A New Medley of Memories

by Sir David Oswald Hunter Blair

1911

Our brothers had good success this year with the spring salmon-netting in Loch Ness; and I myself witnessed the landing one afternoon of nine clean fish, all scaling between fifteen and thirty pounds. We had always enjoyed the privilege of netting a certain number of salmon during Lent; and I think it was this year that Lovat proposed, at a meeting of the syndicate of riparian owners and tenants who had recently assumed the control of the fishing, that this right should be conceded to us as heretofore. It was agreed to with but one dissentient voice, that of a rather cantankerous neighbour of ours who was only, I believe, an honorary member of the syndicate, having pleaded that he was too poor to pay his subscription. "Certainly," said a noble duke who had leased for some years the best spring water in the vicinity; "by all means let the poor monks (or was it "poor devils"?) have their salmon: it's probably all they get to eat!"

Lovat was kind enough to tell me, when he came down about this salmon-fishing question, that he and others (unnamed) were "pulling strings" in various quarters to get me appointed chaplain at Oxford in succession to our dear old Kennard, who (after numerous unheeded cries of "Wolf!") was, it seemed, really resigning, and preparing to retire for life to a dull seaside town in Somerset. I told him, however, that I was sure there was no chance of any monk or other "regular" being appointed: moreover I had heard that a priest hailing from Brighton, with the patent and obvious qualification of possessing £1,000 a year of his own, had been already chosen; and, finally, I hoped and expected to be allowed to return to Brazil, unless I received some very clear and unmistakable indication that I was more wanted at home. Meanwhile the work immediately in front of me was organizing the Bishop Hay centenary celebrations, which were to be kept at our abbey in the autumn on a considerable scale, and of which I had been named general secretary. Before tackling this business I was enabled to spend Holy Week and Easter, as so often before, happily at Arundel, where my visit this year coincided with the anniversary of Duchess Mora's death. I officiated at the memorial service for her in the FitzAlan chapel, always an impressive function among the venerable monuments—some of them more than five centuries old—of bygone FitzAlans and Howards, touched by the chequered light from the great east window, in which the Duke and his little son are depicted in prayer before the altar.

I went from Arundel to Brighton to see my friend Grissell, whom I found wrestling with census-papers, and with the difficulty of inducing his female domestics to admit (at least approximately) their real ages. I had not, of course, had the same trouble at Fort Augustus, where our residents varied in age from sixteen to ninety-five, the latter being the record of our good old Brother Nathalan, whom we all hoped to see reach his century.[[1]] At the Union Club, whither Grissell carried me to lunch, I remember how we (members, guests, waiters and all) deserted our tables and flocked to the window to see—a flying man! Gustave Hamel swooping down on the Hove lawns after flying from Hendon (61 miles in 58 minutes), as steady as a rock on his Blériot monoplane. It was the first 'plane I had ever seen in the air! I reached London next morning in time to attend Linlithgow's pretty wedding at St. Margaret's, Westminster. It was Primrose Day, and the crowds inside and outside the church were augmented by mobs gazing idly at Dizzy's bedecked statue in Parliament Square. I squeezed in afterwards for a few minutes at Hereford Gardens, congratulated the bridegroom's mother, and was amused to hear a dignified menial (who, I thought, must have been a City toastmaster hired for the occasion) shouting out the names of the distinguished guests in stentorian tones for the benefit of our exceedingly deaf host. April was summerlike this year; and I was glad to escape from the noisy stuffy town to my brother's river-side home, where we sat in the violet twilight on the edge of Thames, watching the crafts of all sorts and sizes gliding past in the gloaming, and listening to the snatches of music (sometimes quite pretty and effective) coming to us from launch or wherry across the darkling water. "That's a quiet pretty little thing," said my brother, looking admiringly at an electrically-propelled canoe "made for two" which was skimming up stream swiftly and silently. But the susceptible youth to whom the remark was addressed had eyes only for the vision of beauty in the stern. "I don't think," he said knowingly, "that you'd find her quite so quiet if you knew her!" and was surprised at the shout of laughter with which his remark was received. I got back to Fort Augustus just in time to vote at the School Board elections. We, of course, all "plumped" for our Father Andrew Macdonell, who was duly elected, together with the local Established, United Free, and "Wee Free" ministers, and the Stratherrick priest—a curious clerical crowd. The exceptionally fine summer attracted an unusual number of visitors to Fort Augustus; and we had quite a gathering for the local celebration of King George's coronation-day, which was kept chiefly as a children's holiday, with games, an enormous tea, and loyal and patriotic songs and speeches. A more domestic festival, a few days later, was the silver jubilee of my ordination, which I was glad to be able to celebrate with my brethren. I received quite a sheaf of letters and telegrams—I had no idea that the anniversary would be so generally remembered—and had the pleasure of reading in a Scottish newspaper that I was "one of the most amiable, devout, and learned ecclesiastics of the day!" I was glad that among those present at my jubilee Mass was one of my oldest Catholic friends, Lady Lovat,[[2]] who was herself receiving congratulations this year on the birth of three new grandchildren, including sons and heirs to Lovat and the Stirlings of Keir. Arriving at Keir a few days later, en route for my examination-centre in Staffordshire, I found my host and hostess out, but made friends with the "younger of Keir"—alias Billy Stirling—(aged two months), who was reposing in his perambulator "under a spreading chestnut tree" on the lawn.

My "Oxford Local" work at Oakamoor College over, I went on to Oxford for a few days, on the tiresome (and to me rather melancholy) business of finally packing up my goods and chattels there. Although in Long Vacation, I found a few kind friends still in residence: and the Hassalls took me to see the renovated west front (Wolsey's) of Christ Church. The work, they said, had cost some £15,000, but was well worth it. A few hours in London I devoted to taking a nephew to see the Kinemacolor pictures—the Durbar and the Prince of Wales's investiture at Carnarvon. By some new contrivance the primary colours, only, were reproduced on the films, giving us the blue sky, the green grass and the scarlet uniforms, but everything else brownish-grey: the effect was perhaps more weird than beautiful or lifelike. The popular young Prince was in a box with his sister, looking at his own doings at Carnarvon; and it was curious to see the audience cheering alternately the filmed prince and the live one, who seemed rather embarrassed by the attention paid to him. On my northward journey I visited my friends the Rector of Exeter College and his wife at their pretty Westmorland home, near Oxenholme; it was a district quite new to me, and I was delighted with the fine rolling country, and the noble view over Morecambe Bay and towards the distant Lakes.

I found, on my return to our abbey, extensive repairs going on in view of the expected influx of visitors in September, and the procurator in despair at the dilatoriness of Highland workmen, recalling the famous plumber of Carstairs.[[3]] All the shooting-lodges were full, and expeditions to our monastery, when the shooters had an off-day, seemed one of the regular attractions of the neighbourhood. I remember one of our nearer neighbours, the shooting-tenant's wife from Glendoe, riding down one day to call, with Lady Winifred Elwes—the ladies astride, in ordinary frocks, on fat grey ponies, and our good lay-brother porter in speechless astonishment at the apparition. I was glad to welcome one day for an hour or two my old friends the Portsmouths, en route for their remote castle of Guisachan: his lordship pompously pleasant as of old, and his wife equally pleasant without the pomposity. I presented them to the Bishop of Chur (or Coire), Mgr. Schmitt, at that time a guest in the abbey with his two chaplains. I had visited Chur more than thirty years before on my way to the Engadine (before the railway was made under the Albula Pass), and had visited the cathedral in quest of the supposed relics of St. Lucius, the king of Britain who, Bede says, wrote to Pope Eleutherius asking for instruction in the Christian faith. The Bishop had never heard this story; but he said that there was a constant tradition at Chur that Lucius was a Welsh saint who had died there after spending many years in missionary labours among the Rhaetian Alps.[[4]]

I spent the last Sunday of August as chaplain to the Lovats at Stronlairg, their remote lodge nestling under the great range of the Mona Liadh hills, in the wildest part of Central Inverness-shire. I have called it, and Guisachan, "remote"; but no place is really so, if accessible by a decent road, in these motoring days; and "neighbours" from thirty or forty miles away thought nothing of dropping in casually to luncheon or tea. Lady Derby, whose husband had one of Lovat's forests, came up one day with her daughter and her sister-in-law Lady Isobel Gathorne-Hardy, from whom I was sorry to hear a disquieting account of the health both of my niece Dorothy Cranbrook and of her husband. With our house-party and the servants, I had quite a congregation in our chapelle provisoire on Sunday; and it was, as always, a happiness to me to have the privilege of saying mass for a little flock of faithful Catholics in the splendid solitude of these Highland hills and glens.

The triduo, or three days' celebrations in honour of the centenary of Bishop Hay, had been fixed for September 12-14; and we entertained more than seventy guests in the abbey for the occasion. All the Scottish bishops, except the aged Archbishop of Glasgow, were present, besides Bishop Hedley, Abbot Gasquet, Monsignors, canons, heads of religious orders, priests and devout laymen, including Lovat and his brother Alastair. The weather was perfect throughout the week; and the religious services, though naturally the chief feature of the celebrations, were not so prolonged or so continuous as to prevent our visitors from enjoying many pleasant excursions by land and water. The fine portrait of the illustrious bishop by George Watson (first president of the Scottish Academy), lent us by Blairs College, excited much interest; and my lantern-lecture on the Life and Times of Hay (a collateral descendant of whom, by the way, was one of our guests), was very well received by a distinguished audience. Many of the visitors to the abbey and village stayed on a day or two for the local concert and Highland Gathering. The Rotherhams, Bishop John Vaughan, Lady Edmund Talbot and her sister Lady Alice Reyntiens, were among those who arrived in time for these later festivities. I heard from Lord Rotherham of the death of a very old friend, Sir William Farrer, whose daughter had married my brother. He and his wife, whom he had long survived (he was nearly ninety at his death) had shown to us all constant kindness in the days of our childhood and ever since; and I recalled pleasant days at his beautiful Berkshire home, where the lovely gardens were the delight and recreation of his busy professional life.[[5]]