A New Medley of Memories

by Sir David Oswald Hunter Blair

Letters at Brussels told me of the long-hoped-for arrival of Kelburn's son and heir, godson to Queen Mary (her first since the King's accession). He was named Maurice at the special wish of Her Majesty, who (so I understood) was possessed with the odd idea that "Maurice" was the masculine equivalent for "Mary!" Crossing from Ostend to Dover, I encountered a well-known Scottish peer of whose demise I had read in an English paper two days before. He was on his way home from visiting the Passion-play at Ober Ammergau, had seen no papers, and had been surprised, and rather annoyed, at receiving letters and telegrams at Brussels congratulating him on being still alive. I cheered him up with a story of another man who saw his death announced in the morning papers, and calling up an intimate friend on the telephone, said, "Did you see in this morning's paper that I was dead?" "Yes," replied his friend, "I did. Where are you speaking from?" When I got to London, the same kind brother who had escorted me to Wiesbaden took me (by way of consolation for my wasted month[[4]]) to lunch—on turtle soup and punch—at the "Ship and Turtle" in the City. After a flying visit to my kind friends at Arundel and to my sister in Surrey, I came back to stay with him at his elm-shaded Thames-side home. We made some pleasant expeditions thence by land and water, motoring one day to quaint old Guildford, where we explored Archbishop Abbott's delightfully picturesque old Jacobean almshouses, and drank tea in an almost equally picturesque tea-shop, kept, I was carefully informed, by real ladies!

My pretty niece Cicely insisted on my presence at her wedding to her Brigadier; and I journeyed down to Kent, on a piping August day, in the company of crowds of Irish hoppers bound for the same county. The marriage was from the Cranbrooks' nice place, Hemsted, in the very heart of the Garden of England, a big Victorian house full of the first Earl's[[5]] memorials of Queen Victoria, Beaconsfield, and the other great Tory statesmen of his day. Lady Jane Gathorne-Hardy did the honours for the large house-party, as her parents were away taking a "cure" somewhere; and the day after the pretty wedding in the pretty parish church (the vicar, an old Magdalen man, gave a very good address), our kind hostess escorted the whole party up to town and entertained them to luncheon and a frivolous afternoon at the "Follies." I left London the same night for Scotland, and met at Beaufort, where I stayed en route, for our Highland abbey, Lovat's youthful bride-elect—as tall, and I am sure as good, as the lady in The Green Carnation,[[6]] and already an accepted and affectionate member of the large and merry family of Frasers and Maxwells. I sailed down our familiar canal to Fort Augustus on a marvellously still and bright autumn afternoon; and as we slid alongside the Fort Augustus quay and looked back on the panorama of azure lake and purple hills, a friend and I agreed (as he colloquially put it) that it "licked the Rhine into fits."

I found things externally little changed under the new, or restored, Anglo-Benedictine régime, the chief visible difference being that my brethren now wore the flapping English hood, which gave them rather the aspect of large nuns. There was much coming and going to and from missions and locum-tenancies of vacant parishes; and our house seemed destined to become more and more a "jumping-off place" for that kind of work rather than a great centre of monastic life and observance. One aim was not of course incompatible with the other, given a large enough community; but ours was at this time small enough, and there were several more or less permanent absentees. Most of the latter, however, "rolled up" for the excellent retreat given us by our good old friend Bishop Hedley, who had done us the same kindness just twenty-one years before. He was interested, after it was over, in hearing of our plans and hopes (then much "in the air") for re-starting the suspended building of our much-needed church, of which the foundation-stone had been laid nearly fifteen years previously. A young architect (an "old boy" of the abbey school) was staying with us, and quite prepared to produce the most fascinating designs at the shortest notice. But money, or the lack of it, was, as usual, the crucial point; and we did not "see our way" (horrid phrase) to resume operations either then or in the immediate future.

I went, in these golden October days, when a wonderful stillness so often broods over Highland hills and glens in their livery of autumnal russet, to do chaplain for two Sundays to the Lovats, who had a large shooting-party at Beaufort—Seftons and Howicks and Gathorne-Hardys and some others, including an A.D.C. to the Irish Viceroy, of whom he told me a good story. An old peer from the country presented himself at a levee at Dublin Castle; and his Excellency engaged him in conversation, starting as usual with the weather. "Wonderful rain we've been having: everything coming up out of the ground."—"God forbid!" said the old peer. "I said that everything was coming up out of the ground," repeated H.E., slightly raising his voice. "And I said 'God forbid!'" retorted the old gentleman: "I've got three wives buried under it!"

I went from Beaufort for a day or two to Nairn, which I remember hardly more than a poor fishing village, frequented by ladies and children for sea-bathing, but which owes its present reputation and prosperity, like so many other places, to its excellent golf-links. After a short stay at Kelburn, where I found my poor nephew Alan Boyle making good progress to recovery, I could not resist an invitation to pass a few days at St. Andrews, where the successor of my dear friend George Angus was anxious for me to see his new church lately opened. It was a rather effective building, in what a descriptive report called the "Lombardic style, adapted to suit local conditions." One of the "adaptations" was putting the tower at the wrong end, the "local condition" being that the lady who had built the church, and who inhabited a villa close by, had objected to a western tower as blocking her view of the North Sea! I strolled about the "dear romantic town," mounting the East Neuk road as far as "Rest and be thankful," and feeling heavy-hearted enough, with Tennyson's lines constantly in my mind:

I climb the hill from end to end:
Of all the landscape underneath,
I find no place that does not breathe
Some gracious memory of my friend.

For each has pleased a kindred eye,
And each reflects a happier day;
And leaving them to pass away,
I think once more he seems to die.

I came home from my last walk by the old harbour, admiring, as I had done a hundred times before, the wonderful lights on sea and land which one associates with St. Andrews in autumn; but feeling that I never cared to see the place again. Soon I went south, to Oxford, where Mgr. Kennard, who was again threatening for the nth time to resign, for reasons of health, his office of chaplain, had begged me to come and help him for as much of the Michaelmas term as I could spare. I found him, as a matter of fact, rather exceptionally well, and ready and anxious to recount to an intelligent listener (which I fear I was not, on this subject) every one of his golfing achievements during the past four months at Burnham, Westward Ho! North Berwick, and elsewhere. Although quite incapable of talking "golf shop," I contributed one anecdote (new, I believed), which I had brought from Nairn, and which pleased my old friend. It concerned a young man and maiden who were playing golf—the lady quite a novice—and had reached a hole which was on the top of a little hill. The youth ran up first to see the lie of the balls. "A stymie!" he shouted: "a dead stymie!" The young lady came up with a sniff. "Well, do you know?" she said, "I thought I smelled something as I was walking up the hill!"

I had been invited to preach Lovat's wedding sermon on October 15; but this, as well as much of the long choral service, had been countermanded at the eleventh hour. I went up the day before to the family residence in Grosvenor Gardens: presents still pouring in, and such unconsidered trifles as diamond pendants, silver salvers, gold cigarette-cases, telescopes, and illuminated addresses, lying promiscuously about. A small army of newspaper-reporters (whom I was deputed to interview) swarmed in after dinner. There was a great gathering at the Oratory next morning, where the ample space beneath the dome makes a most effective setting for a wedding pageant. The bride's procession was a little late; and the stalwart bridegroom, supported by his Scots Guards brother, was (shall I say "the cynosure of all eyes" or the "observed of all observers"?—both good old clichés) in the full dress bravery of a Highland chief.[[7]] I went in afterwards to sign the register, while the primo soprano assoluto of the famous choir thrilled out the Bach-Gounod "Ave Maria," as inevitable an accompaniment of Oratory weddings as "O for the Wings of a Dove" is of those at Sloane Street or Eaton Square. Mrs. Asquith (the bride's aunt) entertained us afterwards in the none too spacious reception rooms at 10, Downing Street, where the well-dressed mob, more suo, made play with their elbows in their quest for their own and other people's presents on the loaded tables. There were representatives from the bride's home in Ribblesdale, as well as a deputation of farmers from distant Beaufort; and one heard intermittently the broad accent of Lancashire and the slow soft Highland speech, mingling oddly with the London cackle. The festivities at an end, I escorted a party of youthful Maxwells to the Zoo. We saw a much-bored tiger, which gaped at us most rudely; also a greatly vaunted American aloe, of the "blooming-once-in-a-hundred-years" kind, which we all thought a fraud.