloved Archdeacon Alfred Pott, displayed their joint initials wrought in evergreens. "S.O.A.P.," read the Bishop as he paused before the western gable. "Surely an enemy hath done this," he sorrowfully muttered, and proceeded on his way.