A New Medley of Memories

by Sir David Oswald Hunter Blair

The kind abbot of S. Paulo had come to England in order to escort to Brazil a little community of nuns for his newly-founded Benedictine convent; and I had promised to attend their dispedida at Southampton at the end of September. I found myself at Inverness among the gay crowds attending the Northern Meeting, of which the special feature this year was a great rally of boy-scouts from all the northern counties, in honour of their popular Chief, Sir Robert Baden-Powell. Seven hundred mustered, at least half of them kilted—a very pretty sight; and "B. P." made them a stirring speech, with an interesting account of the spread of the movement ("Escotismo," they called it in Brazil, where it was very popular), in different parts of the world. I travelled from Edinburgh to London with the Archbishop of York, who had been officiating at the wedding of an Ayrshire Houldsworth. We had last met at Dunskey, my old home in Galloway, when he was, I think, vicar of Portsea. I journeyed straight to Southampton, where good Abbade Miguel, an English Benedictine (Dom Sibley) who was accompanying him to Brazil, and the seven nuns,[[6]] were all ready for their long voyage. I saw them on board the good old Aragon (which looked very spick-and-span), "waved my hands (like Nancy Lee) upon the quay," and rather wished that I was one of the party! Meanwhile I had to get back to London, to help to marry (on a murky Saturday afternoon) my Irish Guards friend Tom Vesey[[7]] to Lady Cicely Browne. A "mixed marriage," as it is called, is always a short affair, with no vocal music, and of course no nuptial mass; but this was the briefest I ever remember, the whole ceremony, including a five minutes' sermon from Father Maturin, taking exactly a quarter of an hour! There was the usual tiresome crowd afterwards at Lord Revelstoke's house in Carlton House Terrace; but I was glad to see some old friends, and to have a pleasant chat with Lady Bigge,[[8]] who, by the way, had just become Lady Stamfordham. If there was no music at the Chelsea church, I came in for more than I bargained for next day (Sunday), namely a performance by a famous London choir of Beethoven's Grand Mass, a composition which I would fain hear anywhere rather than in church. It was, of course, excellently rendered; but as I listened to the crashing chords, I could not help recalling the appreciation of an eminently-qualified critic, treating of this musical masterpiece:—

"The Christian sentiment has completely left him in the Gloria, where there bursts forth, not the pure and heavenly melody of a hymn of praise and peace, but the shout of victory raised by human passions triumphing over a conquered enemy."

Journeying north to Ampleforth Abbey, where I was engaged to give my "Bishop Hay" lecture, I read in my morning paper (1) that old Sir William Farrer had left £300,000 (I hoped my sister-in-law would benefit), (2) that Lady Herbert of Lea, an outstanding figure in English Catholic life for sixty years, and a very kind friend to me in my own early Catholic days, had died at the age of nearly ninety; (3) that the Pope had created seventeen Cardinals and two new English archbishoprics (Liverpool and Birmingham); but no Benedictine Cardinal, and none for Canada or Australia, although there were two Irish-Americans for U.S.A.! I spent November 1 and 2 at Ampleforth: on All Saints' Day I saw the college football team give a handsome drubbing to a visiting school—a feat to be proud of, as they were themselves quite novices at the Rugby game. Next day, All Souls', there were the usual solemn requiem services; but owing to the exigencies of the school classes, the poor monks had to crowd in before breakfast matins, lauds, prime, meditation, October devotions, tierce, sext, none, and Pontifical high mass—with a full day's teaching to follow! rather killing work, I should imagine. The abbot told me that he proposed sending two of his community to Western Canada, to "prospect" in view of founding a monastery and college there.[[9]]

A long day's journey from Ampleforth took me to Keir, where I found the new house-chapel, though far from complete, available for mass on Sunday. We drove over to Doune in the afternoon with the Norfolks (who were my fellow-guests), and explored the old castle of the Earls of Moray, partially restored by Lord Moray's grandfather. The massive remains I thought very impressive; and the Duke, who was perhaps more interested in architecture than in anything else, was much taken with the old place. He was also, however, interested in the Arundel parlour-game of "ten questions," which we played after dinner, and in which he displayed, through years of practice, an almost diabolical cleverness. I travelled north to Fort Augustus after a night of terrific gales, with fallen trees and snapped-off limbs lying everywhere along the railway—a melancholy sight.

I had been endeavouring to interest our friends in the south in our desire to reopen the Abbey School when feasible; but at a Council held at the abbey on my return it was decided to leave that project in abeyance, and to concentrate our efforts meanwhile on trying to replace the ramshackle shed which served as our church by at least a part of the permanent building. Harrowing appeals in the Catholic press, embodying views of the shanty in question: a personal campaign undertaken by some of the fathers, and begging-letters of the most insidiously-persuasive kind, were part of the plan of campaign, which met with a fair measure of success. There was some feeling in our community in favour of a very much less ambitious (and expensive) church than originally planned; but I personally would be no party to any scheme involving the abandonment of our hopes to see built a real abbey church, worthy of the site and the surroundings, and the erection instead of a neat, simple, and inexpensive R.C. chapel, which seemed the ideal of some of the less imaginative of our brethren. I was receiving invitations from various Scottish centres to repeat my Hay lecture; and this, we thought, might be judiciously combined with efforts on behalf of our building-fund. I went to Blairs College, outside Aberdeen, for the old bishop's actual centenary (which we had anticipated at Fort Augustus), and lectured to the students and their professors there. On my way back, I visited, for the first time, our "cell" at St. James's, high above the pretty prosperous sea-port of Buckie. The place pleased me—a conveniently-planned house, standing among pine-woods and meadows, with a fine prospect over land and sea; and a nice chapel, simple and devout, with a gaily-gilt altar from Tyrol. I gave my lecture in three other places during these weeks of early winter: at Motherwell, where my lantern failed me, and I was grateful to my audience for listening to an hour's dry talk without pictures; in Edinburgh, where I had a large and very appreciative audience; and in Glasgow, where a still bigger gathering filled the City Hall, and was really enthusiastic. It was all very fatiguing; and I was glad to get home and enjoy a little rest and peace before Christmas. Beaufort, too, where I acted as Christmas chaplain as usual, was restful this year, with only a small family party, and the Lovats getting ready for a trip to Egypt and Khartoum. We had a long, severe, and stormy winter in the Highlands: gale after gale, in which our poor wooden church swayed and shivered and creaked like the old Araguaya in the Bay of Biscay; and then bitter frosts with the thermometer down in the neighbourhood of zero, and all the able-bodied monks smashing the ice in the "lade," in order to keep the current going for our electric light. Meanwhile we were cheered by the general interest, even in far-off lands, in our church-building crusade. Our Maltese father brought a cheque from his island home; and subscriptions came from my Yucatan friend, Señor Ygnacio Peon, and from Alastair Fraser in remote Rhodesia. I went off on a campaign south of the Tweed, with my lantern slides as a passport; and it was never difficult, in lecturing on the straits and struggles of the Scottish Church in the early nineteenth century, to pass to the needs and hopes of the Scottish Benedictines in the early twentieth. I had, as always, a kind reception and a sympathetic hearing from our brethren at Douai Abbey, but had the bad luck to be invalided immediately afterwards, fortunately in the pleasant Surrey home of my sister, who took me drives, when I was convalescent, all among the queer-shaped hills of the North Downs, intersected by the Pilgrims' Way to Canterbury.

The national coal-strike began whilst I was at Nutwood—a million men "downing tools," and the end impossible to foresee. Travelling, of course, became at once infinitely troublesome and tedious;[[10]] however, I made my way to Stonyhurst College, where I had a big and interested audience (there were many young Scots among the 400 pupils), and then managed to crawl back to London (one simply sat in a station, and waited for a train to come along some time), where I attended the "house-warming" dinner of our Caledonian Club—I was an original member—transferred from Charles Street to Lord Derby's fine house overlooking St. James's Square. There were, of course, self-congratulatory speeches; and a concert of Scottish music wound up the evening agreeably. I paid a flying visit to Oxford this week—a guest now in my old Hall, which had a full muster of monastic undergraduates. The most conspicuous object in Oxford seemed to be our "gracious tower" at Magdalen—a mass of elaborate scaffolding from top to bottom:[[11]] spring-cleaning, I imagined, for the Prince of Wales, who was going into residence there in October. I called on the new University chaplain, installed, but not yet, apparently, quite at home in, the old familiar house in St. Aldate's, and also managed to put in a few hours at the Bodleian, to finish my article on William of Wykeham, the last of eighty-three which I had written for the American Encyclopædia. It had been interesting work, of which some tangible results were certain vestments, pictures, and other adornments which I had been thus able to provide for the chapel of our Benedictine Hall.

Lunching at the new Caledonian, on my way through London, I found myself next young Bute, dreadfully depressed about the coal-strike, and (not for the first time) looking forward to the workhouse for himself and family. My next lecture was due at St. Edmund's College, Ware, where I had the honour of numbering among my audience the brand-new Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster,[[12]] imposing in his brand-new rose-coloured robes, but as kind and gracious as ever. In the middle of my lecture (I had an audience of nearly 300) the "divine" (as the church students were called) in charge of the lighting startled us all by suddenly crying out, "There is going to be an explosion!" and the next moment a flame shot up from the lantern almost to the ceiling. "Only that and nothing more"; but it was quite sufficiently alarming for the moment. Next day we enjoyed a motor-drive through the pretty pastoral country, and saw in the course of it one curious sight—a suffragist female (militant by the look of her) standing on a stool just outside the lychgate of a village church, and addressing an apparently very unreceptive audience of open-mouthed Hertfordshire yokels.

Holy Week and Easter found me again at Arundel, where there was a holiday gathering of many young people at the castle, the youngest member of the party being the Duke's baby daughter, who was christened Katherine the day after my arrival. "Absit omen!" whispered (not very tactfully, I thought) the good vicar of Arundel, as we drank tea and nibbled the christening cake after the ceremony—looking up, as he spoke, at a portrait of the baby's luckless ancestress Queen Katherine Howard. "Il n'y a pas de danger," I whispered back; but I don't know whether he understood French. I was amused afterwards, talking to the nurse of the Duchess's small nephews and nieces, to hear her opinion of the castle and its glories. "A dreadful place for children, I call it, with all these towers and battlements and dungeons and hiding-holes—one never knows where they'll get to next. A London house for me, where there's children to look after!" The services were jubilant, and the great church beautifully adorned on Easter Sunday, and the choir warbled what poor Angus[[13]] used to call the "sensuous harmonies" of Gounod in their best style. Yet more children arrived after Easter, including three tomboy great-nieces of our host; and there were great games in the vast Baron's hall—roller-skating on the expanse of polished floor, and dancing to the rather inadequate strains of a wheezy gramophone which had suffered from the depredatory explorations of my lord of Arundel and Surrey and his sisters.

The Duke motored me up to London in Easter-week to attend Stafford's wedding in Eaton-square: masses of arums and Madonna lilies, tall upstanding plumes of Eton blue waving from the bridesmaids' heads, and the inevitable and inappropriate "O for the Wings of a Dove!" The Primate of All Ireland began his sermon by addressing the happy pair, with unnecessary intimacy, as "Eilleen and George";[[14]] and when he had finished we all trooped off to Grosvenor House. Duchess Millicent was in great beauty, but I was sorry to see Sutherland, with whom I talked for five minutes, looking very ill and almost voiceless.[[15]] We had a pleasant drive back to Arundel; and I was interested to notice what one never, of course, sees travelling by rail, how completely the scenery, the soil, even the appearance of the people, changed as we crossed the border from Surrey into Sussex.

I recall a luncheon about this time at a big London hotel—a snug little party of a hundred or so—with Lord Saye and Sele in the chair, and speeches from Lord William Cecil, Sir Henry Lunn, and others, about the development of China, and especially the projected Chinese university. The novel toast of the "President of the Chinese Republic" was replied to, in excellent English, by the Chinese Minister, Yew Luk Lin, next to one of whose two agreeable daughters I was seated: they were all three in Western garb. Next day my brother motored me down to Eton (always a pleasure to me) to see his boy there; we went on afterwards to Brooklands, and looked at the motors dashing round the track and the aeroplanes swooping round, rising and alighting, all new to me and very interesting. Another interesting evening was spent at the Albert Hall, at the annual demonstration of the Boys' Brigade, to which, after the drill and other performances, Prince Arthur of Connaught presented new colours, the gift of the Princess Royal. After this I had to go down to Ramsgate (though feeling far from fit) to give my last lecture at the Benedictine school and abbey there. I was interested in the church—Pugin's masterpiece, as he considered it himself, and thought it impressive, but so dark that I could not read my breviary in it at noonday.[[16]] The observance of the good monks was in some respects Italian (e.g. the reading in the refectory was in that language); but the schoolboys seemed quite British, and cheered my lecture with British heartiness. I should have liked to stay a little and enjoy the hospitality of my brethren in the pure air and sunshine of the Thanet coast; but I had to hurry back to London and submit to a serious medical overhauling, the net result of which was an order to go in for an immediate and drastic "cure"—if possible at Aix-les-Bains.[[17]] A friend's generosity made this feasible; and, duly authorized, I prepared to pass three weeks at the famous Savoy watering-place.