The early days of December brought me news from England of the death of Provost Hornby, my old head master at Eton, aged well over eighty. He had birched me three times;[[1]] still, I bore him no malice, though I did not feel so overcome by the news as Tom Brown did when he heard of the death of his old head master.[[2]] An eminent scholar, a "double blue" at Oxford, of aspect dignified yet kindly, he had seemed to unite all the qualities necessary or desirable for an arch-pedagogue; yet no head master had ever entered an office under a cloud of greater unpopularity. We were all Tories at Eton in the 'sixties; and the rumoured association of the new head with the hated word Reform (which his predecessor Dr. Balston was said to have stoutly resisted) aroused in our youthful breasts a suspicion and dislike which culminated in the words "No Reform!" being actually chalked on the back of his gown (I personally witnessed the outrage) as he was ascending the stairs into Upper School. Tempora mutantur: I dare say there are plenty of young Etonian Radicals nowadays; though I do seem to have heard of Mr. Winston Churchill having been vigorously hooted in School Yard, on his first appearance at his old school after "finding salvation" in the Radical camp.
Two or three weeks before Christmas our abbot found himself rather suddenly obliged to sail for Europe on important business—leaving me a little forlorn, for he was my only real friend in our rather cosmopolitan community, though all were kindly and pleasant. The midsummer heat, too, was more trying than I had anticipated on this elevated plateau; and though the nights were sensibly cooler, they were disturbed by mosquitoes, tram-bells in the square outside, grillos and cigarras in our cloister garden beneath, our discordant church bells[[3]] striking every quarter above one's head, and our big watch-dog, Bismarck, baying in the yard. I accompanied the abbot to the station, where the dispedida (leave-taking) in this country was always an affair of much demonstration and copious embracing. When he had gone we all settled down for a week's retreat, given by a venerable-looking and (I am sure) pious, but extraordinarily grimy, Redemptorist father, who must have found it an uncommonly hard week's work in the then temperature, for he "doubled" each of his Portuguese sermons by a duplicate German discourse addressed to the lay brethren. This pious exercise over, we prepared for the Christmas festival, which I enjoyed. It was my privilege to officiate at matins and lauds and the solemn Mass, lasting from half-past ten till nearly two. Our church (the demolition of which had not yet begun) was elaborately adorned and filled with a crowd of devout communicants, young and old; and when the long services were over, our good brothers gathered round the Christmas crib, and sang immensely long and pious German songs far into the small hours of morning. Later in the day I went up to Paradise ("Paraiso," the name of one of our picturesque suburbs), and lunched with the kind Canadian family whose pleasant hospitality constitutes one of the most agreeable souvenirs of my sojourn at S. Paulo, both at this time and ten years later.
After New Year we had a sudden cool spell, with a southerly wind bringing refreshing airs from the Pole; and I profited by it to extend my daily walk, visiting churches and other places of interest in and about the city. Such old Portuguese churches as the Sé (cathedral) had a certain interest, though no beauty in themselves. The side altars, surmounted by fat and florid saints boxed up in arbours of artificial flowers, were painfully grotesque; and the big church was decked (for Christmastide) with faded red damask which, like Mrs. Skewton's rose-coloured curtains, only made uglier what was already ugly. A scheme, however, was afoot for pulling the whole place down; and a model and plans for a great Gothic cathedral of white granite were already on exhibition in a neighbouring window, and were exciting much attention. A few of the other old churches in the city had already been demolished to make way for new ones, mostly of an uninteresting German Romanesque type, planned by German architects. Native talent, however, was responsible for the splendid theatre, its façade adorned with red granite monoliths; but the finest building in S. Paulo (perhaps in Brazil) was the creation of an Italian architect (Bezzi). This was the noble palace at Ypiranga—a site dear to Brazilians as the scene of the Proclamation of Independence in 1822—now used as a museum of ethnography and natural history, and containing collections of great and constantly increasing value and importance. S. Paulo in 1909 was—perhaps is even now, a dozen years later—a city still in the making;[[4]] but the intelligence of its planning, the zeal of its enterprising citizens for its extension and embellishment, and the noticeable skill and speed of the workmen (nearly all Italians) under whose hands palatial buildings were rising on every side, were full of promise for the future.
In 1909 the Instituto Serumtherapico, now very adequately housed at Butantan (popularly known as the "chacara dos serpentes," or snake-farm), a mile or two from the city, was only beginning, after years of patient and fruitful research, its remarkable work—a work of which (like the sanitation and reconstruction of Rio and the successful campaign against yellow fever) the credit is due to Brazilians and not to the strangers within their gates. The serums discovered by the founder of the Institute, Dr. Vidal Brazil, for the cure of snake-bite are as important and beneficent, within the vast area where the mortality from this cause has hitherto been far greater than is generally known or supposed, as Pasteur's world-famous treatment for hydrophobia. One serum is efficacious against the rattlesnake's bite, another against the venom of the urutu, the jararaca, and other deadly species, while a third is an antidote to the poison of any snake whatever. Twenty-five per cent. of snake-bite cases have hitherto, it is estimated, proved fatal; when the serum is administered in time cure is practically certain. To Dr. Brazil is also due the credit of the discovery of the mussurana, the great snake, harmless to man, which not only kills but devours venomous reptiles of all kinds, even those as big as, or bigger than, itself. It was expected, I was told, that the encouragement of the propagation of this remarkable ophidian might lead in time to the extermination of poisonous serpents not only in the State of S. Paulo, but in every part of tropical Brazil.
The traditional Benedictine hospitality was never wanting at our abbey: the guest-rooms were always occupied, and the guest-table in the refectory was a kaleidoscope of changing colour—now the violet sash and cap of a bishop from some remote State, now the brown of a Franciscan or bearded Capuchin, the white wool of a Dominican missionary or a Trappist monk from the far interior, or the sombre habit of one of our own brethren from some distant abbey on the long Brazilian coast. Nor were the poorer claimants for rest and refreshment forgotten. I remember the British Consul, after seeing the whole establishment, saying that what pleased him most was the noonday entertainment of the lame, blind, and halt in the entrance-hall, and the spectacle of our good Italian porter, Brother Pio Brunelli, dispensing the viands (which the Consul thought looked and smelled uncommonly good) to our humble guests. Our Trappist visitor mentioned above was "procurador" of a large agricultural settlement in charge of his Order; and I remember understanding so much of his technical talk, after dinner, about their methods of hauling out trees by their roots, and their machinery for drying rice in rainy weather, as to convince me that my Portuguese was making good progress!
All our cablegrams from England in these days were occupied with the General Election, the result of which (275 Liberals to 273 Unionists) was vastly interesting, leaving, as it appeared to do, the "balance of power" absolutely in the hands of the seventy Irish Nationalists. Several Catholic candidates (British) had been defeated, but nine were returned to the new Parliament—five Unionists and four Rad.-Nat.-Libs.
Of greater personal interest to me was the welcome and not unexpected news that by a Roman Decree issued on the last day of 1909 our monastery of Fort Augustus had been reunited with the English Benedictine Congregation, our position of "splendid isolation" as a Pontifical Abbey being thus at an end. My letters informed me that the abbot's resignation had already been accepted, and Dom Hilary Willson installed in office by the delegate of the English Abbot-president, with the good will of all concerned, and the special blessing of Pope Pius X., conveyed in a telegram from Cardinal Merry del Val, the Papal Secretary of State. The new superior's appointment was ad nutum Sanctæ Sedis, i.e. for an undetermined period; and the late abbot (whose health was greatly impaired) was authorised to retire, as he desired, to a "cell"—a commodious house and chapel—belonging to our abbey, high among pine-woods near Buckie, in Banffshire.[[5]]
My mail brought me, too, tidings of the marriage of the sons and daughters of quite a number of old friends—Balfour of Burleigh, North Dalrymple (Stair's brother), the Skenes of Pitlour and All Souls, Oxford; also of the engagement of Lovat's sister Margaret to Stirling of Keir, and of the death (under sad circumstances already referred to)[[6]] of Ninian Crichton Stuart's poor little son. I heard with pleasure from Abbot Miguel that he hoped shortly to return to us: he had already cabled the single word "Demoli"; our poor old choir was under the hands of the house-breakers; and we were saying office temporarily in the chapter-room, lighted by such inefficient lamps that I could read hardly a line of my breviary by their glimmer.[[7]]
"Just a song at twilight,
When the lights are low,"
is all very well in its way; but the conditions are not suitable for matins and lauds lasting an hour and a half! After an interval of this discomfort, we get into our côrozinho provisorio (temporary little choir), a hantle cut out of the nave, which was still standing; and there we recited our office during the remainder of my stay.